You are on page 1of 8

A Future for Aesthetics

Author(s): Arthur C. Danto


Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 2, Aesthetics: Past and
Present. A Commemorative Issue Celebrating 50 Years of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism and the American Society for Aesthetics (Spring, 1993), pp. 271-277
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/431394
Accessed: 10/06/2009 15:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Blackwell Publishing and The American Society for Aesthetics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

http://www.jstor.org
ARTHUR C. DANTO

A Futurefor Aesthetics

Thisflea is you and I....


JohnDonne

I have lately been admiringthe engravingsexe- propositions; and it is this expressive supple-
cuted for Hooke's Micrographiaof 1665, espe- ment thatI am somewhatat a loss to explain.
cially plates xxxiv and xxxv, of the flea and the Perhapsit has to do with the way the flea and
louse respectively;and I have wonderedhow, as the louse fill the space of their respectiveplates.
an art critic, I could account for the uncanny The flea's helmet-like forehead all but touches
powerand strangebeautyof creatureswhich, in the right edge of the space defined by the plate,
Hooke's day, must have been regardedas pests, and its battery of tail-hairs in fact touches the
muchas they are today.They are no less fiercely left-handedge. That space has no room for any-
constructedthanthe mandragoresandgriffins of thing else, so the insects look monumental. Yet
mythic imagination, but they at the same time they are not monstrosities,the way gigantesque
show the limits of the imagination,able to little insects in science-fiction movies are, large in
better,in confecting its creatures,thanthe man- proportionto the coweringhumanswho striveto
dragoreor the griffin. The latterbearout a thesis evade theirdangerousmandiblesand slimy exu-
of Locke's, in that they are composed of parts dates. Hooke's plates instead imply that these
which belong to the gross anatomy of more or microscopiccreaturesare, notwithstandingtheir
less commonplacecreatures, with wings, dart- size, monumentaland imposing in the intricacy
ing tongues, talons, fangs, fins, and stingers-a and the proportionsof their astonishingbodies.
bit from here, a bit from there, exemplifications The great microscopistsof the seventeenthcen-
of compound ideas fabricated of simpler ele- tury were possessed by a miniaturistaesthetics.
ments,themselvesderivedfromexperience.Leo- It was not merely that, as Swammerdampro-
nardois recordedto have played in this fashion posed, we could, with the aid of the microscope,
withmembraanimaliumto fashioncobbledmon- "find wonder upon wonder, and God's wisdom
sters-recombinant amalgams of found pieces. clearly exposed in one minuteparticle." It was,
But who could have imagined these bodies, rather,that God's skillfulness and artisanrywas
enormous in proportionto their skimpy, haired even more manifest in the universe's invisible
legs, inadequate,one would supposea priori, to detail. Leeuwenhoekfelt that greatercraft was
carry those plated abdomensand heavy, shelled requiredto execute tiny mechanismsthan large
heads?Hooke's flea is a creatureas ornamental ones that performedthe same functions: it takes
and as intimidatingas a warhorse in Nuremburg a better watchmakerto execute miniaturetime-
armor:the hairs stick stiffly out of its body like pieces than great clocks, for example. In this
spikes, andgive it the air of armedmenace. And view, a flea betraysthe handof the Makermore
the louse, clutchinga hairas if a spear,looks like conspicuously than, say, a horse. Indeed, had
a knight with a blazoned shield and the kind of Leeuwenhoekwrittenthe Book of Job, he would
horned headpiece worn by the TeutonicOrder. have had God challenge our puny limits not with
There is little doubt that these minute creatures the Leviathan, but with the flea, to which he
have been drawnjust as the microscoperevealed devotedno fewerthanfifteen lettersto the Royal
them to be; but more than visual accuracy is Society.
conveyed by the images. They convey a feeling Leeuwenhoek's aesthetics led him to some
thatconnects with a whole body of metaphysical major discoveries, for example, that fleas are
The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51:2 Spring 1993
272 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

