The case for beauty in art criticism: meaning, purpose and function Carrasco Barranco, Matilde Art criticism Beauty Danto, Arthur Carroll, Noël Fundos Nacionais através da FCT/MCTES – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia/Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, no âmbito dos Projetos do Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto (IF/UP) – UIDB/00502/2020; Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa (CFUL) – UIDB/00310/2020; Centro de Estudos Humanísticos da Universidade do Minho (CEHUM) – UIDP/00305/2020 Project: Normative aspects of aesthetic appreciation (ANAE). Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad 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. 2025-12-05T08:28:59Z 2025-12-05T08:28:59Z 2023 book part Matilde Carrasco Barranco. “The case for beauty in art criticism: meaning, purpose and function”. En: Vítor Guerreiro, Carlos João Correia e Vítor Moura (eds.) Quando há arte! Ensaios de homenagem a Maria do Carmo d’Orey, Lisboa: Bookbuilders, 2023, pp. 135-156. ISBN. 978-989-8973-61-0 9789898973610 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/108606 10.21747/9789898973610/quan eng embargoed access Vítor Guerreiro, Carlos João Correia e Vítor Moura