The Abuse of Beauty

Author(s): Arthur C. Danto

Source: Daedalus, Vol. 131, No. 4, On Beauty (Fall, 2002), pp. 35-56
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
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Arthur C. Danto

The abuse of beauty

It is self-evident that nothing

concern For example, shortly after the terrorist
ing
art is self-evident any more, not its attack on theWorld Trade Center in
inner life, not its relation to the world, New York in 2001, the composer Karl
not even its right to exist. heinz Stockhausen it "the
proclaimed
"
- Theodor greatest work of art ever. Since his lan
Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 1969
guage conveyed extreme admiration, he
was in the minds of
instantly disgraced
most. That such a claim could be made
1
at all underscores the total openness of
It is the mark of the contemporary peri the contemporary of art, how
concept
od in the history of art that no con ever monstrous the consequences of
straints govern the way works of visual art in that
conceiving way.
art should look. An artwork can look like
-
The philosophical history of art culmi
anything, and be made of anything nates in the recognition that there is no
anything is possible. merit in asking any longer whether this
or that can be art, for the answer will al

ways be yes, noting that limits external

to the definition -
Arthur C. Danto, art criticfor "TheNation" of art moral consider
-
ations above all always remain. The de
magazine and Emeritus Johnsonian Professor of
Philosophy at Columbia University, has been a finition of art must accordingly be con
Fellow of theAmerican Academy since 1980. He sistent with an absolute pluralism as far
is the author of numerous books, including "Niet as works of art are concerned. I am al
zsche as Philosopher" (1965), "The Transfigura most certain that Adorno's cultural de
tion
of the Commonplace" (19Si), and "Encoun spair derived from this perception,
ters and Reflections :Art in theHistorical Pre though not even that paradigmatically
sent," a collection of art criticism thatwon the pessimistic thinker, whose thought was
National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism in darkened by the Holocaust, would have
1990. "The abuse of beauty" isbased on the been able to imagine a statement like
Cams Lectures presented to theAmerican Philo Stockhausen's, let alone the horror that
sophical Association inDecember of 2001. Danto occasioned it.
is currentlypreparing a revised and greatly ex
'
panded version of these lectures thatwill be pub A he publication of Adorno sAesthetic
lished as a book by Open Court Press in 2003.
Theory in 1969 coincided with the end of
a decade of intense inquiry,
remarkably

D dalus Fall 2002

Arthur c. as
as well
conducted by artists philoso against either the standards of ordinary
Danto -
phers, though largely in independence of discourse where we know whereof we
one another. an - or a
beauty Indeed, essay with speak of scientific discourse gov
-
which the decade properly began erned by strict considerations of verifi
Clement Greenberg's i960 "Modernist ability and confirmability. It is difficult
-
Painting" remarked upon a parallel be to resist the impulse to see a cultural
tween modernist art and a certain form equivalence between the canonization of
of philosophical practice. Comparing ordinary language cultivated by the Ox
contemporary art with a form of self ford School of Linguistic phenomenolo
criticism exemplified in the Critique of gy and the studied aesthetic of everyday
Pure Reason, Greenberg called Kant the objects inWarhol's Factory or Claes
first modernist. Self-criticism in the arts, Oldenberg's 1962 Store on East Second
as understood consisted Street inManhattan, where one could
by Greenberg,
in purifying the relevant medium of the buy painted effigies of gym shoes, auto
art form. Thus three-dimensionality was mobile tires, and women's underpants.
extrinsic to painting, which was essen

tially flat, in Greenberg's view. AAow much of any of this fellwithin

Accordingly, he believed painting should the horizons of official aesthetics is his
be purged of illusionism of any kind, and but some
torically problematic, philoso
over
depth given by right to sculpture. phers certainly grasped that the defini
was one of art de tion of art was at issue as never before.
Greenberg's agenda
fining itself from within, and there can In 1965, the British philosopher Richard
be no question that this quasi-Kantian Wollheim an essay
published important
endeavor was pursued, often with a cer on "Minimal Art."
Though Wollheim
tain puritanical fervor, by a number of was
subsequently credited with coining
artists bent on making art in its concep the term 'minimalism,' he admits to
tually purified condition. This was par known nothing of the works that
having
case with the so-called min
ticularly the finally became so
designated. His con
imalists.But in truth, philosophy and cern in his rather, was whether
essay,
art shared a great many atti there are minimal criteria for something
avant-garde
tudes in the 1960s. art. His paradigms
being designated
One aim of pop, for example, was to were monochrome
painting, which was
ironize the distinction between high and as amere
generally regarded philosophi
vernacular art - between the heroized cal joke until perhaps 1915, and the
painting of the previous generation of that Marcel Duchamp
ready-mades put
artists, the Abstract Expressionists, and forward as art at about that same time.
the popular imagery of the comic strip In addressing this concern, Wollheim
-
and commercial advertisements the followed the official philosophical mod
and Low' of a controversial exhi el according to which having a concept
'High
bition at the Museum of Modern Art in
requires criteria for picking out its in
1992. But comparably, itwas an effort of stances. Itwas a com
Wittgensteinian
analytical philosophy to overcome the that instances can be culled
monplace
of what we call out successfully without benefit of defi
pretensions might 'high'
- the visions
philosophy cosmo-tragical nitions, as in the case of games. In fact
of the Existentialists or of the towering there can be no criteria for distinguish
titans of metaphysics who loomed be a
- ing ready-made metal grooming comb
hind them by criticizing its language from an indiscernible met
by Duchamp

36 D dalus Fall 2002

al grooming comb that was not a ready vanced art of the 1960s, but from the ad- The abuse
made, nor amonochrome white paint vanced of art of that decade ?f beauty
philosophy
from a all over which white as well. Nor could it be part of the defi
ing panel
- so nition of art if anything can be an art
paint had been slathered the ques
tion of definition became urgent after work, since it is certainly not true that
all. anything is beautiful.
Indeed, with the advent of conceptual Not long after the John Simon Gug
was
art at the end of the 1960s, the material genheim Memorial Foundation
no - nor in 1925, the founders saw as
object was longer required did established
it necessarily have to be made by the art its immediate beneficiaries "Men and
ist. "I've stopped making the women devoted to pushingforward the
objects,"
artist Douglas Huebner said in a 1969 in boundaries of knowledge and to the cre
terview. "And I'm not trying to take any ation of beauty." Art in that era was tac
am I try in terms of creating beauty,
thing away from the world. Nor itly defined
ing to restructure the world. I'm not try and that creation was in turn put on

ing to tell the world anything, really. I'm equal footing with efforts at expanding
not trying to tell the world that it could the boundaries of knowledge.
be better by being this or that. I'm just, Forty years later, reference to the cre

you know, touching the world by doing ation of beauty was omitted from the
these things, and leaving it pretty much
" enabling language for the National
the way it is. Leaving the world as we Endowment for the Arts, presumably
found it, we had been told by Wittgen because beauty had largely disappeared
stein, is the way it iswith philosophy, from the artisticagenda in 1965. But
too. still a role in the
beauty played thinking
What follows this history of con
from of the era's politicians, many of whom
erasure - dismissed modern art as depraved and
ceptual and the concomitant
- is not
pluralism I began by remarking destructive. Congressman George A.
that art is indefinable, but that the con Dondero of Michigan wrote that "Mod
ditions necessary for something to be art ern art is communistic because it is dis
will have to be fairly abstract to fit all torted and ugly, because it does not glo
cases, and in particular that our beautiful country, our cheerful
imaginable rify
very little remains of 'our concept of art' and smiling people, and our material
that the framer of a real definition can progress. Art which does not beautify
on. In The Transfiguration of the Com our country in
rely plain simple terms that
con can
monplace (1981) I came up with two everyone understand breeds dissat
ditions, condensed as "x is an art work if isfaction. It is therefore to our
opposed
it embodies a The chief merit government and those who create and
meaning."
of this definition lay in its weakness. promote
it are our enemies."

