Problems of Contemporary Art
Code
722031056
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Filosofia
Credits
10
Weekly hours
3 letivas + 1 tutorial
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To identify philosophical questions presented and aroused by contemporary artistic creation and their articulation with the aesthetical and philosophical tradition.
b) To develop the capacity to relate the ‘art world’ with ‘extra-artisitc’ theoretical problems of contemporaneity.
c) To increase the capacity to discuss critically the aesthetical proposals of the last hundred years.
d) To develop written and oral formulation of aesthetic experience of contemporary art works and and its relation with theoretical problems.
Prerequisites
None
Subject matter
The course proposes a reflexion on contemporary art considering it as symptomatic of the crisis of modern Western culture and of the traditional aesthetic categories. It pressuposes that this crisis was already reflected in modernism and in the avant-guard experiences, although it has known important changes in the aesthetical proposals of the beginning and the end of the XXth century. With reference to concrete exemples of works of art that belong to the Centro de Arte Moderna of Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, the discussion will focus on what value — if any — do concepts like beauty, genius, critique, taste, imitation and tradition as they were coceived and discussed by post-kantian philosophy still have today. The general questions that will give shape to the course are: can we experience a singular work of art in the absence of common aesthetic categories? and: what does it mean the necessity of an artist to provide himself the discourse that allows access to his works?
Bibliography
-Bernstein, J.M. (1992). The fate of art. Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno. Oxford/New York: Polity Press.
-Belting, H. (1989). L´histoire de l´art est-elle finie?. Paris: Gallimard
-Costello, D., & Wilsdon, D (2008). The Life and Death of Images. Ethics and Aesthetics. Ithaca, New YorK: Cornell University Press.
-Duve, T. de, (1989). Au nom de l’art. Pour une archéologie de la modernité. Minuit: Paris.
-Gueulen, E. (2006). The End of Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-Mondzain, M.-J. (2007). Homo Spectator. Paris: Bayard Éditions.
-Mondzain, M.-J. (2003). Le commerce des regards. Éditions du Seuil: Paris.
-Perniola, M. (2006). A arte e a sua sombra. Assírio e Alvim: Lisboa.
-Pippin, R.B. (2014). After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
-Pippin, R.B. (1999). Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Teaching method
The two first sessions of the course will be devoted to a general introduction of the main topics of the syllabus and will have an expositive form. The next sessions will obey to a seminarial structure, with the reading and analysis of philosophical texts and their confrontation with a selection of passages written by artists. The students will be invited to identify and discuss the formulation of problems of contemporary artistic creation referring them to philosophical questions of our time that , in the subsequent sessions, they will find materialised in a selection of works of the Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Evaluation method
The student´s evaluation will be made on the basis of a written paper of about 12 pages (70%) and of the participation on the discussion in class (30%).