Representação, mundo da arte, fim da arte e interpretação : sobre a legitimação da arte pós-histórica em Arthur Danto

Abstract

When we analyze the questions concerning Post-Historical Art within pop art in the 1960s, it is necessary to comprehend the relations between art and reality, art and philosophy, art and history, art and the end of art, art and “The Artworld”, art and interpretation. All these relations are present in Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art. By agreeing with Heinrich Wölfflin’s thesis that ‘not everything is possible at all times’ Danto investigates the possibility of an ordinary object to transfigure into an artistic object, reviewing in this process the most important theories of art. We will follow your critique of the theories of mimesis, formalism, and institutionalism before moving on to the analysis of the concepts of “representation”, “artworld”, and “interpretation”, essential conditions to understand the realm of differences in similarity. To elaborate his theory of the “The Artworld” he delineates a sum of necessary and sufficient conditions to answer the questions concerning the ontological status of contemporary works of art. By these new conditions, we propose the following questions: how to understand the relations between representation, interpretation and “The Artworld”? In what context do these conditions emerge? What are the concepts of the dantian theory that helps us on the legitimation of post-historical art? We conclude that the concept of interpretation, limited by the historical moment, partially answers the questions related to contemporary art. The historicist explanation of the end of the development of post-historical art comes close to the question of art itself, which is “What art is?” and signals the near impossibility that art can give us its own ontological status. The end of historical narratives is also the beginning of a period marked by ‘stylistic chaos’ where it is not possible for art to give a definition of itself and of a style that goes against the classifications or conceptual definitions of what art is, the concept of interpretation, in the face of the anti-aesthetic context of artistic objects, is what stands out due to the relational properties it provides us