Abstract

Whether art has come to an “end” in the modern age has been a question of interest for generations of philosophers and art critics since Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Beat Wyss takes up this question in the context of a wide-ranging account of post-Hegelian art history and art historians that has now been translated into English. Wyss’s project, whose larger aims can perhaps be better glimpsed from the book’s German title, divides into two major sets of reflections—the first devoted specifically to Hegel’s treatment of art and the second to four critics who share with Hegel some sense of art’s having reached its fulfillment.