Danto, a world renown art historian and critic, is speaking about 9/11 from an artistic sensability. His reference to ‘the goneness’ of the Towers evokes their physical and emotional absence. What was his first response? How does he think artists can and will respond?
Choose two or three ideas from his essay, briefly describe what you think he is getting at, and share your thinking about what he is saying.
After 9/11, Mr. Danto did not necessarily consider or expect any response from the art world. As he stated, he experienced the same feelings as everyone else and responded to the event in a similar way; it did not make a difference that he was an artist historian. The art world inevitably responded to 9/11 and Mr. Danto astutely indentified its essential characteristics. In the twenty-first century, nearly everyone has a camera or phone at hand to capture certain events through video or photography. This fact can make the everyday citizen a potential artist. Mr. Danto also outlines that the art surrounding tragedy, specifically 9/11, focuses more on realistic, tangible objects and people and is less romanticized. Over the weekend, channel 4 did a program about a photographer who created new art based on 9/11. He photographed the first responders, firefighters and police officers, and displayed their life-sized pictures in lobby of the Time Warner Building on 59th street. Once again, as Mr. Danto identified, artists attempted to bring the reality of what happened back into the public scene, vis-à-vis the life-sized photographs. Another point, which Mr. Danto pointed out and I had failed to think of, was that the newspapers delicately assembled text and images to portray a certain artistic message. The message focused more on the event and collapse of the towers and less on the memorial and loss of human life. Only after some time five obituaries did make their way into the newspaper. The main points I received from the article was that art surrounding tragedy mostly comes from appropriated objects and images, which have a visceral connection to the event, and that an artistic response is necessary and to be expected.
In his article “Art and 9/11,” Danto focuses on demonstrating how ordinary people respond to tragedy through art. He believes that September 11th marked a change in contemporary art, making the art world more accessible to ordinary people.
When asked how he is feeling after 9/11, he responds simply, “Like everyone else.” He remarks that at first, the thought of creating art during a time like this was the last thing on his mind and he couldn’t imagine that anyone felt differently. However, it is clear by the number of shrines that appeared all over the city that people turned to art to express their feelings of loss and grief. Danto comments on the fact that, “The art world could do nothing better than what the world itself did.” Danto described an installation by Leslie King-Hammond, which was a collaboration of hundreds of shrines created by average people grieving after 9/11. “I was told that when her piece was installed,” Danto said, “people stood in front of it and wept.” The shared suffering of the event made the sight of stranger’s grief palpable for everyone. 9/11 seemed to dissolve the barrier between what was considered art and who could create art. Contemporary art erased the boundaries, allowing, “ordinary, artistically untrained persons to express themselves.”
Danto believes that this tragic event humanized us. People looked to each other to share the grief and pain they felt, the hurt was communicable, and if you hadn’t lost someone or weren’t directly involved, you still felt sympathy pain because, after all, it could have easily been you or your loved ones. “The victim was collective, it was us,” Danto explains. And of course, everyone felt the same loss of innocence and loss of safety. For once, we weren’t looking in different directions and focusing on our separate lives- what was important to one of person was what was important to everyone. Our fate as a country fleetingly converged. You didn’t have to be famous to have others recognize your hurt- everyone was equal and everyone understood.
In an act of true togetherness, New Yorkers shared the burden of their pain by putting photos, candles, and flowers on the wall at the Times Square subway stop. People on their way to work, or school, etc., actually paused for a moment to read the descriptions of the deceased, who were strangers to them. This tragedy brought everyone together through the creation of art, so much so, that New Yorkers took a minute to stop and commiserate the deaths of strangers.
Danto feels that September 11th changed the art world by making the work of ordinary people as illustrious as the work of famous artists. Not only does he feel the art world has changed, but he feels the moral quality of Americans changed by this singular event. While I agree with his description of the “dignity, generosity, bravery, goodness, and heroism,” that aroused after the attack, I believe that this wasn’t necessarily a new beginning of moral consciousness, but rather a demonstration of what Americans are capable of when faced with true crises.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘819381708 which is not a hashcash value.
