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In 1964 Arthur C. Danto, a philosophy professor at Columbia, walked into the Stable Gallery in New York and saw Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes: wooden boxes made to look exactly like the cardboard cartons of soap pads in any supermarket. If a work of art and an ordinary thing can look identical, he asked, what makes one of them art? He spent the next fifty years answering that question. Born in 1924, he had started out making Expressionist prints before turning to philosophy, and from 1984 to 2009 he was the art critic of The Nation. His books run from Nietzsche and the philosophy of history to Warhol, Mapplethorpe and beauty. This guide covers his 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1965–2013 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Arthur C. Danto wrote about thirty books of philosophy and art criticism. The best known are The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), his philosophy of art, and After the End of Art (1997); Encounters and Reflections (1990) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Start with What Art Is (2013), his last and shortest statement of the argument, then read on for what “the artworld” and the Brillo Box argument mean.
Where to Start with Arthur C. Danto
If you want his whole argument in one short book
→ What Art Is (2013) — written in the last year of his life.
If you want his defining book
→ The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981) — the full philosophy of art behind the Brillo Box question.
If you want the “end of art” thesis
→ After the End of Art (1997) — his 1995 lectures at the National Gallery in Washington.
If you want him as a critic of real exhibitions
→ Encounters and Reflections (1990) — essays from The Nation.
13 Arthur C. Danto Books, in Order
Nietzsche as Philosopher
A study that reads Nietzsche not as a poet or prophet but as a philosopher with arguments about truth, language and morality that can be examined in the terms of analytic philosophy. Columbia University Press published a revised and expanded edition in 2005.
Analytical Philosophy of History
Danto asks what historians actually do when they describe the past. His answer turns on “narrative sentences”, which describe an event in the light of something that happened later, such as saying that a war began that no one at the time knew would last thirty years. Even an imagined “Ideal Chronicler” who recorded everything as it happened could not write them. Cambridge University Press published it.
Jean-Paul Sartre
A short introduction to Sartre’s philosophy, from Being and Nothingness to his later Marxism, written for the Modern Masters series. Danto had studied in Paris in 1949–1950 on a Fulbright scholarship. A second edition appeared as Sartre in 1991.
The Transfiguration of the Commonplace
His main work on what makes something art. It opens with an anecdote from Kierkegaard about a painting of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea that is nothing but a red surface, and builds from it a set of identical-looking red canvases that are entirely different things. Since art and ordinary objects can look exactly alike, Danto argues, what makes an artwork must be something you cannot see: what it is about, and how it embodies that. Harvard University Press published it, and it won Columbia’s Lionel Trilling Book Prize in 1982.
The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art
Essays arguing that philosophy, from Plato onwards, has tried to keep art in its place by treating it as mere imitation or mere feeling. The book includes his 1984 essay “The End of Art”, the first statement of the idea he developed in After the End of Art.
Encounters and Reflections
A collection drawn mostly from his reviews for The Nation, where he began writing in 1984, on exhibitions of artists from Braque to Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for 1990.
Beyond the Brillo Box
Essays that follow the consequences of the Brillo Box: if anything can be art, how should we write about the art that came after? Danto argues that Warhol’s boxes closed one long story of Western art and opened a period in which art could take any form.
After the End of Art
The book of his 1995 A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Danto argues that the story of Western art that began with Vasari, of progress towards a goal, ended in the 1960s; after that no style is more historically correct than another, and art becomes plural. He does not mean that people stopped making art. Princeton University Press published it.
The Madonna of the Future
A further collection of his criticism, covering exhibitions of old masters and contemporary artists alike. It applies the “post-historical” view of After the End of Art to particular shows.
The Abuse of Beauty
Danto argues that beauty and art come apart: an artwork need not be beautiful, and a beautiful thing need not be art. He traces how twentieth-century artists rejected beauty, and asks where it still belongs in art. Open Court published it.
