Arthur Danto: The Transfiguration Transfigured

The Transfiguration Transfigured: Concluding remarks (click to view full pdf version)

Arthur C. Danto

Confronted by this outpouring of philosophical analysis bestowed upon a book I published twenty five years ago, I all at once realize how impoverished our language is in words for expressing gratitude. I mean that all we have is some variation on “thanks,” whether someone has passed the salt or held the door open, or rescued a child or saved ones life or murmured, like Molly Bloom, yes I said yes I will Yes. The word, compared to whatever elicits it, is inadequate and mechanical. Perhaps its having become perfunctory implies how commonplace generosity really is in our lives. It is the default condition of each of us to be in constant need of acknowledging the generosity of others. So I thought of the feast of thanksgiving that our forefathers thought of as a way of acknowledging the magnitude of grace by devouring its benefits, showing thanks by demonstrative philosophical gluttony. Lydia Goehr, in her brilliant mock sermon, has after all blurred the boundary between a conference and a congregation, somewhat playing on my own propensity for secularized liturgical language, which Richard Shusterman has made the occasion for his remarkable keynote address. “Transfiguration,” as you will see, is the least of it.

So I have tried, as a sign of devouring if not entirely digesting this banquet of essays, to respond as I could to each of them, sorted into courses by the organizers. The “Concluding Remarks,” while not quite as long as the aggregate length of the papers, is long enough to have been indigestible were it read aloud at the end of a conventional conference, with everyone stifling yawns and looking at their watches and wondering when will he be done? That may be one of the immediate benefits of the online conference, to compensate for those that Lydia itemizes as the pleasures of what we must henceforward call offline conferences. There are many others – like downloading presentations for later perusal, rather than frantically taking inadequate notes, and reading over and over what, at a conference, we could not possibly ask the speaker to repeat.

I have some observations to make, though not on this occasion, of how the medium inflects the message, to pick up on Lydia’s alerting us to the differences the Internet can make in communication. Instead, I conclude this thanksgiving preamble with a genuine acknowledgement. I cannot begin to say how much I have learned from this interchange, from having to think through in some degree what came in these papers, not just about the book but about our subject as aestheticians and philosophers of art. I hope that will be evident as you in your turn work through what I have written in response to you...

Comments

[davidcarrier]

The obituary of Julies Olitski, Greenberg's favorite painter was in the TIMES today. That felt like an omen- it prepared me to look on at this marvelous commentary which stands to our era as ART AND CULTURE does to Olitski's time. There is so much here, I need to be selective, very selective in my response.

A couple of little notes. Arthur's contrast between Hegel and Baudrillard points to exactly the right issue. When one trusts an author, one reads the difficulty parts expecting illumination. But when not, then reading has the sense of a confidence trick. I once asked him about another French writer, Bourdieu, whose Danto-commentary is simply wrong, not something an undergraduate would be allowed to get away with. Yes, he said, it's wrong: and so off that book went to the second hand bookstore. One always trusts Arthur, which is to say that he has an honest argument. Having myself left philosophy for the art world, I think of his reputation in my world with a kind of amazement, he's a sober man amidst mostly giddy writers. In that spirit, Fried's 1962 response to Warhol is worth looking up. He didn't doubt that the paintings were art, his worry was that they depended upon contemporary themes, and so might not survive journalism. But since Marilyn at least is an iconic figure stioll, no need to worry there.

I agree fully about the problems of academic art criticism. An artist we both I think know, Maureen Connor, once told me of reading an account of her art and having to seek a dictionary to learn what was being said. Since she is a very smart person, that said something about the nature of commentary. But part of the problem here, I must say, is that art writing proceeds thus because academic philosophers mostly have not engaged themselves in the art world. Whether they could be accepted by the journals, that's of course another question.

The discussion of TILTED ARC shows Arthur's common sense. I recall wandering in the evening, looking for a liquor store so that I could take wine to a dinner, and thinking, 'how awful'. One learns to trust these unbookish immediate responses.

Responding to my paper, Arthur notes my disappointment that he has as yet only given two conditions. This is clearer in the Mellon lectures. I still am frustrated, for the definition of art, that has to be the core of his analysis. My book PROUST/WARHOL will advocate extending the definition of art-like things to include things like fashion. I tell that because this allows me to tell a little story, from yesterday, which reveals much about Arthur, and so makes a nice conclusion. He is famously fast, as one can infer just from this massive, clear quickly written commentary we have today. And we have learned to communicate in ways which are cryptic. Well!, I said that since fashion too was art, then cultural studies had won, and he should ask his great friend, and Michael Kelly's, Mark Tansey to do a painting, showing Danto before Barthes, exactly as in another real painting Tansey showing the French school of painters surrendering to Greenberg. Arthur said, philosophers do not surrender to literary critics, a nice very fast reply. Here there is much more to say, but probably not today.

