Art and Posthistory by Arthur C. Danto

Author:Arthur C. Danto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

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STYLE, NARRATION, AND POSTHISTORY (1998)

Demetrio Paparoni: You have theorized that, since the sixties, the end of the narrative structure and the acquisition of an increasing self-awareness within artwork has delegitimized art, making it often cross into philosophy. The end of narratives coincides, for you, with the end of history, and so the artist works in posthistory. What happens to style in a scenario like this?

Arthur C. Danto: Art is always a legitimate human activity, but for a long time ideologies—I’m thinking mostly of Marxist critics—would denounce some works that were considered counter to the revolutionary spirit. I had the chance to reflect, mostly on the great narrations that have defined criticism up until recently (the narrative of progress, of modernism, of philosophy, of Marxist history) in which legitimacy and narrative were intrinsically tied. The weakening of these narratives was accompanied by the weakening of this kind of delegitimization. The fact that artists did philosophy does not represent, in my opinion, a “digression.” Through the intrinsic development of art, a true form of the philosophical question about the nature of art emerged—that is to say, why is an object (like the Brillo Box, for example) a work of art, while another object that is absolutely identical to the first from a perceptual perspective (for example, a box of Brillo) is not? I thought that this only had to do with Warhol, but the same question was raised about all of art more or less at the same time (1965). I would prefer to say, then, that at a given moment, art as a collective endeavor, through its internal development, led to an awareness of the philosophical question. The answer could have come only from philosophy, but since the question became responsive, there was space for artists to also attempt to respond, and consequently they behaved like philosophers.

Once the narrative ends, there is no longer a privileged historical direction. This corresponds to an extreme pluralism that is typical of the posthistorical phase of art. But, at this level of separation, can something exist that is equivalent to style? I think this is truly a difficult question; just think of the problems raised by the art of appropriation. Think of Mike Bidlo or Sherrie Levine: every style is at the artists’ disposal the moment in which they decide to make use of it. Melissa Meyer, for example, uses forms of abstract expressionism. But everyone can do what he or she wants. You could even draw from Piero della Francesca! However, it would be very strange if there were no kind of late twentieth-century style: this style is probably invisible to us now, but it will become visible as soon as it has passed. I mean to say that we live in a precise historic moment, and being in history means betraying our historicity in the eyes of the future. The way in which we live today will be accessible—as history and not as life—to those for which our style will become visible. This has nothing to do with narrative, not more than in the case of individual styles.

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