Abstract

Art historians interpret artworks, tell the history of art and compare diverse artistic traditions. This chapter presents one key portion of Krauss's theorizing, Arthur Danto's definition of art, and compares and contrasts their accounts. Responding to radically original contemporary art, Krauss offered a challenging philosophical argument about the nature of art. Danto offers a completely general account, one that identifies the essence of all art. His written commentaries on Warhol tell what is embodied in Brillo Box, which is a commentary on the meaning of visual art in a commodity culture. Danto believes that essentialism is the only satisfactory basis for philosophy. Sometimes appealing to essentialism involves a conservative ideal that at bottom nothing ever changes. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, a textbook that discusses a variety of philosophical writers. In the nineteenth century, Kant's and Hegel's philosophies played a crucial role in the formative development of art history writing.