Unnatural Wonders

Arthur C. Danto's urbane, informed, searching essays about art and the art world are the best record we have of the life of the visual arts in the United States today. The Madonna of the Future, the fourth book of his essays to be published by FSG, finds Danto at the point where all the vectors of the contemporary art world intersect: those of traditional painting, pop art, mixed media, and installation art; those of art and philosophy; those of the specialist who comes to the work fully equipped with theory and the connoisseur who encounters it chiefly through the eyes. Through his reviews of major exhibitions and gallery shows, Danto reflects on the work of past masters (Vermeer, Tiepolo), the great painters of the modern period (Dalí, de Kooning, Kline, Rothko, and Johns), and the pluralistic descendants of Andy Warhol who dominate the New York art scene today. Nietzsche, he points out, published an essay called "How to Philosophize with a Hammer"; Danto's own essays are lessons in how to criticize with a feather, so fine and considerate are his judgments of artists and of the nature of art in general.