Unnatural Wonders
Later essays and reviews on art that works in the space between artworks and everyday things, the gap first opened for him by the Brillo Box. It was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Andy Warhol
A short life of Warhol, published by Yale University Press, that follows his career from commercial artist to Pop art and explains why Danto saw him as a philosophical artist. It is also an account of the 1964 Stable Gallery show that started Danto’s own thinking.
What Art Is
His last book, published by Yale University Press in 2013, the year he died. In a short, plain argument he reduces his definition to two conditions: a work of art has a meaning, and it embodies that meaning, which he calls “embodied meaning”. The examples range from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol.
In What Order to Read Arthur C. Danto
Danto’s books fall into two groups that only meet in the middle. Before 1981 he wrote technical philosophy on history, knowledge, action, Nietzsche and Sartre. From The Transfiguration of the Commonplace onwards almost everything is about art, either as philosophy or as criticism of actual exhibitions.
You do not need the early philosophy to read the books on art. A good order is a short statement of the argument first (What Art Is), then the full theory (The Transfiguration of the Commonplace), then the history (After the End of Art), and finally the criticism, where you can see the ideas tested against real shows.
A reading path
1. What Art Is (2013)
2. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981)
3. After the End of Art (1997)
4. Encounters and Reflections (1990)
5. Andy Warhol (2009)
Everything Else Arthur C. Danto Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 12 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Philosophy
5
5 books · 1968–1989
- 1968Analytical Philosophy of Knowledgethe theory of knowledge
- 1968What Philosophy Isan introduction to philosophy
- 1972Mysticism and MoralityEastern thought and moral philosophy
- 1973Analytical Philosophy of Actionthe philosophy of action
- 1989Connections to the Worldthe basic concepts of philosophy
Art criticism and essays
7
7 books · 1987–2014
- 1987The State of the Artearly criticism from The Nation
- 1994Embodied Meaningscritical essays and aesthetic meditations
- 1995Playing with the Edgeon the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe
- 1998The Wake of Artcriticism, philosophy and the ends of taste
- 1999Philosophizing Artselected essays
- 1999The Body/Body Problemselected essays
- 2014Remarks on Art and Philosophypublished after his death
The years · 1924–2013
Quick facts about Arthur C. Danto
- Known for
- Arthur C. Danto is known for asking why Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box is art when the supermarket carton it copies is not, and for answering that art depends on meaning and theory rather than on how things look.
- 1924
- Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan
- 1964
- “The Artworld”, after Warhol’s Brillo Boxes
- 2013
- Dies in Manhattan, aged 89
- Born
- 1 January 1924, Ann Arbor, Michigan; grew up in Detroit
- Died
- 25 October 2013, Manhattan, New York, aged 89
- Education
- Wayne University (now Wayne State), BA 1948; Columbia University, MA 1949, PhD 1952
- Taught
- Philosophy at Columbia University, 1951–1992
- Critic
- Art critic of The Nation, 1984–2009
- Honours
- George Polk Award for criticism (1985); National Book Critics Circle Award (1990)
- Married
- Shirley Rovetch (1946; she died in 1978), then Barbara Westman (1980)
The red mark is 1981: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, his philosophy of art.
How Arthur C. Danto Writes: From a Box of Soap Pads to a Theory of Art
Danto’s method starts with a pair of things that look the same but are not. In “The Artworld” (1964) it is Warhol’s Brillo Box and the carton in the stockroom; in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace it is a row of identical red canvases. Because the eye cannot tell them apart, the difference must lie in something else. In plain words, “the artworld” is that something else: the background of art history and ideas about art that lets you see an object as a work of art at all. Without it, Warhol’s box is just a box.
From this he draws the Brillo Box argument: if a work of art can look exactly like an ordinary thing, then no definition of art based on appearance, beauty or skill can work. What makes it art is that it is about something and embodies that meaning, which is why his last book can define art in two conditions. The same reasoning produces his idea of “the end of art”: once art showed it could look like anything, it no longer had a single direction to progress in.
