The Transfiguration of the Commonplace A Philosophy of Art Arthur C. Danto Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, EnglandFor Dick and Peggy Kuhns Copyright © 1981 by Arthur C. Danto All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America wo@9876543 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Danto, Arthur Coleman, 1924— The transfiguration of the commonplace. Includes index. 1. Aesthetics, 2. Art—Philosophy. L Title. BH30.D36 ——700.1_——80-18700 ISBN 0-874-003455 (cloth) ISBN 0-674-00348-3 (paper)Preface A character in Muriel Spark’s novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie—Sister Helena of the Transfiguration, who once was Sandy Stranger, a Glasgow teenager, disciple, and rogue—is described as hav- ing written a book called The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Hers was a title I admired and coveted, resolving to take it for my own should I ever write a book it might suit. As it happened, the events in the artworld which provoked the philosophical reflections in this book were in fact just that: transfigurations of the commonplace, banalities made art. When it seemed I might then have use for the title, I wrote Muriel Spark of the takeover, curious also to know what might have been the content of Sister Helena’s book, which is not made manifest in the novel. Fictional dragons have only the biology their creators choose to give them in the works in which they appear, so Wagner’s silence on the matter leaves logically unanswerable questions about Fafnir’s metabolism and his(?) mode of reproduction. Similarly, works that appear in works of fiction have an indeterminate content, and authors are usually clever enough not to try to write the Great Novels, or whatever, with which their authors are fictionally credited. Still, it seemed to me that Spark might have views on what the book would have been about had she chosen to make it about something, and she replied, to my delight, that it would have been about art, as she herself practiced it. The practice, I suppose, consisted in transforming commonplace young women into creatures of fiction, radiant in mystery: a kind of literary caravaggism. Upon reflection, I have done something more amazing if less impressive: I have made fiction into reality, for what was once a fictional title is now a real one. A lesson may be learned from this curious feat, given the aspiration of artists from platonic times to the present of redeeming art for reality. The possibilities of success are exceedingly limited, are limited perhaps to such things as titles, and it is interesting to consider how little has been achieved in actualizing the dream of centuries. Still, it is nice to have a title which overcomes limits it is the task of the book it denotes to establish, in case someone should think that titles are only what works are called. So much for the title. As to the artistic episodes it seemed to describe so admirably, I suppose one must look first to Duchamp, for it would