Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:15:33 — 124.2MB)
To anticipate our imminent return to studying aesthetics, Mark, Seth and Dylan newly introduce our very first episode in this area from way back in March 2010, featuring Mark, Seth and Wes discussing three chapters of Danto's The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, "The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art," and "The End of Art."
What effect should the avant garde have on our understanding of what art is? Danto gives a picture of philosophy and art at war throughout history: Philosophy says that art can't get at truth and is otherwise useless, yet philosophers like Plato seem afraid of the power of art to corrupt. What's the deal?
Also, Danto claims that art is over; the end of art has happened. So suck it, artists. (Actually, artists can keep on doing what they're doing; they're fine, yet art is still over.) Plus, can you stare at a urinal and thereby make it art? What if it's in a museum? Danto loves them crazy ass post-modern artists, and thinks that their work shows that art was not what we thought it was.
As we discuss in the new intro, Danto himself listened to and enjoyed the discussion, which was a big confidence boost for us so early in the run of this podcast.
Our original recording also includes some additional introductory discussion about current events and another listener email. You can hear all that, and of course the subsequent episodes recorded like this when we were still relatively young and energetic, still safety behind our paywall, if you become a PEL supporter.
Buy the book. Read the first essay online. Read "The End of Art" online.
Hi Mark, I am Caesar and I have been Listening to your podcast and YouTube channel for over 8yrs now and I constantly listen to this classic episode to my commute constantly to my way to work.
I am an artist and I want to rank you guys for helping me understand Danto and appreciate his philosophical and theoretical work. I hope you guys do a part 2, 2022 version your discussion about Danto since at the end of the episode everyone was so impressed and enthusiastic about the 3 articles and pledged to continue reading works. Hopefully you guys can add new interpretations.
Thank you.
Thanks you, sir! Scruton that we’re covering next is in part directly responding to Danto.
Hi PEL,
Thanks for your collective fine work ! I’m very keen to have a listen to the original Danto episode. Although, it’s an impossible task doing so through either the Patreon or Apple podcast apps on my phone. I had it briefly, then one click and I was again back in a maze of circular links. This page via Chrome is likely the work-around.
And a suggestion in the realm of art and aesthetics – Jacques Ranciere, who, although off the boil in the last four or five years, has very much been the art-world’s favored theorist in the 2000s. There are many fine secondary texts – Joseph Tanke’s Introduction to Ranciere, for example. As for Ranciere, himself, Dissensus – On Politics and Aesthetics could be a good place to start. His latest book, said to be a good summation/ripening of all that has gone before is titled ‘Aisthesis’, Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art. My own view is that via Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel and Schiller, Ranciere does indeed capture something going on in the work of art, politics, and, as he argues, the current regime of sensibility (in the very broadest sense) we are currently living through. Please investigate the question: does the work of art impact upon everyday life to the degree that it is kept entirely separate? A machine to explode and reassemble the material via the imagination? – and thus an essential aspect of freedom.. You will know better than me if this is an old, rather than new, story, and I’d like to hear it discussed.
Hi Damon, I’m not sure I understand your issue with the Patreon feed; you should be able to add that to your desired podcast app and find it without too much trouble. And if you pay Apple for your subscription, then all the previews get magically transformed to the full-length episodes. (We still prefer/recommend the Citizen feed which is the only one we have full control over.)
Thanks for the recommendations; I’ll check into Ranciere! It sounds like he’s saying something similar to Dewey’s Art and Experience, which is 100% on our list.