[Andrew Haas]

WHY HAMLET?
Having followed this 2007 conference on The Transformation of the Commonplace (1981), although not having been an invited ‘speaker,’ and having just read Danto’s “Concluding Remarks,” I’m nevertheless struck by the fact that no one seems to have addressed the very beginning of the text, or that which comes even before the beginning, namely the epigraphical quote from Shakespeare (well known but here left unattributed):

“Hamlet
Do you see nothing there?

Queen
Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.”

In fact, a surprising fidelity to Hamlet marks Danto’s thinking about art, a fidelity that seems at least as essential as the one to Warhol—for this very same quotation is to be found at the beginning of “The Artworld” (1964, albeit here with attribution and punctuation).
For Danto, Hamlet (together with Socrates) marks a certain representational or reflective theory of art “as a mirror held up to nature” (1964; 571). But while Socrates “saw mirrors as but reflecting what we can already see,” Hamlet recognized that reflecting surfaces “show us what we could not otherwise perceive—our own face and form—and so art, insofar as it is mirrorlike, reveals us to ourselves” (1964; 571). Not surprisingly this argument is repeated or quoted in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, but this time the role of Hamlet (now as Shakespeare’s character) is expanded (1981; 7-11; also 34, 126, 208). In attempting to catch the conscience of the King through the play within the play, Death of Gonzago within Hamlet, “Hamlet knows that Claudius knows that Hamlet knows” (1981; 11). Art as imitation has been set-up or historically situated so that eventually the mimetic theory of art may be superseded, overcome or replaced by the institutional theory of art; and of course, what is at issue here is the ability or inability to distinguish between art objects and “mere real things.”
My question however, much more concerns Shakespeare—or at least Shakespeare insofar as he is used by Danto, that is, insofar as Hamlet is selected as spokesman for Shakespeare’s “theory of art,” if he ever had one—my question is namely: Why Hamlet? Why, for example, not some other play? Why not As You Like It? Or The Merchant of Venice? Does Danto’s theory fit the history of art, or have examples been chosen from the history of art to fit the theory? Does Shakespeare—from whom the fluxus performances may have learned much—not mark precisely that point at which art objects and “mere real things” already become indistinguishable?
Just a couple of examples:

Jacques in As You Like It (Act II, Sc. 7):

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Antonio in The Merchant of Venice (Act I, Sc. 1):

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.

What would happen then, if these texts were taken as paradigmatic for Shakespeare’s ‘theory of art’? If the world is but “a stage where every man must play a part,” then would “The Artworld” not have to acknowledge that it is the only world, the one in which art is not a mirror of nature, but a mirror of mirrors in a hall of mirrors? Would The Transformation of the Commonplace not have to acknowledge that before Warhol, if “all the world’s a stage,” the ripe tomato that hits the character who plays Hamlet hits Hamlet as little or as much as it hits the character who plays himself—just as Laertes touches Hamlet just as much or as little as he touches us (1981; 34)? Would After the End of Art not have to acknowledge that “anything could be a work of art” (1997; 13)? That in the 16th Century, Shakespeare had already enacted the collapse of the distinction between art objects and real objects?
So if the question is: Why Hamlet? Can we not answer with The Merchant of Venice: As You Like It?

[Robert Kraut]

Surrender and Conformity: the Goals of Aesthetic Theory

Robert Kraut

My concern here is with "nonconformity"--especially in light of Arthur Danto's remark (cited by David Carrier) that "philosophers do not surrender to literary critics."

It is one thing to surrender, and quite another to explain: a sociologist who seeks an understanding of some horrifying uprising does not thereby endorse the uprising or surrender to it. If our job, as philosophers of art, is to make sense of what goes on in the artworld--much as the job of a semantic theorist is to make sense of what goes on in a fragment of natural language--then it is vital to generate a theory that conforms to artworld practice; otherwise the theory is inadequate. Aesthetic theorists seem not to agree upon precisely what they are trying to do, or what questions they are trying to answer, or what it would be to do their job well. Consider: some philosophy of mathematics is revisionary: intuitionists, for example, wish to tell mathematicians how to do their jobs; but most of it seeks to provide some explanation of what mathematicians actually do (is this an instance of philosophers surrendering to mathematicians?). If the task of the aesthetic theorist is explanation of artworld practice, then accommodating the data shouldn't be conflated with surrender.

This spills back into my earlier exchange with John Dilworth; here is something he says in response to my observations about his discussion of "vehicle fetishism":

"But Danto himself denies that Demoiselle is a 'mere real thing'. I simply point out the implications if we take him at his word. If there's something wrong with my arguments, then that's what needs to be addressed, rather than worries about nonconformity."

