Arthur C. Danto’s theory on “the end of art” revolves mainly around the changes that the conception of art has undergone over the years. For example, for Danto, works made before 1400 A.D. could not be considered art per se, since they were not conceived with that idea in mind. However, the vision of this author is erroneous. The critic did not refer to the end of art as an impossibility of producing works, but as a tendency to the past. According to him, everything has been invented, art is only a remembrance of the past and therefore innovation does not exist.
On the other hand, the era in which we live, according to the philosophy professor, is post-historical. This is based on the phase that the null development of the arts has had, since creation is stagnant, not to say that it has come to an end. Previously, artists used technological advances to create, but now the artist resorts to ancient artistic techniques to work. That is exactly what the end of art is about because, in the eagerness to “innovate,” creative artists mix old methods with new techniques that are quite different from the original conception of art. That is why it is said that nowadays in art, anything goes.
From absurd installations to large-scale collages, contemporary artists have implemented them as part of the art world. Danto wonders where is the materiality of painting, the clarity of work, the representation of figures, or the portrait of the landscape. Today everything seems to be a regression that mixes the childishness of surrealism, the darkness of eroticism, the modernism of abstract art, and the irony of conceptual art, among other styles that marked the end of modernism to give total freedom to the artist. As a result, some works do not have a concrete direction, and exponents do not know the narrative of their work.
It is about those artists -who, in the eyes of critics like Danto, spoiled art forever- that we will talk about throughout this article.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Admiring Baroque paintings of this controversial painter during the 1600s was like contemplating the work of a misunderstood, violent, tormented, and paranoid genius. Despite becoming the most famous painter in all of Rome in the early 17th century, he was also one of the most hated authors for his artistic manifestations. He included portraits of beggars and common people to represent saintly figures without hiding their dirty feet and tattered clothes.
Caravaggio was one of the geniuses who ruined art forever to the point of exile because, despite his majestic work, everyone believed that the end of art would come with the “insulting” images that the artist reproduced in his paintings.
Dominios Theotokopoulos (El Greco)
El Greco was accused of turning his paintings into unrealistic figures that altered the truth and represented an idealized vision in which the author possibly lived. He was characterized by emphasizing movement, the arbitrary use of colors, and the deformation of buildings or natural landscapes. These same elements caused him serious problems, as when the Three Marys he painted in “El Expolio” did not really appear in the Gospel text.
Such anomalies were used by El Greco to develop a very personal style that marked the end of the Renaissance. They also marked him as a marginal author who spoiled art forever with his eccentricity.
Paul Cézanne
For some, Cézanne was the painter who best knew how to apply color and who gave the basic coordinates for Picasso to materialize, years later, Cubism. But other critics believe that the artist’s synthesis of color, perspective, and composition was a poorly traced path to the avant-garde. The impressionist technique with which Cézanne managed to give freedom and dynamism to his painting was how the painter was leading his work towards abstraction.
The same reason why the author’s abstract composition of color and light was considered a way in which the art of post-impressionism was ruined forever.
Henri Matisse
Along with Pablo Picasso, Matisse was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Despite this, this prolific author was considered the color fauvist who spoiled art with modernist strokes that other exponents considered “beasts” of painting. In essence, the chromatic range he used differentiated him from other artistic works of the time, but also set him apart from the approval of the most important critics of modern art.
Marcel Duchamp
Few artists have been more controversial than Marcel Duchamp. At the time, it was believed that the Frenchman had spoiled art forever. It was believed that the author of the Dada movement broke with any conventions about the plastic and visual arts that already existed. In all his works he tried to capture the intellectual form of the artistic endeavor. That is, he always questioned whether the object (the work) should be considered art or not. It is also believed that Duchamp’s signature marked a clear break with traditional art, giving rise to a series of never-before-imagined elements such as the “ready-made,” which turned an everyday object into an aesthetically anesthetized artistic concept.
Duchamp inaugurated a new artistic category by declaring that art is what is called art and therefore, according to him, anything can be a work.
Joseph Mallord William Turner
When Turner took his easel out on a field trip to make nature his own studio, many considered him a raving lunatic. Today, in addition to being an established artist, he is considered the forerunner of “au plein air” or plenairism (plein air painting). For that and other reasons, including the preface he gave to Impressionism, Turner was branded as an unruly artist who spoiled art. The reality is that the eccentric man who painted everything was an “artist of light” who distinguished himself by opening the way for abstract composers.
The splendor with which Turner painted lights and nostalgic shadows were overwhelming for the time, but today, the play of figures he achieved in his works is considered a symbol of pure avant-garde.
Evidently, these authors did not spoil art, the only thing they were responsible for was to innovate with their creativity. They transformed their perspective into a new artistic conception and marked the before and after of a current. We owe the evolution of art to them and, without their works, the most recognized exponents of modernist styles would never have been forged as such. It all depends on the eye and the moment in which a painting is looked at, for as Danto expresses it in his analysis, art only dies when nothing is new or different.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
