O papel da crítica na arte pós-histórica : um problema filosófico

Abstract

The pluralistic context of contemporary art, represented by the idea of an era in which everything can become art, poses two questions that at the same time enquire the very being of art and the rationale for art criticism: 'When everything can be art, what is different between art and everyday objects?' and 'Why an art criticism when everything can be art?' These are formulations notably derived from the context of the arts from the 1960s to the present day. We find a framework in Dantian philosophy of art that both incorporates the above two problems and reflects them in a superlative character. Danto, by taking upon himself the task of entering the Neo-Wittgensteinian aesthetic debate about concepts and their delimited/non-delimited territories, counterposed to this current an innovative answer to the first question, by formulating the theory of historicism and essentialism, which defines the work of art as much in its theoretical as in its historical condition. Regarding the problem of criticism, on the other hand, Danto's theory is somewhat problematic. According to the philosopher (who, when it comes to criticism, abandons the extensional character of historicism-essentialism) the task of art criticism consists in interpreting whether the embodiment of meaning on the object has been well embodiment, and in accordance with the artist's authority in formulating the meaning. According to Danto, there are two forms of criticism, acting in opposite ways: the first, called surface interpretation, is the one that sustains itself on the author's authority over the meaning; and the second, deep interpretation, related to hermeneutic interpretations, which for Danto submerge in a kind of fortune-telling or theoretical cleodomancy. In this thesis, I will argue that the Dantian conception of criticism is effective in the sense of sustaining interpretive rigor in the embodiment of meaning, but inadequate in reducing all critical interpretation to the essentialist principle, since this theory ignores that a) the extensive aspect of essentialism and historicism is conditioned by the institutionality of the artworld; b) surface interpretation reduces the critical interpretation of art to a task analogous to that of the cryptographer; and, c) surface and deep are not necessarily antagonistic terms, since they can also be complementary in a specific understanding. In counterpoint to this problematic, I will argue that an adequation of the concept of criticism in Danto can be made and in coherence with essentialism and historicism itself, provided that the dichotomy between surface and deep interpretation is replaced by a formulation that at the same time contemplates the interpretation of embodied meaning and the condition of the work of art in the (institutional) world of art. For this theoretical adequacy, I will present a type of criticism whose term is ‘deeper and deeper interpretation’, or, to specify a cohesive translation for this concept, a swim-dive critic.