not spontaneouslygeneratedfromexcrement, as closely, you soon discover they are very differ-
Aristotle had claimed, but that they have appa- ent." And perhapsthis sentimentis distilled in
ratusesof generationnot all that different from Merian's certainly brilliant illuminations, in a
animalsgreatly larger:he was even able to find book which, accordingto Freedberg,"standsat
the spermatozoaof the flea. (Aristotle, wrongas the apex of a traditionof scientific examination
usual, thought such small creatureshad no in- thathas been growing for over a century."What
sides whatever, but were organic atoms.) One Freedbergis endeavoringto do is to cast toward
might as well expect to see a horse spring spon- these pictures of insects somethingof the same
taneouslyfroma pile of manure,the greatDutch- view that Maria Sibylla Merian cast towards
man said in his earthy way, as to see a flea insects themselves: they overcome the distinc-
materializefrom a dabof shit. The microscope's tion between high and low. He arguesthat if we
familiarname was pulicarium, or "flea glass"; identify art with painting, then the Golden Age
and Ecce pulex! is the rhetorical gesture of of Dutch art ended in 1669, with the death of
Hooke's engravings. The engravings thus con- Rembrandt."But if one considersart in its bet-
dense the miniaturistaesthetics that defined the ter and largersense, the GoldenAge is still at its
world of the classic microscopists, and which height at the turn of the century.... Artistic en-
those pioneers felt should define our own: the ergy may be seen to have drainedfrompainting,
world grows more wonderful as we cross the only to pass into book productionand the illu-
limits of unaidedvisibility. They demonstrateas stration of natural history." Our vision of art
well the penetrationby aesthetics of scientific history,but most especially of Dutchart history,
observation.As much as anything, I suppose, I has been limited by what he somewhatfashion-
admire the way the microscopists assume that ably calls the "patriarchal view." And the ascrip-
the tremendousskill of the engraver'shandshould tion of artisticgreatnessto Merianis furtherlim-
be turned as readily to something vanishingly ited- "bedeviled," Freedbergputs it- "by the
small and finally annoying, like lice and fleas, low view of illustrationin general and the dis-
as to the depictionof apocalypticevents: floods, missal of naturalhistory drawingas a predomi-
fires, annunciations, crucifixions, final judg- nantly female activity:" an inherentlyfeminine
ments. I admireeven more the way these figures because perhapsdependentactivity, since there
insist thatnothingcould be morewonderfulthan is no illustrationwithout text. Even today, "il-
these minor beings, associated in the common lustration"and "illustrational"aretermsof crit-
mind with dirt and dogs. When Leeuwenhoek ical demeritby those who cannothavepondered
discoveredthatthe tartarbetweenhis teethhoused the engravings of Micrographia, or Merian's
whole populationsof animalcules,he felt at once luminousbeetles. The phases of their metamor-
humbleandtriumphant. phoses are no less epic thanthe stages of Christ's
I am also struck, if I may say so, by the redemptive ascent through filth and blood to
readiness with which, as aesthetician and art transfigurativeradiance.
critic, I am preparedto thinkof worksas distant But aesthetics itself, let us face it, is aboutas
from the masterpiecesof high art as the flea is low on the scale of philosophicalundertakings
distantfrom the horse in the common scheme of as bugs are in the chainof being or mere illustra-
value. The distinguishedhistorianof Dutch art, tions are in the hierarchiesof art. A philosopher
David Freedberg, has recently devoted a fas- whose name is synonymouswith the production
cinatingessay to the "greatbook on the insects of books as technicalas they are numerousonce
of Surinam"-Metamorphosis Insectorum Su- boasted to me, when I delivered a talk on the
rinamensium-of Maria Sibylla Merian, pub- ontology of art at his high-steppingdepartment,
lished in 1705, and which, in Freedberg'sas- that he had written not one single word of aes-
sessment, "raisesthe portrayalof insectsto great thetics in his entire career. There can be little
art." Freedbergcites a passage from Johannes doubt that some contrast was implied between
Godaertthatcould applyimmediatelyto Hooke's whathe and whataestheticiansdid, which paral-
formidableflea: insects are "miraclesof nature, leled perhapsFreedberg'sidea of the patriarchal
the irrefragabletestimony of infinite wisdom privileging of painting over illustration. Aes-
and power. From the outside, they seem to be thetics was not something the philosophically
disgustingandabject, but when you look at them real man did. And quite apart from the invid-
Danto A Futurefor Aesthetics 273