Those who routinely worry about the metaphysics of modality will find plenty of room to maneuver around his argument. He is, of course, quite right that if the artwork A is represented as an ordered triple A = [C,H,I] then of course nothing can be identical with A unless it contains C as a constituent. Nevertheless, any triple A' = [C',H,I] (where C' is a physical object "observationally indiscernible" from C, H a history, and I an interpretation) is so intimately related to A as to deserve special designation, even if it isn't identity. We may say that artworks A and A' are distinct but intimately related: we can articulate some indiscernibility relation that does justice to actual artworld discourse. Such a theoretical strategy is consistent with continued insistence upon C being somehow integral to A.

Even aesthetic theorists are bound by methodological principles of "minimal mutilation": an ontological explanatory strategy that removes C from the artwork is surely less desirable than one that regards the counterfactual relation between an artwork and some possible alternative physical manifestation of that artwork as a relation other than identity.

All of this assumes that the goal of the aesthetic theorist is to make sense of actual artworld practice. Explanation, not conformity or surrender, is the task at hand.

[davidcarrier]

I take up just the first part of RK's comment, which interests me a lot. Of course he is right-- to make sense of the art world, you need to study it. But I would ask: who is the audience here? If you want to write for the philosophers, well the problem is that as a group they don't know much about the art world. To learn that, you really need to spend time in the galleries. Myself, I think it more interesting to engage in the practice of the art world, writing art criticism. I do not believe that it is possible to understand the art world from outside in any interesting way. And as I've said earlier, the art world is, for better or worse, not interested in what philosophers have to say.

[John Dilworth]

Thanks to Robert Kraut for his renewed concerns about my 'vehicle fetishism' view that a painting does not include its physical vehicle. He says:

"Even aesthetic theorists are bound by methodological principles of "minimal mutilation": an ontological explanatory strategy that removes C from the artwork is surely less desirable than one that regards the counterfactual relation between an artwork and some possible alternative physical manifestation of that artwork as a relation other than identity."

On my view, there still is a "relation other than identity" between possible alternative representational vehicles and an artwork, namely the one specified in the first part of this sentence. Also, as far as overall explanatory plausibility in the arts is concerned, we routinely regard vehicles as inessential in cases such as different DVD copies of the same film, different performances of the same play, dance or musical piece, different copies of a novel, and so on. Consequently, I do regard the visual-arts fixation on particular vehicles as a peculiar psychological fetish rather than as a rationally defensible general kind of explanation in the arts.

[Robert Kraut]

What are we doing? A quick response to David Carrier

Robert Kraut

I appreciate David Carrier's directness in addressing questions about some of the most basic aspects of aesthetic theory: who should be doing it and who is interested in it. David describes himself (in a Feb. 5 posting) as "Having...left philosophy for the art world...". Those who insist that responsible philosophical theorizing draw upon adequate data benefit enormously from the specialized knowledge and experience that David brings to these discussions. He then asks

"...who is the audience here? If you want to write for the philosophers, well the problem is that as a group they don't know much about the art world. To learn that, you really need to spend time in the galleries. Myself, I think it more interesting to engage in the practice of the art world, writing art criticism. I do not believe that it is possible to understand the art world from outside in any interesting way. And as I've said earlier, the art world is, for better or worse, not interested in what philosophers have to say."

David's sentiments prompt several questions that should be made explicit:

1) Many of us have personal engagements in the artworld that play themselves out in our efforts to theorize. I do not write art criticism or spend much time in the galleries. But a substantial amount of my time is spent working as a jazz guitarist. I suspect that David and I are on the same page in our frustration about what Arthur earlier described as theorizing based upon insufficient familiarity with actual artworld practice.

But this prompts questions. When David says "I do not believe that it is possible to understand the art world from outside in any interesting way", it is difficult to say precisely who does or does not enjoy the requisite privileged perspective. Does the purchaser of CD's fall "outside" the relevant portions of the artworld? How about the listener with a few years of keyboard lessons to his credit, who insists upon critically discussing Jimmy Smith's later work? How about the recording engineer, or the roadies who move amplifiers from the truck to the stage? How about those in the front row during the concert who--though not themselves performers--obviously grasp the metric structure of the music? Who, precisely, is "inside" the artworld? The issue here is clear and familiar: the very "inside/outside" contrast assumed by David's remark is a difficult contrast to articulate. (Analogous questions are familiar elsewhere: even the semantic theorist must make decisions about who is or is not a "competent" speaker of the language under study.)

2) Another vital question is prompted by David's "And as I've said earlier, the art world is, for better or worse, not interested in what philosophers have to say."

