The Nation.

Arthur C. Danto

Art Critic

Arthur C. Danto was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1924, and grew up in Detroit. After spending two years in the Army, Danto studied art and history at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) and then at Columbia University.

From 1949 to 1950, Danto studied in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship, and in 1951 returned to teach at Columbia, where he is currently Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy.

Since 1984, he has been art critic for The Nation, and in addition to his many books on philosophical subjects, he has published several collections of art criticism, including Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism; Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992); Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (University of California, 1995); and, most recently, The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000). He lives in New York City.

Currently

  • Unlovable

    May 8, 2008

    The contemporary art world, reflected in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, is themeless and heading in no identifiable direction.

  • Just Looking

    March 20, 2008 Subscribe

    Mapping the difficulty, danger and beauty in the art of Nicholas Poussin.

2007

  • Tilted Ash

    December 13, 2007

    A retrospective exhibition of Martin Puryear's sculptures reinvents MoMA's signature atrium space as a site for spiritual longing.

  • Cinema Studies

    May 17, 2007

    The staged images in Jeff Wall's photographs mirror the fictional glamour of film stills and formal painting.

  • A Mannerist in Madrid

    March 29, 2007 Subscribe

    Jacopo Tintoretto outshines Michelangelo, but his work is rarely seen outside of Venice.

  • Letters

    January 24, 2007

  • Surface Appeal

    January 11, 2007

    Marden and Manet at MoMA.

2006

  • The Body in Pain

    November 9, 2006

    Fernando Botero's latest series of paintings, inspired by the Abu Ghraib photos, immerse us in the experience of suffering in a way the original photographs never did.

  • Stargazer

    September 13, 2006

    Andy Warhol's eye for significant banality transformed the familiar into art. Ric Burns's new American Masters documentary traces the roots of Warhol's smirking genius.

  • All About Eva

    June 28, 2006

    In the late '60's, Eva Hesse's ambitious sculptures challenged the art world. Collected in a new exhibition, her art is even greater today.

  • I'll Be Your Mirror

    April 13, 2006

    The art on display at the Whitney Biennial 2006 doesn't have to tell us it's not morning in America: We know that by watching the evening news.

  • Letters

    February 2, 2006

  • Soul Eyes

    January 19, 2006

    Fra Angelico's genius for depicting the interior life--states of love, spirituality or anguish--is stirring the interest of contemporary artists.

  • Live Flesh

    January 4, 2006

    In no other body of work is the sexuality of human flesh explored as truthfully as in the transgressive, erotically charged images created by Egon Schiele.

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

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