Roger Ariew is Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Cornell U P, 1999), coauthor of Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy (Scarecrow Press, 2003), editor and translator of such works as Descartes, Philosophical Essays (Hackett, 2000) and Pascal, Pensées (Hackett, 2005), and editor of the quarterly journal Perspectives on Science: Historical, Philosophical, Social (MIT Press). He is currently working on the reception of Descartes' philosophy and science in late seventeenth-century France. He will act as a session chair at the conference.
Dominique Berthet : Docteur en Esthétique et Sciences de l’Art. Docteur en Philosophie. Maître de Conférences à l’IUFM de Martinique. Critique d’art membre de l’AICA. Fondateur et directeur du Centre d’Etudes et Recherches en Esthétique et Arts Plastiques (CEREAP) ainsi que de la revue Recherches en Esthétique. Dernières publications: Les corps énigmatiques d’Ernest Breleur, L’Harmattan, 2006; Les défis de la critique d’art, Kimé, 2006; Hélénon, lieux de peinture, HC éditions 2006.
Jean-Paul Sartre was the author of several texts on Tintoretto but also on artists such as Masson, Calder, Giacometti, Lapoujade, Rebeyrolle, David Hare; artists with whom he socialized and even maintained a close friendship. Sartre's unique approach of the works of these artists, fed upon his intimate knowledge of his friends' biographies, reveals some characteristic aspects of Sartre's philosophy. Are the analytical tools and method used by Sartre in his iconographical commentaries still appropriate for a twenty-first century approach of contemporary art? Do they contribute to a better understanding of present-day art? The purpose of my paper is to assess how much of Sartre as interpreter of pictorial artworks has survived beyond clichés.
Else Marie Bukdahl, D. Phil: Former president of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1985-2005), Head of the Department of Art History (1980-2007) of the same; Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (1985) and of the Norwegian Royal Academy (2007); Officier des Palmes Académiques (1987); Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1998); Books include: Diderot, critique d'art. 2. vols (1980-1982); since 1982 co-editor in Paris of Les oeuvres complètes de Diderot; "Stig Brøgger "Limits of the Unpredictable" in exp. cat. Some Works (1987); The French Academy. Classicism and its Antagonists (1990); The Baroque. A Recurrent Inspiration (1993), Caspar David Friedrich (2005); The Golden Islamic Age in Spain (texts in Arabic); Contributor among things to: The French Academy. Classicism and its Antoganists (1990); Dictionnaire européen des Lumières (1997); The Roots of Neo-classicim (2004); Art and Science (texts in Arabic) (2006).
“
Lyotard between Philosophy and Art”
For more than three decades now, several of the French
"postmodern philosophers" have been highly influential in both
aesthetic reflection and the visual arts. This is notable because
their thought makes no separation between images and concept. This
opening has led not only to an intensification of the creative
forces of cognition in art and philosophy but also to a more
nuanced understanding of the varied possibilities, as well as the
limitations for artistic expression, both in visual and verbal
language.
Lyotard has no doubt that the modern emancipation project, originating in the Enlightenment and
perpetuated in Marx’s dream of global human emancipation, has lost its credibility in the last three decades. The reason for
this is that it has frequently been realized in a caricatured
guise, leading to oppression. In
The Postmodern
Condition, Lyotard calls this project “the grand
narrative” (“le grand
récit”). In our time – in the postmodern condition – “the grand narratives” of knowledge and power
have broken down; this project has also been powerless in
the face of the information society’s digital universe.
Lyotard not only analyzed society’s distinct changes of the
conditions for knowledge and abilities, his work is consumed with
arriving at a form of knowledge he calls “the little
narrative” (“le
petit récit”) or “postmodern
knowledge,” which, as he sees it, “is not simply a tool
of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and
reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its
principle is not the expert’s homology, but the
inventor’s paralogy.
Three years after
The Postmodern Condition was published in French, in 1979, Lyotard finished an
essay, “Painting the Secret in the Postmodern Age, Baruchello” (“La pittura del segreto nell’epoca postmoderna, Baruchello,” 1982), positing that,
exempting the digital genres, the signs and symbols
painters and sculptors employ cannot precisely and intensely be translated through concepts
or information-technology media. Such artistic
devices he calls “stockpiles of narrative energy.”
