Abstrakt
In this proposal I shall consider the question of art's ending and its relation to beauty raised by philosopher Sonia Sedivy in her book Beauty and the End of Art. Sedivy observes two tendencies: on the one hand, the twentieth century seems to be marked by a radical openness , on the other hand it seems to ignore beauty and its value.
On the contrary, the twenty-first-century philosophy pays more attention to beauty and therefore it might be necessary to reinterpret the role of beauty in art. Her discussion has two parts: she analyses the problem of the end of art and the role of beauty in this theory and she aims to provide an alternative framework for evaluation of art based on Wittgenstein.
Whereas Sedivy considers the topic broadly, I shall limit myself on her interpretation of Arthur C Danto's end of art thesis and of his opinion on beauty. Sedivy introduces a valuable distinction between substantive and structural sense of ending and points out that it is essentialism which is responsible for Danto's devaluation of beauty in art.
It is true that in The Abuse of Beauty Danto claims that although beauty is a value in a human life, it is only an option in art and not a necessary condition for being one, Danto's last book What Art Is provides us with a new necessary condition for being art describing the skill of an artist. Art has to affect a spectator as a wakeful dream and therefore this condition is responsible for an affective dimension of art.
I believe that this condition is able to accommodate aesthetics qualities of art, beauty included. Therefore this version of essentialism is more favorable to beauty as well as to other aesthetic qualities.