from my proto-definition, as The newspaper magnate William Ran

Missing
from all the philosophical definitions of dolph Hearst "equated any form of artis
art put forth during the 1960s that I can tic radicalism with communism, and
recall, was any reference to beauty, assumed that the work produced in a
which would non-traditional manner was a
surely have been among disguised
"
the first conditions to have been ad means of communist This
propaganda.
vanced by a conceptual analyst at the is but one instance, as we shall see, of the
turn of the twentieth century. Beauty politicization of beauty.
had disappeared not only from the ad In the early 1990s, the art critic Dave

D dalus Fall 2002 37

Arthur C. was asked what he thought the the fate of Metaphysics,
Hickey guage regarding
a
0?nt0
central issue of the decade would be. "brings beauty only scorn ; matron out

beauty "Snatched from my reverie, I said 'Beau cast and forsaken."

ty,' and then, more firmly, ''The issue of

"
the nineties will be beauty. This was A he twentieth century did not begin
a "total uncom
greeted, he recalls, with with such disdain for the concept of
silence. ... I had wandered a
prehending beauty. In letter to Thomas Monro in
into this dead zone, this silent abyss." 1927, George Santayana wrote of his gen
eration that "We were not very much
?-jet me begin
to put this silence into a later than Ruskin, Pater, Swinburne, and
certain the Matthew Arnold. Our atmosphere was
perspective by considering
photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, that of poets and persons touched with
who had become notorious in 1989 when enthusiasm or sad
religious religious
his exhibition The Perfect Moment was ness. Beauty (which mustn't be men
cancelled by the Corcoran Museum of tioned now) was then a living presence,
Art in an ill-advised preemptive move or an
aching absence, day and night." It
was its beauty that justified the
against the danger that funding for the precisely
National Endowment for the Arts might esteem in which art was held in San
be voted down if our saw time. Here, for are
legislators tayana's example,
what the fund was The fear some that are almost unintelli
supporting. thoughts
was based on the charged sexual content gible today, from the early writing of
- was
of his signature images though it Santayana's contemporary G. E. Moore:
central to his achievement that his work "I cannot see but what that which is
was as well. It meant is simply and solely
self-consciously beautiful by beautiful
was this, rather than its content, that that which is an end in itself. The object
alienated the photographic avant-garde of art would then be that to which the
him. of Morals are means, and the
against objects
Iwas writing my book on Map are means. The
When only thing to which they
I asked an artist who was at only reason for having virtues would be
plethorpe, "
the time experimenting with pinhole to produce works of art.
cameras what he thought of him. He dis In his early text Art, Morals, and Reli
missed as a gion, Moore wrote, ismerely a
Mapplethorpe pompier-an "Religion
artist so concerned with as to subdivision of art," which he explicated
elegance
have lost touch with the limits of his me this way: "Every valuable purpose which
as serves is also served
dium. The imperatives of modernism, religion by Art; and
defined tended to make Art perhaps serves more ifwe are to say
by Greenberg,
that its range of good emo
the simple grainy snapshot the paradigm objects and
of photographic And the charge tions iswider." There can be no doubt
purity.
against Mapplethorpe
was that his work that Moore believed that art can take re
was too beautiful to qualify for critical purposes over because of the
ligion's
endorsement. Gerhard Richter recalls, beauty it essentially possesses.
"One writer claimed that if I painted sex
and violence, itwould have been okay, JLNow Iwould like to offer a historical
but one isn't allowed to paint anything It is that the immense es
speculation.
beautiful." teem in which art continues to be held
"The changed fashionof the time," if I is an inheritance of this exalted
today
may appropriate Kant's mournful Ian view of beauty. It iswidely and some

38 D dalus Fall 2002

 a error. The abuse
times cynically said that art has replaced place in virtue of conceptual ?* eauty
Once we are in a to
religion in contemporary consciousness. position perceive
My speculation is that these Edwardian that mistake, we should be able to re
use once
attitudes have survivedthe abjuration of deem beauty for artistic again.
itself. Iwill
go even further to But conceptual analysis by itself, with
beauty
suggest that if there is a place for beauty out the reinforcement of a kind of Fou
in art today, it is connected with these cauldian archeology, is insufficiently
are in to help us in this task. Had
it
survivals, which deeply embedded powerful
human consciousness. not, for example, been for the artistic
in the twentieth
Beauty's place is not in the definition avant-garde century,
or - to use the somewhat discredited idi philosophers almost certainly would
om - the essence of art, from which the continue to teach that the connection
has rightly removed it. That between art and beauty is conceptually
avant-garde
removal, however, was not the tight.
merely
result of a but, as I shall ar
conceptual
gue, a political determination. And it is An the latter sections of Principia Ethica,
the residue of aesthetic politics that lin first published in 1903, Moore wrote,
gers on in the we find in atti far the most valuable we
negativity "By things
tudes toward beauty in art today. The know or can are certain states
imagine,
idea of beauty, the poet Bill Berkson of consciousness, which may roughly be
wrote me recently, is a "mangled sodden described as the pleasures of human
thing." intercourse and the enjoyment of beauti
But the fact of beauty is quite another ful objects." Moore thought the point
matter. "so obvious that it runs the risk of seem
In a passage near the beginning of a
ing to be platitude." No one, Moore
Proust's Within a Budding Grove, Marcel claims, "has ever doubted that personal
(the Narrator), traveling by train to Bal affection and the appreciation of what is
bec, sees a peasant girl approaching the beautiful in Art or Nature, are
good in
station in the early morning, offering themselves." Nor, he continues, "does it
coffee and milk. "I felt on seeing her that appear probable that any one will think
desire to live which is reborn in us when that anything else has nearly so great a
ever we become conscious anew of value as the things which are included
"
beauty and of happiness. under these two heads."
I believe Proust's psychology profound Moore's confident seem al
appeals
in connecting the consciousness of most but I'll sup
- shockingly parochial,
with we were in his
beauty happiness providing pose they commonplace
are not conflicted because of a negativity world. What would not have been com
that had yet to inflect the idea of beauty however, iswhat he next goes
monplace,
in the generation of Proust, Moore, and on to claim, namely that "this is the ulti
Santayana. mate and fundamental truth of Moral
Iwould like to press this further. Itwas and that these two values
Philosophy,"
the moral weight that was assigned to "form the rational ultimate end of hu
us
beauty that helps understand why the man action and the sole criterion of
first generation of the twentieth-century social progress." come to
People might
avant-garde found it so urgent to dis these as truths, but
accept they appear,
lodge beauty from its mistaken place in Moore said, to be "truths which have
the philosophy of art. It occupied that been generally overlooked."

D dalus Fall 2002 39

Arthur C. I think Moore must have been correct aim in this is to "release the people of his
thsit if truths, these were generally over native state from the bondage of ugli
^anto " - or no
beauty looked, since were as ness. There would be no way
they perceived
- to or Pitts
having the force of revelation by the easy way transform Detroit
Bloomsbury circle, whose entire philos burgh into the Catskills or the Grand
of art and of life were derived from But artistic was porta
ophy Canyon. beauty
Moore's teaching. "A great new freedom ble, so if the aesthetically deprived citi
seemed about to come," according to zenry of American City could be put in
Vanessa Bell. Love and friendship, on the the presence of "treasures sifted to posi
one hand, and what Moore tive sanctity," itwould benefit
speaks of "as immense
the proper appreciation of a beautiful ly from the contemplation of beautiful
were to suffice, without the need which Moore endorsed as the
object" objects,
for religion, in satisfying the main moral highest moral good.
needs of modern human beings.
With the exception of Hume and A he problem was that modernist paint
the classical aestheticians drew
Hegel, ing, in the period James's novel was first
no crucial distinction between art and was to veer, some
published, beginning
nature in regard to the appreciation of what starkly, away from the mimetic
beauty, and itmust be borne in mind model. In 1910 and 1912, modernist
that that indifference was but rarely con
painter and critic Roger Fry organized
tested in philosophical aesthetics nor in two notorious exhibi
postimpressionist
artistic practice itself when Moore com tions at the Graf ton Gallery in London.
posed Principia Ethica. If anything, I As it happens, the Bloomsbury circle,
think, Moore supposed the appreciation and Moore himself, praised the objective
of natural beauty superior to the appre works on
beauty of the unprecedented
ciation of artistic beauty, largely because But a great
display in these exhibitions.
"We do think that the emotional con art critics
many professional disagreed.
templation of a natural scene, supposing The artistic representations so deviated
its qualities is in some from the motifs
equally beautiful, they transcribed that
a better state of than that of a saw no way of
way things many viewers dealing
painted landscape we
; would think that with them. "One gentleman," wrote Fry,
the world would be improved ifwe "is so put to it to account for his own in
could substitute for the best works of
ability to understand these pictures that
representative art real objects equally he is driven to the conclusion that it is a
beautiful." colossal hoax on the part of the organiz
Moore believed that so far as the picto ers of the exhibition and myself in par
rial arts are concerned, a beautiful paint ticular."
is a of a beautiful to explain the incapacity
ing painting subject. Attempting
And this I think gave a certain impor of such gentlemen to appreciate objec
tance to the museum of fine arts as a site tive beauty, Fry blamed and
ignorance
in which to experience beauty in those unfamiliarity:
years. In Henry James's The Golden Bowl
Almost without exception, they tacitly as
(1905), his character Adam Verver, a
sume that the aim of art is imitative
man of immense wealth repre
living abroad, none of them has tried to
sentation, yet
has conceived the idea of building a
show any reason for such a curious
"museum of museums" for American propo
sition. A great deal has been said about
City, where he amassed his fortune. His

