Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:38:06.889Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant’s Theory of Modern Art?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2021

Paul Guyer
Paul Guyer*
Affiliation:
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Can Kant’s theory of fine art serve as a theory of modern art? It all depends on what ‘modern’ means. The word can mean current or contemporary, indexed to the time of use, and in that sense the answer is yes: Kant’s theory of genius implies that successful art is always to some extent novel, so there should always be something that counts as contemporary art on his theory. But ‘modern’ can also be used adjectively, perhaps more properly as ‘modernist’, to refer to art of a particular moment, in some cases superseded by postmodern art. Kant’s theory is not a theory of modernist art in at least one prominent form, the formalism of Clement Greenberg. But other theories, such as those of George Dickie and Arthur Danto, although triggered by particular works of modernist art and meant to accommodate them, were meant to be theories of what art was always doing, and Kant’s is too. In that sense it can be considered a modern theory of art but not a theory of modern art.

Keywords

KantBellDantoDickieGreenbergaesthetic ideasbeautyfine artformalismgenius
Type
Article
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 26 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue on Kant and Contemporary Art , December 2021 , pp. 619 - 634
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alberti, Leon B. ([1435] 2011) On Painting. Trans. Sinisgalli, R.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Clive (1913) Art. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Brown, Lesley, ed. (1993) The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Budick, Sanford (2010) Kant and Milton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costello, Diarmud (2007) ‘Greenberg’s Kant and the Fate of Aesthetics in Contemporary Art Theory’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65, 217–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danto, Arthur C. (1964) ‘The Artworld’. Journal of Philosophy, 61, 571–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danto, Arthur C. (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Danto, Arthur C. (1994) Embodied Meanings: Critical Essays and Aesthetic Meditations. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Danto, Arthur C. (2003) The Abuse of Beauty (The Paul Carus Lectures 21). LaSalle: Open Court.Google Scholar
Danto, Arthur C. (2007) ‘Embodied Meaning, Isotypes, and Aesthetical Ideas’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65, 121–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickie, George (1974) Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Fried, Michael (1969) ‘Manet’s Sources: Aspects of his Art, 1859-1865’. Artforum, 7, 28–82.Google Scholar
Gerard, Alexander (1774) An Essay on Genius. London: W. Strahan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, Clement (1960) ‘Modernist Painting’. In John, O’Brian (ed.), Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume IV (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 85–93.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Clement (1971) ‘The Necessity of Formalism’. New Literary History, 3, 171–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1977) ‘Formalism and the Theory of Expression in Kant’s Aesthetics’. Kant-Studien, 68, 46–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1994) ‘Kant’s Conception of Fine Art’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52, 175-85. [Reprinted as Guyer (1997a: ch. 12).]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1997a) Kant and the Claims of Taste. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1997b) ‘From Jupiter’s Eagle to Warhol’s Boxes: The Concept of Art from Kant to Danto’. Philosophical Topics, 25, 83–115. [Reprinted in Guyer (2005: 289–325).]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2003) ‘Exemplary Originality: Genius, Universality, and Individuality’. In Berys, Gaut and Livingston, Paisley N. (eds.), Creation in Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 116-37. [Reprinted in Guyer (2005: 242-65).]Google Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2005) Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2018) ‘The Poetic Possibility of the Sublime’. In Violetta, Waibel and Margit, Ruffing (eds.), Proceedings of the XII. International Kant Congress, Volume I (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter), pp. 297–316.Google Scholar
Herder, Johann G. ([1773] 2006) Shakespeare. Trans. Moore, Gr.. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel ([1788] 1996). Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR). In Kant, Practical Philosophy. Trans Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel ([1790] 2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment (CPJ). Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews, ed. P. Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kristeller, Paul O. (1951) ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics (I)’. Journal of the History of Ideas, 12, 496–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kristeller, Paul O. (1952) ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics (II)’. Journal of the History of Ideas, 13, 17–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langer, Susanne (1942) Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Susanne (1953) Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.Google Scholar
McTaggart, J.McT.E. (1908) ‘The Unreality of Time’. Mind, New Series, 17, 457–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McTaggart, J.McT.E. (1927) The Nature of Existence, Volume II. ed. Broad, C.D.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, Maurice (1965) ‘Family Resemblances and Generalizations concerning the Arts’. American Philosophical Quarterly, 2, 219–28.Google Scholar
Nehamas, Alexander (2007) Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Parker, DeWitt (1926) Analysis of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.Google Scholar
Porter, James I. (2009) ‘Is Art Modern? Kristeller’s ‘Modern System of the Arts’ Reconsidered’. British Journal of Aesthetics, 49, 1–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, James I. (2010) ‘Why Art Has Never Been Autonomous’. Arethusa, 43, 165–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rajchman, John (2011) ‘The Contemporary: A New Idea?’. In Armen, Avanessian and Luke, Skrebowski (eds.), Aesthetics and Contemporary Art (Berlin: Sternberg Press), pp. 125–44.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John (1856) Modern Painters, Volume III. London: Smith, Elder & Co.Google Scholar
Savile, Anthony (1982) The Test of Time: An Essay in Philosophical Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, Kendall (1970) ‘Categories of Art’. Philosophical Review, 79, 334–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar