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The Transfiguration of the Commonplace

Disciplines:
aesthetics
philosophy of art

Summary

Arthur Danto's philosophical theory of art arguing that artworks are distinguished from mere real things by being about something and embodying their meaning in a material vehicle — transfiguring commonplace objects into art.

Core Contribution

Artworks are representations with a rhetoric: they are about something (have semantic content) and the way they are made embodies that content; what makes Warhol's Brillo Box art while commercial Brillo boxes are not is relational and institutional, not perceptual.

Historical Influences

Arthur Danto

Intellectual Lineage

No conceptual lineage found.

Allied Works

After the End of Art Languages of Art

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

No recorded minds influenced.

Intellectual Posterity

No conceptual posterity found.

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