40 D dalus Fall 2002

 these artists searching for the ugly instead How does this happen ? Fry believed The abuse
?* eauty
of consoling us with beauty. They forget that it happens through critical explana-
that every new work of creative design is tion. People have to be brought to un
ugly until it becomes beautiful ; that we derstand the work, and the way in which
usually apply the word beautiful to those it is actually beautiful. That, more than
works of art inwhich familiarity has en the actual explanations Fry gave, is his
abled us to grasp the unity easily, and that great achievement. For itmakes clear
we find ugly those works inwhich we still that artistic beauty often requires expla
perceive beauty only by an effort. nation if it is to be appreciated, some

thing that Hume understood completely.

The perception of these artworks as ugly
"In many orders of beauty, particularly
was, in effect, the projection onto them
those of the finer arts," Hume writes in
of amental confusion that a course in
the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
aesthetic education will remove. Postim
Morals, "it is requisite to employ much
on to say,
pressionist painters, Fry goes in order to feel the proper sen
affirm "the paramount of reasoning
importance timent ;and a false relish may frequently
design, which necessarily places the imi
be corrected by argument and reflec
tative side of art in a secondary place."
tion." Hume is eager to point out that
This is the basis of Fry's formalism.
"moral beauty partakes much of this lat
But Fry himself made amistake even
ter
more than those critics who species."
profound
it was the aim of painting to
supposed I accept Fry's
imitate nature. His mistake was suppos With qualification,
as well as the spirit of Hume's
was the aim of to be beau point,
ing it painting Iwant to
marvelous observation. What
tiful.
deny, however, is that the history of ap
I give Fry great credit for recognizing
preciation always culminates in the ap
that something needed to be explained
o? beauty. That, as I see it, is
in order that those who scoffed might preciation
the assumption of Edwardian aesthetics,
perceive the beauty of postimpressionist
which the kind of art selected for the
to
painting, but I draw special attention
the a priori view that the painting in
Grafton Gallery ought to
exhibitions
have called into question. The Edwar
was beautiful, if only
question really
viewers knew how to look at it. dians, for example, were entirely right to
begin to appreciate African art. They
Since Fry, it has become a common
were even right in thinking that, on for
place that the history of modernism is
mal grounds, it could be seen as beauti
the history of acceptance. This story is
ful. The Victorians had thought that
told over and over by docents and lectur
'primitive peoples' were, inmaking art,
ers in art appreciation. In this view, the
a trying to make beautiful objects, only
history of art always has happy ending. -
Manet's vilified in 1865, became they did not know exactly how hence
Olympia,
their 'primitivity.' The Edwardians
aworld treasure two generations later:
in The Guermantes Way, Proust writes of thought themselves advanced because
formalism enabled them to see what Fry
the way "the unbridgeable gulf between
what they considered amasterpiece called "Negro sculpture" as beautiful.
by
But they were wrong in thinking that
and what they supposed must for
Ingres to
ever remain a 'horror' (Manet's Olympia, they had learned through formalism
see the beauty that was the point of
for example) shrank until the two can
African art.
vases seemed like twins."

D dalus Fall 2002 41

Arthur C. That was never its point, nor was in 1873, when Rimbaud published this
o
beauty the point of most of the world's poem. In Fantin-Latour's group portrait
^an
art. It is very rarely the point of art of the previous year, Un Coin de Table,
beauty great
Rimbaud is shown seated with Verlaine
today.
lived through the Sensation ex and a number of other bohemians in a
Having -
hibition at the Brooklyn Museum in group called Les Villains Bonhommes The
- Verlaine and Rim
1999, with its crude exploitation of what Bad Eggs of whom
shock or offend, I can sympathize baud were, one might say, the 'baddest.'
might -
with Fry. The critics, pretty much to a The portrait of Rimbaud the only por
- is of a singular
condemned the art, and were trait of him we possess
person,
certain they were being put upon. But ly beautiful, almost angelic looking
some of us were ready to see it as a First shown in a pensive state. He was
youth,
Amendment rather than aesthetic mat and a rakehell, and the dispari
eighteen,
ter, and in this we were perhaps more ty between his character and his appear
right than
someone would have been ance, as in Dorian Grey, is a familiar fail
ure of fit that has come to give beauty a
who hoped that through argument they
would see the beauty itwas in some bad name. His badness extends even to
measure the object of the art to injure. his aesthetic preferences, which he cata
This is not to say that beauty does not in the Delires section of his poem :
logs
have a role to play in the art of our own "Idiotic pictures, shop signs, stage sets,
to find out what that backcloths for street-entertainers, bill
day. But in order
role might be, we shall have to free our boards, vernacular images, old fashioned
selves from the Edwardian axiom that all stories, church Latin, badly spelt por
art is categorically beautiful, if only romance novels for elderly
good nography,
we have learned to recognize how. We ladies, fairy tales, little books for chil
will have to find ways of justifying art dren, old operas, silly refrains, na?ve
would not
other than those with which my narra rhythms." What Rimbaud
tive of the decline of beauty began. It is have known was that his inventory was
an achievement of the conceptual histo to become the substance of an alterna

of art in the twentieth that we tive aesthetic a century later.

ry century
have amuch more idea of artis I have no wish to lose myself
complex Though
tic appreciation than the early modern in interpreting Rimbaud's poem, it can,
- in general, down to be read as a tribute to the
ists or modernism perhaps must,
its formulation in the writing of Clement power of beauty, the disparities notwith

Greenberg
as late as the 1960s. standing. Having abused Beauty in the
third line, it is as if the poet were sen
- a season in hell - in
tenced to madness
2 titles the section of
penalty. He explicitly
-
Near the opening of Une Saison en Enfer the poem in which he declares his anti
an allegorical account of his aesthetic preferences as Ravings. That
allegedly
tumultuous relationship with the poet section ends with what feels like Rim
- : "One eve baud coming to his senses, though it can
Verlaine Rimbaud writes
ning, I sat Beauty
on my knees ;and" I be read as heavy irony: "All that's be
found her bitter, and I abused her. hind me now. Today I know how to bow
The 'bitterness of beauty' became epi down before beauty."
demic in the avant-garde art of the fol It is as if Rimbaud intuited a thought I
was a rare thought can hardly suppose he could have read in
lowing century, but it

