Philosophizing art

the long version

In these essays, collected over the last twenty years, Danto probes the relationship between philosophy and art, as he has done throughout his career. Danto explores this relationship through an electric mix of concrete cases in which either artists are driven by philosophical agendas, or their art is seen as solving philosophical problems in visual terms. The essays cover a varied terrain, with subjects including Giotto's use of olfactory data in The Raising of Lazarus; chairs in art and chairs as art, Mel Bochner's Wittgenstein drawings; the work of Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, and Robert Irwin; Louis Kahn as "Archai-Tekt", and visual truth in film.