Wesleyan University

Art as Appearance: Two Comments on Arthur C. Danto's after the End of Art
Author(s): Martin Seel
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 37, No. 4, Theme Issue 37: Danto and His Critics: Art
History, Historiography and After the End of Art (Dec., 1998), pp. 102-114
Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505398
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 ART AS APPEARANCE:
TWO COMMENTSON ARTHURC. DANTO'S AFTERTHEEND OF ART

MARTINSEEL

ABSTRACT

In his latestbookaboutartArthurDantoclaimsthataestheticappearance-visuality in
thevisualarts-has becomemoreandmoreirrelevant formostof contemporary art.This
essayfirstimmanently critiquesthe distinctionbetweenthe aestheticandartisticproper-
tiesunderlying thisclaim.Danto'sclaimabouttheirrelevance of theaestheticis notcom-
patiblewiththe spiritof his ownwritings:whatDantodeniesin After the End of Art has
beena cornerstone of his theoretical
worksinceThe Transfigurationof the Commonplace,
namely,thatthe aestheticis indeedbothan elementaryanda definingpropertyof art.
Examplesrangingfrom Duchamp'sFountain to a recentinstallationby the Art &
Language grouparediscussedto supportthiscritique.Second,theessaydefendsDanto's
contention thatdevelopinga "definition Butit turnsoutthat
of art"is a sensibleenterprise.
Danto's(self-ascribed) "essentialism"concerningarthas no essentialistimplicationsin
anyspecificsense.

ArthurDanto's most importantachievementin the field of aestheticsis not theo-

retical but practical. Since the publication of The Transfigurationof the
Commonplace he has demonstratedthat it is possible to be a professional
philosopherof art and a successful critic and a true admirerof the art of one's
own time. This is notjust a personalbut an eminentlypolitical point-since what
is at stakehere is the foreign relationsbetween the artworld andthe world of aca-
demic research.These relations are much less foreign now. In modernthinking,
artand arttheoryseemed to be naturalenemies, at least as long as theoristscould
not convince the public that they themselves had the temperamentand virtuosity
of genuine artists (as in the case of WalterBenjamin or Theodor W. Adorno).
Although it is said that Danto himself is one of the leading conceptual artists
(thanksto his famous series of merely imaginedartworksand their merely mate-
rial Doppelgdnger),his reputationas a mediatorbetween the academyand the art
world does not depend upon an addictionto a romanticconception of the artist
as theoristand the theoristas artist.Whathe has shown is simply that a theoryof
art of Hegelian strengthand ambitiondoes not have to ignore what is going on
in contemporaryart.
This, therefore,might be called Danto's rule: Hard-corephilosophy of artis in
a position to acknowledgethe pluralityof the artisticmovements of its time. Or
even stronger:Someone who believes he or she has a valid definitionof art can
 ART AS APPEARANCE 103

neverthelessdisplay emphaticappreciationof art.What seemed to be excluded

by an implicit law of artistic sovereignty appearsto be included in the life and
work of at least one single theorist and critic. Danto's most recent book is just
one more piece of evidence for this. It develops strong philosophical claims
about the history of art and the position of artworksamong all other kinds of
things and signs, and at the same time it is a highly intense reflectionon the state
of the art in art. Its discourse proceeds in a continuousencounterwith a variety
of contemporarystyles and works, therebyfulfilling the ultimatefunction of the
philosophy of art as well as of art criticism in an exemplaryway: to enrich and
enlighten the perceptionof older, newer, and the newest works of art.
This practicalor even existential demonstrationis an outcome of Danto's out-
standingtheoreticalcontributions.Two basic assumptionsare responsiblefor the
intensityof both his philosophicaland his criticalpraxis. (1) Artworksare objects
in the world only insofar as they are about the world; they are about the world
only insofar as they embody their meaning. (2) History of art can be written-
philosophically-as a quasi-Hegelianhistory of the growing self-consciousness
of art, culminating in Duchamp and Warhol;following that, in the 1960s, art
reached a new age in which there is no longer a place for a teleological story of
artisticprogress.The first assumptionallows Danto to say what an artworkis or,
to be more precise and less hybrid,how it differs from other objects and signs.
The second allows him to react open-mindedlyto any artisticobject that strikes
him-not exactly the way in which critics, let alone philosophers,usually react
to currentaffairsin art.
Nevertheless,thereis an irritatingbias in Danto's more recenttreatmentof art:
the claim that aesthetic appearance-visuality in the visual arts-has become
more and more irrelevantfor most of contemporaryart.Aesthetics, it follows, is
no longer responsible for the theory of art. This, I believe, is an unacceptable
consequence, since it ignores the point-or at least a point-of all artisticpro-
duction: the creation of unique appearancesin the world which in turn display
unique interpretationsof the world. In a Heideggerianidiom, one could say that
Danto's latest writings tend to be not seinsvergessen (forgetful of being), but
erscheinungsvergessen(forgetfulof appearing).However,since I believe thatthe
separationbetween aestheticsand the philosophy of artat which Danto arrivesin
After the End ofArt is not a naturalconsequenceof his entiretheoreticalwork on
this subject, the first of my comments will be an immanentcritique of his dis-
tinctionbetween aestheticand artisticproperties.I shall arguethat Danto's claim
about the irrelevanceof the aestheticis not compatiblewith the spirit of his own
writings. Having put things togetheragain and having consulted some examples,
my second comment-in the third part of this essay-will be an attempt to
defend a claim that is probablythe most adventurousof all of Danto's contribu-
tions: thatit is a sensible, non-perverse,non-suicidalenterpriseto develop a "def-
inition of art."Again my remarksmight be read as an immanentcritique,since I
would like to show that Danto's (self-ascribed)"essentialism"concerningarthas
no essentialist implications.
104 MARTINSEEL

