CATCHING IDEAS OF BEAUTY: A JOURNEY INTO THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART PART I

7.11 - 23.11.2023 Deadline for applying: 30.10.2023

This is an experimental online course that wants to take a closer look at some conceptualizations made on beauty, philosophy of art, aesthetics and the sublime.

A good preparation in the field of art philosophy helps contextualise topics that are too often treated superficially by curators and art critics.
Making art or talking about art cannot be approached without a good knowledge of the philosophers who have been instrumental in developing theories of art.
This is an experimental online course that wants to take a closer look at some conceptualizations made on beauty, philosophy of art, aesthetics and the sublime.
In these first 6 online sessions we will have a closer look at Walter Benjamin, G.W.F. Hegel and Immanuel Kant.
We call these theories and authors classical, which is a word to hide that we forgot about their theories in detail and that we effectively have only wrapped-up conclusions or prejudices about them in our minds. The word “classical” is effectively today a word that means “irrelevant” for our own time and purposes. A “classical” is well known and famous to everybody, but extraneous to us. But the reality is that all these classical theories and texts are much less homogenous and well known as they seem. They are ambiguous and conflictual already for themselves and in their own paradoxes very much relevant for our own ideas of beauty and art theory.
In this series of lectures, readings and conversations we do not have to talk necessarily about the realities of art and beauty today, about single artworks or artists — although we might do if we want to — but our focus is set on concepts of beauty and philosophy of art between 1750 and 1930.