As a critic for The Nation he wrote for general readers rather than specialists, with plain sentences, concrete descriptions of the works in front of him and openly stated judgements. His philosophy books are more demanding, but the essays collected in Encounters and Reflections and its successors show the same ideas worked out against real exhibitions.
Watch
Arthur C. Danto on Beauty and Politics
Arthur C. Danto speaks on beauty and politics at an event of the John Adams Institute, with Historische Uitgeverij, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on 22 October 2002, drawing on a chapter of The Abuse of Beauty. From the official John Adams Institute channel.
Frequently asked questions about Arthur C. Danto’s books
How many books has Arthur C. Danto written?
About thirty books of philosophy and art criticism, not counting the many exhibition catalogues he contributed to. This page covers 13 key books, from Nietzsche as Philosopher (1965) to What Art Is (2013), and lists the others below them.
What are Arthur C. Danto’s books in order?
Nietzsche as Philosopher (1965), Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), Jean-Paul Sartre (1975), The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986), Encounters and Reflections (1990), Beyond the Brillo Box (1992), After the End of Art (1997), The Madonna of the Future (2000), The Abuse of Beauty (2003), Unnatural Wonders (2005), Andy Warhol (2009) and What Art Is (2013).
Where should I start with Arthur C. Danto?
What Art Is (2013), a short book that sets out his whole argument in plain terms. Then read The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981) for the full theory, or After the End of Art (1997) for his view of art history.
What is Arthur C. Danto’s most famous book?
The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), his philosophy of art, followed by After the End of Art (1997). His most cited single text is the 1964 essay “The Artworld”.
What does Danto mean by “the artworld”?
In his 1964 essay “The Artworld”, published in The Journal of Philosophy, Danto used the word for the background knowledge of art history and art theory that lets people see an object as art. You cannot see it with your eyes, but without it you could not tell Warhol’s box from a shop carton. The essay influenced George Dickie’s institutional theory of art.
What is the Brillo Box argument?
In 1964 Andy Warhol showed wooden boxes painted to look like Brillo soap-pad cartons at the Stable Gallery in New York. Danto argued that since the artwork and the ordinary carton look identical, what makes one art cannot be visible. It must be that the artwork is about something and embodies that meaning, while the carton simply holds soap pads.
What did Danto mean by “the end of art”?
Not that art stopped being made. He meant that the long story of Western art as progress towards a goal, from Vasari onwards, ended in the 1960s, when art showed it could take any form. After that, he argued, no style is historically more correct than another. He set this out in a 1984 essay and in After the End of Art (1997).
Did Arthur C. Danto win any prizes?
Yes. Encounters and Reflections won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for 1990, and he received the George Polk Award for criticism in 1985. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace won Columbia’s Lionel Trilling Book Prize in 1982.
Is Arthur C. Danto still alive?
No. He died of heart failure at his home in Manhattan on 25 October 2013, aged 89. He was born on 1 January 1924 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Was Arthur Danto an artist himself?
Yes. He studied art and history at Wayne University in Detroit and made Expressionist-style prints from 1947, some of which are in public collections, before turning to graduate study in philosophy at Columbia.
Footnotes
- Arthur Danto — Wikipedia
- Danto, Arthur C. 1924– — Contemporary Authors, Encyclopedia.com
- Groundbreaking art critic Arthur Danto dies at 89 — Times of Israel (AP), 2013
- His Soapbox Was the Brillo Box — The Arts Fuse, 2013
- After the End of Art, catalogue record — Wellesley College Library
- A New Book Starts with the Biblical Passage of the Red Sea — Columbia News
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Is this man some kind of Midas, turning whatever he touches into the gold of pure art?”
— Arthur C. Danto on Andy Warhol, “The Artworld”, The Journal of Philosophy (1964)
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