Abstract

The title of this thesis is a play on Arthur Danto's 1984 essay title The End of Art . Danto states that in the postmodern condition where ordinary objects such as soup cans and Brillo boxes can be considered art, the traditional model of the Western Canon and its progression of styles has become obsolete. Similarly, writing art criticism was traditionally the province of specialized publications, arts sections in newspapers, and professional art critics. In the age of the Internet, however, anyone with access to a personal computer can write and post their own "art criticism" on the World Wide Web. Through an analysis of the history of the genre and of hypertext and its parallels with several literary theories, I will examine three art writing websites. These case studies will provide an overview of the diversity of the art writing that is available on the Internet, with a view to establishing the current state of art critical writing that can be found on the World Wide Web.