eBook details
- Title: Undoing the Aesthetic Image (Conference)
- Author : Art Monthly
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 54 KB
Description
It seems that for every generation of artists and thinkers about art there is a favoured philosopher, an avatar for their preoccupations and critical frameworks. A concept and a name begin to circulate around artistic networks. Filtered through articles and citations, a body of thought becomes, often to the surprise of its author, the theoretical touchstone for a discipline he or she may be only remotely connected with. For example, at one end of the 20th Century the French philosopher Henri Bergson found prominence through the attentions of European sculptors; and towards its end psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva found herself coopted into a discourse around feminism, desire and the image. It is exciting when we are offered direct access, live and in person, to those intellectuals who have become iconic in this way but who are known largely through their published works. Yet it can also be a confounding experience. For while the contemporary art world picks out--with magpie-like unconcern for academic propriety--the sparkly bits from the oeuvres of political philosophers, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, cultural theorists and even art historians, things can go wrong when those who have been temporarily lured into the ambit of contemporary art try to return the compliment.