~Tim Migliore
In “Unnatural Wonders” by Arthur C. Danto, I realized that an event like September 11, 2001 was so shocking that “every artist was in the same state of grief and disbelief” as I was or any other ordinary New Yorker was. Danto felt “like everyone else,” stunned by the tragic event (Danto 125). In p 129 asserts that all artist will “return to their studios, what they returned to was the art they were engaged with before,” meaning that he believes that artists will continue on with their art and lives as they did before September 11, 2011 happened.
Danto’s references to the art in the Times Square subway got to me emotionally. I really like the way he said that ordinary people would stop and read stories of people who died during 9-11. Dead people who these people “they did not know” yet they still stopped and read. Danto also describes that “the victim was collective, and it was us” (Danto 128) This is his message: we are one. A big act of terror in New York City brings New Yorkers together in pain, determination, and a sense of moving beyond the past. Its just like the time Americans all over America came together and flew the American flag in an effort to communicate unity that yes we feel your pain New York City.
I also was intrigued by Danto’s take of doing art of the world trade centers. An artists attempt at producing a painting “would by any case not be by means of painting a picture of the twin towers as they stood… inflects of everything that remains of the Manhattan skyline” (Danto 126). I think the meaning here is that no picture or painting will ever fill the void of 9-11. Nothing can or will ever replace the emptiness of downtown New York. A picture of the sky over ground zero is not needed because the distinct towers, towering over the rest of downtown, will always be gone.
Tim Migliore
Danto immediately wonders how the artists in New York would “deal” with their remorse in their art – does “to deal” mean “to conceal,” “to restrain,” or “to represent” their sorrow in artists’ work in this context? He also feels that because artists “all feel like everyone else,” they should express and represent the remorse of New Yorkers and the world in their artwork. Though, Danto disagrees with commemoration of 9/11 in form of a still life, for example, the memorial light show.
Having shared our 9/11 morning stories in class, I find the phrase “we all feel like everyone else” particularly interesting. Thankfully, none of us were struck hard like the people on the news did on the day of the event. We were disconnected with the event for some because we were too young to understand the gravity of the situation, and for some because we did not belong in the territory of the terror. We all felt detached, but that is how we felt back then. As we grew older, we found ourselves more informed of the importance of the attack, and now, I believe, we do all feel like everyone else. Because this is the one event that we all feel like everyone else, art is able to bring a wide spectrum of audience close to each other and, yet, it still is a personal experience as all art form is.
I agree with Danto on how 9/11 should be reflected in art. The memories and the “meaning,” as Danto words, of the lives survived and deceased equally continue to live in the city. Artists, when reflecting the tragedy, should not undermine the city and the people by victimizing them after the event but rather express the incessant pumping of lives that enables the city to stay alive regardless of the attack.
When I think of the word ‘art’, I usually imagine such grandeur and renowned works such as a painting by Picasso and Mozart’s 25th Symphony. I’ve always thought that artists are living in a different world from where I am living now and that I would never be able to step into their artistic world because I am not that creative and artistic at all. When I finished reading Mr. Dante’s article, however, I found that the art that he illustrates in his writing might not be as difficult and extensive as I’ve always believed, because what he focused on here is how people respond emotionally when they faced a poignant tragedy: 9/11.
When the tragedy happened, all people in NYC, who experienced losing someone or at least heard about the tragedy occurred in their neighborhood, expressed sorrow in their own ways; some people brought flowers to the shrines, some lightened candles in token of respect to the memory of the deceased, and some wept and mourned at the monument. They had their own stories in connection with this event, and expressing their emotion on it was sublimated in art.
By saying “What the instantaneity of the impromptu shrines has taught us is that art, at some level, is in an abiding integral component of the human spirit,” Mr. Dante believes that art has people’s stories and is expressed by ordinary people through ordinary stuffs like, for example in this case, shrines and candle. I learned that art is not a difficult and complicated work, but something that incorporate my own story and spirit in any kinds of work.
