Charles Davis Sep 18, 2012:

Original quotation Danto first wrote these words in "Arthur C. Danto on The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné", from Artforum International, September 2002; I've just checked Artforum's archive, but they don't have the text online. According to the source I quoted in my answer, it reads "Warhol went from being what one of Henry James's characters calls a "little artist-man," on the fringe of the fringe of the art world, to the defining artist of his era".

Danto then used the same sentence again, in a different context, in his book on Warhol, Arthur C. Danto, Andy Warhol, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009, p. 17. Here he very slightly changes the wording to "on the fringe of a fringe of the art world"; also he no longer hyphenates "artist man" (as James did). It doesn't really make any difference, but you may prefer to use the book version.

Charles Davis Sep 18, 2012:

@ Jenni Thanks for your comments on Danto and Warhol, which I've read with great interest. This is a deprecating term, but Danto is surely using it not to express his own view but to refer to how people generally regarded Warhol in the early days; Danto himself regarded him as a supremely important artist, as you say. So you and frankowro are both right, in my opinion.

Jenni Lukac (X) Sep 18, 2012:

Danto doesn't see him as marginal, but the reference is to remark that Henry James made (or would make). If Charles found the original quote, then the issue is settled.

Francisco Vare Sep 18, 2012:

Thanks for the insight and the article :)
I wasn't stating anything, just giving a linguistic opinion based SOLELY in the form of the word. That's why I didn't offer an official answer. Still, the word in Spanish doesn't seem a compliment to me.

Jenni Lukac (X) Sep 18, 2012:

Danto definitely didn't regard Warhol as an artist that "just got lucky," but rather as a sort of genius that took what Marcel Duchamp started with his "readymades" to its logical conclusion. According to Danto, Warhol was not a false artist; the objects that constitute Warhol's work are not so important as the conceptual ideas behind it. You might want to have a look at a Washington Post review of his book on Warhol: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12...
One can understand the idea of Warhol being on the margin of the art world fron two perspectives: that he came from the world of advertising, and that at the moment when he (and other pop artists) began to forge gallery careers, Abstract Expression was the dominant style

Francisco Vare Sep 18, 2012:

pseudo-artist? I agree with Jenni Lukac and maybe marginal artist is a good way to put it, but this question got me thinking for the last 2 hours. The Spanish diminutive '-illa' can convey a sense of irony, and even a sense of deprecation sometimes, at least to me as a native speaker of the language. So I was thinking that maybe Danto wanted to convey the idea of 'non-artistry' of 'false artistry'. What I am trying to say is that maybe, and just maybe, the use of the word periferia here is not in the sense of marginal or obscure. Instead, Danto saw Warhol as an outsider, a false artist, a pseudo-artist who just got lucky.

Am I thinking too much? Maybe I got a philosophical day. I don't even know if what I wrote has any sense, sorry if I didn't make myself clear!