Abstract
The term "end of art" refers to the idea of an American philosopher Arthur C. Danto, who claimed in his eponymous essay in 1984 that art in a certain sense came to an end in the 1960s.
Although his text was published more than thirty years ago, it has still been part of the critical discourse and the interest of philosophers in this topic has even increased recently. The first monography on Danto's thesis was published (Bahlmann, 2015); the thesis is approached from the point of view of contemporary discussion about beauty (Sedivy, 2016); and steps to reinterpret the thesis were taken (Snyder, 2018).
In my proposal, I will concern with Stephen Snyder's book End-of-art Philosophy in Hegel, Nietzsche and Danto,1 more concretely, with his criticism of Danto's position and with the alternative reading of art history of 20th century. In the first part of my presentation, I will explain Danto's thesis about the end of art and his distinction between "historical" (art produced before the end of art) and "post-historical" art (art after the end of art).
In doing so, I will emphasize the importance of Danto's thought that art set itself free from a master narrative in the age of pluralism. In the second part, I will approach Snyder's criticism of Danto's thesis and his narrative of the art of the 20th century based on Ernst Hans Gombrich's conception introduced in his book Art and Illusion.
To understand Snyder's argumentation, I think it crucial to illuminate the term "problem-solving structure" because this quality of art aims to ensure the continuation of the history of art and to disprove the end-of-art thesis at the same time. Moreover, it is necessary to take Snyder's interpretation of Danto's terms "narrative" and "style" into consideration.
In the final part of my proposal, I am to compare the conceptions of both authors. I will ask a question of whether Snyder's revision offers a better solution to the change of 20th-century art and of whether Snyder's criticism is justified.
Although I believe that Snyder's argument that art has a problem-solving structure is persuasive, his interpretation of Danto's notion of the narrative and style is too thin. As I will seek to prove, Snyder does not consider the "oppressive" dimension of the master narrative from which art was according to Danto freed.
In short, Snyder's revision deals only with a partial problem and cannot explain why there is no master narrative which would claim universal validity