iousness of logical machismo, there was in this ence-providing we can do the right sort of art
prolific philosopher'sview the conviction that criticism on this image. The flea's aesthetics
aestheticshas, by contrastwith science, nothing implied the way Hooke and his contemporaries
to report regarding the real structures of the lived in the universe, and the question surely is
world. His work was in the philosophy of sci- whether it is any different for us. Beauty and
ence, austerely construed, and, as he had little truth may not be quite one, but they appearto
doubt that science must be the vehicle of truth, have been sufficiently wed in the Age of the
so had he little doubtthatthe science of science, Marvelousthatan adequatelyadvancedaesthet-
as practiced by him, was the truth about the ics stood a fair chance of being queen of the
truth.But one greatadvantageof thinkingabout sciences: show me whatmen and womenhold to
scientific illustrationof the seventeenthcentury be beautifuland I will show you what they hold
is the way it communicatesto us that scientific to be true. And the rhetoricalquestionof the last
andaestheticconsiderationswereas intermingled sentence but one implies my view: that it is
in themas were the bloods of the poet of the lady possible that aesthesis stains so deeply the way
Donne addresses in his poem about that meta- we represent the world that no simulation of
physical flea which had bittenthem both: "One mentalprocess which seeks to filter it out could
blood made of two." Not just art and science, approximatethe way the cognitive mindactually
but aesthesis and cognition might concur that works.
"This flea is you and I, andthis / Ouremarriage Humefamouslywrotethat "Beautyis no qual-
bed, and marriage temple is." Try to subtract ity of things themselves, it exists merely in the
expressionfrom truthin Hooke's plate xxxiv! mindwhich contemplatesthem." Like the eye of
Can aesthesis and cognition be any less com- the beholder,alternativelyallocatedas Beauty's
mingledtoday?Or was theirmarriagean artifact residence,"themind"is meantas a sort of philo-
of the era of the early microscope-of The Age sophical attic in which the madwomanof aes-
of the Marvelous, to cite the title of an exhibi- thetic coloration is kept out of ontology's way.
tion, itself marvelous,which constituteditself a But there are an awful lot of things that have
lens throughwhich we could see the mind of the been taken seriously by tough-mindedphiloso-
Seicento,filled with the likes of fleas and micro- phersthatotherphilosophershavesupposedexist
scopes?I thinkthe futureof aestheticshadbetter merely in the mind: time, space, and causality,
consist of findingthis out, andpossibly the place to name a few. And while these may be but
to begin is with scientific illustration,as prac- forms for the organizationand rationalizationof
ticed today (photographyhas not made it obso- experience, it would be a neat trick to try to de-
lete but, rather,more necessary than ever). But scribe "thingsthemselves"withoutusing them.
alongside this difficult investigation-it is not Kanthad no way of doing that, and the things in
easy to know to what degree we are able to raise themselves are described only privatively, as
styles of representationto such a level of con- thatto which the forms of the minddo not apply,
sciousness that they revealthe structureof con- leaving "thingsthemselves," as Hume used the
sciousness itself-there is the task of clearing term, so commingledwith the forms thatwe can
away the powerfully disenabling ideas of aes- hardlydisassociatethem. Humedid like to speak
thesis that have tended to define the field, and of causalityas somethingthe mindprojectsonto
which make it rathereasy for my tough minded the neutralfabric of the world, leaving unclear
colleagueto feel therewouldbe no greatpoint in how we are to representthe pre-projectedworld
thinkingabout aesthetics in his endeavorto re- to ourselves. In any case, if beauty holds parity
construct the spiffy language of science. His of philosophicalnaturewith causality,aesthetics
ideal is to expunge from language everything can hardlybe discriminatedfromsciencein terms
Frege hadin mindby Farbung,leaving its analy- of objectiveauthority.
sis only a matterof unqualifiedSinn and Bedeu- As for the eye, it is, after all, an extruded
tung. My sense is that Hooke's flea exemplifies portion of the brain; the brain, in turn, that
a symbol in which Farbungis so inextricably entire computational system, is mobilized by
bound up with Sinn that we can almost infer what the eye finds fair: if beauty is in the eye of
from it the vision of the worldheld by the author the beholder,the brainat the very least keeps the
of the Micrographiaand by his primary audi- object of beauty in focus, the eyes open and
274 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

