Resisting the Divides: Contemporary Philosophy of Art

This conference on the philosophy of art includes views from contemporary practicing art critics as well as philosophers from both the analytic and continental perspectives. The philosophy of art, as practiced in the Western world, has tended to have two divided homes: in analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. Within the analytic tradition, the philosophy of art has recently undergone a revival with the emphasis on perception. This has more closely aligned art theory to science and questions of biology as well as to issues within psychology. The continental tradition has traditionally drawn upon phenomenology’s first-person experience with its ties to embodied perception as well as the social and historical concerns of the social aspect of art. In the realm itself of visual art, the state of (so-called) post–post-modernism has resulted in both the dissolution of belief in progress and even, according to some art critics, a lamentable stagnation. But many philosophers of the last century have suggested that art needs to be thought of within its social, pragmatic, or epistemological functions, suggesting perhaps a need to think of art outside the confines of modernism’s stylistic revolutions and formalist issues. Relatedly, the pluralism within science could be accessed as model for this enterprise. Multiple views on a phenomenon are required due to the complexity of the enterprise, and the practice of both making art and of perceiving it might be in that category. This conference seeks to bring these strands, the analytical and the continental ones, together and evaluate how to move forward with art theory in an age of globalization.

Conference speakers are open to registered attendees: October 7 and 8, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., 411 Brooklyn College Library.
Keynote speakers are open to the general public: October 7 and 8, 5–6 p.m., Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library.