I. AESTHETICAND ARTISTICAPPEARANCE

ThroughoutDanto's writings aboutartlurks an argumentagainstthe importance

of the aesthetic. He holds that aesthetic predicates are not able to discriminate
sufficientlybetween artworksand other kinds of objects. In The Transfiguration
of the Commonplacehe convincingly arguedfor this position. If of two phenom-
enally identicalobjects one can be an artworkwhile the otheris a mere real thing,
then the status of being an artworkcannot depend on aesthetic-that is, sensual-
ly discriminable-properties alone. In Danto's own words:
No sensoryexaminationof an objectwill tell me thatit is an artwork,sincequalityfor
qualityit maybe matchedby an objectthatis not one, so farat leastas the qualitiesto
which the normalsenses are responsiveare concerned.That much I should hope has been
established by my argument.If aesthetic response were constant as to the difference
between art and nonart, the same would be true of these. But it is false. Our aesthetic
responseswill differbecausethequalitiesto whichwe respondaredifferent.'
This position is assumed again in After the End of Art, where Danto says that
the appearanceof readymadesand Brillo boxes in the art world "meantthat as
far as appearanceswere concerned,anythingcould be an artwork,and it meant
that if you were going to find out what artwas, you had to turnfrom sense expe-
rience to thought."2But Danto then goes on to draw a conclusion that is much
strongerthanthe contentionthataestheticqualitiesare not sufficientto determine
whether an object is artistic.Visuality, he concludes, is no longer the point of
contemporaryvisual arts:"Visualitydrops away, as little relevantto the essence
of art as beauty proved to have been. For art to exist there does not even have to
be an object to look at, and if thereare objects in a gallery,they can look like any-
thing at all."3It is importantto notice here that the case of invisible objects with-
in the visible arts (to which I shall returnbelow) is not the paradigmcase for
Danto's diagnosis aboutthe decline of aesthetics. "I shall argue,"he writes some
pages later, "that aesthetical considerations,which climaxed in the eighteenth
century,have no essential applicationto what I shall speak of as 'artafterthe end
of art'-i.e. art produced from the late 1960s on. That there was-and is-art
before and after the 'era of art' shows that the connection between art and aes-
thetics is a matterof historicalcontingency,and not partof the essence of art."4
In Danto's view the artisticmovements of the late 1960s have to be seen as a
fulfillmentof the Duchampianprogram"to extrudethe aesthetic from the artis-
tic."5Therefore"aestheticsseems to be increasinglyinadequateto deal with art
afterthe 1960s."6This is so because "thereis one featureof contemporaryartthat

1. ArthurC. Danto, The Transfigurationof the Commonplace(Cambridge,Mass., 1981), 99.

2. ArthurC. Danto, After the End of Art: ContemporaryArt and the Pale of History (Princeton,
1997), 13.
3. Ibid., 16. In the same paragraph:"Whateverart is, it is no longer something primarilyto be
looked at. Staredat, perhaps,but not primarilylooked at."
4. Ibid., 25.
5. Ibid., 84.
6. Ibid., 85.
 ART AS APPEARANCE 105

