What is the artworld theory?

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

Arthur C. Danto answers

The artworld theory begins with a puzzle that struck me with considerable force when I walked into the Stable Gallery on East Seventy-fourth Street in the spring of 1964 and stood before Andy Warhol's Brillo Box. Here was an object visually indiscernible from the cardboard packaging one might find stacked in a supermarket storeroom, and yet one was unquestionably a work of art while the other was not.¹

The eye, so long prized as the sovereign organ of aesthetic judgment, turned out to be philosophically useless for settling the question.² What this showed me was that the difference between art and non-art is invisible — it cannot be read off the surface of the object — and so whatever constitutes that difference must be located elsewhere.³

My answer, worked out in the 1964 essay "The Artworld" published in the Journal of Philosophy, was that to see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry: an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art.⁴ I called this atmosphere the artworld. Two things are bundled in that notion, and it is worth keeping them distinct.

First, there is the historical dimension: Brillo Box could not have been a work of art in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, because the structure of art history had not yet performed the erasures that made objects of this order possible.⁵ Second, there is the theoretical dimension: one needs some sense of an enfranchising theory, a discourse of reasons in which artists, critics, curators, collectors, and dealers participate, relative to which things get constituted as artworks.⁶

Without both of these, one simply cannot see the Brillo Box as art at all. Now, that essay became the origin of what has been called the Institutional Theory of Art, and I retain mixed feelings about that attribution even today.⁷ George Dickie took the institutional thread and wove from it the claim that being an artwork is a status conferred by a structure of roles within the artworld construed sociologically.

But there is a crucial distinction I have always insisted upon: I was talking about seeing something as art, which is a far cry from something being art.⁸ No institutional account gives us a definition of art — it gives us, at best, an account of how something gets received as art.⁹ The ontology I was after all along is different. An object is a work of art through the interpretation by means of which it is an interpreted object, and the object embodies that interpretation.¹⁰

What meanings are possible is a matter of historical contingency; the discourse of reasons evolves over time and limits the kinds of novelty there can be.¹¹ But institutionalism is not an ontology, and it is an ontology I have been after. Works are embodied meanings — that is the positive claim, and The Transfiguration of the Commonplace is where I spell out what more is required beyond the artworld framing.¹²

Sources

What especially moved me at the time was the sense that here at last was a philosophical question raised from within the art world, the question, namely, of why Warhol's Brillo Box was art, as I unquestionably accepted it to be, and why something that looked just like it—namely, the carton in which Brillo comes in the supermarket—is not a work of art at all.
Embodied Meanings, pp. 28–29
The eye, so prized an aesthetic organ when it was felt that the difference between art and non-art was visible, was philosophically of no use whatever when the differences proved instead to be invisible.
Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 27–28
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
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
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, as they would not have been possible in, say, Amsterdam's art world of the seventeenth century.
Beyond the Brillo Box, pp. 27–28
I spoke of a discourse of reasons in which various individuals participate, and then went on to suggest that the ability to see something as art presupposes increasing fluency in the discourse of reasons through which the work is accepted into the community of artworks.
Replies to Essays, p. 14
What 'The Art World' achieved was the establishment of a connection between the question of what is art and certain institutional factors in society. 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
For that matter, in 'The Artworld' I was talking about seeing something as art, which is a far cry from something being art.
Replies to Essays, p. 15
I don't believe any institutional theory gives us a definition of art, simply a certain account of how something gets to be received as art.
Replies to Essays, p. 15
An object is a work of art through the interpretation by means of which it is an interpreted object, and hence in candidacy for the status... Since the object 'embodies' the interpretation, we have what Dickie refers to somewhat scornfully as the 'old-fashioned sounding' theory.
Replies to Essays, p. 15
That discourse evolves over time, and it is what makes novelty possible, and it limits the kinds of novelty there can be.
Replies to Essays, p. 15
Works are embodied meanings. What meanings are possible is a matter of historical contingency. Institutionalism is not an ontology at all. And, however inadequately, it is an ontology that I have been after all along.
Replies to Essays, p. 15