Young proposes that ground zero should not only remember the past tragedy, but also celebrate American culture. A magnificent celebration of all the values that terrorists abhor, the memorial should be a site that symbolizes rebirth of American culture after the great tragedy that struck ground zero on that day. With that in mind, Young suggests that the memorial site at ground zero should include plant groves, with 2850 plants for each of the victims who tragically lost their life on 9/11. This follows the holocaust memorials in Israel and the Hanshin earthquake memorial in Japan, where plant-life is a display of the victims’ lives and not their tragic deaths. Moreover, the care required for the nurture for plants symbolizes the work necessary to ensure that memories of victims of 9/11 will not be forgotten. In the end of the essay, Young also suggests a museum for commemorating 9/11.
I agree with most of Young’s ideas, as memorials need to show the vitality of life led by the many victims instead of their violent deaths. However, I believe that the new world trade center needs to be a taller building as suggested by Trump (Joe’s column). However, the design can be anything but the old one as the previous design would just show families of victims the awful horror that took place on 9/11. Instead, a new design is necessary for the building, as it would symbolize the growth of American values of freedom, modernity, etc. since 9/11, as those values are spreading across the globe. Moreover, it will be a symbol of ever-present strength of America, as the larger building would show that the country could bounce back up from any number of tragedies. In this way, the memorial will not only reflect the life of the victims, but also show that the country as a whole can rise back stronger from any tragedy that strikes the nation.
In addition to suggestions for the memorial, Young’s phrase of the “ever changing landscape of memory” suggests that memories of significant events like the destruction of WTC and immigration to the US through Ellis Island are changing as each new generation tries to identify with these events in history. He suggests that the new world trade center will itself be considered a memorial, which will bring importance to all the other memorials in southern Manhattan, instead of overshadowing them because of its height, because of the importance it brings to the region.
Following the 9/11 attack, Mr. Danto questioned how the art world will “deal with” the tragedy. Art normally has a strong connection with the current events of the time, and Mr. Danto knew it was just a matter of time till artists from around the city would try to memorialize the event. Though, as Mr. Danto states “we all feel like everybody else”, and he sensed that by thinking about how to artistically remember the event his thoughts were, as he puts it, “inconsistent”. However in both essays, artists take times of grief and pain to make beautiful pieces of art and try to unite the people with a common emotion. For example, Jacques-Louis David’s, The Death of Marat, had taken a moment of grief in history and created a politically charged work of art. Like David’s Marat, Mr. Danto believes there will be artwork to memorialize the fall of the twin towers and they will be made for years to come.
Attempting to find art made after the 9/11 attacks, he travels up to the Davis Museum to see the exhibit “Obituary” by Joseph Bartscherer. Bartscherer’s art takes obituaries from The New York Times, and arranges them in the shape of gravestones. Mr. Danto believes the shape and the size represent the visual aspect of death itself. The exhibit attempted “to bring to consciousness the way we think of death as public life” by presenting actual death of everyday people. The art exhibit, including the deaths before and after the 9/11 attack, was attempting to not only memorialize the deaths of those who died from the attack but just death as a whole. The exhibit was recognizing the evident ideal of human immortality and with the loss of life humans will grieve.
Mr. Danto believes that the artwork should not just deal with death, but also have a symbolic mourning that everyone understands. The displays of candles, flags, flowers and images, are representative of loss of life. However he does not believe the “Tribute in Light” is the “right kind of response”. The lights in the sky do not have the “symbolic mourning” as the candles, flags, and flowers do. He states memorials should restore the form of life, and not simply point our their “goneness”. The “Tribute in Light” focuses directly on the “goneness” of the towers themselves, and it is only marking the steel and the metal that was lost and not the human life. However, the light show does in fact honor those who have died, mainly because it makes people remember the event it self. Like the candles and flowers, the memorial simply reminds everyone of the loss on 9/11 which in effect reminds us of the loss of human life.
Memorials are not simply for those who lived through the event or experienced it. It relies merely on the fact that people can connect the loss of human life to their own experiences and feel grief for that event. He takes Maya Lin for example. She created the Vietnam Veterans Memorial even though she was too young at the time to experience the grief. But art does not always merely rely on your own personal experiences. Artists are able to extract the emotions of loss and grief and portray these emotions artistically whether or not they lived through the trauma of the event. Mr. Danto believes artists will continue to memorialize the 9/11 attack because it was such a tragic event and art can allow for the symbolic mourning of life.
