Jason Gaiger

Art as made sensuous: Hegel, Danto and the 'end of art'

Hegels lectures on aesthetics embrace the world history of art in its broadest sense, encompassing the advanced cultures of Asia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia as well as the specifically European tradition that extends from Classical Antiquity through to the art of the Nazarenes and the burgeoning Romanticism of his own day. This attempt to bring the different stages and forms of art into a coherent system and to tell the story of their successive unfolding from the standpoint of philosophy lies at the very heart of Hegels aesthetics. Indeed, the detailed attention that Hegel pays to the historical development of art has led Ernst Gombrich to recognise him as the founding father of the modem discipline of art history, with all the ambivalence that this expression conveys. In this paper, however, I am concerned less with the way in which Hegels aesthetics have informed, and continue to inform, our ongoing attempts to understand the art of the past than with the relevance that his ideas still possess in relation to the art of the present. I shall argue that Hegels aesthetics can tell us a great deal about contemporary art and that, read in the right way, his views provide an important corrective to a significant strand of contemporary art theory. I want to start by addressing something that must be regarded as a considerable obstacle to any such endeavour: Hegels theory of the ‘end of art’. If, as popular conceptions of this theory would have it, Hegel saw the development of art as in some way a completed historical enterprise superseded in his own time by the new science of philosophy, not only would there seem to be little meaningful role left for art to play in his larger philosophical system but also little that such a philosophy of art can contribute to helping us understand the new and unexpected directions that art has taken, and continues to take, right up to the present day. This interpretation of Hegels views remains highly problematic and anyone familiar with Hegels method of argumentation will remain dissatisfied with such a one-sided representation of his position. Nonetheless, the extant text of the Lectures on Aesthetics does appear to offer some support to such claims.

Danto’s Philosophy of Art History

Book reviewed in this article: Arthur C. Danto After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History

Art After Beauty: Retrieving Aesthetic Judgement

Book review of Kant after Duchamp by Thierry De Duve , Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996

Schiller's Theory of Landscape Depiction

Examines the theory of landscape depiction in the works of literary writer Friedrich Schiller.