Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-historical Perspective

A ground-breaking contribution to contemporary thinking about aesthetics, Arthur C. Danto's new collection of interconnected essays grapples with the most challenging issues in art today, among them the problems of contemporary pluralism and the dilemmas of censorship and state support for artists. Andy Warhol's Brillo Box of 1964 constituted a radical attack on traditional definitions of the artwork and, in Danto's view, brought the history of Western art to a close. Beyond the Brillo Box considers the aftermath and the consequences of Warhol's work on three levels. Danto first discusses what he calls the master narrative of Western art, showing how even the most revolutionary pre-Pop movements were nourished by a common conception of art which lay securely within the Western tradition, and contrasting this tradition to parallel narratives in the East and in Africa. He then takes up the current, post-historical period, which began with Warhol and the collision of "high" and "low" art, and discusses how the pluralism it engendered has changed the way art is made, perceived, and exhibited. Finally, Danto addresses the philosophical idea of the master narrative from Plato to Wittgenstein and beyond by exploring the ways art has a history, the different kinds of history it has in different cultures, and the degree to which narratives are real and not simply intellectual constructs. Arthur C. Danto's criticism, which has been published principally in The Nation, since 1984, has made him one of our leading art critics. Here he discusses the philosophical concerns that underlie his provocative and illuminating engagements with the art of our time. Urgently committed yet always witty anddeeply humane, Danto is the most enlightening--and exciting--thinker about the problems of aesthetics today. Beyond the Brillo Box is a work of immediate--and more than immediate--importance.