As Thierry de Duve has put it, whenanything visual can be called art ...

[t]he sentence
this is art is a con-vention. Historical nowledge alone is re!uired to "ae and #udge
art,so"e intellectual interest $or the logic o$ %odernis", so"e strategicdesire or
interest to see it $urther e&trapolated and tested on "ere insti-tutional grounds. Art $ades
into art theory.
''
This leaves unased the !uestions o$ who is authori(ed to do the calling, andhow an
ob#ect or action arrives at the point where the convention o$ art can acton
it.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
p)'). *eorge Dicie produced his own institutional theory ten years later, but its lesser
contact with the actualworld o$ art, in $avor o$ an elaborated analytic-philosophical
apparatus, has con-de"ned it to a co"plete lac o$ in+uence outside o$ pro$essional
aesthetics.
,
Theplace that Danto has achieved in the art world, "eanwhile, is due "ore to hiswriting
as a critic than to his strictly philosophical wor.A"ong artists, the divorce o$ art $ro"
aesthetics too its conceptual shape $orthe "ost part not in opposition to acade"ic
philosophy but in reaction to the$or"alist criticis" o$ -le"ent *reenberg and his
$ollowers.
.
*reenberg/sideas, descended, as 0awrence Alloway once pointed out, $ro" nineteenth-
century aestheticis",
1
had closer $orerunners in *er"an anti-aestheticconceptions o$ the )2'3s and )243s,
when partisans o$ photography drew sharpdistinctions between the essences o$ di$$erent
"edia, reserving $or painting 5in thewords o$ %oholy-6agy7 the ele"entary "eans o$
color and plane, asopposed to naturalistic representation.
8
9n his essay Avant-garde and itsch,published in )242, *reenberg presented art-$or-
art/s opposition to utility as theidea o$ art/s opposition to the co""ercial culture o$
industrial capitalis". 0ieTheodor Adorno, who si"ilarly 5but "ore convincingly7 traced
his thining tothe aesthetics o$ :ant, *reenberg located art/s signi;cance in its
autono"y, its$reedo" $ro" deter"ination by nonartistic ends and its governance by its
ownhistorically evolving principles.
2
<nly an e"phasis on aesthetic !uality couldeep art alive as an alternative to the
"aret-oriented culture o$ capitalis". 9nlater writings, *reenberg identi;ed the practice
o$ aesthetic autono"y with thee&ploration by each artistic "ediu" o$ its speci;c nature.
The nature o$ painting,speci;cally, was reduced in his thining to the pristine +atness o$
the stretchedcanvas on which areas o$ color could be laid. The "odernist assertion o$
the
p)''. value o$ the artwor in its own right, and not #ust as a representation o$
so"ebeauti$ul or subli"e reality, beca"e a $ocus on the e&pressive resources o$
the"ediu", not in order to e&press ideas and notions, but to e&press with
greateri""ediacy sensations, the irreducible ele"ents o$ e&perience.
)3
9n this way *reenberg set a do"ain o$
aisthesis
in opposition to what here$erred to as literature, or verbali(able sub#ect-"atter, insisting
on the gul$ between visual art and language. He invoed *otthold 0essing as a
precursor,but while 0essing/s )1..
0aoco=n
located a $unda"ental distinction betweenpoetry and visual art not only in the narrative
capacity o$ the $or"er but also inwhat 0essing held to be the greater abstractness o$
linguistic signs, *reenberg saw language 5outside o$ "odernist poetry7 as transparent in
relation to sub#ect-"atter and viewed the opacity o$ its "ediu" as basic to visual art,
whosecharacter e&hausts itsel$ in the visual sensation it produces.
))
-oncern with"ediu", as opposed to sub#ect, or even e&pression, had "ade abstraction
o$ supre"e i"portance in "odern art, in which the autono"y o$ the aesthetic
thusbeca"e, in painting at least, the substance o$ art itsel$.9n 6ature o$ abstract art,
published two years be$ore Avant-garde anditsch but written as a contribution to the
sa"e discussion a"ong politically"inded artists and writers that *reenberg/s essay
would enter, %eyer >chapiroargued that despite both appearances and the belie$s o$
artists and critics, thepretended autono"y and absoluteness o$ the aesthetic present in
its purest $or"in abstraction was a "yth. Here as elsewhere in art, he observed, $or"al
con-struction is shaped by e&perience and nonaesthetic concerns.
