Whereas in the Beaux-Arts system, medium-identification was unproblematic and aesthetic judgment took the form of “this painting is good”, “this sculpture is elegant”, and the like, in the present system, where anything can be art, there are objects that are not identifiable as belonging to any of the specific art forms and for which the sentence “this is art” formulates the liminal aesthetic judgment that admits them into the domain of art. I shall dissect that sentence, the emphasis being in turn put on “this,” then on “art,” and finally on “is”.

Professor emeritus from the Université de Lille 3, Thierry de Duve is a historian and philosopher of art, and an occasional curator. He is Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Art, New York University, for the fall semester of 2013. His English publications include Pictorial Nominalism (1991), Kant after Duchamp (1996), Clement Greenberg Between the Lines (1996, 2010), Look—100 Years of Contemporary Art (2001), and Sewn In the Sweatshops of Marx: Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp (2012). He recently finished a book of essays on aesthetics, and was during academic year 2012-2013 William C. Seitz Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) in Washington, D.C.