Abstract

The paper examines Danto's ideas about the “birth of art” from three perspectives: his concept of a natural aesthetic instinct; his concept of the birth of art “in a narrow sense,” in the transfiguration of substitutes (an event or possibility that he dates and places in various ways); and his concept of the constant birth of art, “in a larger sense,” among “artists‐outside‐the artworld.” The paper comments on these notions, some of their sources, and some of their interest and implications, from an art historian's perspective.