A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy ? The Focal Trajectory and Internal Logic of Forty Years of Debate over Danto's "End of Art"

Yi Li; Sarantsatsral Tserenchimed

doi:10.63313/ah.9059

Authors

Yi Li CITI University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar 14201, Mongolia Author
Sarantsatsral Tserenchimed National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63313/ah.9059

Keywords:

Arthur C. Danto, End of art, Post-Historical Period, Immune Structure, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Categorical Reduction, Chinese Aesthetics, Qiyun

Abstract

Arthur C. Danto’s “end of art” thesis, first advanced in 1984, has provoked one of the most sustained and philosophically consequential debates in contemporary aesthetics. This article systematically traces the focal trajectory of that debate across four decades—from the empirical refutations gathered in Berel Lang’s The Death of Art (1984), through the paradigmatic challenges of the 1998 History and Theory special issue, to the epistemological deepening of the 2001 Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on “The Historicity of the Eye,” and finally to the decentralized reappraisals of 2006–2008. The analysis reveals a paradoxical structure: at each stage, critics who sought to overturn Danto’s claim found their escalating attacks absorbed into his framework, ultimately confirming the very problem-domain he had established. This article argues that the persistence of this pattern rests on an “immune structure” generated by two unexamined categorical reductions at the starting point of Danto’s argument—the equation of the history of art with the history of art’s conceptual self-cognition, and the further identification of the exhaustion of that conceptual narrative with the end of art itself. Moreover, the debate did not merely fail to refute Danto: through the gradual institutional adoption of the “post-historical” judgment in art-historical curricula and curatorial practice, Danto’s thesis functioned as a self-fulfilling prophecy, actively shaping the very condition it purported merely to describe. The article concludes by suggesting that non-Western aesthetic traditions—specifically, Chinese categories such as qiyun, yijing, and bimo—harbor a fundamentally different mode of questioning art, one that does not proceed by way of conceptual boundary-exhaustion, and may thus open a path beyond the debate’s four-decade impasse.

References

[1] Arthur C. Danto, "The End of Art," in The Death of Art, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Haven Publications, 1984), 6.

[2] Contemporary Aesthetics 4 (2006), Special Issue: "Danto at Twenty." The commemorative issue was organized by the journal's editorial board and brought together multiple scholars for systematic review and assessment of the reception of Danto's end-of-art thesis over two decades.

[3] Arthur C. Danto, "Narratives of the End of Art," Grand Street 8, no. 3 (Spring 1989): 57–81. Subsequently collected in Arthur C. Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), 330–345. For Danto's repeated clarifications, see also Danto, After the End of Art, 21–25.

[4] Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 4.

[5] Christopher Butler, "Art and Its Interpretation," in The Death of Art, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Haven Publications, 1984), 137–158.

[6] Robert A. Pois, "Danto's Apocalypse," in The Death of Art, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Haven Publications, 1984), 159–180. Pois's appeal to Worringer's concept of "artistic will" (Kunstwollen) appears at 155–158.

[7] Pois, "Danto's Apocalypse," 159–180.

[8] Joyce Brodsky, "A Pluralistic Model of Art History," in The Death of Art, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Haven Publications, 1984), 115–130.

[9] Richard Kuhns, "The End of Art?," in The Death of Art, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Haven Publications, 1984), 163–180. For Winnicott's classic account of the "transitional object," see D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1971).

[10] Arthur C. Danto, "The Artworld," Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 19 (1964): 580.

[11] Full details of the special issue: History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): Danto and His Critics: Art History, Historiography and After the End of Art. For the background of the symposium held at the Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, April 16–19, 1997, see the editors' introduction, 1–3.

[12] Arthur C. Danto, "The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 127–143.

[13] Noël Carroll, "The End of Art?," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 17–29. Carroll's decomposition of Danto's argument and his challenge to the logic of sample selection appear at 21–25; his twofold conclusion at 28–29.

[14] Michael Kelly, "Essentialism and Historicism in Danto's Philosophy of Art," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 30–43.

[15] Hans Belting, Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte? (1983), rev. ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995); English translation: The End of the History of Art?, trans. Christopher S. Wood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). The thesis cited here appears in the introduction, 1–15. For Anita Silvers's analysis of cross-contextual commensurability, see Anita Silvers, "The Story of Art Is the Test of Time," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 44–58.

[16] Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art?, trans. Christopher S. Wood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). The German original was published in 1983; the revised edition in 1995. For the subsequent development of Belting's "image history" project, see his Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 1–20.

[17] Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 1–25.

[18] Arthur C. Danto, "The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 127–143.