distinguishesit from perhapsall art since 1400, which is that its primaryambi-
tions are not aesthetic.Its primarymode of relationshipis not to viewers as view-
ers, but to other aspects of the persons to whom the art is addressed."7 All in all,
the historyof artfrom Giotto to DuchampandWarhol"demonstratesthatthe aes-
thetic is in fact not an essential or definingpropertyof art."8
On the contrary,I would like to respond,the aestheticis indeed both an essen-
tial and a definingpropertyof art.All that Danto has shown (thatmodernarthas
shown)-and all that can be shown-is that aesthetic quality is not sufficientto
distinguish artworksfrom other kinds of things. Moreover,that the aesthetic is
not sufficient to discriminatebetween art and non-artdoes not at all mean that
the aestheticis not (or is no longer) the point of artisticobjects.Aesthetic appear-
ance is in fact the very point of traditional,modern,and contemporaryart.
Before taking a look at some examples, I would like to make clear the sys-
tematic reason why I think Danto cannot really mean what he is saying in the
passages quoted.9First notice an ambiguityin Danto's use of the term "aesthet-
ic." Sometimes the term "aesthetic"stands for "mattersof taste"in the sense of
mattersof "the sense of beauty."But this is not the predominantuse of the term
in Danto's writings. In most cases the term "aesthetic"stands for "mattersof
vision" or, more generally,for "featuresof an object that can be distinguishedby
sensory experience."After the End of Art employs the second sense of "aesthet-
ic": its crucial claim is that the sensory presence of artworkshas become more
and more irrelevantfor their status as works of art.
This cannotbe true because it is only half of the truth.In The Transfiguration
of the CommonplaceDanto made a double comparison,aiming to drawa double
distinction. On the one hand, he comparedartworkswith (phenomenallyindis-
cernible) mere real things; on the other hand, he comparedartworkswith (again
phenomenallyindiscernible)"mererepresentations"-recall the telephone book
read as an avant-garde novel, or Loran's diagram transformedinto a Roy
Lichtenstein painting. The result of this twofold conceptual experiment was a
double distinctionbetween artworksand other things on the one hand, and art-
works and other signs (or constellationsof signs) on the other.Artworks,Danto
argued,differ from mere real things in having a dimension of aboutness(and in
existing in a context of interpretation)-they are not just things, they are signs,
even if they may look like simple things. But-as the second half of Danto's
investigationwas designed to demonstrate-they are very special kinds of signs,
differing from all other kinds of (widely understood)symbolic representations.
They do not have meaningin the way arbitrarylinguistic signs (which are in prin-
ciple replaceable) and sentences have; they embody their meaning in an irre-

7. Ibid., 183.
8. Ibid., 112.
9. For reasons of simplicity I shall restrictmyself in the following to a discussion of the role of
appearancein the visual arts;for a discussion of the literature(which might seem to be a counterex-
ample to the assumptionof a strict interdependenceof the aesthetic and the artistic), see my forth-
coming Asthetikdes Erscheinens(Munich, 1999).
106 MARTINSEEL

