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The Abuse of Beauty: The Paul Carus Lectures 21

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Expertly written by Arthur C. Danto (art critic of "The Nation" magazine and Emeritus Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy at Column University), The Abuse Of Beauty: Aesthetics And The Concept Of Art is an intriguing and thoughtful study of the role of beauty in art. A century ago, art strived for beauty above all; yet in the modern day, an overly beautiful work of art may even be downgraded by critics for that very reason. Individual chapters cogently address the issues of internal and external beauty in art; the intersection of beauty and politics; the beautiful and the sublime within the concept and execution of art, and a great deal more in this intellectually stimulating and enthusiastically recommended discourse as to how art is viewed within the contexts of the past, the present, and the future.

This book was just long enough that I was still interested in what Danto had to say about beauty in art at the end. Any longer, and I probably would not have finished it. That being said, Danto does not obviously go through every single artist that ever dealt with this subject. It is an opinion book, and as such, subjects are discussed according to his taste. Also, the book had a nice, conversational tone, which also helped the reader get through the various levels of beauty in art without tearing their hair out.

Probably my favorite part about "The Abuse of Beauty" is that Danto does not force his opinion on you. He presents his opinion while discussing many historical events in art, and therefore opens the door for his readers to form their own opinions. There are a lot of different sections to this short book, but all of them are varied and interesting. Overall, a very informative and pretty enjoyable read.

Recently, a posting on a photography bulletin board that I follow asked whether the work of Jasper Johns was beautiful. Ultimately the thread devolved into a free-for-all about patriotism (based on the fact that a Johns work showed an American flag). In the battle the original question was lost, but, after reading "The Abuse of Beauty" I suspect that was because the original poster asked the wrong question. I suppose he should have asked whether the work was Art, with a capital A.

This book deals with such confusion. Danto, a popularizing philosopher, explains how philosophers like Kant and Hegel examined the question of art, relating it to beauty. But Danto points out that while that relationship may have existed in the 17th century, it was certainly gone by the twentieth century. Aesthetics, which he defines as the study of beauty in the arts, is not an appropriate field for discussion of much modern art, because much of that art was not beautiful. (I would suggest that Danto's definition of aesthetics is too narrow, but his definition allows him to expand on his ultimate point.) The author asks questions like what is art, and defines it in terms of how people view it; is it a matter of form, or is it a cultural artifact that tries to explain the culture in which it was created? Danto acknowledges these aspects of art as useful in appreciating art, but ultimately comes down on the side of a rather traditional view of art, namely as a device for transforming our view of the world and ourselves.

When I said that Danto was a popularizer, I didn't mean that as an insult. As I noted in my recent review of "The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics", too often, when speaking about art, philosophers, semioticians, art historians and art critics speak to us in jargon and convoluted arguments that only members of that inner circle can decode. Danto on the other hand, speaks clearly, in terms that ordinary people can understand. Oh, one might occasionally have to reread a paragraph, or even a chapter to grasp what is being said, and certainly this book should not be read on the subway, at least by most people. But it is ultimately accessible.

Danto's thesis is a simple one. Art is not just about beauty, but rather the effect that it has on our mind. Perhaps if the poster referred to in the first paragraph had understood this, the ensuing discussion would have been more useful.

This book is a collection of articles and essays, most of which must have been published in The Nation, for which Danto is an art critic. They cannot and will not reveal any structured and clearly defined approach of art. They are an impressionistic progress through Dantos own writings. But Danto ignores anything that does not go his way. He ignores Bosch who is the negation of his « beauty » definition of Renaissance art. He ignores all those who deal with « ugly » subjects, even Goya and his drawings about the horror of war and many other subjects. He ignores television and video art, directly on these media (there is one instance in this book of the use of video art in a museum presentation : that is not television and video art, that is the use of video and television technology within the museum). He even relegates video and television art in the « demotic » field, that is to say art for the people, and this approach, borrowed from Hegel, is absolutely condescendent towards the people : people can only suck on the television pacifier because they are not able to understand and enter the sphere of real art. Danto is an aristocrat, like all art critics. He thus ignores the audience of art, the people who are bombarded with artistic forms everyday in the supermarkets, in films, on TV, and in all kinds of mediatic channels. Danto is a typical university professor turned into an art critic and who advocates and illustrates the dominant vision that art is IN the artist, IN the official art circulating system, IN the critics analysis of it. I dream of a real republic of arts, arts FOR the people, WITH the people and BY the people. Not a submission of artists to the « uneducated » people but a constant permanent intercourse (and this implies exchange, and personal  even sexually and emotionally motivated  connection) between the artists and the wide audience that is bombarded with artistic productions. When I read Danto I think of what Spiro Agnew said about « ephete intellectuals ». Agnew was not a very kosher and clean character but he definitely had one point here : what is important in art is the effect it has on the widest audience possible through the various media that use artistic concepts and constructs to be effective. What I am interested in is not the self-satisfied belly-button titillation of artists or art critics but the real effect art forms have on people in general through channels that Danto does not even know, because he is totally locked up in his artistic ghetto. Its a shame because some of his ideas are interesting, orginal and even explosive. But he does not even know about it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU