Sam Moore
I love a book of theory that I can butt heads with, and this is one of them; it has some wild ideas around modernism and the political undercurrents that Danto associates with it are kind of wild -- and I don't agree with them at all. And it feels like he picks and chooses when questions of like, institutional value and taste matter in a way that aligns with his taste and thesis: a Rembrandt forgery is bad because history has moved on from the way Rembrandt is historically understood; but Gureilla Girls aiming to skewer male-dominated museums is bad because...? There are some really curious moments of uncertainty about like, when the roles of these institutions matter and when they don't. Maybe I'm just mirroring Danto and looking to see the artists I like (GG) given the like, attention I feel they deserve in the way Danto does with some of his history-remixing-case studies.
But the idea of being at the end of something and what comes after it is something I've been thinking about a lot. Inevitably feels like it needs to be tied into Fukuyama? That yes, we're at the end of something but that just means a sort of full stop in the macro, things in the micro will still happen. The question of the worth and merit they get in a world without these narrative arcs of history/artistic development is one Danto doesn't really answer: maybe the point is that there is no answer.
I love a book of theory that I can butt heads with, and this is one of them; it has some wild ideas around modernism and the political undercurrents that Danto associates with it are kind of wild -- and I don't agree with them at all. And it feels like he picks and chooses when questions of like, institutional value and taste matter in a way that aligns with his taste and thesis: a Rembrandt forgery is bad because history has moved on from the way Rembrandt is historically understood; but Gureilla Girls aiming to skewer male-dominated museums is bad because...? There are some really curious moments of uncertainty about like, when the roles of these institutions matter and when they don't. Maybe I'm just mirroring Danto and looking to see the artists I like (GG) given the like, attention I feel they deserve in the way Danto does with some of his history-remixing-case studies.
But the idea of being at the end of something and what comes after it is something I've been thinking about a lot. Inevitably feels like it needs to be tied into Fukuyama? That yes, we're at the end of something but that just means a sort of full stop in the macro, things in the micro will still happen. The question of the worth and merit they get in a world without these narrative arcs of history/artistic development is one Danto doesn't really answer: maybe the point is that there is no answer.