Danto’s paper is obviously influenced by the changes happening in art around the time it was written, especially the end of the era of abstract expressionism and the beginnings of Pop art.
• Danto’s introductory paragraphs begin with a rejection of what he will call the “Imitation Theory” (IT) of art. That rejection is nothing new, but don’t miss his comments on the relation between art and theories of art, something that will prove to be central to his view of art.
• Section I discusses art from the beginning of the twentieth century (the time of Croce, Bullough, and Bell) and from the time Danto wrote this. Notice the motivation for the second theory of art he considers. (He offers no full name for this theory, only the abbreviation “RT” but the context should suggest the label he might use.) This theory dates from the first period Danto discusses. He notes how it might seem appropriate also for the art of his day (i.e., the Pop art of Lichtenstein et al) but he goes on to pose a problem for it.
• Much of section II is designed to introduce and illustrate Danto’s idea of a particular sense of the word “is,” what he calls the is of artistic identification. You should think through his examples and try to come up with some of your own. Don’t miss the last few paragraphs, pp. 579f, where Danto points to the further development of this idea that will appear later in the paper.
The rest of the paper is devoted to the Danto’s idea of the “artworld.” This is, of course, related to the art world—i.e., the world of artists, critics, galleries, museums, etc.—but the inhabitants of Danto’s artworld are works of art so the question of what makes for the artworld is the question of what makes something a work of art.
• Danto’s discussion of Warhol’s Brillo boxes in section III leads up to his discussion of the role of theory in the last paragraph of the section (p. 581). Notice that he asserts the dependence of art on theories of art not only for works like Warhol’s but for art generally.
• In Danto’s final section, he develops these ideas further. His suggestion that the history of the artworld is tied to the introduction of new “artwork-relevant predicates” is worth comparing to Goodman’s discussion of ways of making worlds.
In a later book, Danto developed similar ideas in slightly different terms:
… To see something as art at all demands nothing less than … an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art. Art is the kind of thing that depends for its existence upon theories; without theories of art, black paint is just black paint and nothing more.… It is essential to our study that we understand the nature of an art theory, which is so powerful a thing as to detach objects from the real world and make them part of a different world, an art world, a world of interpreted things. What these considerations show is that there is an internal connection between the status of an artwork and the language with which artworks are identified as such, inasmuch as nothing is an artwork without an interpretation that constitutes it as such. But then the question of when is a thing an artwork becomes one with the question of when is an interpretation of a thing an artistic interpretation.…
Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 135.