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The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World
The Madonna of the Future finds Danto at the point where all the vectors of the art world those of traditional painting, Pop art, mixed media, and installation art; those of art and philosophy; those of the specialist who brings theory to bear on the work and the viewer who appreciates it primarily visually.
480 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2000
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About the author
Arthur C. Danto
167 books172 followersArthur C. Danto was Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and art critic for The Nation. He was the author of numerous books, including Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life, After the End of Art, and Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 4, 2008
I was given Danto's Unnatural Wonders as a gift when my Senior Project went up in college - and reading it was a relatively transformative experience. It introduced me to a flavor of art criticism - one that mingles philosophy, artistic biography, and keen visual analysis in a way that I found deeply appealing. Of course, it also helped that several of the shows Danto discusses in the book were ones which I had actually seen - so I could measure his writing against my own experience.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find the same enthusiasm for Madonna of the Future, through two reasons, neither of which have anything to do with the quality of the book. One problem is that Danto stresses almost exactly the same points, over and over, that he does in Unnatural Wonders - the blurring of boundaries between art and life, the pluralism of the art world, etc. These are interesting topics, but one doesn't get the sense that he developed his ideas much between one book and the next.
More problematically, though, is that I found Danto getting repeatedly straitjacketed by his insistence on certain philosophical viewpoints. Danto's background is in Philosophy (he was a professor of Philosophy at Columbia), and he spends much of his essays trying to put his artists into a larger framework. Sometimes this succeeds admirably, such as his analysis of the critic Meyer Schapiro. Other times, though, his ideological goals obscure his vision: good criticism ends with the brain, but starts with the eye.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find the same enthusiasm for Madonna of the Future, through two reasons, neither of which have anything to do with the quality of the book. One problem is that Danto stresses almost exactly the same points, over and over, that he does in Unnatural Wonders - the blurring of boundaries between art and life, the pluralism of the art world, etc. These are interesting topics, but one doesn't get the sense that he developed his ideas much between one book and the next.
More problematically, though, is that I found Danto getting repeatedly straitjacketed by his insistence on certain philosophical viewpoints. Danto's background is in Philosophy (he was a professor of Philosophy at Columbia), and he spends much of his essays trying to put his artists into a larger framework. Sometimes this succeeds admirably, such as his analysis of the critic Meyer Schapiro. Other times, though, his ideological goals obscure his vision: good criticism ends with the brain, but starts with the eye.
March 8, 2008
Not at all what I was expecting. A little dry.
February 9, 2008
Brandy--do you still have my copy?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews