What Art Is

Publishers WeeklyBucking the critical trend, Danto, an influential critic and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Encounters and Reflections, attempts to offer something like a succinct and clear definition of art that is capable of spanning historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. This latest work relies heavily on his accomplished career, recapitulating some of his dominant arguments while also occasionally revising them or departing in new directions. The conclusion he reaches—that art is embodied meaning, and that the viewer adds to the creation of art through interpretation—is elegant in its clearheaded take on an endlessly difficult question. This definition is secondary, however, to the route Danto takes getting there, and his asides and far-reaching rhetoric can variously please, illuminate, and frustrate.