Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments I: The End of Art? II: The Status of the Art Object Relative to Mere Real Things Before 1800 III: Confronting the Art Object: The Simple Produce of the Common Day A: William Wordsworth: The Simple Produce of the Common Day B: Thomas Carlyle: Natural Supernaturalism C: John Ruskin IV: Leaving the Raft Behind: John Cage A: Recontextualizing Cage: Industrial Supernaturalism, Suzukian Zen, and the Buddha's Raft B: The Simple Produce Changes: The Industrial Revolution and the Crisis of Natural Supernaturalism C: On the Buddha's Raft D: The Ultimate Object E: Ecology: 24'00" Epilogue Notes Index

Reviews

Arthur Danto announced the end of art in his noteworthy Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Harvard Univ. Pr., 1981). Though Leonard (interdisciplinary humanities, San Francisco State) concurs, he attributes the change not to an abandonment of the ``art object'' but to a change in religious sensibilities. As the Romantics turned to nature for the holy (``natural supernaturalism''), they turned away from art as a source of the ideal. Leonard examines Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Ruskin to situate and understand the aesthetics of composer/artist John Cage. The author then argues that Cage's aesthetics must be understood in terms of a religious crisis, which seeks to create an art and music that consumes the art object, much in the spirit of the Buddhist abandonment of form. This provocative and illuminating study of Cage's aesthetics is recommended for academic criticism and philosophy collections.-T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.

John Cage's chance musical compositions and Andy Warhol's Brillo pads evince a distrust of the special status of the art object. Their rebellion against the separation of art and life has antecedents, according to Leonard, in the anti-art sentiments of Wordsworth, Ruskin, Carlyle and Emerson. Wordsworth declared art to be ``but a handmaiden'' in our quest for transcendence through immersion in the everyday. Emerson called paintings ``hypocritical rubbish'' that distracted us from ``eternal art''--the life around us. San Francisco State University humanities professor Leonard argues that, beginning around 1800, a new religious intellectual orientation, ``natural supernaturalism,'' sought human perfection via appreciation of natural beauty and the commonplace. His highly stimulating, impassioned, demanding study engages theorists from Plato to Arthur Danto as it traces this current from Wordsworth through Whitman to Italian Futurists, Cage and conceptual and environmental artists. (June)