-Alison Wong
Sorry Reject my former comment, my comment on Danto’s work follows below:
Danto’s first response was that he was feeling like every other citizen in the country because of sadness due to the attacks. People were concerned about the loss of life on that day. In the essay, Danto states that since artists responded like everyone else, their art is also more comprehensible to the public. No longer respecting the difference between “high” and “low” art, artists like Leslie King-Hammond and Joseph Bartscherer were able to connect to people with their moving exhibits that put everyone to tears because of memories of lost life.
Some important facts that Danto focuses on with the article is that painting is no longer the main vehicle for art. He goes on to say that the more important vessels for art were the flags, pictures, and videos that ordinary people made during and after the 9/11 to memorialize the innocent blood spilled on that day. He claims that art is and will be more accessible to the public in the future especially as public expressions of emotions have become a part of mainstream art. I think that Danto’s idea is a great way in which artists now empathize with the public and are accepting of public contributions.
Moreover, Danto also focuses on is that art has actually not changed much due to September 11. Because he believes that art is an integral part of a person’s mind, Danto thinks that art has not undergone a major change due to the violent attack on the US. He explains the argument by claiming that the people, who first made art, including the videographers, have not changed their moral standards of heroism and dignity. Those innate traits allowed them to take the video of the attack on September 11, instead of fleeing the scene due to fear of attack. Hence, he believes that art as a component of the mind has stayed the same. I agree with Danto’s statement that art has not changed since September 11, because of the academic acceptance of art many forms.
Aside from art, Danto comments on the symbolic nature of attacks on World Trade Center. He accepts that terrorists thought of symbolic terms when destroying the twin towers as they were symbols of American power as they stretched to conquer the clouds with their length. However, if the terrorists wanted to eliminate largest number of people, they would have attacked Indian point or any other nearby nuclear facility. I believe that Danto is correct when saying that terrorists were thinking symbolically when they destroyed the larges tower in New York City. The symbolic nature of the World Trade Center made it reflect American greatness, because it was located in America’s most vibrant New York City. Hence, it made a good target in the minds of terrorists.
–Steve Mathew
Danto’s initial response of September 11 was that of a New Yorker, rather than an artist. He expressed his distress through his amazement of the reporter’s question and the mere fact that the phone lines were actually functioning. Danto clearly believed that his identity as a New Yorker came before his duties as an artist.
Soon after he approaches the idea of art when he mentions the same thoughts of other artist friends. Though they describe themselves to be “like everyone else,” Danto also seems to be second-guessing himself. He marvels over the evident “power of the art world” and comes to terms with the fact that it is only natural for people to turn to artists to express the general public’s emotions about the tragic day.
He quotes Clark; “Pictures, in the people’s eyes, are miracles.” He recognized the power of art to “bring back what was thought to be lost.” After visiting several exhibits in memoriam of 9/11 in schools, even one that did not specialize in art and yet had the ability to move crowds, he came to the conclusion that contemporary art has the ability to allow the “artistically untrained express themselves,” making them powerful.
I agree with Danto. I feel that many people rely on viewing many different forms of art- yet, art all the same- to express the emotions that they are unable of expressing themselves. Many people claim that they wish that could express themselves through poetry or paintings the same way others seem to do effortlessly, but by viewing them, they can sometimes live vicariously through these means and feel as viewers, they too have created that art through their emotional connection to it.
Danto’s first response was of disbelief and confusion as everyone else would have been but the way I think that the artistic community reacted in a non-emotional but acted as historians in terms of preserving the event was astonishing to him and myself. He believes that artists do have great impact when it comes to creating art about the historic event because artists can communicate the sorrow of the event on a more relatable level to the public than can news or solid facts about the event. For instance, the ability to have New Yorkers pause “in their transit to and from the shuttle to read the descriptions of people they did not know” in Times Square is a significant act in itself because it shows that people can sympathize with those that died in the same “form of life” which Americans still lead.
