After the end of art1997
contemporary art and the pale of history
by Arthur Coleman Danto
Over a decade ago, Arthur Danto announced that art ended in the sixties. Ever since this declaration, he has been at the forefront of a radical critique of the nature of art in our time. After the End of Art presents Danto's first full-scale reformulation of his original insight, showing how, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art has deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vassari helped define for it in the Renaissance.
Moreover, he leads the way to a new type of criticism that can help us understand art in a posthistorical age - where, for example, an artist can produce a work in the style of Rembrandt to create a visual pun, and where traditional theories cannot explain the difference between Andy Warhol's Brillo Box and the product found in the grocery...