In fact Danto makes statements that would rile some I could think of, such as art always being ‘about something’, or most of the art being made today not having ‘the provision of aesthetic experience as its main goal’. The resulting view of art is not from the position of every contemporary practitioner, though. But besides the lodestar of whim or taste, Kant is taken as a robust guiding reference throughout, religious art is sampled richly, and forays into personal recollections, philosophical texts from Plato to Heidegger and twentieth-century art history underpin an argument that feels both contingent and firm. The bookending chapters comprise a more general address of the matter in hand, while the central ones focus on photography, the body and the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Personally, I enjoy writing that essays, even sashays, through ideas rather than grinding along a prescribed route and structurally the references and subjects here seem more scenically than strategically navigated. I am reminded of what a friend recently said about Edna O’Brien’s memoirs Country Girl (2012): “It reads like a distracted dictation, made over her shoulder, as she looks for the sugar in the kitchen cupboard.” But this is far too damning in either case, for meandering and leapfrogs of thought can be deftly orchestrated and pleasurable to follow but What Art Is is nonetheless oddly categorical for such a friendly excursion as this. Danto’s new book and the circumbendibus nature of its contents. There is a comical discrepancy between the directness of the title of Arthur C.

Arthur c danto what art is