Speaking of the form of life, Danto’s mention of terrorists treating the towers or any representative monuments in any country as a symbol of a form of life is interesting. It is that way because the towers themselves were art pieces that symbolized the American Dream/urbanization. Although the attacks were directly addressed towards the lifestyle of a whole nation, the attacks themselves did not extinguish that presence because I feel that Americans understand that their way of life does have a risky part to it and they can openly feel proud of their freedom through art, which is established through the new memorial.
Moreover the value of one’s life becomes more significant as media and artists portray the tragedy because art has a contagious effect when it comes to the aftermath of disasters as exemplified by the captivating effects of King-Hammond’s display of commemorative objects.
The concept of art being an integural part of the human spirit is one that resonates very will with me. Danto suggests that 9/11 didn’t change the way we made art, or even the reasons why. It gave us no clearer insight into what does and doesn’t constitute art. It only proved that we continue making it in spite of life’s pitfalls. A coping process. Also, I thought it was powerful how he noted that he wishes not to have had this realization, given the circumstances that facilitated it.
Secondly, Mr. Lawlor brought up an interesting point. Initially, newspapers “focused more on the event and collapse of the towers and less on the memorial and loss of human life. Only after some time five obituaries did make their way into the newspapers.” Now, I wonder why that is. Was it because we weren’t far enough along in the mourning process to cope with the truth of the tragedy? At that point, could people only grasp a vague, symbolic representation of the event? What ever the answer, I am excited to learn about what artists have done over the last ten years in attempts to deal with the memorialization and the loss of life. Alison talked about this briefly as well. She said that the light show, along with the candles and the flowers, reminds us of the event, which in turn, reminds us of the loss of life. Maybe to appeal to as many individuals as possible, an over-arching symbol like that is necessary. Nevertheless, I agree with Danto that the best way to memorialize this thing would not be to fill the void that the towers left behind. It would be to commemorate the world we know now. The skyline with out the towers, as he says. Thats beautiful.
Lastly, I wonder if it’s true that “we all feel like everybody else.” Danto asserts this without even batting an eye, making it the platform for much of his reasoning. Do we?
It is really fascinating to me that Danto starts off by saying that all of his fellow artists “feel like everybody else”. This is somewhat ironic because art is all about expressing an individual feeling. So how could the attacks of 9/11 be shown by particular artists if they all feel the same?
I don’t think art can justify the exact feelings of the people affected by the 9/11 attacks. Sure an artist can try to express what had happened that day, but the some feelings are too intense to be conveyed through artwork. It is almost like hearing a tragic story from someone who lived through it. Sure, you will feel bad and sympathize for them, but you will never have the feelings that they had because they lived through it and you just heard about it. That is what artwork is to me. It is a story telling how someone felt, but unless it is your art you will not get the same feelings out of it.
Lastly, I loved how Danto realized the force that the 9/11 attacks had on all the people that were involved in them. He brings up the fact that “the poorest he has the right to live, as does the greatest he.” This makes so much sense to me because he is stating that everybody has their own life to live, and they should all be observed. I am a strong believer that no matter who you are or how you survive your day to day life, you have as much of a right to live as the next guy.
What struck me the most about this article was the day it was written on, September 12th, 2001. Most of us, including myself, don’t really think about the day after 9/11. We are either focused on the NYC of September 11 or the NYC of today. Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to compare Young’s idea of a memorial with Danto’s vision of a memorial but I found myself doing so anyway. I do like the idea of a grove of trees being a memorial but I was also attracted to the way the Obituary at Davis Museum memorialized the people who had passed away on that day. Perhaps it is the way that the victims were personalized, something that the trees could not have captured in their essence.
I always feel strange that it’s the fact that 9/11 was caused by people who called themselves Muslims that connects me to the tragedy. I used to live in the Middle East. My parents had been friends with many Muslims parents and I had grown up with their children, playing soccer in the desert plains of Oman. I had never thought of them as different or anymore violent than I was.
