Inescapable Beauty, Elusive Sublime

"The work of art ... is essentially a question, an address to the responsive heart, an appeal to affections and to minds." –Hegel

"Everything goes past like a river and the changing taste and the various shapes of men make the whole game uncertain and delusive. Where do I find fixed points in nature, which cannot be moved by man, and where I can indicate markers by the shore to which he ought to adhere?" –Kant

This two-quarter program is designed for intermediate or advanced artists and philosophers. Students will choose to emphasize one of three areas: 2D studio work, 3D studio work, or the critical application of philosophical theory. In addition, we will all participate in lectures and seminars. All students will undertake extensive reading in philosophy and aesthetics, as well as explore the visual arts in this context, and all students should be prepared to do upper-division work in critical thinking, reading, and writing. Seminar readings will inform our understanding of aesthetic theories. Writing projects and art workshops will encourage students to explore their own creativity. Students will be expected to pursue their personal work while participating in interdisciplinary critiques.

Together, we will undertake an artistic and philosophical inquiry into the beautiful and the sublime. What is the role of beauty in our creative and intellectual life? How do we experience the sublime? How have these experiences been historically documented and challenged? We will be exploring these concepts not only in connection with works of art, but it is with the work of art that we will most directly experience beauty as an occasion for reflection, and as a demand for thought and engagement. Further, we will ask whether the sublime is something that can be represented at all in art, and whether the attempts to do so gave rise to a certain line of modernist works.

We will approach these and other related questions through an in-depth study of aesthetics. Indeed, the "work" of art is, by some accounts, work that we as viewers must undertake and finish, or if not finish, at least continue. It is in response to this demand for serious but enjoyable engagement that we will pursue a deeper understanding of the concepts of beauty and sublimity, by philosophical and artistic analysis and through practice.

Students will register in one of three specific groups (two-dimensional visual art, three-dimensional visual art, advanced philosophy) in relation to the primary focus of their inquiry. 2D students will focus on aesthetic theories of beauty and the sublime while sustaining a rigorous studio practice in whatever media they choose to work. 3D students will focus on aesthetic theories of beauty and the sublime while sustaining a rigorous studio practice in functional or sculptural work. The 3D work will be centered in the Fine Metals Studio and incorporate fine metals as well as mixed media. The philosophy students will do similarly ambitious work in philosophical aesthetics, with readings likely to include Kant, Hegel, Greenberg, Adorno, and Danto, with special emphasis on the relationship between criticism and philosophy.

In addition to classic texts and essays, students can expect to read books such as: Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime (Rolfe), Sticky Sublime (Beckley), Uncontrollable Beauty (Beckley, Shapiro), and The Abuse of Beauty (Danto).