Fall 2002
42 D dalus
 - The abuse
Kant's Critique of Judgment that "the iXant interestingly handled moral and
?* eau y
beautiful is the symbol of the morally aesthetic differences in systematically

good." Kant's thought is not entirely parallel ways. He learned about the
easy to follow, but he clearly wants to say South Seas from reading Captain Cook's
that finding beautiful ismore voyages, and clearly he was struck by the
something
than simply taking pleasure in experi otherness of the societies Cook de

encing it. The beautiful scribes. The question comes up for him
"gives pleasure
with a claim for the agreement of every whether those other lives are ones we
one else." For this reason, "the mind is would morally be able to live. In the
made conscious of a certain ennoble schedule of cases in which he attempts
ment and elevation above the mere sen to illustrate the working of the categori
cal imperative, he considers a talented
sibility of pleasure received through
sense, and the worth of others is esti individual in comfortable circumstances
mated in accordance with a like maxim who "prefers indulgence in pleasure to
of their judgment." And Kant goes on to troubling himself with broadening and
claim that "the subjective principle in improving his fortunate natural gifts." It
is represented as would be entirely consistent with the
judging the beautiful
universal, i.e., valid for every man." The laws of nature that everyone should live
abuse of beauty in this view is the sym like "the inhabitants of the South Seas,"
bolic enactment of an offense against so one formulation of the categorical
by
morality and hence, in effect, against hu imperative, itwould be permissible that
"I had armed myself aman "should let his talents rust and re
manity. against jus
tice," Rimbaud says just after confessing solve to dedicate his life only to idleness,
his crime. indulgence, and propagation." But we
It is not clear, even if itwould have "cannot possibly will that this should
been possible for him to have imagined become a universal law of nature," for
it, that the abuse of beauty would be re "as a rational being,
one
necessarily wills
Kant as a
garded by ipso facto moral evil, that all one's faculties should be devel
as are
since beauty only symbolizes morality, oped inasmuch they given to one
and between moral and aesthetic judg for all sorts of possible purposes."
ments there is only the kind of analogy, The implication is that the South Sea
to use his example, that may hold be islanders are not quite rational, but even
tween a commonwealth and a living so
ought to live in conformity with the
So aesthetic imperatives are moral Protestant ethic, and that iswhat we
body.
Kant rec must teach them as moral missionaries.
imperatives only symbolically.
ognizes that not everyone will agree, Kant was in no sense amoral relativist.
case by case, on questions of beauty, but What relativists regard as differences in
the analogy requires the belief that they culture Kant as but differences
regarded
ought to, whatever the force of the in development, on the model of the dif
There was an ten ferences between children and adults.
ought. Enlightenment
to believe that the same moral Kant contests Sea aes
South
dency similarly
-
principles the golden rule for exam thetics, as he understands them. Pre
- were to on an
ple be found in every society, sumably based anthropological
so must have seemed co illustration he must have seen, Kant was
universality
extensive with humanity. Would there aware that there are parts of the world in
a men are covered with a kind of
have been parallel view in regard to which
: "We could adorn a
beauty? spiral tattoo figure

D dalus Fall 2002 43

Arthur C are wrong.
ato
with all kinds of spirals and light but reg They just don't know what
on
' uj as j.]^ ]sjew Zealanders
jjnes do with beauty is, which he would have defined

beauty their tattooing, if only itwere not the in terms of what we may as well term the
a In Protestant aesthetic.
figure of human being," he writes.
this same section of the Third Critique, he Even Hegel, the first major philoso
says, "We could add much to a building, pher actually to have gone out of his way
to look at paintings -
which would immediately please "the eye and listen to music
if only itwere not to be a church. and, as we shall see, an extraordinary art
-
These are imperatives of taste, and it is critic had a difficult time with other

striking that Kant considers the tattoo as traditions. "The Chinese," he writes in
a form of ornamentation, like the Philosophy of History, "have as a gen
merely
on a church, rather than eral characteristic, a remarkable skill in
gilded statuary
a set of marks that may have nothing to imitation, which is exercised not merely
do with beautification, but serve rather in daily life but in art. They have not yet
to connect the tattooed
person with succeeded in representing the beautiful
some as beautiful in their
larger scheme of the world. The ;for painting, per
tattoo may conduce to admiration are
of its spective and shadow wanting." (Ma
- reasons so to the side, as
bearer but not for aesthetic net, who pushed shadows
much as for whatever it is in a person the we find them in
photographs, inevitably
tattoo signified - military prowess, say, flattened his figures, which explains in
or cosmic rank. some measure the outcry against his
Similarly with the brass
neck coils affected by the Paduang work.) The implication is that the Chi
women of Burma. And something of the nese have either no idea of or a
beauty
same sort may be true of ornament in wrong one. But Chinese culture had a
the German baroque church Kant evi very different idea of visual truth than

dently finds offensive to taste - as if the Hegel had, and hence a different view of

passions of northern European icono the aims of representation. No one could

clasm were merely expressions of aes count their art as ugly, which is the oper
thetic revulsion. So it iswith reference to ative thought in Fry's dictum that things
cognitive rather than aesthetic will be perceived as until are
judg ugly they
ments as was
that both ought to be assessed. perceived beautiful. It Hegel who
Iwould hesitate to say that all cases of required aesthetic education, fixated as
so-called beautification can be deflected he was on the Renaissance
paradigm of
in this way, but the possibility suggests mimesis.

that a universal beauty may be entirely But Fry understood, as amodernist,

consistent with cultural differences, our that the ligature between beauty and
mistake consisting in regarding certain mimetic representation had been irre
as aesthetic when some in his time. He knew
things they have versibly loosened
and more cognitive func that one could not argue his critical au
quite different
tion. The aesthetic diversity of the diences into agreeing that C?zanne or
art is consistent with beauty as as we
world's Picasso shows the world really see
such being everywhere the same, if one it. He had instead to argue that this is
cared to defend that thesis. not relevant, and that the
emphasis must
on on - to use
If, on the other hand, tattooing in the be not vision but design
South Seas really is beautiful "in the eye the terms of his famous title. Then we
of the South Sea Islander," Kant must can see the
beauty of African and Chi
feel himself entitled to the view that they nese art, having surrendered the mis

44 D dalus Fall 2002

 criteria so compelling art and morality, on another The abuse
leading mimetic between
?* eau y
to Hegel. Ruskin was that "all great art
plane right
the beauty-mimesis ismorality." In 1903, as we have seen,
Loosening liga
ture made it possible for Fry to become a Moore seriously argued that the con
great formalist art critic, but because he sciousness of beauty was among the su
continued to see the ligature between art preme moral goods. We are safe, I think,
and beauty as a necessary connection, so in speaking of an atmosphere at the be
that of necessity art is always beautiful, ginning of the twentieth century in
it failed to occur to him, as a theorist, which Rimbaud's image of abusing
that whole artistictraditions have exist seen as an
beauty could still have been
ed in which was never the abuse of morality.
beauty point
at all. I can think of no more vivid a gesture
Beauty was not the rainbow that of abusing beauty by abusing great art
awaited us as the reward of sustained than Duchamp's 1919 work in which he
looking. It
was never the case that the drew a moustache on a postcard of
was that Lisa, and scribbled amild obscen
only proper way to address art Mona
of aesthetic contemplation. To put it an ity beneath that paradigm of great art.
other way, it never occurred to Fry, any That work, like everything by Du
more than it had occurred to Ruskin, is a field of
champ, fiercely competing
that the beauty that was incontestably interpretations, but Iwant to use it as a
a
present in, for example, the great cathe historical signpost of deep change in
drals may have been a means rather than attitude a
that calls for historical expla
an end. nation. Iwant to focus on an art-histori
The point was not to stand in front of cal episode in the course of which, great
the church and gape at its ornamenta to the benefit of the philosophical un
ly
tion, but to enter the church, the beauty derstanding of art, a logical gap was de
as it so often is in enter art and
being the bait, finitively opened between
ing into sexual relationships. beauty.
one contemporary who appears Itwas a gap that remained invisible to
Fry's
to have understood this was Marcel the denizens of Bloomsbury, who re
Duchamp. "Since Courbet, it's been be mained, for all their modernist ideals,
lieved that painting is addressed to the late Edwardians. Itwas invisible to them
retina. That was
everyone's
error. The because they had the idea, expressed in
retinal shudder!" Hisargument, remark Fry's dictum, that works of art are per
ably overlooked by aesthetic theory, is ceived as ugly until they are perceived as
quite historical: "Before, painting had beautiful. Itwas a gap that remained in
other functions, it could be philosophi visible until the great conceptual efforts
cal, religious, moral. Our whole century of the 1960s to define art. That gap is the
is completely retinal, except for the contribution inmy view of what I shall
Surrealists, who tried to go outside it term the intractable
avant-garde.
somewhat." Iwant, in setting the scene for my his
torical explanation, briefly to return to
- in to
An 1905, ruminating on the somewhat Moore's philosophy particular
farcical contest between Whistler and the connection between the two su
Ruskin, Proust wrote (in a letter to preme goods he holds up for examina
Marie that while Whistler tion. Moore sees a clear connection be
Nordlinger)
had been right that there is a distinction tween goodness and beauty: "It appears

