VISUAL ANIMALS: Crossovers, Evolution and New Aesthetics
Curated by Ian North
18 & 19 April
Download VISUAL ANIMALS program here
CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ART PROJECTS SA 2007 Project 4 presents VISUAL ANIMALS
AIM: To bring together some key researchers in disciplines usually working at a tangent to each other -notably including art history, analytic philosophy and bio-aesthetics-to discuss new or revised concepts of art that may influence current approaches to the writing of world art history.
Although interchange between the fields indicated has recently increased, art is nowadays most influentially discussed-within the Australian art world, as elsewhere-in terms of Cultural Critique (or 'Theory'), based on continental philosophy and cultural studies generally. Among its myriad insights social constructivism is dominant: the idea that all culture is a purely human and contingent artefact.
In contrast, bio-aesthetic research-the study of art and aesthetics as, in part, a biologically based phenomenon-seeks to explore the trans-cultural aspects of aesthetic behaviour in humans by placing an emphasis on what happens when people are creating or experiencing art. Aspects of philosophy, and especially analytic philosophy, seem pertinent here, reconsidering theories of beauty (for example) in the light of cognitive science and a new understanding of art's possible wellsprings, without resorting to a reductive determinism. A fresh art-theoretical approach, then, might help art historians to embrace the already well-established universalism of more broadly sociological or anthropological approaches to the understanding of human culture, with implications for the writing of both national and world art histories.
It may thus be possible to rehabilitate ideas about, for example, the character and role of beauty in art and the ability of art to transcend cultural and epochal barriers, as well as viable conceptions of art's intrinsic value-perhaps even its notional spirituality. It was a commonplace of the postmodernist/postcolonialist era that 'no-one knows what art is any more', or words to that effect. The discussion proposed might take us at least some distance towards an effective riposte.
Even so, the proposal is intended as a supplement to the theoretical discoveries and insights of the late twentieth century and the now thirty-five year old era of contemporary art following modernism's collapse. It is not conceived as a reactionary agenda, casting beauty or the aesthetic as a stick with which to beat 'Theory'. Nor does the proposal aim to deny all or any of those sociological, political, psychoanalytical or other concerns that dominate current discussions about art and art production. Art may occur in many modes, including beauty's opposite, disgust-even if beauty (perhaps in some radically expanded sense) might, after all, transpire to be a central element in what many individuals and cultures deem to be significant works of art.
The intention of the symposium, then, is to encourage an examination of art from the ground of art experience rather than to impose an abstract ideology. It is not intended as a search for a spurious essentialism, but rather to take into account the realities of the human genome and its evolution according to the laws of nature. Recent art-historical writing has been obsessed with problematic postcolonial concerns about power, gate-keeping and national identities generally. It would do well, arguably, to acknowledge as well the persistent qualities of common humanity, and consequently the similarly enduring aesthetic power of art.
The various speakers, with their widely varying academic perspectives, will have their own stories to tell, some of them, no doubt, qualifying and perhaps contradicting this broad rationale.