placeable manner.They are individual signs, displaying an untranslatableand

irreplaceableway of seeing whateverthey are about.10
This short-and extremely condensed-recollection was necessary to bring
into focus again what came out of focus in the boldly anti-aestheticpassages
quoted above: the constitutiverole of embodimentin artisticpresentation.If it is
plausible to say that artworksdiffer from "mere representations"in that they
embody their meanings, then it cannot be plausible to say that appearancein art
has become irrelevant.For where would the embodying featuresof a work of art
be identifiableif not in the very appearanceof each and every object of art?And
how should these appearances,which are constitutiveof the artisticembodiment
of meaning, be recognized if not throughthe media of sensory perception,how-
ever much thoughtand interpretationwill be needed to capturewhat is to be per-
ceived here and only here? How could "artisticpredicates"be applied in an
enlightened way without successfully applying the relevant "aesthetic predi-
cates"?How could the "ways of seeing" embodiedin a work of the visual artsbe
perceivedwithout intensely looking at this very object (or, if it is an installation,
experiencing it together with all kinds of bodily reactions)? How could visual
perceptionnot be the point of taking a work of the visual arts seriously-again,
if it is true that being an artworkmeans to transcendthe means of mere repre-
sentation(roughly speaking,representationin the use of arbitraryor replaceable
signs)? Therefore,if we underwritethe premises offered by the twofold analysis
of The Transfigurationof the Commonplace,the consequencecan only be this: if
embodiment is a constitutive feature of art, appearanceis constitutive as well,
since meaningfullyarticulatedappearanceis a very condition of artisticembod-
iment.
This is why I believe that the radical anti-aestheticismin After the End of Art
is incompatiblewith Danto's own philosophy of art. One reason for the radical
formulationsin After the End of Art seems to be that there Danto is one-sidedly
concerned with the difference between artworks and other things and not so
much with artworksand other signs. Only in the last chapter,where he discuss-
es the possibility of a definition of art, does the topic of embodiment(marking
the differencebetween artisticpresentationand normallinguistic or pictorialrep-
resentation)regainits complementaryrole with the element of aboutness(mark-
ing the difference between things in the world and things about the world). If
these two conditions are interdependent,as I believe (that Danto believes) they
are, then there is no way of "extrudingthe aestheticfrom the artistic."
One must distinguish between (at least) two kinds of "aestheticreaction"-
just as Danto himself did in The Transfigurationof the Commonplace.One kind
of reaction is directed simply at what can be seen by everyone not out of their
senses (to put it literally);the otherkind of reaction, relying upon normalsenso-
ry awareness,is directedto objects of articulationand interpretation,which dis-
play their specific meaning by presentingthemselves as bodies of significance.
10. Cf. TRansfiguration,164 and chapter7. The connection between embodiment and irreplace-
ability would need furtherdiscussion which I cannot go into here.
 ART AS APPEARANCE 107
This second reactiondoes not, however,go beyondsensory appearance;it is just
a differentreactionto it, a differenttreatmentof it-including interpretationand
the ascription of artistic predicates as well as aesthetic ones. Thus, artistic
appearanceis to be understoodas a mode of aestheticappearance,not as an alter-
native to it."1Whoever succeeded in "extrudingthe aesthetic from the artistic"
or-which is the same-artistic meaningfrom the sensory process of appearing,
would succeed in extrudingart from the art world.

II. DUCHAMPAND OTHERS

Duchamp and Warholsucceeded in many-although quite different-ways, but

fortunatelynot in that. Among other things, they succeeded in exhibiting the
paradoxesof artistic appearance,but they did not go beyond appearance.They
needed appearance,and needed to insist on appearance,to exhibit the puzzles of
aesthetic and artistic appearing.The core of these paradoxes is precisely that
which not only seems but (visually) appears to be without differencecan never-
theless have a dramaticallydifferentappearance.Worksof artdo have an appear-
ance differentfrom their visually indistinguishablematerialcounterparts:this, I
believe, is the philosophicalpoint thatis made by the artof the ready-madesand
after.
Duchamp'sFountain,shown in a gallery,looks like an ordinaryurinalbut also
occupies the position of a sculpturalobject-a figurativething with a metaphor-
ical meaning-a position thatit at the same time heavily denies. It at once insists
that it is there not to be used for its usual purpose but to be seen only, without
allowing itself to be seen as this or that,except maybe as a reflectionon the desire
to see sculpture-likeobjects as this or that. In so doing, it suddenlyreminds the
viewer that something essential-essential to urinals in everyday life-is miss-
ing, namely, the smell, thereby initiating an experience of subtraction,letting
subtractionbe sensed, a subtractionof functionsand meaningsand sensings. This
subtraction,if the viewers are in touch with philosophy, will be conceived as a
decomposing process of meaning that this parody of a sculpturalwork of art
keeps increasingin each and every one of its switching appearings.Only because
of this play of incompatibleappearancesis it possible to ascribethe artisticpred-
icates Danto chooses to characterizethe differencebetween ordinaryurinalsand

11. In fact needed here is a threefold distinctionamong visual, aesthetic, and artisticobjects, the
artistic ones being visually and aestheticallyrelevantobjects of a special kind. What separatesaes-
thetic from merely visual objects-if such a distinctionis drawnin additionto Danto's ambiguousdis-
tinction between the aesthetic and the artistic-is not so much a (perhapsold-fashioned) "sense of
beauty"but a sense of the momentaryappearingof an arbitraryobject. Everythingthat is viewed (or
stronger,that is said to deserve to be viewed) in such a way can be understoodas an aesthetic object.
As Danto rightly points out, this kind of aestheticawarenessit not sufficientfor the perceptionof art-
works, but it is neverthelessa necessary condition for treatingan object as an object of art. For an
accountof the prominenceof the concept of appearancein the historyof aesthetics,see my essay "The
Career of Aesthetics in German Thinking," in German Philosophy since Kant, ed. A. O'Hear
(Cambridge,Eng., 1998).
108 MARTINSEEL

