In the process of becoming artworks, found objects are removed from everyday circulation, and, in so far as they are inalienable parts of the artwork, acquire the status and ‘aura’ of
‘art’ that similar objects which remain part of everyday use and work do not. Thus,
Duchamp’s urinal, Siopis’s domestic objects, and Seejarim’s bus tickets have an ‘aura’ and value, that things like them that have remained in the realm of the everyday do not. The relationship of actual (as opposed to represented) things in artworks that not only look the same, but are substantially the same as things in the world, yet are nevertheless
differentiated from them is explored by Danto (1981).
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As mentioned in the introduction, it was upon seeing Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (1964), which appeared so similar to boxes of tubs of Brillo one could find in supermarkets, that the artwork prompted Danto (1981, vi)to question whether:
…once an artist has deemed one thing to be art, how can this be
differentiated from other things that look like it but which are not artworks?
Danto (2009) recalls that the now iconic Brillo Boxes (1964) was one of the artworks exhibited at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1964, which was filled with artworks that appeared to be supermarket products. Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (1964) is an interesting case within this discussion of what separates artworks from other sorts of things.
Danto (1981) argues that Brillo Boxes was made possible partly because of historical developments in art, like the invention of the readymade. However, unlike Duchamp’s designation of found objects as ‘readymades’, Warhol reproduced the design of a box of Brillo on specially-made wooden boxes, which were stacked on the gallery floor, in much the same manner as they would be in a supermarket. Warhol’s work was not made from a found object; it was fabricated to look like a quotidian object. Danto (2013) points out Warhol wanted the edges to look sharp and thus more pristine than cardboard boxes. Even though Warhol employed assistants to help produce his artworks, which were made by mechanical means like screen printing, the production of these works is attributed to Warhol.89 Although Warhol’s boxes look very similar to the boxes of Brillo found in supermarkets, they were not the same in two ways. Warhol made his boxes out of wood, and not cardboard; and even though silk-screening technology that enables things to be
89 It is ironic that, James Harvey, a designer from Detroit who designed the original Brillo logo, and who apparently had aspirations of being an artist, is little known as the original designer (Danto 2009, xiv).
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mass produced was employed to make Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, they were not mass produced, but part of a limited edition set, much like a print edition. Thus Brillo boxes had the ‘trace’ of the artist, who is recognised as author of the artwork. It is significant that Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (1964) appeared to be the same but were not the same as boxes of Brillo found in supermarkets. Warhol relied on the conventions of engaging with art in the gallery- where viewers are not permitted to touch the artworks, emphasising Brillo’s transition from the everyday into the field of exhibition.
Both Duchamp and Warhol thus brought the profane into the sacred space of the gallery, albeit in different ways. Therefore Danto (1981, vi) looked to Duchamp for the antecedents of what he refers to as “the transfiguration of the commonplace” in art. Danto (1981, vi) argues that Duchamp’s readymades had a “profound philosophical originality” because they begged the question
…how (do) such objects get to be works of art, since all that would have been shown is that they have an unanticipated aesthetic dimension.
Thus, Danto (1981) argues, Duchamp showed us that the distinction between art and ‘mere things’, is not perceptual; artworks don’t necessarily look different from mere things. This point brings us back to the initial question, what separates artworks from other things that look like artworks but remain part of everyday practices? Danto explored aspects of this question in a range of texts including After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (1997), The wake of criticism (1998), The philosopher as Andy Warhol (1999), and What art is (2013), amongst others. In Artefact and Art, an essay accompanying the
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catalogue to Vogel’s exhibition Art/Artefact at the New York Institute for the Creative Arts of Africa, Danto (1988) extends the question to what differentiates artworks from artefacts.90 Danto (1988, 18) suggests that, although the boundary between art and other things is philosophically established, it is possible to “discover something to be a work of art”.
Further, according to Danto (1988, 20), although “anything can become an object of detached aesthetic scrutiny” this does not make it art.91 Putting it another way, Danto (2013, 26 author’s emphasis) states that “just because everything can be art, it doesn’t follow that everything is art.” Danto (1981, p. 31) also acknowledges, artists since Picasso have appropriated non-art objects as part of artworks, and displayed them in manners in which artworks are displayed, further complicating the distinction between artworks and other sorts of things.
90 In trying to answer what differentiates art from artefacts, Danto (1988, P27) recalls the philosophies of Socrates and Plato, for whom the distinction between art and artefact was of utmost importance. He points out that one of the differences for the ancient Greeks was that they believe that the artist was ‘inspired’.
Modernist beliefs about the artist as genius creator rest on the notion of the artist as an ‘inspired individual’, invoking Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. These ideas about what art is are linked to the idea of the artist, and the artwork is valued as primarily the product of the artists’ labour.