Analyzing the art of Gianfranco Baruchello, Lyotard describes how
art contains another, more expansive perspective that, referring to
Kant, he calls “the sublime,” defining it as “a
break that occurs like the crash of a
meteorite onto the surface of the book – this
is the ontological earthquake that modernity is all about.”
Everything that the imagination cannot sum up in a single
impression – e.g. the stormswept sea, the infinitely great,
the formless – arouses a sensation of the sublime.
In his essay, “Answering the Question: What Is the
Postmodern?” Lyotard specifies his interpretation of
“the sublime,” while setting out his analysis of
“the postmodern” and “modernity”: “It
is in the aesthetic of the sublime that modern art […] finds
its impetus and the logic of avant-gardes finds its axioms.
“For the artist, the experience of the sublime produced by
the encounter with the infinitely great means a liberation from
pre-established models. In the attempt to grasp the absolute great
– that which cannot be visualized – new principles for
artistic creation are discovered. As a case in point, Lyotard
mentions Malevich’s squares. The various neo-expressionist
currents that emerge in the 1980s are inspired by Lyotard’s
analysis of the information society and his interpretation of it in
the exhibition Les Immatériaux (1985). This particularly
involves American New Image, German Heftige Malerei, French
Figuration libre, Italian Transavantgardia, and Danish Savage
Painting. However, he looks in vain in these movements for traces
of “the postmodern,” which he defines as “that
which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in
presentation itself […] that which searches for new
presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a
stronger sense of the unpresentable.” Artists who seek the
experimental – e.g., Daniel Buren and Joseph Kosuth –
“are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of
what will have been done. Hence the fact that the work and text
have the character of an event.”
In a 1985 essay, “The Sublime and the
Avant-Garde,” Lyotard amends and expands his interpretation
of “the sublime.” Inspired by Burke’s reading of
“the sublime” and Barnett Newman’s view –
in theory and practice – that “the Sublime is
now,” Lyotard construes “the sublime” as “a
symbol of artistic creation and of Creation itself.” Lyotard
was highly interested in contemporary Danish artists and had
discussions with several, including the sculptors Hein Heinsen and
Mogen Møller and the painters Albert Mertz, Stig
Brøgger and Dorte Dahlin. All, in their own ways, are
inspired by his interpretations of “the sublime” and
his aesthetics per se. In “After the Sublime, the State of
Aesthetics” (1988), Lyotard reveals new traces of the
activity of “the sublime” in visual art. As he points
out, during the experience of “the sublime,” certain
qualities of matter imperceptibly slip into the artwork and there
become present, appearing as nuances or “timbres.” They
are an untouchable zone in art, containing qualities that are not
available to dialogue and dialectic. They are present but can never
be translated into any of the ruling discourses in social and
cultural space.
Of all the “postmodern French philosophers,”
Jean-François Lyotard is the one who was most involved with
the visual arts. Widely inspired by visual artists, he, in turn,
influenced their view of art, as well as their artistic activities,
in a multitude of ways. Quite forcefully, he emancipated visual art
from all ideological ties, clearly bringing out its creative and
experimental aspects. Consequently, visual art has enjoyed better
opportunities for crossing pre-established boundaries, opening up
new frontiers, revealing the unexpected and – in new ways and
on its own terms – inspiring ethical and social thought.
Curtis L. Carter is professor of Aesthetics, Marquette University Department of Philosophy, USA, Founding Director and chief Curator Haggerty Museum of Art 1984-2007. First Vice President International Aesthetics Association, 2007. Author of essays on aesthetics of visual arts, aesthetics of dance, curator and catalogue essayist for modern and contemporary art exhibitions including retrospectives of Jean Fautrier and Wifredo Lam. Recent essays on "Avant Garde and Media Arts," "Aesthetics into the Future," "Changing Influences on the Practices of Contemporary Art," and "Dance: Perspectives of the Aesthian and the Performer," "A History of Aesthetics 1966-2006" "Nelson Goodman: Philosopher and Performance." Frequent lecturer international conferences, visiting scholar Beijing universities 2007.
