Beauty Optional
Does art have to be beautiful? That was the issue raised
by Arthur C. Danto, the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
at Columbia University, during his talk, titled “Beauty and
Politics,” given at the Dominique de Menil Memorial Lecture,
an annual part of the Rice University President’s Lecture
Series.
Danto, an artist who turned his attention to philosophy, including
the philosophy of art and philosophical psychology, explained that
he has been examining the relationship between beauty and art since
the 1993 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York. Part of the exhibit included a badge that stated, “I
cannot even imagine being white,” and a videotape of the Rodney
King beating by Los Angeles police.
The exhibit brought to the forefront one of two educational models
at museums: the cultural insight model. Danto explained that through
this model, art is a means to knowledge of culture. “Art helps
us understand the culture to which we belong,” said Danto,
who has been the art critic for the Nation magazine since 1984.
“And in a particular case, American art can help Americans
understand their own culture and hence themselves.”
The artists who took part in the 1993 biennial were engaged in issues
of race in America. Visitors to the exhibit, Danto noted, “were
put on the spot. That’s not what they had come for, and that’s
not what they wanted the museum to be.” However, the exhibition
and the artists reflected the trend at the time toward the incompatibility
of politically motivated art and beauty. A century ago, beauty was
considered the ultimate purpose of art. Such art is the focus of
the other educational model prevalent at museums: the art appreciation
model, where art is an object of knowledge in its own right.
Even as recently as a half-century ago, the American painter Robert
Motherwell successfully integrated beauty with abstract art that
expressed his political voice. His works, Danto said, “showed
human suffering but were unquestionably beautiful.” But Danto
went on to say that artists and philosophers began to wonder if
it is even morally acceptable for art that depicts human suffering
and socioeconomic discourse to be beautiful. He noted that even
without beauty, there still can be artistic excellence. “My
sense is that artistic excellence is connected to the intended effect
of the art,” he said. “The work in Biennial 1993 was
intended to change the way we think and act on matters of justice.
If it did that, then it achieved artistic excellence, though perhaps
not beauty.”
A decade removed from the 1993 Whitney biennial, however, art has
shown a return to beauty. In fact, Danto noted that the 1980s and
early 1990s were the high-water mark for politically tumultuous
art. The very same year as the Whitney biennial that included the
King videotape, a conference titled “Whatever Happened to
Beauty?” was held at the University of Texas, and the phase
of political art without beauty was nearing an end.
Danto said that there are many aspects of society that people deal
with while integrating things of beauty, such as buying flowers
for the dead and the impromptu shrines of candles and flowers that
memorialized the lives lost in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“One thing is clear,” Danto said, “and that is
that whether or not to use beauty in art has become an option for
artists.”
—Dana Benson
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