D dalus Fall 2002 45

Arthur c. that the beautiful should be de Itwas with this question that the con
? probable
as that of which the con cept of became
on" fined admiring
" beauty abruptly politi
beauty templation is good in itself. The two cized by avant-garde artists around 1915,
values, Moore claims, are so related to which fellmidway in the period of the
one another "that whatever is beautiful in Duchamp's career.
ready-mades
is also good." He goes further: "To say
that a thing is beautiful is to say, not in A he 'abuse of beauty' became a device
deed that it is itself good, but that it is a for dissociating the artists from the soci
element in something which
necessary ety they held in contempt. Rimbaud be
is :to prove that something is truly beau came an artistic and moral -
hero the po
tiful is to prove that awhole, to which it et everyone wanted to be.
bears a particular relation as a part, is in the genius of Rimbaud,"
"I believe
sees some near
truly good." So Moore the young Andre Breton wrote Tristan
entailments between art and beauty, and Tzara, the author of the dada manifesto
between beauty and goodness. And of 1918. It is dada to which I primarily re
was on
beauty indeed the principle fer in the project of disconnecting beau
which Bloomsbury was
friendship ty from art as an expression of moral re
based: It consisted almost entirely of vulsion against a society for whom beau
those who to beauty the highest
assigned ty was a cherished value and which cher
moral priority. ished art itself because of beauty.
The Bloomsburys saw themselves as Here is a recollective account by Max
the true vessels of civilization. And they Ernst:
it the mark of a civi
perhaps supposed was reac
To us, Dada above all a moral
lization that it create individuals of the
tion. Our rage aimed at total subversion. A
sort they exemplified. In this, I think,
horrible futile war had robbed us of five
were not so far from Kant, in
they light of our existence. We had
of his concluding that beau years experi
proposition into ridicule and shame
enced the collapse
ty is the symbol of morality, even if con
of to us as
in his view, by way of a kind of everything represented just,
nected,
true, and beautiful. works of that
My peri
analogy. There is in aesthetic judgment od were not meant to attract, but to make
an entailed disinterestedness as well as a
scream.
which in Kant's philosophy people
universality,
was sine qua non for moral conduct. The -
Ernst knew the war
he had been an ar
-
person who values aesthetic experience tilleryman and his art was aggressive,
has amoral fineness in that she or he is as his of the war-makers as
perception
ennobled through the disinterestedness. hateful required it to be.
Remember, further, that Kant defined In some measure this was true of Ger
the Enlightenment as mankind's man dada in
- a
coming general. The First Interna
of age cultural stage he would have tional Dada exhibition in Berlin had
believed the South Sea Islanders have art was -
signs declaring that dead "Der
not and perhaps for a long time will not Kunst ist Tot" - to
adding "Long life the
have attained. maschinen Kunst Tatlins." Its members
And now the question was :how is it were not out to vilify German values ;
that those nations defined
by civilized were bent on them
they destroying by
should
have made the an
high-mindedness forcing upon German consciousness
most savage and war that his art it could not swallow. Its means were
protracted
tory up to that point had known ? a kind of
aggressive foolishness.

46 D dalus Fall 2002

 was a kind He intended that his work be found The
The original spirit of dada ?*
of exaggerated play in the shadow of the disgusting, which was the one aestheti-
war, a way of demonstrating its con cally unredeemable quality acknowl
tempt for the by in edged by Kant in the Critique of Aesthetic
clashing patriotisms
fantile actions :the term itself was infan was noticed by Kant as
Judgment. Disgust
tile for 'rocking horse,' and the Zurich amode of resistant to the kind
ugliness
dadaists registered their protests of pleasure that even the most displeas
-
through buffoonery against what Hans ing things "the Furies, diseases, the
- are
Arp called "the puerile mania for author devastations of war" capable of
itarianism which could use art itself for when as beautiful
causing represented
the stultification of mankind" : works of art. "That which excites dis
by
While the thunder of guns sounded in gust [Ekel],99Kant writes, "cannot be rep
resented in accordance with nature
the distance, we we recited, we
pasted,
without all aesthetic satisfac
versified, we sang with all our soul. We " destroying
tion. Since the purpose of art is taken to
searched for an art that
elementary be the production of pleasure, only the
would, we thought, save mankind from
most perverse of artists would under
the furious folly of these times. We
take to represent the disgusting, which
to a new order.
aspired cannot "in accordance with nature" pro
duce pleasure in normal viewers.
- There are, to be sure, those who derive
xVada art was vehemently ephemeral
book a in experiencing
posters, jackets, calligrams, pam perverted pleasure
- as we what the normal viewer finds disgust
phlets, recitations would expect
one
from amovement of poets as well
made ing: who have, might say, 'special
as artists. These in their very tastes.' Artists interested in representing
ephemera,
were what Tzara celebrat the disgusting would not have this spe
ephemerality,
ed as "means of combat." cial audience in view. Their aim is pre
to cause sensa
Dada refuses to be found beautiful, cisely through their art
even - tions that, in Kant's phrase, "we strive
today, after the passage of time
our
and that is its great philosophical signifi against with all might."
cance. Dada the intractable The psychobiology of disgust is as yet
exemplifies
since its works are not well understood, but the early writ
avant-garde, misper
ceived if perceived as beautiful. That is ers on it followed Darwin in thinking of
it as a
not its point or ambition. product of evolution concerned
"
The narrative of aesthetic "basically with the rejection of food.
redemption
assures us that sooner or later we will see Evidence for the centrality of food "in
all art as beautiful, however ugly it ap cludes the facial expression, which fo
as cuses on oral expulsion and closing of
peared at first. Try to see this beautiful !
becomes a sort of for those the nares, and the physiological con
imperative
who look at art that does not appear comitants of nausea and gagging." Re
beautiful at first at all. cent research has widened the scope of
Someone told me that she found beau "disgust elicitors," somewhat weaken
-
ty in the maggots infesting the severed ing the connection with survival and it
and seemingly putrescent head of a cow, iswith in this augmented
items schedule
set in a vitrine by the Young British Art that disgust has become an artistic op
ist Damien Hirst. It gives me a certain portunity for those eager to hold beauty
wicked to imagine Hirst's frus at bay. Kant would have no recourse but
pleasure
tration if hers were the received view. to regard this as the perversion of art. It

D dalus Fall 2002 47

Arthur c. would be of no value to the artists in Kant does make plain that the disgusting
question if a taste for the disgusting is the antonym of the beautiful. So the
^anto
beauty were to be normalized. It is essential to is in any case not
disgusting conceptual
their aims that the disgusting remain ly connected with the sublime. The ant
disgusting, not that audiences learn to onym of the sublime, he deliciously ob
take pleasure in it, or find it somehow serves, is the silly, which suggests that
beautiful. the effect of dada was less the abuse of
I have seen a sculpture from Nurem beauty than the rejection of the sublime.
era of a
berg from the late Gothic figure
known as "The Prince of theWorld," Ajut the disgusting, as
just possibly logi
which looks comely and strong from the can
cally connected with beauty, also
front but is displayed in a state of wormy have the connection with morality that
decay from behind; the body is shown
beauty does.
the way itwould look decomposing in In the early 1990s, curators recognized
the grave. Such we a genre of contemporary art
sights explain why they desig
the dead. There can be no nated
actually bury 'abject art.' "The abject," writes
of what is the intended func the art historian "is a
question Joseph Koerner,
tion of showing bodily decay with the in the history of art nor
novelty neither
skill of a Nuremberg stone carver - it is in the attempts to write that history."
not to give the viewer pleasure : it is, Koerner cites, among other sources, a
rather, to disgust the viewer, and in so characteristically profound insight of
as a vanitas, us
doing, to act reminding Hegel
: "The
novelty of Christian and
through presentation that the flesh is Romantic art consisted of taking the ab
corrupt, and its pleasures a distraction as its privileged
ject object. Specifically,
-
from our higher aspirations namely to the tortured and crucified Christ, that
achieve everlasting blessedness and
ugliest of creatures in whom divine
avoid eternal punishment. To show the became, human evil,
beauty through
human as is certainly to basest
body disgusting abjection."
violate taste, but Christian artists
good Rudolph Wittkower begins his great
were to pay this price for what text on art and architecture in Italy after
prepared
as our
Christianity regards highest moral the Council of Trent by recording the de
purpose. cision of that councilto display the
Kant did of course have a concept of wounds and agonies of the martyred, in
the sublime, which I suppose has to tran order, through this display of affect, to
scend morality, because of the close par elicit the sympathy of viewers and
allels he insisted between moral
upon through that to strengthen threatened
and aesthetic without so faith. "Even Christ must be shown 'af
judgments,
much as asking whether and in what de flicted, bleeding, spat upon, with his
the of beauty itself skin torn, wounded,
gree production deformed, pale and
serves or can serve some higher moral if the calls for it." The
unsightly' subject
ends. It is quite as if beauty were its own in the Renaissance to beautify
tendency
end, justifying the practice of art the crucified Christ was in effect amove
through its existence alone. to classicize Christianity by returning
Kant never the purpose of
asks what a
the tortured body to kind of athletic
the disgusting might be in awork of art, grace, denying the basic message of
or of beauty might
why the dereliction Christian teaching that salvation is at
a
be moral means. a
In precritical text, tained through abject suffering.

