What is Danto's artworld?

Arthur C. Danto, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Arthur C. Danto answers

The question deserves a careful answer, because "the artworld" has been taken up in ways I did not intend, and the distance between what I meant and what Dickie made of it is philosophically significant. When I walked into the Stable Gallery in the spring of 1964 and stood before Warhol's Brillo Box, what struck me immediately was that the eye was of no use in settling the question the work raised.1

Here was an object visually indiscernible from the cardboard packaging stacked in supermarket storerooms, yet one was unquestionably a work of art and the other was not. Whatever made the difference could not be seen. That observation forced a question: what kind of atmosphere must surround an object if it is to be constituted as an artwork rather than a mere real thing?2

My answer, published in the Journal of Philosophy in October 1964, was this: "To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry — an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld." The artworld, in my sense, is not a sociological network of institutions.3 It is a conceptual atmosphere, a discourse of reasons, relative to which objects get constituted as artworks at all.4

Theory is not incidental to this; the artworld is logically dependent on theory.5 Without theory, black paint is just black paint and nothing more; with it, the same black paint can carry the weight of an artistic identification that excludes whole classes of competing interpretations.6 Matisse put something close to this when he told Tériade that the arts have a development coming not only from the individual but from an accumulated strength, a civilization that precedes us — that the talented artist cannot simply do as he likes, that what he produces is in some sense imposed on him by the historical moment.7

That historical dimension is essential. The Brillo Box could not have been an artwork in seventeenth-century Amsterdam or eighteenth-century Peking.8 The artworld had to have opened sufficiently — through the accumulated history of erasures, of prior art-historical moves — to make such a work possible. So the artworld is both theoretical and historical: one needs a sense of the structure of art history and a sense of the enfranchising theory that confers identity on the work as art.9

Now, this is where the institutional theory, for which I have retained mixed feelings, enters.10 My 1964 essay established a connection between the question of what art is and certain institutional factors in society, and it became the origin of what Dickie developed into his institutional theory.11 But Dickie's artworld — a structure of roles within which artists create art, a network of curators, critics, collectors, dealers conferring status — is not my artworld.12

His theory tells us what the sociological furniture of the artworld looks like; it cannot tell us what makes art. No institutional baptism, however authoritative, explains why some baptisms succeed and others fail, nor how art existed before the institutions did. What I was talking about in "The Artworld" was seeing something as art, which is a far cry from something being art, and I do not believe any institutional account bridges that gap.13

The artworld in my sense is the condition of possibility for artworks, not a conferral mechanism. It is the atmosphere without which the question of art cannot even be raised — the shared conceptual space, saturated in theory and historical belief, within which something like the Brillo Box becomes philosophically legible.14

Sources

  1. The show demonstrated a number of things, not least of all that the eye is incapable of determining the answer to this question and indeed that the Good Eye of artist and critic alike no longer was of great use in arbitrating the deep questions of art.
    Embodied Meanings, pp. 28–29
  2. There is, of course, still a difference between art and non-art, between works of art and what I like to refer to as 'mere real things.' What Warhol taught was that there is no way of telling the difference merely by looking.
    Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 27–28
  3. To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry—an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an art world.
    Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 59–60
  4. It seemed to me that without both of these, one could not see the Brillo Box as a work of art, and hence that in order to do so one had to participate in a conceptual atmosphere, a 'discourse of reasons,' which one shared with the artists and with others who made up the art world.
    Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 27–28
  5. it is plain that there could not be an artworld without theory, for the artworld is logically dependant upon theory.
    Transfiguration of the Commonplace, p. 145
  6. without theories of art, black paint is just black paint and nothing more.
    Transfiguration of the Commonplace, p. 145
  7. The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual, but from an accumulated strength, the civilization which precedes us. A talented artist cannot do just as he likes. If he used only his talents, he would not exist. We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us.
    Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 59–60
  8. So no Brillo Boxes in eighteenth-century Peking, nor for that matter in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, but I thought, in 1964, that the artworld had opened up sufficiently to accommodate the Brillo Boxes.
    Replies to Essays, p. 14
  9. It occurred to me that one had first of all to have some sense for the structure of art history, construed as the history of erasures just alluded to, as having made works of this order possible... And then one needed some sense that it was with reference to an enfranchising theory that they derived their identity as works of art.
    Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 27–28
  10. It was the origin of what has come to be called the Institutional Theory of Art, on which I retain mixed feelings even today.
    Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 27–28
  11. What 'The Art World' achieved was the establishment of a connection between the question of what is art and certain institutional factors in society.
    Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 27–28
  12. Dickie's reconsidered institutional theory is certainly a lot closer to the institutional factors I have in mind by the discourse of reasons, but it is no closer to a theory of what makes art.
    Replies to Essays, p. 14
  13. in 'The Artworld' I was talking about seeing something as art, which is a far cry from something being art. I don't believe any institutional
    Replies to Essays, p. 14
  14. I defined an art world as an atmosphere of theory and of historical beliefs, relative to which things get constituted artworks.
    Embodied Meanings, pp. 28–29