Duchamp's Fountain: "The work itself has propertiesthat urinals themselves

lack: it is daring,impudent,irreverent,witty and clever."' 2
A different story with the same systematic consequence could be told about
the Brillo Boxes. Were it not for the massive irritationsgeneratedby the appear-
ing of these seemingly banal objects, they could not possess the highly artistic
virtuesDanto attributesto them in the last sentences of The Transfigurationof the
Commonplace(using visual metaphorsall the way down): "As a work of art,the
Brillo Box does more thaninsist thatit is a Brillo box undersurprisingmetaphor-
ic attributes.It does what works of arthave always done-externalizing a way of
viewing the world, expressing the interiorof a culturalperiod, offering itself as
a mirrorto catch the conscience of our kings."'I3Withoutlingeringin the presence
of an object of art-without an at once sensitive and interpretiveawarenessof its
appearing-there is no possibility to take it as an object of art.
An objector to this might argue that this synopsis fails to do justice to those
artworksor practicesin art which do not offer any object to be viewed or other-
wise sensed. "Forartto exist there does not even have to be an object to look at,"
was one of the argumentsDanto gave to supporthis radicalposition. If one aims
at a philosophical definitionof art as Danto does, it would be sufficient to give
just one example of an artworkwhich has been fully emancipatedfrom visuali-
ty. Here, indeed, where we would have a work of visual artwithout anythingrel-
evant to be looked at, visuality would have droppedaway. But there is no such
work of art, at least not as far as I know.
There are, of course, instances of conceptualart which consist merely in texts
providingadvice for the construingor imaginingof objects of art.But this advice
is presentedin the form of texts, more or less typed like termpapers,hanging on
the wall like a series of paintings,so thatthey have at once the appearanceof pic-
tures and non-pictures, being about the impossibility of a pictorial and pic-
turesque art, nevertheless (from a certain distance) looking like a sequence of
minimalist graphics, and so on. There are statistical experiments like that of
Komarand Melamid about the average preferences of American consumers of
paintings, which gave rise to the painting America's Most Wanted(1994), of
which Danto writes: "As a painting it has no place in the art world at all. What
does have a place in the art world is the performancepiece by Komar and
Melamid which consists in the opinion poll, the painting,the publicity,etc. That
work is probablya masterpiece.Thatwork is aboutthe people's artwithoutitself
being people's artat all. Thatwork is 'postmodern,humorous,and ironic,'as one
observersaid, as is derivatively,the Most Wantedpaintingitself."'4

93-94. The statusof artobjects thatseem to state "we are what we are not and
12. Transfigutraction,
we are not what we are"-to use a quote from Sartre'sBeing and Nothingness that Danto uses in a
piece on Ad Reinhardt(A. C. Danto, Embodied Meanings [New York, 1995], 204)-concerns the
paradoxicalappearanceof these works, because otherwise we would have difficultiesin distinguish-
ing between artworksand persons, as I think we should.
13. Transfiguration,208.
14. After the End of At, 216.
 ART AS APPEARANCE 109

But of course that means that this painting, which "looks unmistakably
Hudson River Biedermeier,"'lis an essential part of this artistic operation,espe-
cially in its being a flat, decisively nonauratic (and maybe even anti-auratic)
painting of what the average everyday user of paintings believes to be the para-
digm case of an auraticpainting. A paradox again which manifests itself solely
in the appearanceof that sardonicpainting.
Consider, too, the pertinentpieces of land art like Walterde Maria's Vertical
Earth Kilometer installed for the Documenta VI in Kassel in 1977. All that can
be seen is a sandstoneplate, measuringtwo squaremeters, with a brass manhole
cover in the middle underwhich a solid brassrod one kilometerin length extends
into the earth.Nothing is to be seen of this rod; the viewer has to know about it
from information provided in the catalogue (or from an additional exhibition,
which was arrangedin the museum in 1977, documenting the realizationof the
installation).Here, indeed, most of the artworkcannot be seen. But still, visual-
ity, let alone sensuality, does not drop away fully. The beholder experiences a
visuality that withdrawsfrom his or her beholding, an inverted monument, at a
place-a huge lawn in front of the exhibition hall-that would be most suitable
for a conventionalsculpturelooming into the sky. In other words, the work of art
here is not only the invisible hole but also the place at which one of the longest
artworksin the world is located, maybe the largest sculptureever made, without
any sign of human power and splendor, without any bit of a Heideggerian Ge-
stell being erected.We are not standinginfront of or beneath, but above a gigan-
tic sculpture, which excludes the viewer from any vision of its magnitude and
sublimity.We only have a glance of the top of the thing, which is the center of a
site createdby its largely invisible dimension. To be sure, one has to know of this
in order to be sensually aware of the earthly space beyond all spaces in which
sculpture,architecture,and landscape are given. De Maria's work of art is, like
every installation,the creationof an experientialplace at which a bodily-sensual
encounter cannot be replaced by anything, even though bodily-sensual experi-
ence alone could not identify any artworkhere. In art, even nonappearingis a
matterof appearing.'6
At Documenta X in Kassel in 1997, the group Art & Language (consisting of
the English artists Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden) equipped two rooms.
The installation was entitled Sighs Trappedby Liars. In one of them were vari-
ous furniture-likeforms: a sofa, a low table, and a numberof armchairs.These
forms were constructed from panels measuring approximately 30cm x 40cm,
which were covered with colored canvas;here texts had been copied (some eas-
ily legible, some barely decipherable)- two pages of an open book in each case.
The texts consisted of extracts,partly from the group's publications,from litera-
ture, and from art criticism. Four of the panels were positioned on the wall as
paintings, one of which was without printed text, like an abstract painting.