91 In the article, Danto (1988, 18) equates the manner in which Western art historians have come to view Artefacts from non- Western traditions as art, with a process of ‘discovery’. This process of discovery is a process of ‘enfranchisement’; those objects that were not part of art when they were made, but are
embedded in art as found objects by artists, become art through a process of enfranchisement. According to Danto (1988, 19) Picasso recognised the sculptural styles in African art as art , and after this moment those African artworks were enfranchised in the Western eyes, partly because it was impossible to acknowledge Picasso as a master without acknowledging those works he revered as masterpieces too. Further, according to Danto (1988), Picasso’s ‘discovery’ was possible because of the turns that painting and sculpture had
undergone in Picasso’s own tradition, which made it possible for him to see the possibilities in African art, even though these objects may not be thought of in the same way by the makers of those objects as Western art historian have come to appreciate them. Danto (1988, 31) is critical of the manner in which Western philosophers have tended to view other cultures in terms of their own lexicon. He points out that when Western philosophers do not find terms in another culture for understanding things the way in which they are understood in the West, the assumption is that those distinctions do not exist in that culture, rather than seeing that their view is a superimposition of ideas may not fit. Despite Danto’s criticism of Western philosophy, his account of Picasso’s enfranchisement of African art is problematic, because those objects he discusses have not been not been enfranchised, but rather primitivised, and appropriated, with little regard to their actual significance- and have certainly not been regarded as having the same value as Western art works.
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Danto (1981) questions, if artworks can look the same as mere things, and mere things can be designated as art, what are the criteria defining the boundaries of art? That is, what properties of art can we identify that are true for all artworks, and are therefore philosophically part of the ontology of art? In the Transfiguration of the commonplace Danto (1981) systematically explores a range of possibilities of what might characterise all artworks.92Danto (1981) argues that artworks embody thought and express a meaning beyond their ‘use value’ or function. While he acknowledges that this is also true of other things, Danto (1981, 52) posits that “what the artwork is about is central to the question of what an artwork is”. Developing his argument, Danto (1981) suggests that artworks, unlike other sorts of things, are specifically made by artists to express something about their content. Sensitive to the implications of his claim, Danto (1981) is cautious to include the caveat that ‘artworks’ are made by ‘artists’- someone who is accepted as an artist by the art fraternity- to express something.93 He therefore claims that two essential characteristics separate artworks from mere things. The first is that an artwork expresses something about its content (Danto, 1981, 148) and the second is that through the artwork, artists enables us to see their way of seeing the world (Danto, 1981, 207). In a later essay, Danto (1988, 31) expressed the idea in this way:
…just as a human action gives embodiment to a thought, the artwork embodies something we could not conceptualise without the material object which conveys its soul.
92 Bourdieu (1993a) criticised Danto’s attempt at a universal definition of what art is, arguing that it is only because Danto is part of the paradigm of thinking about art and philosophy in a particular manner that Danto feels that it is natural and necessary to find a universal definition.
93 While this caveat may address those problems with the implication that other objects do not express something about their content, the caveat begs a new question: that is what counts as “artists” and by extension, what counts as “art.” African artworks, like Zulu headrests and Luba hairpins that were made with an aesthetic dimension, do express something about their content but also have a utilitarian purpose must be considered in this discussion. These artworks have come to be valued as artworks by art historians like myself, who may not be in the West but have been trained in the discipline of art history, which has its roots in Western ideologies. In these instances, the artwork becomes art because it is understood as such by the art historian rather than by the makers of the work, who may not even use the terms artwork and artist.
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Linked to this, according to Danto (1981), is that artworks communicate something of the artist’s attitude towards the content through the manner in which they are presented. That is, the manner in which we encounter the art work has bearing on the recognition of the artwork as art, and the viewers’ interpretation of the artwork.
Bourdieu (1993) challenges Danto’s (1981) definition of what separates artworks from mere things. According to Bourdieu (1993), the problem with Danto’s theory is that it is a search for an ahistorical essence of art, and, according to Bourdieu, an ahistorical essence of art is impossible, because we always view art from our particular historic position, and with the disposition we have been enculturated to use when looking.94 Bourdieu (1993, 217) therefore questions the extent to which the artwork is able to communicate the artists’
supposed intended message, pointing out that we can never look without our ‘‘…spectacles that sit on our noses and are so close to our eyes that we do not see them.” Gell (1998, 12) is also critical of what he refers to as Danto’s “institutional account of what art is”. It is interesting to note that while Gell (1998) is critical of what he refers to as Danto’s reliance on the institutional account of art, Gell himself cannot get away from discerning artworks as those things that he has encountered “in an art like situation” rather than focusing on objects made to be art. Perhaps this is because many of those objects analysed by
anthropologists have been made with aesthetic consideration, but have not been made as
“art” in the Western canon. 95
94 As discussed in chapter two, for Moxey (2002) an ahistorical essence of art is impossible.
95Bourdieu and Gell are discussed in more depth in chapter five.
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