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Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present

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Arthur Danto has graced the art critical stage for over two decades now but no one collection of his writings delves with the accomplished assurance of a critical mind at its highest powers as does his now classic Encounters and Reflections. Here the philosopher of art and art history depicts a landscape that casts shadows on the orthodox mesmerism of art and delineates the distortions that the conventional assumptions convey. Danto has the capacity to portray a very public examination of art as it manifests itself to the eyes of the inquisitive mind devoid of an affluence of taste and a prejudice of theoretical inscriptions. He surveys the gallaries and the museums as a journalist would and raises provocative questions with a sustained critical inventive flair that entertains and instructs alike.

In Encounters and Reflections, Danto broadens the debate on painting and sculture in the late eighties to not only include the major points on the map - recent pop favorites such as Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe - but also current assumptions about the masters - Van Gogh, John Singer Sargent, Klee among others - with the same lucidity that characterizes his writings on philosophy, primarily on Nietzsche, Sartre and the American Analytical School. His review of two Whitney Biennals sprawl into a committed investigation of the art scene from a vantage point of an aesthete whose grit is matched only by a desire to reach into the past as a vanishing point so as to better relate the perspective that drives the art world and its genius.

Danto amuses and astounds likewise as he expatiates on recent revolutionaries such as Cindy Sherman, Eric Fischl, and Anselm Kiefer, but where he is most insightful is in three final essays that probe the foundation of modernism, posing questions about the nature of the masterpiece and the evolution and meaning of art. This collection of essays is an inspiring approach to the diverse strands that cordon off the art world to the lay viewer, as it defines the intrepid place it inhabits only to take us beyond such definitions and reflect on its phenomenological essence as cultural artifacts loaded with theoretical strokes most are blind to. Exceptional and versatile, intellectually keen and philosophically blunt. Not to be missed if you are a museum goer or if you are interested in the value and meaning of art in the present age.

Wth that said Beyond the Brillo Box is just as fabulous a read...

An art historian's job is to show the public why certain works of art made history: what made them exciting, new and worth seeing for their times. If we can come closer to understanding what excited the viewing public then, we will have far more appreciation for that art now. To my mind, nobody brings art history closer to us, to make us feel its importance both then and now, than The Nation's art critic, Arthur C. Danto. If future generations will have any sense, his Encounters and Reflections will be remembered the way we still remember Diderot's Salons. These are lively, knowledgeable and exciting essays about artistic masterpieces which shouldn't be relegated only to the pages of art history, but also enjoyed by the general public today. Arthur Danto's essays help us savor the delectable pleasure of art.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com