)'
And indeed theabsence o$ literature in what *reenberg called "odernist painting
really"eant not the lac o$ re$erence other than to the $or"al conditions o$ the wor,but
#ust the absence o$ representation 5or denotation7. 6onetheless, *reenberg/s$or"ulation
corresponded su$;ciently to $unda"ental $eatures o$ the artistic ;eldas it evolved with the
success o$ A"erican abstract art in the postwar period tohave in+uence, positive and
negative, on critics and artists $or several decades.The concept o$ artistic ;eld is
borrowed $ro" the writing o$ ?ierre @our-dieu, who de;nes a ;eld o$ cultural production
as a syste" o$ relations a"ong aset o$ agents and institutionsAin the case o$ the art
syste", these include artists,dealers, critics, collectors, art "aga(ines, and "useu"sA
constituting the site o$ struggles $or the "onopoly o$ the power to consecrate wors as
culturallyvaluable, in which the value o$ wors o$ art and belie$ in that value are continu-
ally generated.
)4
>uch ;elds "ay be characteri(ed in ter"s o$ alternative
p)'4.
positions, e"bodied in individual and group styles 5lie ?op, %ini"alis", and-olor
Bield painting7 and cha"pioned by co"peting critics, collectors, curators,and gallerists.
Chile the )2,3s saw the artistic ;eld, as Day"onde %oulinobserves, roughly divided
between the see"ingly opposite positions o$ abstrac-tion and representation,
succeeding decades produced, in the Enited >tates,an artistic ;eld with no nor"ative
aesthetic.
)F
6onetheless, the rise to globalpro"inence o$ an A"erican avant-garde style, Abstract
G&pressionis", eptalive earlier conceptions o$ "odern art based on the autono"y o$
the artistic actand the associated high cultural value o$ abstraction, even while the
co""ercialand political success o$ the new A"erican art was under"ining the idea o$
anecessary con+ict between advanced art and the do"inant culture.Thus literature in
*reenberg/s sense re"ained absent $ro" %ini"alis",which tended to restore the
e"otionalis" and subli"ity o$ Abstract G&pression-is" both by e"phasis on such
$or"al "atters as scale and the nature o$ "aterials and by a new attentiveness to
physical and social conte&t. @ut the woro$ artists lie Bran >tella, Donald Hudd, -arl
Andre, Dobert %orris, and DanBlavin, using such devices as shaped canvases, colored
three-di"ensional sur-$aces, nearly +at asse"blages, and colored light, pointedly
crossed the boundarybetween painting and sculpture that *reenberg had both de;ned
and insistedon as pri"ary $or !uality "odernist art. -ritic and art historian %ichael
Bried,in )2.1 evidently a disciple o$ *reenberg/s, e&plicitly recogni(ed in %ini"alis"the
staing-out o$ a co"peting positionAboth o$ production 5and sales7 and o$ critical
pro"otionAin the artistic ;eld. This enterprise, as he put it, sees todeclare and
occupy a positionAone that can be $or"ulated in words, and in $acthas been $or"ulated
by so"e o$ its leading practitioners, a $eature that distin-guishes it $ro" "odernist
painting and sculpture and also "ars an i"portantdi$$erence between %ini"al Art ...
and ?op or <p Art.
),
The struggle $or cul-tural value could be waged as a con+ict o$ theoretical categories.The
*reenbergian e"phases on opticality and !uality as central to "od-ernis" were
clearly a"ong the targets ai"ed at by Dobert %orris/s )2.4notari(ed >tate"ent o$
Gsthetic CithdrawalI
p)'F. The undersigned ... being the "aer o$ the "etal construction entitled0itanies ...
hereby withdraws $ro" said construction all esthetic !ual-ity and content and declares
that $ro" the date hereo$ said constructionhas no such !uality and content.
).
The thought i"plicit in this declaration was e&pressed at characteristicallygreater length
by Hoseph :osuth in his te&t o$ si& years later, Art a$ter philoso-phyI 9t is necessary to
separate aesthetics $ro" art. >ince art once had ani"portant decorative $unction, any
branch o$ philosophy that dealt withJbeauty/ and thus, taste, was inevitably duty bound to
discuss art as well. <ut o$ this Jhabit/ grew the notion that there was a conceptual
connection between artand aesthetics, which is not true.