upon it, and the rest of the body's impulses put few who know anythingabout paintingwho do
on hold. In consigning beauty to the eye, the not reckonMantegnaas amongthegreatestpaint-
cynic believed it to be subtractedfrom objects, ers of history. But of those there is a consider-
and in doing so overlooks the whole dense net- ably reduced number that actually like Man-
work of neural wiring that connects the eye to tegna and perhapsan even greaternumberthat
the rest of us, and us to the world throughit. So actively dislike him.
in subtractingbeauty from the world'sobjective When we ponder such examples, of course,
order,we subtractourselvesfromthatorder,and we have alreadygone well past genetics, and are
the philosophicaldisenfranchisement of aesthetic dealing with culture and history, bracketed a
qualities(in the mind, in the eye) is in effect the moment ago. I forebear,even so, commenting
self disenfranchisementof us, driven as we are on the crippled state of cognitive science in
by the colorationsof meaningin choosing mates treatingus in abstractionfrom our historicaland
and metaphysicalsystems. culturallocations. It is the mind and the eye that
I literally cannot imagine what objects are locate us in cultureand history, but my thought
really like, abstractedfrom what might ingra- here, from which the engaging tangle of Hume
tiate the eye or satisfy the mind. Simply as a andOgilby,MiltonandMantegnahavedistracted
matterof genetics, and withoutbringingin issues me, is that even the prehistoric,preculturaleye
of history and culture, there is probablyenough and mind, if there were such things, would have
complexity in the architectureof cognition to found beauty in things. On the other hand, the
underwritethe truthof Hume's observationthat eye that makes the scientific observations and
"eachmindperceivesa differentbeauty"-which the mind that frames the scientific theories are
does not mean that there is no accounting for so woven in with the history and cultureof their
taste, butthatwe know too little aboutthe genet- owners that the neat enucleationof aesthesis is,
ics of cognitionto be able to do so. On the other as the Germanssay, vorbei.
hand,andthis wouldhavebeen the othercompo- The conjointtitle of thisjournal-The Journal
nent in Hume'saccount, thereis enough genetic of Aesthetics and Art Criticism-has increas-
overlapfromindividualto individualthatit would ingly been a matter of puzzlement to readers
be strangeif there were not a few things which who in fact find very little actualart criticism in
humansas humanswould not agree were beau- it. Either-to be consistentwith its content-the
tiful. Hume wrote that "it is fruitless to dispute title shouldbe TheJournalof Aestheticssimply,
concerning tastes," and if he is right, it is be- or-to be consistent with its title-its range of
cause the genetic understructureof aesthetics articles should be expandedto contain more of
determinesus to the receptionof experience so the sort of article which naturallyfinds a place
seasoned with aesthesis that there is no opening in such publications as Artforumor October.
for the interventionof rationaldispute. But it is But, in fact, as David Carrieronce observedin a
no less fruitlesswhen tastesconcur,when, to use session at an annual meeting, members of the
his well-knownexample, "Whoeverwouldassert American Society for Aesthetics hardly follow
an equalityof geniusbetweenOgilbyandMilton, contemporaryartcriticism,andthis recommends
or Bunyan and Addison, would be thought to just droppingthe second conjunct. I have a dif-
defend no less an extravagancethan if he had ferent view of the matter. I feel, for example,
maintaineda molehill to be as high as Teneriffe, that the wise founders of the Society felt that
or a pond as extensive as the ocean." The two aesthetics has a reach far wider than the preoc-
sides of Hume'sthesis on taste are underwritten cupationwith art as such-a position one might
by the same physiology or psychology. The dif- say is alreadyin place in Kant, who has negligi-
ference is that with the Ogilby-Miltoncase, the ble things to say about art-and they would be
Ogilby-freakcan at least be shown why his taste dismayed to see how more and more of the
is perverse, why he ought to admireMilton, on content of the journal has been given over to
the basis at least of the kinds of considerations aesthetic questions which more narrowly deal
which enterthe criticismof poetry. Still, no one with art, so thataestheticsand the philosophical
can be talkedinto liking Milton by such reason- concern with art have increasinglybeen seen as
ing, when it is Ogilby who has that certain synonymous. No: they saw aesthetics as vir-
somethingthat excites the soul. There are very tually as wide in scope as experience, whetherit
Danto A Futurefor Aesthetics 275

be experienceof art or of insects. Then, when it most disenablingstrategyof all. Justthinkabout


