“exclude aesthetics from the concept of art.” Danto’s interest is in art as
philosophy, which is what we are left with after the end of art that he has
announced.^5 The particular aesthetic merits of a work are not important
for the developments of art that Danto cares about, for such merits are
no longer interesting. As he points out: “A lot of Warhol’s works are aes-
thetically as neutral as the personality he endeavored to project”^6 Indeed,
Danto looks almost with a kind of sympathy upon those scholars trapped
within the narrow confines of an approach to art via aesthetics. After
bracketing out aesthetic experience from his discussion of art, he feels
the need, “by way of concession” to add that:I think aestheticians have had far too restricted a range of aesthetic qualities
to deal with—the beautiful and the ugly and the plain. And have assigned to
taste far too central a role in the experience of art. I feel that expanding this
range will itself be an exciting philosophical project. (“The End of Art,”
133)I don’t share Danto’s pessimism regarding the range of aesthetic quali-
ties with which aestheticians work. In fact, I shall argue that a more
careful look at the role of aesthetic experience gives us deep insight into
one of art’s most powerful functions: its humanizing function. I am inter-
ested in demonstrating that art’s humanizing function provides us with
an orientation point even in the midst of dizzying modernist trends in
culture.
Danto is not the only thinker to have linked the end of art to the
development of modernist trends in culture. The end of art that Theodor
Adorno describes is also to be found in the particular conditions of
modernity that give rise to it. For both Danto and Adorno, Hegel is a cru-
cial reference point.^7 Adorno points out that the thesis regarding the
immanent or already reached end of art has been repeated throughout
history, perfected since the modern period, and philosophically articu-
lated by Hegel (though not invented by him).^8 Of course, Adorno is
aware of the irony in these repeated calls that art has ended, the end of
art becomes a sort of never-ending story all on its own, as culture moves
from one crisis to another with such regularity that the familiar and per-
haps by now tired expression of a ‘permanent crisis’ is invoked.
Danto is not troubled by the end of art that he sees, for the end that
comes into view under his philosophical lens is a sort of liberating move,
which can be seen as a new beginning for the history of art, one in which
the future of art is left wide open. As Danto himself reminds us: “It is
not part of my claim that there will be no stories to tell after the end of76 Elizabeth Millán