The Death of Art: A Philosophical Inquiry

By Monica Seiceanu and Santiago Olábarri Oriol, coordinators of Opium Philosophie - International
Letter 1
Today, neither the disappearance nor the devaluation of artworks can bear witness to its
proclaimed death. Artistic production has perhaps only increased, enlivened by the chants of
its funerary orators. Yet, the very character of the works—their indistinguishability from
quotidian objects, their incomprehensibility—is a sign of a transformation. We have an
underlying understanding of the purpose of the question concerning the death of art, just as
much as of the paradox, it emphasizes. From Malevich’s well-known The Black Square or
Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup, to Tracy Emin’s My Bed, we see that Adorno’s statement
that “[i]t is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore” holds in place.
Together with its status in society, not in the auction house or the museum, art might have
perished. But what is it that once no longer present, makes us postulate the death of art? To
address this question, it is not only paramount to determine what precisely caused art’s demise
but also to determine what art itself might be, its definition: in order to affirm that it no longer
exists, we should first be able to say what it ever was.
According to Hegel in his Lectures on Aesthetics, art should correspond not to a certain
standard of natural beauty (since beauty, as Hegel understands it, is to be found in art and not
in nature), but to humanity’s spiritual needs; art shouldn’t reflect a certain image of reality, but
the freedom of our spirit. In the ancient world, art was doing even more than that: the ancient
people didn’t have a clear and determined conception of spirituality (which is to be seen, for
example, in the indetermination of their religions), and this made it easy for their artistic
creations to surpass that vague conception. The historical point of perfect correspondence
between art and spirituality is represented by the Greek civilisation: they had both a determined
set of gods and evolved artistic practices, and Hegel especially finds that ancient Greek
sculpture represents an absolute form of beauty. However, history did not stop there. In the

By Monica Seiceanu and Santiago Olábarri Oriol, coordinators of Opium Philosophie - International
modern era, art was able to depict the glimmer of gold and man’s subjectivity with more
‘resolution’ and freedom than ever before, yet its content had become prosaic. That freedom
could no longer be expressed within the frame of the canvas. In Hegel’s words, art ‘no longer
affords us the satisfaction of spiritual needs which earlier ages and nations sought in it’. This,
according to him, is a sign of the end of art: not in the sense that people are no longer creating
anything, but in the sense that those creations are no longer able to accomplish their function.
We have thus reached a dead point of art, and humanity should rather turn to religion and
philosophy in order to preserve its spiritual freedom.
But what if we don’t accept Hegel’s definition of art as a means to sensuously express
spirituality? Will we arrive at the same conclusion if we only focus on the artistic practice
itself? In After the End of Art, Arthur Danto expresses his belief that art ended in the sixties –
this period was particularly marked by the emergence of the problematic movements of pop
art, minimalism, and conceptualism. Nevertheless, Danto doesn’t make the claim that art itself
has died, but rather that the history of art has ended: we can no longer recognise a specific
artistic era by some rigid characteristics. Art’s life no longer depends on feeding on its tradition
and current works of art should instead be viewed as post-historical. Jean Baudrillard, who
agrees with Danto on the dating of the ‘unlucky event’, writes in Towards the Vanishing Point
of Art: ‘All of the art’s disappearance, and thus all its modernity is in the art of disappearance’.
In a time where everything has already been done in art, including its own disappearance, what
is there left for us to do? Yet, Baudrillard tells us, we cannot give in to this disappearance and
because everything has already been accomplished, we are condemned to reproduce what is
already done. To return to the beginning. It seems that together with the coexistence of modern
life and art in a dangerously peaceful and commercialized relationship, art is persistently found
to be dead. How is this possible? Is the question of art’s death merely one concerning its

By Monica Seiceanu and Santiago Olábarri Oriol, coordinators of Opium Philosophie - International
definition? And, if we accept the consequence that Hegel’s proclamation of art’s historical
necessity was also fundamentally a guarantee of its contingency, is it then the task of
philosophy to define art? What, if any, is the task of philosophy at the sight of art’s corpse?