48 D dalus Fall 2002

 Theaestheticism of the eighteenth Edwardian views we find inMoore and The abuse
was a ?fheauty
century corollary of the rational Bloomsbury.
ism of natural religion. Itwas Kant's I regard the discovery that something
to situate aesthet can be art without
stunning achievement good being beautiful
ics in the critical architectonic as a form one of the great clarifications
conceptual
of judgment two small steps away from of twentieth-century philosophy of art,
was
it made by art
reason.
pure though exclusively
of the vast human suffering
In view ists, and itwould have been seen as com
that was one salient aspect of the twenti monplace before the Enlightenment
eth century, it is astonishing how dispas gave beauty the primacy it has continued
sionate, how rational, how distancing, to enjoy. That clarification managed to
how abstract so much of twentieth-cen push reference to beauty out of any pro
tury art really was. How innocent dada posed definition of art, even if the new
was ! In its refusal to situation dawned very slowly in artistic
gratify the aesthetic
sensibilities of those responsible for consciousness.

World War I, dada gave the world bab When a of art such as
philosopher
in place of beauty, silliness instead Nelson Goodman sets aesthetics aside in
bling
of sublimity. If it injured beauty, itwas order to talk about representation and

through
a kind of punitive clownishness. meaning, this is not done with the ex
What abject art, so
pathetic in its inca pectation that we will return to the con
to do much to deflect or di cept of beauty with an enhanced under
pacity finally
minish the degradations of the body that standing. It is done, rather, with the
the politics of our times has used as its awareness that beauty belongs neither to
means, has done is to seize upon the em the essence nor the definition of art.
blems of degradation as away of
crying
out in the name of humanity. "For many
in contemporary culture," Hal Foster 3
writes, "truth resides in the traumatic or On principles of Renaissance theory,
were on the world -
or dam windows
abject subject, in the diseased paintings
aged body. Thus body is the evidentiary pure, apparently transparent openings
one saw the world as if
basis of important witnessings to truth,
" through which
of necessary power.
from outside. So a picture drew its beau
witnessings against
or ty from the world, none of
My aim is not to judge the success ideally having
failure of artistic abjection, but rather to its own to contribute to what one saw, as
emphasize that it is intended to resist itwere, through it. (This of course over
the prediction that art is ugly until seen looks the contribution of the frame in
as beautiful. It is amisperception of art shaping the way the world presents itself
to see it as always and necessarily con to the eye in a painting.)
cerned with the creation and apprecia The stereotypical painter crooks the
tion of beauty. With dada, a deep con index finger against the thumb, framing
the world until it resolves into a picture
ceptual shift took place. This perhaps
-
until it looks the way she wants her
justifies the claim that I have often made
-
that in the twentieth century, the artists picture to look like Lily Briscoe in To
were forward the philosophy of the Lighthouse, or, we imagine, any of the
carrying
art in away that could not have been Bloomsbury painters scouting the south
achieved by philosophers themselves, of France for what the traditional art
whose intuitions were colored by the schools designated motifs.

D dalus Fall 2002 49

Arthur c. Kant was famously a
? stay-at-home, but eighteenth century, in France especially,
he lived in an era of aesthetic tourism. a close was drawn between
o?n parallel
beauty The well-to-do went abroad to see the painting pictures and painting faces, so
:the as in his of Madame Pom
sights Alps, the Bay of Naples, that, portrait
well, of course, as the Piazza San Marco, padour at her Vanity, which shows the
the Pantheon, the Leaning Tower, the great lady with her rouge-brush before a
A pictorial mirror, Boucher is virtually a
Acropolis. industry grew up saluting
to provide - memo fellow artist. With the made-up
souvenirs objective face,
- be ex
ries of what one took in. This I take to Kant's follow-up thought would
be the background of Kant's somewhat act - "we are conscious of it as art while

surprising remark, at ?45 of the Critique yet it looks like nature."

Beautification to incur a
of Judgment, that "Nature is beautiful has tended
because it looks like art," when one certain condemnation : it
puritanical
would have the opposite asser traffics in causing the kind of false be
expected
tion instead. Kant seems to be saying liefs that constitute the cognitive basis
that the world is beautiful when it looks for the great cosmetic fortunes of the
the way painters represent it.
When one modern world. The French term for 'to
thinks an artist represented a scene be make up' isfarder, or 'to color,' which
cause itwas beautiful in the first place, explains in part why there was a tradi
one understands
rightly the Renaissance tional mistrust of colors - why Descartes
idea that what one sees pictured on a so far as to say we
went really did not
canvas or a a
panel is transparent view of need our eyes to know what the world
a scene's was like, since the blind can feel the out
beauty.
This cannot, however, have been the lines and know the shapes of things.
whole story, not even for Kant, who rec Ruskin appears to have had beautifica
- or - in sup
ognized that art was capable of repre tion artifice in mind when,
as beautiful of the British he
senting "things which may port Pre-Raphaelites,
be in nature ugly or displeasing. The Fu condemns pretty much the entire histo
ries, diseases, the devastations of war, ry of painting from the time of Raphael
etc. may even be regarded as calamitous, down.

be described as very beautiful, as they In the first of two letters to The Times
are represented in a picture." in 1851, Ruskin wrote that his young pro
So the picture in Kant's understanding teges
must contribute to the beauty, since
desire to represent, of any
irrespective
these motifs have none. It is here that
conventional rules of picture making; and
Kant makes his parenthetical observa
tion on disgust as the "one kind of ugli they have chosen their unfortunate
ness which cannot be represented in though not inaccurate name because all
artists did this before Raphael's time, and
accordance with nature without destroy after Raphael's time did not do this, but
ing all aesthetic satisfaction, and conse
sought to paint fair pictures rather than
quently artificial beauty.99 stern facts, of which the conse
represent
I emphasize 'artificial beauty.' It is
- quence has been that from Raphael's time
what we would 'beautification'
call
to this day historical art has been in
aesthetic sophism, making the worse ap
involves cosmetics, acknowledged decadence.
pear better, which
fashion, interior decoration, and the It did not incidentally matter that the
was -
like, where we are not dealing with natu reality only imagined 'made up' by
ral but with enhanced beauty. In the the artist in the other sense of the ex

