Abstract

According to Arthur Danto, the crisis of modern art is not the abandonment of representation, nor an attempt at intentional “uglification,” but a struggle to escape the aesthetic objectification of artworks.1 This attempt at escape has led modern artists to hold an indifferent attitude toward beauty, an attitude that has resulted in the readymade: in Duchamp’s famous urinal and snow shovel, and Warhol’s perhaps more famous soup can. Danto’s account of this crisis in art is plausible—for what is one to say vis-à-vis the beauty of objects in art galleries whose twins reside in washrooms and cupboards?—and if accepted identifies a related crisis in philosophy. From Plato to Schopenhauer, philosophers have largely ..