Art is Dead (again); or, The coward within Art is momentarily resurrected, then dies one of its ten thousand deaths...

Art is Dead. Long live Art!
Photo: Flickr/Peter Bihr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

I believe that my work must be guided by a philosophy, and not just any philosophy, but one that begins at my beginning and hopefully stands the test of time, or at least my time. This week I insisted with some colleagues that having a clear philosophy was important. Not everybody can see the importance. But when things go wrong, or we disagree about a particular direction, our arguments become philosophical.

I had decided that my task as a philosopher must be to compose a theory of representations, which would be a philosophy of what it is to be human (Arthur Danto).

Take Andy Warhol as an example. Art or not? Well. Arthur Danto played a big part in bringing out the philosophy of art.

Andy Warhol and art is dead? Again, it is the philosophy that makes art and thought and music live.

A bunch of brillo pads isn't art, but a painted wooden box made to look exactly the same is art. Why? Philosophy.

Watch Synecdoche, New York. Does it make sense now?