Study On Arthur C.Danto's Aesthetics

In the 1950's and 1960's,post-modern art began to flourish,which demonstrated the tendency of disappearance of boundary between art and non-art,between elegant and popular art,and disappearance of beauty in art.In such social context,Arthur C Danto,a crucial figure in modern aesthetics,with a stand of essentialism kept studying new arts and tried to find the nature of art and he believed it was possible to to define art after the end of art,which meant the the art has already showed all its possibil ities.As far as Danto was concerned,the end of art theory firstly meant art has been philosophically disenfranchised.Since Plato,philosophy has always disenfranchised art:to remove art from ontology considering it useless or to take it as a part of philosophy,which became philosophy at last by eliminating its perceptual characteristics and regarding it as something reasonableSecondly,the end of art theory lied in the end of grand narrative pattern.Danto believed grand narrative pattern,like a story grew with a beginning,a development process,and an ending.From ancient Greece,imitation and representation nave been major art form.In the period of modernism,art did not attach importance to imitating and representing the real world,instead to expressing the world finding its own specialty,thus,Vasari pattern,or imitation pattern came to an end.Modern art reached the summit when it got its purity.The ready-made became art,when Warhol's "Brillo's Box"representative of Pop Art was shown as an art.Pop Art made vague and vanishing the boundary between art and daily life and between art and non-art,and the modern grand narrative pattern which has been in leading position and pursued art self-discipline couldn't function anymore,which meant the grand narrative pattern came to and end and art entered a post-historical period.The end of grand narrative pattern created a free time for art,from then art developed in various waysWhen art showed all it varieties and put forward the issue of the nature of art philosophically,that is the end of art,it was possible for us to define art because at this time the definition included all art forms.The definition of art is the basis to judge whether something was an art or not.Danto believed beauty was not the essence of art because the appearance was not the basis to judge whether something was an art or not.He put forward two requirements which could make one thing become art:aboutness and meanings.Art had two levels of meanings:the superfacial meaning and symbolic meaning and the latter was the key to make one thing art.In this process of transformation,based the"artworld" with art history and art theory explanation played a significant role.As a western aesthetician,Danto also payed much attention to traditional Chinese art and analyzed it by his the end of art theory.In his research he found traditional Chinese art did not focus on imitating the real world,but focused on creating a virtual world to express the inner world of people and traditional Chinese art made great effort to understand and reach the sublime spiritual situation by imitating the senior.But in 19th century traditional Chinese painting changed essentially and with self-suspicion began to give up its own style and to adopt western techniques,style and value orientation.This self-consciousness directly led to the end of original narrative patternDanto actively responded the expectation of new art theory with studying the new art form and with the foundation of classic German aesthetics and analytical aesthetics,and discussed art in perspective of ontology.Despite some limitations,his aesthetics,such as the nature of art,the end of art theory and relationship between art and beauty,makes great contribution to the development of aesthetics and provides with much enlightenment.