Art, a Baseless MansionA look at Victor Burgin's End of Art Theory

Art as we know it today, like any other human activity, has undergone various conceptual and functional developments - it has been considered craft and technique, becomean intellectual activity, and formed an independent and distinctive framework of itself.Ultimately, it has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to describe whatit is now. New art, or at least a large part of it, is called conceptual art. An art that dealswith concepts. One of the concepts that is most dealt with is art itself: the nature of art.Conceptual art is, in a sense, the final step in the process of art’s self-consciousness.An art that obscures the borders of art (in its historical sense) and philosophy. This amalgamation is, for some, problematic, and it is considered impossible to bring thetwo together. In this conflict, one of the two ends of the spectrum, the artist and thephilosopher, disappears, or becomes the other. This has led some people to speak of theend, or the ends. The End theories encompass various aspects of art; one is art theory.Art and theory have long been interconnected, in different ways, and the end of onemay be the end of the other. Victor Burgin, the British artist and theorist, has discussedthe end of art theory and described how theoretical foundations no longer exist in arttoday. Burgin's theory, of course, stands alongside other end theories, and is indebtedto some of them. This article attempts to summarize the state of the art in reachingthis "end" point, and explain Burgin's arguments with references to other historical andphilosophical issue.