Most musicians I've interacted with have little interest in (or patience for) reflection upon the subtleties of expression, representation, and other traditional problems in aesthetic theory. That isn't the sort of thing they care about, or even know how to participate in. So much the worse for those musicians? I doubt it. Participants in a practice are usually left cold by "higher level" theorizing about the norms and regularities sustained within their practices: most working mathematicians have little interest in questions about formalism, platonism, and nominalism; most successful athletes have little concern with the neurochemical details of muscle tension and/or performance stress; most moral agents have little interest in whether moral realism, projectivism, emotivism, or prescriptivism are true. The fact that philosophical theories of morality are of little interest to those engaged in moral deliberation is no argument against the utility of such theories.

So when David says: "...who is the audience here? If you want to write for the philosophers, well the problem is that as a group they don't know much about the art world.", I only note that things have changed little since Clive Bell lamented the situation almost a century ago. We hope that philosophers of art are sufficiently familiar with the arts to make their theories genuinely relevant to the data. Arthur Danto is one of few philosophers who qualify for dual citizenship in the worlds of art criticism and systematic philosophical reflection: perhaps that is why his work is of such seminal importance.

[davidcarrier]

A very short reply in agreement with RK. I am only discussing visual art, where the art world is, in America anyway, in New York. Nothing about music, which I know too little about. My one essay on music is a footnote in Lydia's first book. I would love to read aesthetics devoted to pop music. My sense, looking at the VELVET UNDERGROUND literature for my PROUST/WARHOL is that the commentators seem too stoned to be sensible. Philosophical sobriety is called for!

[virginia Helena A. Aita]

I’m immensely gratefull to Mr Danto for his marvelous, enlightening response. His comments so revealing and sober helped us to adjust any misinterpretation. Let alone his lucid stand in aesthetics and art criticism practice as an ethical commitement to deep humanistic issues, since art itself is a transgressive work of transfiguration! But what makes me the most happy was finding out your clear bias towards Kant’s theory of aesthetc ideias (Kant after Duchamp, certainly not after Greenberg), pretty much akin to that “perfect adequacy/correlatedness” of content and means of presenttion from Hegel’s Aesthetics. After all, it seems you both agree that “the beauty of art presents itself to sense, feeling, intuition, imagination; it has a different sphere from thought, and the aprehension of its activity and its products demands an organ other than scientific thinking” (Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. I, p.5), so showing not saying - embodied meanings which demands all the more art criticism interpretation.
Thanks a lot and congratulations to all of you (organizers and expert teachers) for this superb congress on line, doubtless a brave and praiseworthy enterprise. After all, despite the risks of cyber format, and is volatile audience, I’m quite sure it’s huge sucsses.Doubtless, it’s an upgrade in aesthetic debate - a sophisticated and yet democratic forum of AD’s philosohy/ criticism, by itself unprecedented. It makes me retrieve my faith in American democracy! As a graduate student from Brazil (UFRGS), I’m a bit appart from this rich and pro interchange (working on a thesis on Danto, and translator/reviewr After the End..), so I treasured every paper, mostly because one could get in touch with the moods, rythms and stimmung of the arguments/contenders without missing acuteness.
Let alone the bright, wittty, omnipresence of David Carrier valuable comments. It’s also amazing the vibration, challenge and excitement AD and his wonderful work aptly awakes in so many thinking people. Who does not want to get inspired? Lidia Goher put forward that inghtfull and speculative text, Carrier engaged us in his rigorous investigtion of major philosophical issues, with an amazing fluent knowledge, Shusterman took us in a speculative and metphysical journey, which makes me wonder how close we still are from theological notions and how much mystery (embodied meanings as metaphors!) transfiguration envolves. My best,
Virginia Aita

[Lydia Goehr]

I tried to post this comment last night. Anyway, in that comment I first thanked the organisers of this conference for producing what has VIRTUALLY turned out to be a wondrous global phenomonon. But second I made note of the fact that yesterday someone (shy of technology) emailed Arthur who emailed me to ask whether the comment (below) could be posted for all to read. So here it is:

"I cannot find the online conference site with my poor computer skills. But I would like to share the following thought with you and your good friends:

My teacher of Chinese classics told me about calligraphy: "With one brush pen and with one color of ink--black--you can express your own thoughts and feelings and describe a myriad of objects and concepts. You cannot know the meaning of what I say now but if you live long enough this idea will dawn on you."

I think I was five years old then. Of course, I could not comprehend what my master told me at that time. But after many years and on a different continent another master who is the author of The Transfiguration of Commonplace has confirmed the wisdom of my old master.

Young Kun Kim
The Graduate Center
The City University of New York"