The aim of this course is to give students a survey of the main philosophical problems issuing from theories of beauty and art, with a special emphasis on modern techniques. All artworks arise from a phase in which contingency, integration (or montage) of heterogeneous elements and experimentation, play a main role. Artists do not know how their initial intention will appear in the final product. They play with chances and errors and disturbances. The provisional and dynamic moment in art is intertwined with the technical, especially in modernity. The dysfunctional with the functional.

Key concepts to the structure of the lectures are: allegorical, art market, chance, construction, dysfunctional, editing, experiment, fragment, functional, gratuitous, mimesis, nature, representation, sequences, symbolic, technique. Aesthetics emerges as a controversial battleground of philosophical analysis. Class discussion and motivation are fundamental.

Lectures and seminars will serve the purpose to analyze chosen topics (focused on visual art, with a look at theatre, poetry, music and dance). Power Point projections of classical and contemporary artworks are shown and discussed. A few guest lectures and films may be included in the program. 

EXCERPTS FROM TEXTS TO BE EXAMINED IN DEPTH (any good editions or online, or books on reserve in the library):

Form:

Plato, Phaedrus

H. Focillon, The Life of Forms

A. Portmann, "What Does the Living Form Mean to Us" in Essays in Philosophical Zoology

Ramachandran, The Science of Art

Perspective::

G. Alberti, On painting  

P. Florensky, Reverse Perspective

E. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form

Baroque and cinema:

G. Careri, Flights of Love

W.Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age if its Mechanical Reproduction  

End of Art:

F.Hegel, Lectures on Aesthetics  

A.Danto, The Abuse of Beauty

Contingency:

Leonardo, Wonderful Inventions

M. Duchamp, The Creative Act

L. Henderson, Duchamp in Context

A. Breton, Surrealist Manifesto

N.Luhmann, Art as a Social System

P. Virilio, The Accident of Art.

Sublime:

I.Kant, Critique of Judgement

B. Newman, The Sublime is Now

J-F. Lyotard, The Inhuman

REFERENCE TEXT:

L. Shiner, The Invention of Art

EXCERPTS FROM FILMS:

Peter Greenaway, The Draughtsman's Contract

Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dalì, Un chien andalou

Germain Dulac and Antonin Artaud, La coquille et le clergyman

Salvador Dalì and Walt Disney, Destino

The painter in Teorema by P.P.Pasolini

Lars von Trier,  5 Obstructions                 

William Kentridge, Automatic Writing

Students will be able to understand modern art and to master art history from a theoretical perspective. Different theories of art explain different aspects of its practices, but are irreducible to one another. The study of the role contingency plays in the arts will constitute the core argument. The issues at stake will make students aware of the necessity to be critical and analytic in their evaluations of both philosophical arguments and art productions.

Students should plan to regularly attend the class, since we will often broaden the topics contained in the texts to contemporary issues, and since this class is mainly intended to the rousing of students’ personal thoughts and ideas.

Please refer to the university catalog for the attendance and absence policy.

Academic honesty:

As stated in the university catalog, any student who commits an act of academic dishonesty will receive a failing grade on the work in which the dishonesty occurred. In addition, acts of academic dishonesty, irrespective of the weight of the assignment, may result in the student receiving a failing grade in the course.

It is forbidden to use the computer in class.