Though 9/11 occurred in 2001, I was first told that the attack on 9/11 was by Muslim radicals in 2003 after I began my first year in the US. I first thought of my friends back in Oman and I found myself thinking how could their religion justify this. The young me could not find an answer. In fact, it’s only recently that I’ve come to “peace”, in a sense, with my thoughts about Islam.
Back to Danto’s essay, I agree with Danto’s statement that the true response to 9/11 would have been to continue living the way of life that the hijackers had obviously opposed. Perhaps the US could have chosen a different route rather than more warfare. I might seem insensitive to the families of those who lost someone but from my point of view more killing won’t bring back their loved ones; the victims can only go on living in memories. The life of an innocent American is just as precious as the life of an innocent Muslim.
Daisy Berisha
In his article titled “Art and 9/11”, Arthur Danto skillfully connects tragedy to art in a way that may often go overlooked in society. With a specific connection to the French Revolution, Danto portrays the idea that art is a reaction. It is a reaction to anything in or around the artists’ realm of consciousness, and thus art is shaped by our daily experiences, and, inversely, the daily occurrences and experiences in our lives are shaped by our art. With this in mind, Danto knew that the art world would react with a “vernacular display of candles, flags, flowers” that essentially embody the sorrow of the event.
It comes as no surprise that Danto’s first response to the tragedy of September 11th, 2001 was that of sorrow and disbelief, but it is interesting to note that he realized, almost instantly, the important role that the art world would play in reaction to the event. Interestingly, Danto didn’t really like the memorial light show in downtown Manhattan because he believed that the show was not doing enough to commemorate the loss of life: “It is wrong because it memorializes the structures without restoring the form of life they facilitated.” I find myself agreeing with this statement because the show was a form of artwork, and through it I got the impression that these lights were the shadows of the buildings, and nothing more.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘1526160378 which is not a hashcash value.
Arthur Danto stated his reaction as no different from anyone else’s. He pondered upon the art’s role in commemorating the tragedy, and referred to the slain Marat’s painting to proclaim that art can never replace the loss. Rather than to use art to bring back the World Trade Center, he advised to use art to signify the affect upon the people. According to Danto’s opinion, 9/11 was a blow to the American lifestyle. Everyone felt the same because everyone was affected similarly. Shrines with flowers, pictures, and candlelight made by regular people were enough to serve artistic memorials. This expression was simple and appropriate. Danto ultimately advised that artists can respond similarly to these people, for it was true to the common emotion felt by all- citizens and artists alike.
I agree to his point that art can never replace. Danto referred to T.J Clarks when Clark said pictures can bring the loss back to the world. But a picture or a painting will not change the fact that the towers are gone. The attack happened. I think Danto used the slain Marat’s painting to prove that art can never change reality. Danto’s idea of using the affect upon the people as the theme is certainly a more appropriate, realistic way to memorialize. I also liked his point that the attack greatly affected the American lifestyle. It is certainly true that an attack to a nuclear facility would have made human death more primary to its cause. The attack created a void within every Americans, especially New Yorkers, when they see the empty gap where the towers once stood. Danto successfully proved his point by using this comparison.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘605472539 which is not a hashcash value.
Danto describes his first response to 9/11 as being dazed but also confused at how any artist would channel their feelings about 9/11 into art. Then he states how people look to art as way to bring something lost back into the world even though it cannot do this completely. Therefore this is a failed attempt as seen in the example Jacque Louis David’s Death of Marat which was not able to provide a complete image of Marat after trying to convey him as a martyr in the painting. The contemporary art that Danto describes is very successful in how it “consists in selecting and arranging the things that define ordinary life”. By connecting to ordinary life, art is able to mirrors human life and become an “integral component of the human spirit”. The value of this type of art is much higher than the type like Death of Marat attempts to reproduce but always remains unable to do this impossible task. The art that connects to the human soul like Leslie King-Hammond’s piece is powerful enough to make people cry and this is much more worthwhile. As Gionna said, it is difficult not to connect Danto and Young to each other. Danto demonstrates how art is much more powerful when connected to human life just as Young demonstrates memorials need to celebrate life instead of death, art cannot revive what is already lost.