50 D dalus Fall 2002

 - so as itwas not falsified the penalty, the humiliation, almost the The abuse
pression long ?* eauty
in the interests of beautification. squalor attendant upon being'made
I cannot help but feel that the aura of flesh' are marked." As enfleshed, God
some of the must as as we all be
falsification helps to explain begin helplessly
-
suspicions aroused when beauty plays a gin hungry, wet, soiled, confused, col
role in contemporary art. Consider again icky, crying, dribbling, babbling, drool
the case of Mapplethorpe. He tried to ing, and totally dependent. All that is
achieve the excitement of pornographic implicit inMantegna's picture, and it is
as
images in artistic, that is, beautiful pho inconsistent with seeing the painting

tographs. Freud observed that "the geni beautiful. The message transcends beau
tals themselves, the sight of which is al ty and ugliness. It ismorally rather than
are ever
ways exciting, hardly regarded visually true.
as beautiful." Yet at their most success Iwant one further
example, which
ful, we can barely stand to look at some comes from Hegel, a great art critic,
of Mapplethorpe's pictures from which, writing about amasterpiece by the artist
because of the beauty with which he in the Pre-Raphaelites were to : "It
despise
fused them, we cannottear our eyes is a familiar and frequently repeated
re

away. They paralyze the will, as in the proach against Raphael's Transfiguration
case cited aman who that it falls apart into two actions entire
by Socrates of
"feasts his eyes" on the sight of corpses. ly devoid of any connection with one
To take a less complex case, Sabastao another," Hegel writes.
Salgado's photographs of suffering hu
- And in fact this is true if this picture is
are beautiful and hence, his
manity considered externally :above on the hill
-
critics would say, falsified because suf
we see the transfiguration, below is the
fering of that order, being grim, ought scene with the child possessed of an un
not to be seen as beautiful. Salgado pret clean spirit. But ifwe look at the spirit of
tifies through photographic artifice what
the a connection is
composition, supreme
ought to be shown in its true colors. If
not to be missed. For, on the one hand,
there is to be art, it should not be beauti
Christ's visible transfiguration is precisely
ful, since the world does not deserve
his elevation above the earth, and his de
beauty. Artistic truth must accordingly
parture from his disciples, and this must
be as sad as human life itself, and art
be made visible too as a and a
separation
leached of beauty serves in its own way
as amirror of what human departure ;on the other hand, the sublimi
beings have
done. Art, subtracted of the stigma of ty of Christ is here especially transfigured
in an actual case, in the fact
serves as what the world has simple namely
beauty, that the Disciples could not help the child
coming to it. Beautifiers are, so to speak,
without the help of the Lord. Thus here
collaborationists.
the double action ismotivated throughout
and the connection is displayed within
IVAost of the world's art is not beauti
and without in the fact that one disciple
ful at all, nor was the production of
expressly points to Christ who has depart
beauty part of its purpose. One of the
ed from them and thereby he hints at the
most marvelous pieces of art criticism I
true destiny of the Son of God to be at the
know was written by Fry himself about
same time on earth, so that the will
saying
Mantegna's Simone Madonna in Berlin :
be true :
Where two or three are
gathered
"The wizened face, the creased and inmy name, there am I in the midst of
crumpled flesh of a new born babe... all
them.

D dalus Fall 2002 51

Arthur c. To say design is as weak as beauty would ter to our taste and sentiment." It is in
ke an inappropriate response to this regard to this sort of beauty that one
^anto
beauty tremendous work. The design inheres in might say there is no disputing taste. But
the meaning intends to convey, Hume, as aman of letters, had a vivid
Raphael
Yeffet of the event he has undertaken to sense of the transformative power of

depict visually, when the meaning of the critical reasoning:

event itself- the transfiguration - is not
In many orders of beauty, particularly
entirely visual. Ruskin would be right those of the finer arts, it is requisite to
about Raphael: 'externally' it lacks visu
al truth, but internally it conveys truth employ much reasoning in order to feel
the proper sentiment; and a false relish
of a profounder kind.
may frequently be corrected by argument
and reflection. There are just grounds to
V>Jne sees from this passage the re
conclude that moral beauty partakes
markable difference between a thinker
much of this latter species, and demands
like Hegel, who was deeply engaged by
the assistance of our intellectual faculties
great art, and Kant, who was not, and for in order to give it a suitable influence on
whom experiencing art was of a piece
the human mind.
with experiencing natural beauty, like
that of flowers or sunsets or lovely wom This kind of reasoning is, I think, illus
en. And this is ismissing in trated in Fry on Mantegna, or on
finally what Hegel
Moore's of thinking about art as Raphael. And I believe it is Hegel, more
way
He on the than any other thinker, who draws the
well. thought of artistic beauty
model of natural beauty, as we can see distinction most sharply. He is the first
from his belief that something beautiful in particular to distinguish, perhaps too
exists much more in reality sharply, between aesthetics and the phi
compellingly
than in pictures. losophy of art. Aesthetics, he observes,
David Hume takes up the relationship is "the science of sensation or
feeling,"
between natural and artistic beauty al and concerns art "when works of art are
most as an aside, in order to point out an treated with regard to the feelings they
between two views of moral were to produce, as, for in
analogy supposed
stance, the feeling of pleasure, admira
truths, namely "whether they be derived
from Reason or Sentiment." Sentimen tion, fear, pity, and so on." This is a great
talists claim that "To virtue it to advance over Kant, who more or less
" belongs
be amiable, and vice odious. The latter confines the relevant repertoire of ef
term evokes a distant echo to disgust, a fects to pleasure and pain, making an
moral revulsion that verges on physical important exception for sublimity. Hegel
recoil. By symmetry, the former evokes a insists beauty is 'higher' than the
artistic
kind of natural attraction we
: are drawn beauty of nature, and he writes with a
to what we perceive as for us in marvelous thunder that "The beauty of
good
others. Hume allows that there is a kind art is beauty born of the spirit and born
"
of beauty of which the latter may be again. What I am eager to stress is that
true: "Some species of beauty, especially art is, for Hegel, an intellectual product,
the natural kinds, on their first appear and that its beauty too must express the
ance command our affection and appro thought the art embodies.
All this said, Hegel cannot have
bation ;and where they fail of this effect,
it is impossible for any reasoning to re thought of art as other than beautiful,
dress their influence, or adapt them bet and indeed he saw this as art's limita

52 D dalus Fall 2002

 tion, thinking as he does of beauty in The abuse
place of ashes. I intend the examples, in
?* beauty
terms of a sensation, or what Hume calls brief, to help remove the stigma from
a'sentiment.'
beauty, to restore to beauty some of
Hegel writes that "the beauty of art what gave it the moral weight it had in
presents itself to sense, feeling, intuition, Edwardian aesthetics.
; it has a different The first, somewhat overdetermined
imagination sphere
than thought, and the apprehension of comes from Proust. In a section
example
its activity and its products demands an called "The Intermitancies of the
organ other than scientific thinking." Heart," in the fourth volume of In Search
That iswhy art has come to an end, to of Lost Time, the Narrator has returned
invoke his celebrated thesis. We have to the seaside resort of Balbec. On his
risen above the sphere of sense in the first stay, he was accompanied by his be
respect that philosophy, or loved grandmother, who has since died.
Wissenschajft,
is an exercise of pure understanding and The section of the book in which he de
analysis. So "the conditions of our pres scribes his grandmother's death is curi
ent time are not favorable to art." The ously clinical and detached, which is
end of art thus has nothing to do with somewhat inconsistent with what we
the decline of art but rather with the as would expect, given their earlier bond.
cent of reason. We feel we have learned something

through this about the character of Mar

A here remains the question of whether cel, who seems amuch colder person
there is an important difference between than we would have believed him to be.
natural and artistic beauty, just so far as This impression proves to be false ; the
the object itself is concerned. moment he returns to his room at the
perceiving
Let's allow that in the appreciation of Grand Hotel, he is overwhelmed with a
natural the which is the sense of loss and bereavement, and de
beauty, object
- scends into an acute depression as his
vehicle of beauty which has beauty
- irrevocable absence
among it properties is not connected grandmother's
with a thought that explains its exis floods his consciousness completely.
tence, whereas with a work of art the Marcel now sits gazing at his grand
beautiful is explained by the thought mother's photograph, which tortures
that it is necessary to grasp in order to him. He realizes how self-centered he
the had been when he had been
the object of
appreciate beauty. Is the apprecia
tion of beauty different between the two his grandmother's totally dedicated
- to
cases ? love how he had failed, for example,
Iwant to present a pair of examples - notice how ill she had been on that first
-
one of natural, one of artistic
beauty in sojourn to Balbec. This mood lasts until
which we can see Hume's way of dealing he goes for a walk one day in the direc
with the distinction at work. I have se tion of a high road, along which he and
lected the examples his grandmother used to be driven in the
because they raise
some
striking psychological issues that carriage of Mme. de Villeparisis. The
bear on the moral grounds evoked in road was muddy, which made him think
of his grandmother and how she used to
treating beauty as shallow and false to
the reality of the world. They bear on return covered with mud when she went
what I take the prophet Isaiah to have walking whatever the weather. The sun
meant in envisioning a world in which is out, and he sees a "dazzling specta
are cle" - a stand of apple trees in blossom :
those who suffer given beauty in

