美學 제53집(2008년 3월) pp.127~148

Contemporary Art and Inability of Aesthetics* - A. C. Danto's Philosophical Art History

Lee, Sung-H uhn** 1)

. Introduction

This paper has two goals. First, it tries to outline the consequences of Danto's Philosophy of art, or, in his own term, philosophical art history in terms of 's Brillo Box. These consequences, what might be called Warhol-ef- fect(Ⅰ), (Ⅱ), (Ⅲ), seem to be positive, and, in a sense, even inevitable for the understanding of the contemporary art. In this respect, Danto's art theory helps explain the contemporary art including Warhol's Brillo Box in the broader context of art history. His story gave a philosoph- ical rationale for the art-historical significance of con- temporary art which seems to be so chaotic. For example, amongst many objects that had previously never been con-

* 이 논문은 2004학년도 경성대학교 학술연구조성비에 의하여 연구되 었음. ** 경성대학교 교수 128 sidered works of art but that were put forward as artworks in the latter half of the twentieth century were an ordinary necktie, a room filled with dirt, a hole dug in the ground, a 1960 Chevy half buried in the sand, an illegal drive on an uncompleted freeway as well as 's Brillo Box. The new and curious thing about art in this era, as Danto put it, is that we can no longer tell whether something is art by looking at it. Rather anything can be art, and anyone can be an artist. Perhaps in these sorts of cases there is no way for any of us to tell whether these are works of art without resorting to a new art theory other than the tradi- tional ones such as Imitation theory, Expression theory, or Formalist theory. Second, the paper, based on these con- sequences, tries to show what cost had to be paid for Danto to draw such consequences, and how much incompatible it is with his own spirit in which he has written so many writings on the contemporary art. It appears that he has paid an unexpected and overwhelmingly inadequate cost to pronounce the thesis of the "end of art".

. Perceptual Indiscernibility

It could be said that Warhol's Brillo Box -of course, we could count Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades and other pop artists' works in this category, not to mention other numer- ous examples Danto himself has imagined through his so-called thought-experiment - had three distinct but inter- connected effects upon Danto. When Danto first saw the Brillo Box exhibition at Stable Gallery in 1964, he, as an Contemporary Art and Inability of Aesthetics 129 aesthetician and a promising painter, had an astonishing shock. This shock, which we could call Warhol-effect(Ⅰ), being concerned with the problem of definition of art, caused him to realize that only if we accept the principle of perceptual indiscernibility, it would be possible to define art at all. In April of 1964 Arthur Danto was being exposed to an talismanic exhibition of Brillo Boxes by Andy Warhol at the Stable Gallery in New York.(Figure 1) The encounter with Warhol's Brillo Box was a great and in- toxicating experience for him. It suddenly became a source of profound knowledge. Figure 1: Andy Warhol with Brillo Boxes, "It was a most excit- New York, 1964 ing moment, not least of all because the entire structure of debate which had defined the New York art scene up to that point had ceased having application."1) In fact, the problem here is that noth- ing need mark the difference, "outwardly", between Andy Warhol's Brillo Box and the brillo boxes in the supermarket.(Figure 2) And he immediately found that this kind of work desper- ately called for a new theory other than the theories of re-

1) A. C. Danto, After the End of Art. Contemporary Art and the Pale of History(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp.123-4. 130

alism, abstraction, and modernism. The question the Warhol show cast to him was not a practical or pro- duction-related question, but a philo- sophical one: why were his boxes works of art while the almost indis- tinguishable utilitarian cartons were merely containers for soap pads? It was certain that the minor observable differences could not account for the grand distinction between art and Figure 2: Andy Warhol reality. buying brillo boxes at Gristede's supermarket, Danto's philosophical response to New York, 1960s the remarkable experience was his 1964 paper "The Art World" and The Transfiguration of the Commonplace of 1981. Originally, the brillo box was the in- dustrial design by Steve Harvey used to contain brillo pads when they are shipped. Andy Warhol appropriated Harvey's boxes and offered them as an example of fine art in the context of a gallery show. The philosophical problem shown here is that aesthetically, i.e, in the sense of sense im- pressions, the respective boxes are identical. So where is the difference between the industrial product and the work of fine art? Further, if a brillo box can be art, then it seems anything can be art. This is significant to a philosophy of art that purports to understand the aesthetic and conceptual significance of art. Danto realized that if we could deal with such a work, we really had to try to think of it in a more philosophical way. For Danto, the Warhol boxes, though clearly of their time, raised the most general question about Contemporary Art and Inability of Aesthetics 131 art that can be raised, as though the most radical possibil- ities had at last been realized. It was, in fact, as though art had brought the question of its own identity to conscious- ness at last. What distinguishes Warhol's Brillo Box from the brillo boxes in which Brillo comes? What makes an object art that so resembles ordinary things that perception cannot seri- ously discriminate between them? However this identity is to be articulated, it is clear that it cannot be based upon anything works of art have in common with their counterparts. One prominent theorist, for example, regards paintings as very complex perceptual objects. So they are, but since objects can be imagined perfectly congruent with those which are not art works, these must have equivalent complexity at the level of perception. After all, the problem arose in the first place because no perceptual difference could be imagined finally relevant. But neither can pos- session of so-called ‘aesthetic qualities' serve, since it would be strange if a work of art were beautiful but something ex- actly like it though not a work of art were not. In fact it has been a major effort of the philosophy of art to de-aes- theticize the concept of art.2)

2) As a matter of fact, it was Marcel Duchamp, a far deeper artist than Warhol, who presented as 'readymades' objects chosen for their lack of aesthetic qualities - grooming combs, hat racks, and, notoriously, pieces of lavatory plumbing. "Aesthetic delectation is the danger to be avoided," Duchamp wrote of his most controversial work, Fountain, of 1917. It was precisely Duchamp's great effort to make it clear that art is an intellectual activity, a conceptual enterprise and not merely something to which the senses and the feelings come into play. And this must be true of