[19] Arthur C. Danto, "The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 128–130.

[20] Arthur C. Danto, "The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 131–132. Danto's exact formulation in the text contrasts "the history of art's philosophical concept" with "the history of visuality."

[21] Arthur C. Danto, "The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense," History and Theory 37, no. 4 (December 1998): 131–132, 141. The distinction between visual history and conceptual history receives its first explicit formulation here. Danto writes at 141 that what the Brillo Box accomplished "cannot be duplicated philosophically."

[22] Thomas E. Wartenberg, "Introduction: The Historicity of the Eye," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 1–5.

[23] Mark Rollins, ed., Danto and His Critics, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). This volume collects representative essays by Davis, Rollins, and Carroll, and constitutes the most authoritative scholarly survey of Danto's reception.

[24] Whitney Davis, "Art History, Knowledge, and the Historicity of the Eye," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 19–28. The discussion of Gestalt visual constancies appears at 23–25.

[25] Mark Rollins, "The Historicity of the Eye: A Critical Notice of Arthur Danto," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 7–17. The systematic exposition of the three-level distinction appears at 12–14.

[26] Noël Carroll, "The Historicity of the Eye: A Commentary on Danto," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 47–54.

[27] Noël Carroll, "The Historicity of the Eye: A Commentary on Danto," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 50–51.

[28] Arthur C. Danto, "The Pigeon within Us All: A Reply to the Critics," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 63–71, see 65–66.

[29] Raquel Cascales, Arthur Danto and the End of Art (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 45–52.

[30] For documentation of the online conferences held between 2006 and 2008, see José Luis Lirola, ed., El fin del arte y otros ensayos (Madrid: Antonio Machado, 2009), vii–xv.

[31] Among the Latin American contributions to Danto criticism during this period, particularly notable is the Argentine scholar Elena Oliveras on the applicability of Danto's thesis in the context of Latin American contemporary art. See Elena Oliveras, "El fin del arte en América Latina," in Estética contemporánea: Estudios de filosofía del arte, ed. Ricardo Ibarlucía (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2008), 187–204.

[32] For parallel readings of Danto and Fukuyama's end-of-history thesis, see Pedro Süssekind, O Fim do Mundo: A Estética do Fim da Arte (São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2014), chap. 1, "Dois Fins da História," 15–62.

[33] For an empirical examination of the relationship between the art market and the end-of-art thesis, see Olav Velthuis, Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–30.

[34] James Elkins, "The Survey: A Course Description," in Is Art History Global?, ed. James Elkins (New York: Routledge, 2007), 89–93.

[35] Okwui Enwezor, "The Black Box," in Documenta 11_Platform 5: Exhibition, ed. Okwui Enwezor et al. (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 42–55. The cited passage appears at 49.

[36] For the classic formulation of the "self-fulfilling prophecy," see Robert K. Merton, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy," The Antioch Review 8, no. 2 (Summer 1948): 193–210. This article invokes the concept in a restricted sense: it does not claim that all features of the artistic post-historical condition can be attributed to the dissemination of Danto's theory; it claims only that Danto's thesis provided these institutional changes with a philosophically coherent self-descriptive language, thereby accelerating its acceptance as "common sense."

[37] Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 13. The original reads: "The history of art is the history of the question 'What is art?' being raised, refined, and advanced."

[38] Wang Duanting, "Yixu" [Translator's Preface], in Arthur C. Danto, Yishu de Zhongjie [The End of Art], trans. Ouyang Ying (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2001), 1–8. Shen Yubing, 20 Shiji Yishu Piping [Twentieth-Century Art Criticism] (Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2003), 245–280. [in Chinese]

[39] Xiao Hao, "Dantuo Yishu Zhongjielun zai Zhongguo de Jieshou yu Piping" [The Reception and Criticism of Danto's End-of-Art Thesis in China], Wenyi Yanjiu [Literature and Art Studies], no. 3 (2022): 45–56. [in Chinese]

[40] Huang Yongping, Zhongguo Huihuashi yu Xiandai Huihua Jianshi zai Xiyiji li Jiaoda Liang Fenzhong [A History of Chinese Painting and A Brief History of Modern Painting Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes], 1987. This work was first realized at the Xiamen Dada exhibition in 1987. See Huang Yongping, "Guanyu Dada" [On Dada], Meishu [Art Monthly], no. 3 (1987): 15–18. [in Chinese]

[41] Peng Feng, "Zhongguo Dangdai Yishu zhong de Lishi Yishi" [Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Chinese Art], Wenyi Yanjiu [Literature and Art Studies], no. 8 (2021): 12–24. [in Chinese].