15. Ibid.
16. For a more extended treatmentof the dialectics of appearing,see my forthcomingAsthetikdes
Erscheinens.
110 MARTINSEEL

Looking at this arrangementwith an attitudeindifferentto art, one saw strange

pieces of furnituremade of colored panels, some of which were hung up like
paintings. Everything was very colorful and cheerful; it was like being in a
kindergartenfor adults.
Whoevercould perceivethis installationas artsaw and experiencedsomething
completely different. One participatedin a game of differences that dissolved
only to re-formagain and again. The squaresthat made up the objects appeared,
with varying intensity, as pictures, texts, or decorative elements. However one
looked at the small canvases-as the still backgroundfor a text, or as the shift-
ing surface for a painting-they always seemed to be denying their status. The
text appearednow as a linguistic meaning, now as a graphicfigure. It consisted
of colors and lines or of sentences and paragraphs.By the same token, these
objects consisting of picture/textpanels presentedthemselves as utensils and as
sculptures,without fulfilling one of the two roles completely.They were objects
for bodily use or for contemplative viewing. There was a constant switching
between base and superstructure,between backgroundand foreground.The col-
orful furniture,which hadjust remindedus loudly of the needs of the body, meta-
morphosedinto a presentationof the linguisticalityof things. The colorful can-
vas, which had just been the backgroundof a theoretical text, moved into the
foregroundof an abstractpainting.
In oscillating between these ways of appearing,the installationplayed both
with the literality of the visible and with the materialityof the mental. At the
same time, it ironicallycommentedon recent art'sneed for commentary.It is just
as impossible to transferthe complex spatial and visual metaphordeveloped by
this work into anothermedium as it is to replace a powerfullinguistic metaphor.
The metaphoris presented only through the appearingof the work of art. Of
course, this appearingcannot come about without the interpretivesensibility of
beholders. But that does not mean that Art & Language's playing with the
switching to and fro is not visible, is not presentin perception.Rather,it is there
solely in that way-for a perceptionthat can see the ensemble as art.
This perceptiondoes notfirst have to be suppliedwith interpretationsin order
then to discover a different process of appearing(after all, the interpretations
offered could be wrong, misleading, or nonsensical). Rather,in the course of the
encounterwith the object, this perceptiondiscovers the meaningfulappearingof
the artwork.In respect of art,the saying "Weonly see what we alreadyknow"is
wrong. All relevant knowledge about the objects of fine art can be confirmed
solely in seeing, in the act of perceivingthe particularworks of art.Fine artdoes
indeedrequirean interpretiveseeing, but it is nothingwithoutan interpretivesee-
ing (or sensing, if we recall the VerticalEarth Kilometer).This also applies to
very small and, up to now, fictionalworks. "Familiaras I am with thumbtacks,I
yet have to see a work whose materialcounterpartis one.""7

17. Transfiguration,105 (emphasis added).

 ART AS APPEARANCE 111

Thus, when in one of his most cautious moments Danto says "thatartworks
and real things cannot be told apart by visual inspection alone,""8 he is indeed
right. However,one cannotconclude from this thatthe visual is in any way irrel-
evant.What can be concluded is just thatthe perceptionsufficientfor seeing any
"real"object is not sufficientfor the perceptionof an art object. Once we behold
something as a work of fine art, we ascribe to it perceivablepropertiesdifferent
from those any child could ascribe to it. In Art & Language's Documentaroom
we say: "The components of this piece of furnitureoscillate between text and
image."To make this possible is one of the exemplarytasks of the artist:to give
the look of things an improbableappearance.And isn't this what happensin any
"transfiguration of the commonplace"?