)1
The basis $or such ideas is the post-)233 displace"ent o$ the conceptualcenter o$ art
$ro" re$erence to the world to the artist/s creative vision, to ane"phasis on the artist/s
act, not properties o$ the ob#ect it produces, as de;nitiveo$ that ob#ect/s artistic status. 9t
was, o$ course, %arcel Ducha"p who ;rst drewthe radical conse!uences o$ this
e"phasis, in his wor a$ter )2)' and in e&pla-nations o$ it as involving an atte"pt to
escape the rule o$ taste by the use o$ "echanical techni!ues and the artistic recycling o$
ready"ade ob#ects.
)8
<nceany ob#ect chosen by an artist can be art, he clai"ed, art is no longer aestheticA
that is, e$$ective through its perceptual propertiesAin nature. 9n a )2.) lectureon his
invention o$ the ready"ade as an art $or", Ducha"p e"phasi(ed thatthe choice o$
these JDeady"ades/ was never dictated by esthetic delectation.This choice was based
on a reaction o$ visual indi$$erence with at the sa"e ti"ea total absence o$ good or bad
taste.
)2
This state"ent is !uestionableI not only is the distinction between choice andthe
e&ercise o$ taste $ar $ro" clear, Ducha"p/s choices in $act e&e"pli$y a consis-tent 5and
speci;cally "odernist7 set o$ $or"al interests.
'3
@ut the ready"adeundoubtedly involved a shi$t in the concept o$ taste $ro" the
e&pressive action o$ a uni!uely gi$ted individual toAlet us sayAthe design decisions o$
an in$or"edconsu"er. This change Ducha"p e&pressed as a desire to get away $ro"
the
p)',. physical aspect o$ painting and to put painting once again at the service o$
the"ind. This "eant, $or instance, that the title was very i"portant,
')
as part o$ a general e"phasis on the role o$ language in establishing the signi;cance o$
anartwor, a language no longer e"ploying the vocabulary o$ aesthetics.As Thierry de
Duve has put it, whenanything visual can be called art ... [t]he sentence this is art is a
con-vention. Historical nowledge alone is re!uired to "ae and #udge art,so"e
intellectual interest $or the logic o$ %odernis", so"e strategicdesire or interest to see it
$urther e&trapolated and tested on "ere insti-tutional grounds. Art $ades into art theory.
''
This leaves unased the !uestions o$ who is authori(ed to do the calling, andhow an
ob#ect or action arrives at the point where the convention o$ art can acton it. 9t also treats
as an outco"e o$ artistic decision-"aing what was in realitya "ore co"ple& social
develop"ent. This included changes in the "areting o$ art, to be discussed later, and
the decisive entrance o$ art into the e&panding e"brace o$ acade"ic institutions. At a
ti"e when the center o$ art education"oved $ro" cra$t sills 5centered traditionally on
techni!ues o$ representation7 toan awareness o$ current artistic activities and a
readiness to participate inthe",
'4
art theory, long inherent in the sel$-consciousness o$ "odern artisticpractice, crystalli(ed
out o$ the discourse o$ artists, critics, and art historians5later incorporating ele"ents o$
$rancophone and -phile literary theory7 as ane&pression o$ the institutional autono"y o$
art as an acade"ic discipline. >choolaesthetics was le$t behind, re+ecting philosophy/s
character as 5in :osuth/swords7 an acade"ic sub#ect with no real social li$e and no
cultural e$$ect.
'F
Despite the central role played by language in -onceptual artwors, in addi-tion to the
+ood o$ words that acco"panied the" in the $or" o$ theory,literature in *reenberg/s
sense re"ained parado&ically absent here. :osuth/saccount o$ -onceptualis" is
re"arably lie the $or"alis" he voci$erouslyattacs, describing artwors as analytic
propositions providing no in$or"ationabout the world outside art but asserting only that
they
are
wors o$ art.Despite :osuth/s insistence that -onceptualis" had abandoned i"agery
$ora $or" o$ philosophi(ing, and such critical clai"s as @en#a"in @uchloh/s scien-tistic
celebration o$ the
precision
with which these artists analy(ed the place and