The Transfiguration of the Commonplace

Author: Arthur C. Danto
Year: 1974 (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33(2))
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/danto-1974-transfiguration-of-the-commonplace.md

Summary

Danto's landmark essay in the philosophy of art asks what distinguishes an artwork from a merely similar (even perceptually indistinguishable) real object. He argues that art cannot be defined by its manifest / perceptible properties, since artworks and ordinary things can be indiscernible; rather, artworks are those objects that bear "aboutness" and semantical properties — they represent, denote, and "show what they denote" — and are interpreted as such within an artworld/theory. Removed from the real, art "puts reality at a distance"; even the empty "Untitled" painting is about aboutness, its content "the concept of art." The essay subtends the ready-made / everyday-object problem (Duchamp).

Key Claims

• Indiscernibility and aboutness: a square of primed canvas (a mere thing), an artwork "about nothing," and an artwork "not about anything" can be perceptually identical; "which ... are artworks ... are clearly not matters to be settled from scrutiny of their faces" but by relational/semantical properties.
• Art as semantical/representational: artworks admit of semantical assessment ("they are linguistic to the extent of admitting semantical assessment"); representation involves a vehicle that shows what it denotes ("pictures show what they denote"). Aboutness is the feature that elevates a copy into an imitation/mimeme.
• Mimesis vs. illusion: imitations are distinct from illusions — illusions induce false beliefs, while imitations "must be initially appreciated as imitations and hence not real"; pleasures in mimesis presuppose a grasp of the daydream/reality distinction.
• Art distances reality: "the importance of art must be bound up with the logical fact that it puts reality at a distance"; in the neutral space of the gallery the everyday object (ironing board, vacuum cleaner, ready-made) is disarmed — "a mode of disarming."
• Transfiguration of the commonplace: following Nietzsche's genealogy and the Cimabue example, the same object shifts from charged reality (first sense of "appearance") to representation (second sense) without the object changing at all — "the transfiguration of life into art."
• The philosophical endpoint: the "empty" works "are about aboutness, and their content is the concept of art"; when "philosophy's paintings ... are part of the artworld, the artworld has shaded into its own philosophy, and by definition grown old."

Connections

Concepts: Everyday Life · Consumerism · Iconic Architecture
Authors: Arthur Danto
Debates: (aesthetics and the ordinary)
Related source notes: (related: ready-made / transfiguration)

Direct Quotes

"[T]he appreciation of art as art presupposes an active awareness of the [art/reality] ... the importance of art must be bound up with the logical fact that it puts reality at a distance."

"[W]hat they are about is aboutness, and their content is the concept of art."

"[T]he line separating [art and philosophy] has all but vanished." (on the philosophical paintings)

Open Questions

• If art is conferred by the "artworld"/theory rather than intrinsic properties, what distinguishes this from mere institutional arbitrariness — and how does the "transfiguration of the commonplace" bear on ready-made/everyday-object aesthetics and the icon?