III. CLOSINGGAPS, DEFININGART

My considerationsso far have two furthercritical consequences concerning the

frameworkof After the End of Art. Danto tends to overstatethe systematic gap
between aesthetics and the philosophy of art, as well as the historical gap
between art before and afterWarhol.
If it is unjustifiedto put the aesthetic and the artistic in opposition, then it is
equally implausible to separatephilosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of
art.Differentas mere real things and mere aesthetic objects (of beautifuldesign,
or beautiful or sublime nature)are from artworks,this difference can be suffi-
ciently explained only if their correspondingmodes of appearanceare not torn
apart-if we see the philosophy of art as a special (thoughthe most interesting)
part of philosophical aesthetics."9"It is not that aesthetics is irrelevantto art,"
Danto remarksin passing in his magnumopus on art.20It is not only not the case
that aesthetics is irrelevantto art, I would prefer to say, but since aesthetic
appearanceis essential to all kinds of art, aestheticsis highly relevantto any the-
ory of art.
If it is unjustifiedto say that visuality has been droppingaway in the (visual)
arts since the 1960s, then it seems equally implausibleto say that a development
in art-or even the developmentof art- has at this point come to an end. The
gap between art "since 1400" and what happens today appearsmuch less dra-
matic. Since the item of an "end"of art is not my topic here, I shall not go into
a discussion of this point. Nevertheless I feel obligated to mention the costs of
my apology for Danto's general position (as I see it) against some of his more
eccentric claims. His philosophy of art history too needs to be revised. For if art
before and afterthe late 1960s continues to produceaestheticallyintense objects
of meaning,then the changes in the artworld cannothave thatexceptionalmean-
ing Danto tends to assume. To be sure, grave changes in artisticproductionhave

18. After the End of Art, 71 (emphasisadded).

19. This interconnection across differences is realized in my book Eine Asthetik der Natur
(Frankfurt,1991).
20. Transfiguration,107.
112 MARTINSEEL

occurredsince then:the art scene has become radicallypluralistic,togetherwith

an extremelywidespreadtendency to cross the lines of differentartisticgenres.
But instead of being the end of all comprehensivedevelopmentin the arts, this
increasinginteractionismmight be just one more historically significant devel-
opment.Be-thatas it may, I am not at all sure that artcame to full Hegelian self-
consciousness in the 1960s-or that such a goal can ever be reached.Going on
in many partsof contemporaryart seems to be a deepened self-explorationof art
in respectof its history as well as its genres, its public position as well as its rela-
tion to science and theory.It is hard to imagine that this process could come to
an end for internalreasons. What has been called the "end"of art since Hegel's
days has once again turnedout to be nothing more-but on the other hand noth-
ing less-than a fundamentalchange concerningthe culturalfunctions of art.
However,as indicatedat the beginning,I shall leave this point in favorof some
concluding remarksabout the problem of defining art. Following Hegel, Danto
himself has tied the possibility of a definitionof art to a diagnosis of an ending
not of artisticpracticebut of artisticprogress.Only after arthas gained full self-
consciousness, Danto claims, can philosophy make a sensible attempt to say
what an artworkis.21 Since I have doubts concerningthe diagnoses of an ending
of art,I might seem to be committedto anotherskepticalconsequencehere. But
this is not the case. Following Danto I believe that the development after
Duchamp has indeed posed the philosophical question of the demarcation
between art and non-artin a radicalway, so that since then there is a much bet-
ter chance to come up with a plausible definition.Thus I find myself once more
in a position to defend Danto's project,this time not so much againsthimself but
against those critics who condemn the very attemptto define art as a roll back
into essentialist metaphysics.
The crucial question that has to be answeredfirst is what are we doing when
we try to give such a definition.The main answer is a negative one. To propose
a definitionof art in no way means to establish a criterion of art-neither a cri-
terion of good art nor a criterionof what deserves to count as (good or bad) art.
To acknowledgea given object as artor as good artalways implies a criticaljudg-
ment aboutthis object (or is derivativeof suchjudgmentsgiven by others).To be
sure, every philosophy of art must unavoidablyrely upon the past and present
discourseof art-criticalinterpretationand evaluation,since its examples are usu-
ally well-establishedworks of art.There are no artworksoutside the reach of (a
varietyof historicalstyles of) artisticappreciation.But the philosophyof artdoes
not directly contributeto this kind of discourse. Of course the philosophy of art
may have and is allowed to have a more or less strong (or, to be realistic, a more
or less weak) influence on artisticproductionand art criticism;however,it does
not itself, as long as it is philosophy of art, perform sequences of critical dis-
course. Its chief purposeis not the interpretationand evaluationof artworksand

21. "By 'after the end of art,'I mean 'after the ascent to philosophical self-reflection."'"The end
of artconsists in the coming to awarenessof the truephilosophicalnatureof art."After the End ofArt,
14 and 30.
 ART AS APPEARANCE 113
artisticdevelopments,but a reflection on what kind of practice we are involved
in when we are concernedwith making,performing,perceiving,and interpreting
works of art. Or, to put it in Danto's own words, its foremost enterpriseis a
reflectionon how the "artworld"relates to the rest of the world.
At this point anothernegative answermust be given. A definitionof art should
not be understoodas a synopsis of what a philosophyof artis able to achieve, but
ratheras a recalling of the startingpoint of art-theoreticalreflections-a starting
point, to be sure, they have to come back to again and again.An appropriatedef-
inition of artdoes not give a final answer,it gives an initial one. It cannotby any
means say what we are doing when we are dealing with art. Nevertheless, it
might say what we are talking about when we are treating art philosophically.
According to Wittgenstein,philosophical problems often have the form of "not
knowing where one is"; maybe it is a good idea to see the searchfor a definition
of art (as primafacie anti-Wittgensteinianas it is) in light of this remark.A def-
inition may help to say where we are, what kind of problems we have in think-
ing about the difference between art and non-art.A useful "definitionof art"
would not give a substantialanswer; ratherit would raise-or at least help to
raise-the right kinds of questions.
In my opinion, this is exactly what Danto does when he offers his definitionof
art.22He does not say anythingabout the good and the bad in art, he gives two
conditions that every object treatedas an artworkhas always already satisfied.
First, it has a dimensionof aboutness;this makes a differencewith respect to all
"merereal things."Second, being "about"the world in some way, it articulates
its meaning through procedures of embodiment;this makes a difference with
respect to all other species of aboutness, that is, all other kinds of "representa-
tion" in a wide sense of the term.As Danto himself sees it, in his majoropus on
art he analyzed the first condition sufficiently,whereas some work is left to be
done on the second. This is so because once having separatedthe object of art
from all mere things it is placed into the sphereof signs, where a neat separation
is a much more complex matter.But here as well, the task of any furtherelabo-
rationis as clear as can be: what has to be discussed is the ways in which artis-
tic embodimentdiffersfrom otherkinds of designation.A discussion of this point
will contributeto the question of what we are doing when we are making and
experiencingartworksin contrastto other things in the world and other sayings
about and showings of the world.
Thus the job of a definitionof art is primarilyto markthe differencesthat are
at stake when we-practically or theoretically-are concernedwith art.Its job is
not that of a doormanwatching out for the right kind of things enteringthe dis-
cotheque named "artworld."23Its purposeis solely to delimit the dance floor on
which everything that happens to have gained entrance makes its individual
moves. It says what it means to be a memberof the artworld, not what is required

22. For the following, see After the End of Art, esp. 193ff.
23. I owe this example to KarlheinzLfideking.
114 MARTINSEEL

to enter. In Danto's original version, it says quite laconically it has to do with

aboutnessand with presentingits contents througha process of appearing.
Is this an "essentialist"position, as Danto and his critics declare it to be? I do
not think so. It is a statementaboutthe sorts of differencesthat are at play wher-
ever something is taken to be art, at least up to now. Nobody knows what will
happentomorrow.Since "art"and "artwork"are normativeconcepts, there can-
not be such a thing as an everlastingessence of art;all "ontology"of the artworld
rests upon persistent demarcationsthat are continuously held to be relevant
where things such as artworksare at stake.Artworksand the art world exist as a
realm of culturalpractice,and it is possible-although, if thinkerssuch as Hegel
and Danto are right,quite improbable-that humanculturesmay one day lose all
interest in objects that make possible an experiential encounter with ways of
encounteringthe world. Thus, the attemptto understandthe function of art quite
naturallyimplies a defense-however tacit-of the importancenot of this or that
work of art, but of the cultural possibility of making and perceiving art.
Combiningthis implicit theoreticalapology of art with an emphaticcriticism of
artworksand artmovements,as Danto personallydoes, is a permanentencore for
which we should be additionallygrateful. It demonstratesthat a philosophical
enthusiasmfor art must not make philosophersblind to what they believe to be
their passion.24

Justus-Liebig-Universitdt
Giessen

24. Thanksto John Farrellfor rectifying my English.