D dalus Fall 2002 53

Arthur C. The disposition of the apple trees, as far as two hands exist, to invoke one of
Danto
tjie could reach, were in full bloom, Moore's most famous arguments. You
on J

beauty unbelievably luxuriant, their feet in the cannot argue anyone into accepting that
heedless -
mire beneath their ball-dresses, if they are uncertain of it for what
of spoiling the most marvelous
pink satin could be more certain than that? If they
that was ever seen, which glittered in the doubt that, their doubt is irremediable.
sea
sunlight; the distant horizon of the This I think is Hume's point about nat
gave the trees the background of a Japan ural beauty. You can't argue anyone into
ese print ; if I raised my head to gaze at the was at the core
feeling it. Natural beauty
- even
sky through the flowers, which made its of Marcel's experience if there
serene blue appear almost violent, they was an aura of drawn from
metaphors
seemed to draw apart to reveal the im his experience of art, which enters into
mensity of their paradise. Beneath that his descriptions.
azure a faint but cold breeze set the blush second is of a relatively
My example
ing bouquets. [Itwas] as though it had work, Maya Lin's Viet
contemporary
been an amateur of exotic art and colors nam Veterans Memorial of 1982, which I
that had artificially created this living select because it iswidely as
regarded
beauty. But itmoved one to tears because, possessing great beauty, both by those in
to whatever lengths itwent in its effects of the art world and by quite ordinary per
refined artifice, one felt that itwas natural, sons for whom it has become one of the
that these apple trees were there in the most widely admired sights inWashing
heart of the country. ton, D.C.

The Memorial is simplicity itself. It

The example is overdetermined because
consists of two symmetrical triangular
someone like Marcel would have
only that bend away from one another
seen this glorious as he did. He is wings
sight at amild angle -125 degrees - from a
like his counterpart, Swann, in seeing
shared vertical base to gently enfold
everything through the metaphors of
those who approach it. It is a very re
art. Someone who had never seen Hiro
duced form of the Bernini colonnades
or an Ascension of the Virgin, or in
shige St. Peter's Square in Rome,
whose life there were no ballgowns or enclosing
a similar role.
buts performs Maya Lin
pink satin, could hardly have experi was an undergraduate at Yale when she
enced the apple trees quite as he did.
presented the idea, and was told by her
Still, itwas a piece of natural beauty,
instructor that the angle between the
which might have taken the breath away
two wings "Had to mean something."
from anyone fortunate enough to have The two walls are of polished black gran
seen it.Marcel tells us that from this
ite, and inscribed with the names of ev
moment, his grief for his grandmother
ery American soldier killed in the Viet
to diminish ; one
began metaphorically, nam War - about 58,000 in all - listed
might say, she had entered paradise. He
was for ashes. The beauty, chronologically by date of death.
given beauty The commission of Lin's scheme for
one truly say, helped heal him.
might the memorial almost had the quality of a
The apple trees at Balbec might be on
:
short list for Moore's world of fairy tale it took the twenty-one-year
anyone's old all of six weeks to complete the win
beauty. A world with such sights in it selected unanimously from
would be better, Moore is confident in ning model,
1,421 entries in blind review. This, after
than aworld of ashes. That
arguing, Lin's peers had criticized the work as
would be as obvious as the fact that his

54 D dalus Fall 2002

 -
Visual poetry' it is, after all, a kind of nam Veterans Memorial, the thought The abuse
- of beauty
book and had expressed their uncer belongs to the work and the
explains
of its architectural merit. Mean In natural the
tainty beauty. beauty, beauty is
while, Lin was young, female, of Asian external to the thought; in art the beauty
descent, and had lost no loved ones in is internal to the work.
the conflict :she failed all the tacit tests
the designer of such amemorial was A he idea of internal beauty, of beauty
to meet. as
supposed integral to the meaning of awork, ori
When the organizer of the competi came to me in
ginally thinking of Robert
tion, Jan Scruggs, first saw the work he Motherwell's Elegy for the Spanish Repub
was disillusioned. "A big lic. People have sometimes read its black
profoundly
bat. A that could forms as icons for the penis and testicles
weird-looking thing
have been from Mars. Maybe a third of a bull, and, thus, the work as
elegizing
grader had entered the competition. All the loss of virility. But I see them as hu
the fund's work had gone into a man and architectural elements in a
making
bat for veterans. it :shawled wom
huge Maybe symbol landscape of devastation
ized a boomerang," en and broken
Scruggs thought. pillars, against early day
"It's weird and Iwish I knew what the as with the Christ figure in Piero's
light,
hell it is." It is amazing that itwas not Resurrection. Motherwell achieved a rep
voted down. Everyone wondered how resentation that transcends the history it
the general public would react, but one and
interprets, personal experience,
person told Scruggs that "You would be memory, as will Lin's work in a relative
surprised how sophisticated the general
ly short period of time.
is." That of course turned was the way the
public really What impressed me
out to be true. idea of is connected with the
very elegy
The beauty of the work is almost in idea of beauty - that its an
being elegy
stantly felt, and then perhaps best ex meant itwas intended to be beautiful,
plained in terms of the emotional re and that the beauty was intended to be
sponse of visitors, many of whom come
healing, the way the music a
at funeral
to see the name of someone
they loved is, or the flowers, or - this is not to my
and to do a rubbing of it to carry home. taste - even the beautification of the de
They see themselves reflected in the
parted for the occasion of a
'viewing.' I
same wall that carries the name of the mean in any case that Motherwell's Ele
dead, as if there were a community of
gies do not just happen to be beautiful.
the living and the dead, though death it Their being beautiful is part of their
self is forever. Possibly there is an analo
- meaning, and integral to their impact.
gy to a natural such as
phenomenon
the surface of a very still body of water
IVAy heart leaps up-when Ibehold a
in which the sky is reflected, as inMo rainbow in the sky" Wordsworth's
net's immense paintings of water lilies sentiment a species of
expresses beauty
that make visible the way clouds and and aesthetic surprise we have all experi
flowers seem to occupy the same space. enced. But my concern in the preceding
Whatever the proper explanation of the has been mainly to make
paragraphs
felt beauty of the wall, it is understood
plain the relationship between beauty
with reference to the 'thought.' It is part and thought, and between the kinds of
of the meaning of the work. In Proust's that into the of
thoughts go experience
orchard, the thought is his. In the Viet external as against internal beauty - how

D dalus Fall 2002 55

Arthur C. in the first instance the thoughts are per connected and in different ways with
anto
sonal and in the second objectively resi "the deepest interests of mankind and

beauty dent in the work. the most comprehensive truths of the

My
concern in this essay as a whole, spirit." Because these interests are con
on the other hand, has been to show the nected with the way we are made, they
: us
connection between beauty and art might help begin the detoxification of
art when its in art and
beauty is connected with beauty contemporary philoso
presence is part of the meaning of the phy, always recognizing that both have
work. shown that it is not part of the definition
The TajMahal is beautiful, but I am of art.
not certain Iwant to say that about the Beauty is one mode among many
Cathedral of Cologne, or about The Last through which thoughts are presented in
or the Demoi art to human sensibility -
of Michelangelo disgust, hor
Judgment
- and sexuality are still oth
selles dAvignon and certainly not of the ror, sublimity,
Woman with aHat, ers. These modes
Simone Madonna, explain the relevance
cases of of art to human existence, and room for
Raphael's Transfiguration. The
beauty I have considered go some dis them all must be found in an adequate
tance toward supporting Hegel's view definition of art.
that art and philosophy are differently

56 D dalus Fall 2002