The Ends of Art (curated by Euripides Altintzoglou)

Abstract

From Marius de Zayas to David Rabinowitch Richard Huelsenbeck and, and from Arthur Danto to David Kuspit art is declared dead every time it goes through a critical stage in its course of development. Post-modern stylistic plurality posed as the end of art history but recently relational aesthetics placed Pluralism under dispute and in doing so signaled the dawn of a new era. Instead of joining conservative historians in a post-apocalyptic religiosity about the loss of all that was great in art we need to turn to critical self-reflective strategies that echo the spirit of conceptualism.

The intention of this group of works is not to simply demonstrate ways by which there can be art after the ‘end of art’ and thus to seek for means to satisfy Arthur Danto’s uncertainty about the future of art after Plurality by sustaining a purist approach to art history. Rather, each work included in the Ends of Art deals solely with the nature of a given discipline through another and, thus investigates the potential for an even more radical and thorough process of examination of the changing nature of art through interdisciplinarity; expanding the field of each discipline is the methodology of this exhibition, not the aim. At the core of this methodology is the intention to eradicate the last remaining traces of humanism in art history: the dissolution of distinct art disciplines for the means of theoretical analysis.