is art itself that is to be dealt with, it should be Hooke's flea once more: it instructsus in how
very largelyin the form of art criticism. the flea looks, but it does more than that by
There is, then, the aestheticswhich addresses instructingus how to think and feel about the
itself to the encolorationof meanings-to speak flea and abouta world which has such creatures
in the formal mode-or which penetrates our in it. I am content to follow the lead of David
experienceof the worldin such degree-to move Freedbergin campaigningto have illustrations
into the material mode that we cannot seri- accepted as art. But that does not mean that
ously addresscognition without referenceto it. henceforthplate xxxiv of Micrographiajust be-
It wouldbe, on the whole, an immensecontribu- comes a focus for contemplation,to be viewed
tion to our understandingof ourselves as cog- in the recommendeddisinterestedway. It is no
nitive beings if we were to study, from that use promotingsomething to the status of art if
perspective,the degree to which we are aesthetic that means putting it forever on cognitive sab-
beings, whose minds, as the in-the-mind-of-the- batical. Butthis bringsme now to the topic of art
beholder sort of theory allows, are filled with criticism.
(aesthetic)colorationsand preferences.In brief,
we allow the disenabling theory of aesthetics II
and use it as a pivot on which to argue for a
disenablingtheory of cognitive science, which The Transfigurationof the Commonplacetook a
fails to factor in what is "in the mind of the fairly hostile position on the aesthetic, but the
beholder." That means, in my view, that the targetof the hostilitywas two-fold:detachedand
progressof cognitive science is held hostage to disinterestedaesthetics,which is so salientin the
aesthetics, and boundto be retardataireso long philosophical tradition, and, beyond that, the
as the best work in aesthetics continues to re- tacit view, implicit in our practice, that art and
strict itself to conceptual questions of art. The aesthetics are so closely linked that they are
future of aesthetics is then very much to be somehow inseparable. My view was that aes-
understoodas the aesthetics of the future, con- thetics does not really belong to the essence of
strued as a discipline which borders on philo- art, and my argumentwas as follows. Two ob-
sophical psychology in one direction and the jects, one a work of art and the other not, but
theory of knowledgein the other. which happento resembleone anotheras closely
So muchfor the in-the-mindpartof the disen- as requiredfor purposes of the argument,will
abling formula. The other part- "of the be- have very different aesthetic properties. But,
holder"-is disenablingin a differentway: it as- since the differencedependedon the ontological
sumes, which has been the practice since Kant, difference between art and non-art, it could not
that aesthetics concerns primarily what tran- account for the difference in aestheticqualities.
spires in the mind of beholders, and treats aes- The aesthetic difference presupposedthe onto-
thetics as essentially a contemplativeaddressto logical difference. Hence, aesthetic qualities
objects, divorced from practicalconsiderations could not be part of the definition of art. True,
of every sort. We aestheticize only when the the work of art has a set of aesthetic qualities.
world is, so to speak, on hold. My view, on the But so does that which resembles it without
otherhand, is thatif aestheticconsiderationsare being a work. It may furtherbe true that these
commingledwith cognition, and cognition itself are aesthetic qualities of different kinds. I am
harnessedto practice, contemplationis not the not quite sure there are two kinds of aesthetic
defining aestheticpostureat all. (As if we leave qualities, but in any case one would need the
aestheticsbehind when we snap out of our con- concept of art to say in what the differencemust
templativestances and duke it out with reality!) consist. So I was able, pretty much, to put aes-
We may no doubt pause to admire the starry thetics on ice in workingout, so muchor so little
heavens above and the moral law within, but as I was able, the defining characterof worksof
those parenthesesof contemplation in no way art.
exhaust all the ways in which we relate aesthet- Let me now illustratemy claim by consider-
ically to the world. So perhapswhat we might ing the example which carried me so great a
call the aestheticizationof aestheticsis by farthe distance in that book and elsewhere: Warhol's
276 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Brillo Box of 1964. Now Brillo Box served a to his box, was an external assessment of the
purpose in making vivid the deep question in commercial container. But to Harvey, the box
ontology, of how somethingcould be a work of was not banal at all. In any case, in point of
art while otherthings, which resembledit to the meaningthe two could not be more different.
point where at least their photographswere in- Though Brillo Box and the Brillo boxes be-
discernible, could not. The mere Brillo boxes long more or less to the same momentin history,
which are not works of art neverthelessare not so faras externalchronologyis concerned,noth-
mere things; unlike mere fleas, they are among ing about the Brillo boxes would enable you to
the kinds of things Joseph Margolis has called know that there was an art work like Warhol's.
cultural emergents, which, like artworks, em- You might infer from Harvey'sboxes the exis-
body meanings. The interestingthing is to show tence of an art from which he derives his motifs
how the meaningsof thesetwo culturalemergents and his reductions:almost invariably,advertis-
differ, and hence how their aesthetics differ. Or ing art drawson high art paradigms.But thereis
better:to show the differencein the art criticism scant connection between Brillo Box and those
of these two objects. paradigms: the nearest affines to Brillo Box
The "real"Brillo box, which actually houses would have been what Oldenbergand Lichten-
Brillo pads, was designed by an artist, Steve stein were doing. But there are no interesting
Harvey, who was a second generationAbstract stylistic affinities between the various Pop art-
Expressionist more or less forced to take up ists, and certainly no affinity at all between
commercial art. It has, in fact, a very marked Harvey'sbox and any of Warhol'saffines-say a
style, which situates it perfectly in its own time plastic hamburgerby Claes Oldenberg.The real
and there are some very marked connections Brillo box could not have been done in, say,
betweenit and some of the high-artstyles of that 1910, but for reasons altogetherdifferent from
time. Its style, however, differs sharply from those which explain why Warhol'sBrillo Box
thatof Warhol'sBrillo Box, which has almost no could not have been done in 1910. For all that
connection to those very high art styles at all. they resembleone another,they belong to differ-
Where Warhol'sis cool, it is hot, even urgentin ent histories, and though Harvey'swork would
proclaimingthe newness of the product it con- be unthinkablewithouta certainkindof abstrac-
tains, the speed with which it shines aluminum, tion, andWarhol'sboxes, of course, unthinkable
and that its twenty-four packages are GIANT withoutHarvey'sboxes, Warhol'sworkwas itself
SIZE. Speed, gigantism,newness, areattributes in no way dependent upon those kinds of ab-
of the advertising world's message-they per- stractions, coming from a different space en-
tainas certainlyto thatdiscourseas moon, blood, tirely thanHarvey's.
love, and deathpertainto the discourseof poets. These differences could be protracted,but I
Warhol'sworkwas very new indeedin 1964, but have writtenenough at this point to underscore,
were we to read the NEW! as proclaimingthat I hope, the aestheticdifferencesbetweenthe two
fact, the work would have a subtlety and clever- works and the way in which these aesthetic dif-
ness we wouldnot attributeto the box's design as ferences are exactly the differencesbetweenthe
such. The design uses sans-serif lettering-the art criticism appropriateto the two objects. I
lettering of the newspaperheadline-to under- have no difficulty in accepting the commercial
write the urgenciesof its message, andmy hunch art as art for the same reasonthatI have none in
is that Harvey was influenced, in his motif, by acceptingthe scientific illustrationsof the seven-
certainthemesin hard-edgeabstraction.Butnone teenth century as art. But in this particularin-
of this pertains to Warhol, who felt no such stance the differences, if not of a kind, are per-
influence and had no such message. The wavy hapsof a quality.SteveHarvey'sboxes areabout
white band connotes water; the capitalized Brillo and about the values of speed, cleanli-
BRILLOexemplifies spotlessness in a blaze of ness, and the relentless advantagesof the new
chromaticclarity against the white (a few years andthe gigantical.Warhol'siconographyis more
laterthe paintmighthavebeen Day Glo). Warhol complex and has little to do with those values at
just took all this over withoutparticipatingin the all. In some ways it is philosQphical,being about
meaningat all. For him, at best the sheer banal- art or, if you like, aboutthe differencesbetween
ity of the box was meaningful, and this, internal high art and commercial art. So Hegel may be
Danto A Futurefor Aesthetics 277

