Response to Kim

In her last post, Kim asks, How does or should Danto deal with conflicting, legitimate art theories? Arguably, Danto writes somewhat circularly and doesn't quite define art. Although Danto acknowledges that one must have knowledge of the history and theory of art in order to understand and appreciate it (a central part of his own theory), he doesn't come up with any objective standards upon which we could begin to define art. Perhaps this is because of his emphasis on value rather than physical properties; evaluation rather than description. But what frustrates me is Danto's lack of concrete examples. Theories of art are different, I acknowledge. But they must contain some common quality, otherwise I feel that Danto's "is" may be too general and too inclusive. Knowledge and history are necessary in order to understand almost anything, I agree, but they are such broad concepts that I wonder how accurate one can be while using them to define rather than evaluate. In class, we determined that sometimes it is not the object that has artistic qualities, but the language that describes it (although the object can render such qualities). While in theory, this all makes sense to me, I can't help but confess that the redundancy which occurs when discussing the value of art always seems to overshadow and distract from our unanswered (or at least more complex) question of "What is art?".