Arthur C. Danto
From Philosopedia
Danto, Arthur C(oleman) (1 Janury 1924— )
Danto is a critic, professor, aestheticist, and philosopher.
He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the son of Samuel Budd and Sylvia (Gittleman) Danto. In 1946 Danto married Shirley Rovetch, and they had two children, Elizabeth and Jane. Upon her death in 1978, he married Barbara Westman in 1980. His office in New York City is at 420 Riverside Drive 10025-7773 (212.666.3588, acd1@columbia.edu).
Danto served with the AUS, 1942-1945.
Contents |
Education and Positions Held
Danto received his B.A. in 1948 from Wayne State University; his M.A. from Columbia University in 1949, and his Ph. D. from Columbia in 1951. He did postgraduate studies at the University of Paris from 1949 to 1950.
He was an instructor at the University of Colorado, 1950-1951; a member of the Columbia University Faculty, 1952 to date; chairman of Columbia's philosophy department, 1979-1987; and Co-director, Center for Study of Human Rights 1978-1992. In 1992 he became Professor Emeritus at Columbia.
Danto also has been Andrew W. Mellon Fine Arts lecturer, 1995; and Albertus Magnum professor, U of Cologne, 2005
Author
- • Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge (1968)
- • What Philosophy Is (1968)
- • Analytical Philosophy of History (1965)
- • Nietzsche as Philosopher (1965)
- • Mysticism and Morality (1972)
- • Analytical Philosophy of Action (1973)
- • Jean-Paul Sartre (1975)
- • The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981 - Lionel Trilling Book Prize 1982)
- • Narration and Knowledge (1985)
- • The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986)
- • The State of the Art (1987)
- • Connections to the World (1989)
- • Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (1990 - National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism, 1990)
- • Beyond the Brillo Box: Art in the Post-Historical Perspective (1992)
- • Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions (1992)
- • Robert Mapplethorpe (1992)
- • Embodied Meanings: Critical Essays and Aesthetic Meditations (1994)
- • Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (1995)
- • After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (1997 - Eugene Kayden Prize, 1997)
- • The Body/Body Problem (1999)
- • Philosophizing Art (1999)
- • The Madonna of the Future (2000)
- • The ABuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (2003)
- • Unnatural Wonders: Essays in the Gap Between Art and Life (2004)
Positions Held
- Editor, Journal of Philosophy (1965 to date) and was President in 1987.
- Art critic at The Nation (1984 to date)
- Contributing editor of ARTFORUM and the consulting editor for various other publications
- Member of the Board of Directors, Amnesty International (1970-1975) and its General Secretary in 1971
- President of the Guggenheim Foundation in 1969, 1982
- Member of the American Council of Learned Societies, 1961, 1970
- Member, American Philosophical Association (v.p. 1969; president 1983)
- Member, American Society of Aesthtics (v.p. 1987; president 1989)
Awards Received
- Recipient of prize for distinguish criticism Manufacturers-Hanover/Art World, 1985
- George S. Polk Award for Criticism, 1985
- National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism, 1990
- International Center of Photography Infinity Prize for Writing on Photography, 1993
- Fulbright Distinguished Professor, Yugoslavia, 1976
- Phi Beta Kappa
- Arts and Sciences, Fellow AAAS
- College Art Association (Frank Jewett Mather Prize for Criticism)
In 1980, Danto signed the Secular Humanist Declaration.
In Columbia (Spring 1993), he described how in 1948 he entered the Columbia University graduate program in philosophy as a probation student, not having had any previous undergraduate courses in philosophy. In fact, he “had no great interest in philosophy and certainly no intention of becoming a philosopher. Rather, philosophy seemed a good way for me to draw the benefits of what remained to me from the GI Bill, enabling me to be in New York while I pursued my real ambition, which was to become an artist.” He did, in fact, become an artist and also he became the art editor of Nation.
In the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Danto wrote the entry for “Naturalism.”
His special expertise, according to Robert Sharpe of the University of Wales in Lampeter, is aesthetics,
- where he is largely responsible for bringing the idea of the "art world" into prominence. For Danto, works of art are only reognized and understood as such if they are located within a context which constitutes the artworld, involving, inter alia, the works of other artists and the practices of critics. Art is surrounded by an "atmosphere of theory." We cannot separate work and interpretation.
Evaluating the photographic achievement of the controversial artist, Robert Mapplethorpe, Danto in 1995 wrote Playing With the Edge. In 1997 his After the End of Art is a discussion of contemporary art and the pale of history. Based on his Mellon Lectures, the work of art criticism tells how art has changed, how there no longer is any special way it has to “look,” how art in essence is whatever artists make. It does not, he states controversially, have to have an explicit social or political message.
