Arthur Danto, Paul Mellon Distinguished Fellow Lecture 1989

(Mellon lecture): Art historian Arthur Danto speaks from a prepared text he calls The Shape of Artistic Pasts: East and West, in which he explores the ideas of imitation, innovation and tradition, using specific examples from Chinese and Western art history, and compares and contrasts these two very different artistic cultures. He also considers when and how artists and the public in the East and West responded to a break in their connection with the past as expressed through their changing attitudes toward art.