“Philosopher and Artist: Unsettled
Boundaries”
The problem of a philosopher’s relation to the artist
recurs again and again throughout the history of philosophy.
In ancient Greece,
Plato’s writings suggest his ambivalence toward the role of
the artists in his society. In ancient Chinese culture, the roles
of
philosopher and artist
appear often to be merged into one as success as an artist requires
mastery in philosophical wisdom, poetic intuition, and graphic
imagination.
Echoing in part the
views of Plato, Hegel, writing in the nineteenth century also
maintains a division between the roles of philosopher and artist,
and holds that the philosopher supercedes the artist in the
hierarchy of access to knowledge.
The context of a conference on French philosophers and
contemporary art offers a fruitful venue in which to consider the
topic, “Philosopher and Artist: Unsettled Boundaries,”
in the context of the recent thought. There are numerous important
pairings of philosophers and artists working together during recent
times. The result is a body of materials for examining anew the
boundaries between the work of philosopher and artist with respect
to their collaborations in the quest for human understanding.
Merleau Ponty’s
writings on painting, including his well known discussion of
Cezanne’s approach to painting in “Cezanne’s
Doubt,” offers a phenomenological account of the respective
roles of philosopher and artist.
He assigns to painting
an ontological status with the task of presenting an imaginative
access to the forms of phenomena in pre-theoretical experience.
Yet he stops short of
assigning equal weight to philosopher and artist.
The focus here will be on the relation of André
Malraux and Jean Paulhan with the artist Jean Fautrier
and between Gilles
Deleuze’s writings and the paintings of the artist Francis
Bacon.
Malraux and Paulhan
were intimately engaged in dialogue with the artist Fautrier, and
helped to place his art in the context of French philosophical
debates concerning the visual
and literary arts.
Deleuze considers the
conceptual and cultural interface of
philosopher in general
and in reference to Bacon’s approach to painting.
He regards philosophy
and art, together with science, each as creative endeavors of equal
standing.
His view, supported by
in depth analysis of Bacon’s painting and his studies in
cinema and other art forms,
is that philosopher and
artist serve as mediators to one another, helping each other to
express themselves in the process of their respective creations.
The brief examination of the philosophers and artists in
question led to no decisive answer to the question of boundaries
between philosopher and artist. It does suggest that the boundaries
are more elastic and flexible between the two than most
philosophers or artists might suppose.
There is little doubt
that the philosopher who seriously engages the finest artists of
his time will be better equipped to generate a deeper understanding
of the foundations of human knowledge than otherwise discernable
using only the resources of philosophy.
Dominique Château (Thèse d’Etat, 1988 : La Philosophie de l’art comme synthèse critique) is University Professor at Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. His main interest is aesthetics, theory of art and film studies. He has written extensively on the definition of art, visual arts, and the philosophical approach of cinema.
"On Some Atmospheric Relations between French Philosophy and Contemporary Art": Following Arthur Danto when, defining artworld, he says that art requires "an atmosphere of artistic theory," my lecture grounds on the assumption that French philosophy may be considered as contributing to the atmosphere of contemporary art theory. But what concerns me is not only French philosophy as such, as it is in French, but French philosophy as it results after its transformation through American culture; moreover, I will consider the feedback of this change on French philosophy in its native context. Text in English and French.
Jean-Pierre Cometti est professeur émérite à l'Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille 1). Il est également professeur associé à l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Directeur de la collection « Tiré-à-part », auteur de plusieurs livres consacrés à Ludwig Wittgenstein, à l'uvre de Robert Musil, au pragmatisme américain et à des questions d'esthétique, il a aussi traduit en français Nelson Goodman, Robert Musil, Richard Rorty, Richard Shusterman et Ludwig Wittgenstein.. Au nombre de ses ouvrages les plus récents, on compte : "L'Art sans qualités", Farrago, 1999; "Questions d'esthétique", PUF, 2000 (avec J. Morizot et R. Pouivet) ; "Art, modes d'emplois", La Lettre volée, Bruxelles, 2001 ; "Musil philosophe", Le Seuil, 2002 ; "Art, représentation, expression", PUF, 'Philosophies', 2002, "Wittgenstein et la philosophie de la psychologie", Presses Universitaires de France, 2004, "Les arts de masse en question" (dir), La Lettre volée, 2007, ainsi qu'une nouvelle édition de "L'Homme sans qualités" de Robert Musil, parue au Seuil en octobre 2004.
