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This essay begins with symbolic art in its most emblematic sense – that is, as pre-art – and, after briefly surveying classical and romantic art forms, arrives at the return of the symbolic in the farthest historical and conceptual periphery of art: the moment of the end of art, where the symbolic assumes the role of ‘post-art’. This will allow us to address the theme of the end or death of art, which, like that of the symbol, is central to D’Angelo’s interpretation, both in his 1989 book Simbolo e arte in Hegel and in other works. In rethinking the symbolic, D’Angelo in fact reformulates the thesis of the end of art not as a definitive closure, but as a transition toward philosophy and conceptual language: in short, not a death, but a change of medium for the spirit and of function for art. In dialogue with this thesis, I argue that this ‘weakening’ of the thesis of the death of art at the subjective level is possible only on the basis of its full and irreversible recognition at the objective and absolute level. Recognizing a central role for the symbolic paradigm has the advantage of reaffirming the inherently provisional, unstable, and conflictual nature of any establishment of meaning in artistic form and, at the same time, of asserting for art a function that is difficult to relinquish, however fragmentary and weakened it may be.