right that there is a special kind of aesthetic enshriningthe differencebetweenaestheticsand


quality peculiarto art. He impressively says it the aesthetics of art-between what Hegel calls
is, unlike naturalaestheticqualities (he uses the Schoenheitand what he calls in contrastKunst-
term Beauty, but that was the way aestheticians schoenheit-in the conjoint title of the journal
in his era thought),the kind of aestheticquality they established. Hegel, by the way, showed us
which is aus dem Geiste geborenund wiederge- how to do the kind of art criticism I fumbled
boren. But that is no less true of the aesthetic towardsin discussingthe greatengravingsof the
qualitiesof the Brillo boxes as of Brillo Box. We flea, in his marvelous-I would say unparal-
would expect nothing else, given that both are leled-passages on Dutch painting, and on the
dense with meaning, and, in a sense, aus dem differences between it and what he terms mod-
Kultur geboren. It may be less important to ern painterswho attemptthe samethings. Justas
distinguishhigh from low art than either from a matterof interest,Hegel does not once use the
merenaturalaestheticsof the kindthatwe derive word "beauty" nor any of the standardpredi-
fromour genetic endowment. cates of aesthetic vocabulary. As art critic as
So my concludingproposalis this: we under- well as aesthetician, Hegel shows us both di-
standthe aestheticsof art as art criticism,just as mensionsof our future.
I am supposingthe foundersof our society did,

You might also like