"What’s New on the Markey of Open Ideas?:
Some remarks on the role of supply and demand on the
contemporary conditions of art"
Philosophical ideas and theories play a significant part
in the present artworld. This paper aims to investigate what it
means for philosophy to play such a part, and what needs philosophy
fits. Is there an artistic “demand,” and what does it
consist of? What does philosophy supply for responding to it, and
what is philosophy able to supply? What is at stake, and what
advantage can art and philosophy derive from such a deal?
"Du nouveau sur le marché des idées?:
Quelques remarques sur l’état de l’offre
et de la demande dans les conditions contemporaines de
l’art."
Les idées et théories philosophiques jouent
un rôle significatif dans le monde de l’art
contemporain.
Les
présentes remarques visent à en saisir le sens au
regard des besoins auxquelles elles répondent de la sorte. Y
a-t-il une demande de l’art à l’égard de
la philosophie, et en quoi consiste-t-elle? Qu’apporte
ou que peut apporter la philosophie pour y répondre? Quelle
est la nature des intérêts en jeu, et quel
bénéfice l’art et la philosophie peuvent-ils
tirer de ce commerce?
Richard Conte was born in 1953. Artist and professor at the Paris 1 university, he's director of the research center in visual arts.
"
Quel usage les artistes font-ils de la
philosophie?"
On sait quel usage les philosophes ont fait et font de
l’art.
Mais il
n’est pas interdit de renverser la donne et de poser la
question dans l’autre sens: quel usage les artistes font-ils
de la philosophie? Le motif serait donc d’Interroger
l’art actuel dans ses pratiques relatives à la
philosophie. Si chaque artiste s’inscrit dans une conception
du monde qui peu ou prou, se rapporte à un champ
philosophique, c’est souvent sans s’en réclamer
explicitement. Ce qui m’intéresse ici, c’est la
volonté manifeste de certains artistes contemporains
d’accompagner leur discours de références
philosophiques et d’en revendiquer les effets dans leurs
œuvres. Toutefois, il faut distinguer les artistes qui se
réfèrent volontairement à tout un
système philosophique, de ceux qui puisent dans les textes,
les propos ou postures des philosophes pour nourrir ponctuellement
leur réflexion poïétique. Après une
période durant laquelle les artistes, comme les autres, ont
chaussé volontiers les bottes des sciences humaines,
succédant à une autre où les poètes
étaient les compagnons de route des artistes, c’est
aujourd’hui la philosophie qui semble
représenter l’époque. On peut aussi se
demander pourquoi ce sont plus les textes de philosophie morale ou
politique ou de métaphysique qui intéressent les
artistes contemporains que les textes d’esthétique?
Les artistes attendent
peut-être plus des questionnements sur le sens de la vie que
des réflexions sur l’art. Ils n’ont pas pour
mission d’illustrer une esthétique qui anticiperait
l’existence de leurs œuvres. En régime de
singularité, Ils instaurent leur esthétique et les
critères de son appréciation.
Dorte Dahlin and Joachim Hamou
Dorte
Dahlin, visual artist, founder and general coordinator of
Nomad
Academy Copenhagen, was born in 1955, and lives and works in
Copenhagen. She was educated at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine
Arts 1978-82 and became one of the central figures in the
break-through of New Image/Wild Painting in Denmark. The past 10
years she has been working in the field of site-specific art,
sculpting in public spaces in all aspects of the word.
Joachim Hamou is a visual artist living in Copenhagen. He is primarily working with video narratives. Joachim is involved in many collaborations, notably the creation of the first Danish artist driven TV station, tv-tv. He is also involved in many interdisciplinary collaborations such as urban empowerment projects with Urban Task Force in Copenhagen or theater project with Uppsala Stadsteater in Sweden. See more updated information on hamou.org.
"
A
Visual Note for a Lost Manuscript"
A video artwork by Joachim Hamou and Dorte Dahlin
Production: Nomad Academy, 2007 (15 min)
The jumping-off point of the video artwork is a
collaboration between painter Dorte Dahlin and videoartist
Joachim Hamou. It is based on their 6 shorter and sampled
anecdotes/poems relating to experiences of Revelation, the Arab
World, Lost Distance, Speed, Chinese painting, Rubber-geometry,
etc.
