The case for beauty in art criticism: meaning, purpose and function

Abstract

In this essay, I have analyzed the objection that Carroll directs at Danto’s view of internal beauty and the amendment he proposes in order to keep its insights and contribution to art criticism. Basically, he recommends that critics seek to identify the works’ constitutive purposes when trying to explain why they are the way they are and evaluate them accordingly. The notion of constitutive purposes is supposed to be able to drop Danto’s condition of aboutness that necessarily ascribes meaning to artworks, because there can be completely meaningless artworks like those that are not about beauty but just are beautiful, meaning nothing else. However, my thesis here is that insofar as it is artistic, such beauty bears expressive meaning intended by the artists.