Neo-Expressionism

Why does Dantro say that we have reached the end of art when he talks about post modernism?

When Dantro talks about the end of art, he is talking about the end of art as a philosophical debate. Dantro was also a practicing philospher at the time when he made these statements (in the early 1980s). For Dantro, Andy Warhol's Brillo Box of 1964 marked the true end of art. Coming up with some "cutting edge" idea was no longer about coming up with a new philosophical pursuit, it was merely self-gratifying, manufactured to cater to the art market.

I agree with Dantro in this respect. Most of modern art is made to be something that is tangible to sell. The "philosophy" or justification that backs it up is merely a selling pitch. In the modern world, it seems that you can sell almost anything as art as long as it has a good selling point. Artists are rarely experimental merely for the sake of being experimental. So many modern artists are being experimental in order to discover some idea that will make them money. It is "art market research" rather than pure experimentation. As the art market becomes more and more important in the survival of the artists in the 1980s and 90s, the artworks become less of a philosophical conversation and more of a selling pitch. On one side this questions our common notions of art, but on the other it destroys "original" thinking in favor of popular icons.