The stories are recorded in English by Indian and Afro
American actors, so the stories will be experienced as
”Global Travelling Stories,” being transformed by
local circumstances such as nationality, gender, age, accent,
space, vocal pitch, etc.
Presenting the videonote supports the idea of an open
source collaboration between people/artists of different
faculties, cultural and civil backgrounds - when meeting on
cultural, social and political (environmental) issues, using art
as a non-imperialistic/democratic tool of action.
The videonote exemplifies the working strategy of
Nomad
Academy.
Marc Jimenez, Professeur d’Esthétique et Sciences de l’art à l'Université de Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne. Directeur du Laboratoire d'Esthétique théorique et appliquée. Publications: La querelle de l'art contemporain (Gallimard), Qu'est-ce que l'esthétique ? (Gallimard) L'esthétique contemporaine : tendances et enjeux (Klincksieck).
"Une esthétique de l’implication"
Il est devenu totalement illusoire de penser que l’art
actuel puisse s’opposer au système technocratique du
capitalisme mondialisé. Toutefois, certaines orientations
récentes de la création artistique montrent que les
questions esthétique et artistique -
considérées sous l’angle de leur dimension
« humaniste » - demeurent
fondamentalement « politiques » au sens le
plus exact du terme.
On admet enfin que l’art
est une activité indéfinissable, rebelle à
toutes les normes d’évaluation traditionnelles,
indocile vis-à-vis des critères habituels, capable de
nouer des relations inédites avec l’éthique,
l’économie, l’industrie et les technosciences.
On peut en conclure que l’exigence théorique et
interprétative à son sujet n’a jamais
été aussi grande. L’esthétique et
l’art du XXIe siècle ont quitté
résolument la sphère idéaliste, coupée
du réel, séparée
de l’existence,
éloignée de la société telle
qu’elle existait encore au XIXe siècle. Des enjeux
cruciaux apparaissent, consécutifs à la
« nouvelle alliance » entre la
création artistique contemporaine et la science. L
’art contemporain, dans ses variantes
technologiques – art biotech, art transgénique, art
lié aux neurosciences cognitives -
soulève le
grave problème d’une possible déshumanisation
et celui d’une perte d’autonomie de l’individu
victime de l’extrême rationalisation du monde
vécu à laquelle procède le capitalisme
mondialisé.
On serait ainsi en droit de parler d’une
« responsabilité éthique de
l’esthétique » plus lourde qu’elle le fut
sans doute jamais dans le passé. Mais l’essentiel est
de prendre conscience que si l’art contemporain partage avec
l’art moderne et classique cette capacité
d’enregistrer les mouvements de la société et
du monde, il y a toutefois une grande différence entre
l’art du passé et la création actuelle.
Celle-ci possède une puissance d’expressivité
qu’elle doit à la multiplicité des
procédures, des matériaux, des formes, des
matières désormais à sa disposition. Cela veut
dire que l’artiste et les œuvres réagissent
comme des sismographes hypersensibles aux forces qui
ébranlent en profondeur, modèlent et structurent le
monde actuel.
Ni l’esthétique,
ni les artistes, ni l’art n’entendent renouer avec les
utopies avant-gardistes du XXe siècle qui
prétendaient changer la vie et le monde.
Nombreux sont les artistes qui tissent chaque jour
davantage des relations inédites et de plus en plus
serrées avec les technosciences – qu’il
s’agisse des nouvelles technologies appliquées au
vivant ou de celles qui tentent d’analyser voire de
prévenir les risques qui planent sur
l’humanité. Seuls les artistes qui acceptent de jouer
l’unique jeu qui en vaille la peine, à savoir le jeu
de la responsabilité vis-à-vis de leur art et de
l’insertion de celui-ci dans la société, sont
en mesure de reconquérir le pouvoir dont les prive
l’univers de l’industrie culturelle et marchande. Ce
pouvoir n’est ni utopique, ni chimérique ni
fantasmatique. Face l’extrême rationalisation du monde
vécu à laquelle procède le capitalisme
mondialisé - rationalisation qui entraîne son lot
d’inégalités et d’injustices - la
responsabilité éthique des artistes
– celle qui
détermine leur réel pouvoir - est certainement
plus grande qu’elle le fut jamais dans le passé. Cette
responsabilité est au cœur d’une
véritable
esthétique de
l’implication.