Eva Lín Vilhjálmsdóttir – King’s College London
Letter 2
Prima facie art does not seem to be dead. We are surrounded by it almost every day. In the
first open letter, Seiceanu & Oriol point to a paradox: art appears to be more vigorously alive today
than ever: permeating our modern everyday lives, but there is something about art that seemingly has
lost its inherent shimmer, making us postulate its death.
The theorists that postulate art’s end yearn for a time long passed, where art had a better
defined and delineated role within societies and histories. Hegel, thinking back to a time where art
represented spirituality in a perfect equilibrium of expression and spiritual freedom. Danto, longing
for a time where one could characterize art according to the specific factors that it possessed.
Baudrillard, pining for a time when art could genuinely be original. The common thread running
through all arguments is the past. The current cannot succeed at recreating what was done in the past
and, therefore, its future is condemned.
With this worry comes a thought about one of the most persistent ideas in art theory:
the seeming impossibility of defining art. The concept of art is not static, and it never was - it is a
skewed view of the past. Drawn to account for the possibility of a rational linear progression of what
art could be and should become. It is not a pretty picture of the evolution of artistic expression,
spiritual enlightenment, or original innovation in light of the more nostalgic theories of art. Thus,
when art has become something that does not fit the philosophers’ linear picture: consumable objects
or experiences, the philosophers or theorists cry out that art is dead.
The death of the definition of art seems to be a legit worry. The objection “that is not art” has
ceased to be valid, everything and nothing has, therefore, become an art. The definition of it is so
broad that there is no definition. Art history, however, seems to be a continual sequence of artists
breaking the bounds of the definition of art: expanding the question of method and meaning as with
impressionism and readymades. How can it be then that the death of art connects inherently with the
non-conformity of the ideas of the theorists themselves? The questionable and commercialized
coexistence of art and modern life seems to be straying away from something that should be essential
to art. That is, the possibility of separating art from other non-art objects, according to Danto, one can
do so through theory.

Eva Lín Vilhjálmsdóttir – King’s College London
Morris Weitz, in his The Role of Theory in Aesthetics questions the art theorist project of
defining and delineating the concept of art. He finds the search for a set of necessary and sufficient
conditions for something to be defined as art problematic. Art is an open concept according to Weitz,
and he states that: “the very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and
novel creations, makes it logically impossible to ensure any set of defining properties. We can, of
course, choose to close the concept. But to do this with “art” or “tragedy” or “portraiture,” etc., is
ludicrous since it forecloses on the very conditions of creativity in the arts.” He expounds his view
by referring to Wittgenstein’s ideas about language-games from his Philosophical Investigations. We
should shift our questions from what is art to how do we use the concept art? How is the word ‘art’
used in language? We should not look for the last and final definition of art but for how artworks
resemble each other, looking for family resemblance. We could find some paradigm cases of art to
use as a measuring stick, but that is not all-encompassing.
Furthermore, Weitz mentions two ways of elucidating the usage of the concept of art. On the
one hand, there are descriptive usages; when we describe something as 'art' which is analogous to
describing something as a chair. The descriptive questions entail what we do when we might find
similar conditions, properties that are present in most artworks, rather than necessary conditions for
a work of art to be considered art. On the other hand, evaluative usage such as “is this good art?”
concerns how we praise a work of art as a work of art, what conditions constitute an excellent work
of art? In his view, these usages of art are often confused, and this creates problems for the definition
of art. Weitz’s clarification is, however, not bulletproof since it is from 1956, and one could say that
the descriptive usage no longer applies. If we can, in the year 2020, use the word art for anything, we
have to rethink the open concept of art.
If taken this way, theories of art are saved from pointlessness or inanity. Diving into the use
of the concept of art, therefore opens up a whole world of possible ‘living’ definitions of art,
definitions that are ‘forthcoming’. The end of art is, according to my reading of Weitz, a false view
of art: it entails looking at art as a closed concept, defined logically, which is impossible since art is
an empirical concept.
Is it the task of philosophy to define art? On Weitz’s view, yes – but in a different sense than
before. Art might be more active than ever because of the false idea of sufficient and necessary
conditions of art have been uncovered. The musician does not have to be a virtuoso, and visual art