Meghan Bravo
Author Arthur Danto uses a first hand experience of his on September 11, 2011 to get the main idea of the passage across. That art and “the real world” are intertwined deeply and sometimes maybe even interchangeably. How does a building go from being someone’s workplace, to the sight of a horrific tragedy, and finally to the main image in an artwork? The fact that some people’s first thoughts after 9/11 were how is art going to change or be affected, shows how much art truly is a part of our day to day life.
“It was as if the difference between what was in the art world and what was not had entirely dissolved. The art world could do nothing better than what the world itself did. In truth, I think it could do nothing other than what the world itself did.” (Danto 127) This excerpt from the passage accurately portrays how often reality and art became hard to distinguish. What is art is a question that has no definite answer. It is undeniably a part of daily life throughout the world and might be parts of daily life itself. Through every tragedy and triumph, art is there to capture the moments in history that can never be forgotten.
The lines between art and reality may be blurry but in some areas they are more than clear. At the end of the passage Danto states, “What the instantaneity of the impromptu has taught us is that art, at some level, is an abiding integral component of the human spirit. I have always taken this on faith, but I am not grateful to the terrorism for having provided us with a modicum of empirical confirmation. Given the circumstances, I would be glad never to have known how true it proved to be.” In this statement Danto clearly draws a line, he firstly states that simply 9/11 showed of how much art truly is involved with our lives and our world. Then he went on to say that he is not grateful for the tragedy for showing us this, rather he would have preferred it to never happen to know how true it was. This clearly demonstrates the difference between art and reality, that artworks can only try and capture our emotions but real tragedies and real human loss evokes a pain that no piece of art could imitate nor justify and console.
In his essay, Arthur Danto recalls the weeks following the attacks of September 11th, and brings to attention that in that time frame, everyone seemed to share the same state of emotion: “grief and disbelief”. According to Danto, all artists he spoke to had the same urges to express the exact feelings he did- a unity of emotion, but no clear thought of exactly what this emotion was.
Danto speaks of how the French Revolution, among other historical movements and events, was propelled by artwork; For a more contemporary example, he uses the distribution of posters of Osama bin Laden among radical Muslims. Yet in no way could artwork “give us back the World Trade Center whole”. Danto says this because he feels the emptiness of the void left behind where the towers once stood strips any other aspect of the architecture or other artwork of Manhattan of any beauty it once held. He alludes to the subject of modern art, and how it’s rejection of “pictorial representation” for abstract concepts, prevents it from being a viable method of communicating a general emotion felt by the nation at large. In this aspect, I agree with Danto. The reason the French Revolution was so successful in its use of imagery was due to it being representative- illustrating and conveying emotions to a largely illiterate majority. In our contemporary world, our majority is literate with some sort of education, which transforms art from something universal to something aimed primarily at a bourgeois-like audience.
Danto recalls a visit he’d made to the Maryland Institute College of Art sometime after the attacks and visited a graduate show. There he found a makeshift shrine similar to thousands other that had appeared throughout the city in the weeks following the attacks, made up f photographs, flags and candles. Danto tells us that as people stopped before it and wept, “[i]t was as if the difference between what was in the art world and what was not had entirely dissolved”. This he seems to bring up as an almost ‘solution’ to the previously presented conundrum of attempting to use art to communicate universal ideals it seemed to no longer be able to do in its present state. It’s interesting that the relief and unity which some expected to feel from the works of the artist community was actually produced by those affected themselves. The makeshift shrines were accepted as an art form in those weeks following 9/11 because of the relief they brought to those who came upon them. Any attempt at art so soon would have seemed shallow and insensitive; “There was no room for anything else as art”.
In retrospect, this was a good way to introduce us to the course. This text basically introduced us to the concept of art rising from disaster, a concept which some of us, myself included, was never actually introduced to, despite the fact that war movies are essentially this except it is its own genre and we have a lot of them released in any given year. Tangents aside, it was interesting going back to the main topic of this class and how in times of tragedy art comes in some way a response to what happens in the world, including disasters. The quote on David the painter may have been corny, but it is true to an extent. Expression heals our wounds, and what art but expression.