Christophe Kihm est membre de la rédaction
d’art press et co-directeur de la revue Fresh Théorie.
Il est enseignant au Fresnoy, Studio national des arts
contemporains, ainsi qu'à la Haute École d'Art et de
Design de Genève (Suisse) et au programme MAPS (Master of
Art in Public Sphere) de l’ECAV (Sierre, Suisse). Il est
commissaire d'expositions et prépare une série
d'ouvrages sur les pratiques culturelles populaires contemporaines.
"Art and Economy: An Aesthetic Trouble"
There are two questions associated with the relations between
art and the economy. They define the issues of a theoretical
debate. The first one concerns the political virtues (or not) of
these artistic practices that turn the system’s principles
against the system itself: “Can art use business’s own
arguments and own means in order to disclose the ways business
works?” The second, which is complementary to the first,
points to a paradox since it questions the way in which industry
supports an art world whose propositions are often critical of its
methods, the different functions of art in the economic context.
To answer these questions needs to formulate a hypothesis of
separation. Meaning that art and the economy belong to two separate
spheres. To postulate that art and the economy necessarily belong
to different sets is to immediately detach the artist from the
economic sphere, so that he would therefore consider it from the
point of view of an outside observer. This hypothesis is commonly
held: it is based on a definition of the artist as an
interpreter. The economic sphere, on this view, is but one
of the areas of which he can make a reading. He could just as well
look at science, sport, medicine or social phenomena – as he
indeed does. The distance that he enjoys in this activity endows
the artist-cum-interpreter’s position with a necessarily
critical dimension, which ensures that there is a transition in his
practice between observation and action. According to this
hypothesis of “separation”, the question of the
relation between art and the economy is already settled in advance:
art, as a locus of critique, will also be the place for the
critique of the economy. And, if we accept the validity of this
proposition, then the economic sphere will be ideally positioned
both to solicit and to receive this critique. In accordance with a
conversational model in which the answer is addressed first and
foremost to the person who asks the question, the artist will speak
to the economy as the adviser speaks to the Prince or the Fool to
the King.
But can we rest content with this first vision, which
eliminates all trace of bilaterality from the relation between
economics and art? That would be hard. This equation of an “a
priori separation” is underpinned by two presuppositions
which themselves rest on two debatable postulates: on the one hand,
the existence of an
art system that encompasses all artistic practices; on the
other, that of an
economic system encompassing all economic practices. These
two systems are seen as being autonomous and interfering only in
that specific instance when the subject of art is the economy and
the object of the economy is art.
The problem must be reconsidered, in terms of “trouble
in aesthetics.”
Bernard Lafargue est p rofesseur d’histoire de l’art et d’esthétique à l’université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux.
"
La philosophie troublée par les mille et une
figures de la beauté."
Si le génie grec a créé le paradigme
sculptural de la beauté en tant qu’harmonie de
l’esprit et du corps, du divin et de l’humain,
c’est en lui donnant une infinité de figures propres
à célébrer son régime
esthétique, démocratique et polythéiste.
À cette versatilité de la beauté, habile
à mettre la cité juste en péril, Platon oppose
la beauté sublime du Phèdre réservée au
philosophe et la beauté édifiante de La
République bonne pour tous les citoyens.
Suivant « le naturel philosophe »
platonicien, l’Esthétique de Kant et de Hegel
sacrifient le pluralisme de la beauté au
monotonothéisme du Sublime. Et à bien des
égards, on peut dire que la modernité manifeste la
même haine de la
beauté
compromise dans tel ou tel régime politique. En redonnant
à la beauté son visage ironique et désinvolte,
le pluralisme postmoderne invite aujourd’hui la philosophie
à se déprendre des mirages du sublime et à
renouer des liens avec l’esthétique et les sciences
humaines.
"Philosophy troubled by the thousand-and-one
figures of beauty"
If Greek genius created the sculptural paradigm of
beauty in the sense of the harmony of spirit and body, of divinity
and mankind, it did so by giving it an infinity of specific figures
likely to celebrate its esthetic, democratic and polytheistic
order.
To this versatile
beauty that imperils the city of the just, Plato opposes the
sublime beauty of his Phaedra which only the philosopher may reach,
and the enlightening beauty of The Republic
that is accessible to all citizens.
Following Plato's "natural philosopher", both Hegel's and
Kant's aesthetics sacrifice pluralist beauty to
the benefit of the
monotheist Sublime.
In
many
ways, we can say that modernity reveals the same hatred of beauty,
compromised as it is in this or that political system. By giving
back to beauty its ironic and nonchalant face, postmodern pluralism
today invites philosophy to detach itself from the mirages of the
sublime and to
reconnect with aesthetics and the humanities.
Carol J. Murphy is Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Florida and Director of the France-Florida Research Institute. Her publications include books on Marguerite Duras, Julien Gracq, a translation of Jean Paulhan's essay on Jean Fautrier, Fautrier l'enragé, and numerous articles on contemporary French authors and filmmakers. She recently co-edited two issues of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, on "Verbal, Visual, Virtual: New Canons for the Twenty-First Century." She serves on the Editorial Boards of The French Review and French Forum. She will act as a session chair at the conference.
Marie-Dominique Popelard and Anthony Wall
Popelard est Professeur à
l’université de la Sorbonne nouvelle – Paris III
Vient de paraître "Peindre les idées? Sur la
calligraphie chinoise," Paris, PUF, 2007. Directeur du centre de
recherches APPLA & CO (Approches pragmatiques en philosophie du
langage et de la communication) dont une publication collective
vient de paraître "Moments d’incompréhension.
Approche pragmatique," Paris, PSN, 2007.
Anthony Wall is “University Professor” for French and Literary Theory at the University of Calgary (Canada). Recent publications include Ce corps qui parle : pour une lecture dialogique de Denis Diderot (2005) and “Curiosity Printed on Several Faces, Including Diderot’s” (Diderot Studies XXX, 2007).
"Frank Stella, lecteur de Diderot"
To what extent
is it possible to say of Frank Stella’s “Diderot
Series” that his geometric configurations are in any way
describable as
readings of
Diderot’s writing, either his novelistic texts or his
philosophical treatises? While clearly several contemporary
artists, painters and sculptors alike (Glenn Brown and Yinka
Shonibare) can be shown to re-read, for example, the painted work
of the Eighteenth-Century icon Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
something more complicated than a re-make – or a re-paint
– occurs in the case of Frank Stella who in his visual art
seeks neither to illustrate nor to re-do Diderot the writer.
There is of course the problem of transmedial reconfiguration,
which presents itself rather noticeably in the case of Frank
Stella reading Diderot, something only marginally valid in the
cases of our painter-sculptors re-doing Fragonard. Because Stella
is putting into images the verbal titles (if not the verbal works
themselves) we have an interesting series of cases for which it
is altogether appropriate to prod Paul Ricoeur’s thinking
on reconfiguration. This we propose to do in a dialogue presented
in vivo.
Dans quelle mesure peut-on dire des
« Diderot Series » de Frank Stella que
leurs configurations géométriques décrivent
d’une quelconque façon une lecture de Diderot, de
ses romans ou de ses traités philosophiques ? Alors
que les travaux de plusieurs artistes contemporains, peintres et
sculpteurs (Glenn Brown et Yinka Shonibare), peuvent facilement
être présentés comme des re-make ou des
re-peintures – par exemple de Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
le cas de Frank Stella semble plus compliqué. Il ne
s’agit pour lui ni d’illustrer, ni de re-faire
Diderot l’écrivain. Parler de reconfiguration
transmédiale dans le cas de Stella (la notion de
reconfiguration proposée par Paul Ricoeur pourrait
être retravaillée) n’est peut-être que
marginalement valide dans le cas des peintres-sculpteurs
« re-faisant » Fragonard. Stella met-il en
images des titres verbaux ou des œuvres verbales ? De
ces questions, nous ferons une présentation
dialoguée.
