Dr. Deborah Heikes                                                                                                                           Office Hours:
334 Morton Hall                                                                                                                                                   & by appt.
824-2335                                                                                                                                              Email:

Course Texts:

 Required:
 Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts, David Goldblatt and Lee B. Brown, eds.
 Ways of Seeing, John Berger
 Pedagogical Sketchbook, Paul Klee
 Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky

On Reserve at the Library:
 “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin
 “When is Art,” Nelson Goodman

Theoretically it is irrelevant whether an artist employs three-dimensional, linear, pictorial, black-and-white, colored, photographic, or other means to represent something.  –Laszlo Moholy-Nagy  (“isms’ or Art?)

Is art a representational system, even when it appears not to represent? How do we distinguish works of art from natural objects?  Is art merely an imitation of the natural world?  And what is art?  Are we to define art in terms of form, expressiveness, artistic intentions, social role?  Do works of art have any intrinsic meaning?  Or, perhaps, art lacks meaning altogether?  How does art function in human experience?  Are there any determinate criteria for judging a work of art?  Is the value and quality of art works merely a matter of subjective judgment?

These questions, and others, are central to aesthetics and the philosophy of art.  During this course, we will consider these questions and the answers provided by philosophers and artists.  We will begin by focusing on historically significant philosophical reflections on art and aesthetic theory.  With this brief history, we will consider how art reflects certain perspectives on the world and how it functions as a social institution.  In the second part of the class, the primary focus will be on the art and theory of the 20th Century.  Beginning with works such as Duchamp’s “explosion in a shingle factory,” the art of the past century exhibits a sharp break with the representational realism evident in the Western tradition since the Renaissance.  Simultaneously, photography has emerged as artistic medium capable of a representational clarity and precision not possible in other artistic mediums.  We will look specifically at the mediums of painting, photography, sculpture, and architecture, considering the representational and formal functions of each medium.  With respect to each of these mediums, we will examine the nature and role of art in our world.  Finally, we will discuss the controversy surrounding what counts as art (e.g., Duchamp’s “ready-made” urinal or Rauschenberg’s erased DeKooning).
 

Requirements:
 

Test over Aesthetic Theory     (20%)
Project (Berger Text)               (25%)
Project (Painting)                     (25%)
Final Exam/Project                  (25%)

Course Outline: (dates for specific reading assignments will be announced in class)

 Historical Overview: Philosophy and Aesthetics
  Plato, Against Imitation (5-9);  Ion (355-362);  Allegory of the Cave (119-121)
  Aristotle, On Tragedy (363-366)
  Hume, Of the Standard of Taste (483-489)
  Kant, Judgments About the Beautiful (492-500)
  Dewey, Art as Experience  (506-510)
  Heidegger, The Origin of a Work of Art  (62-68)
  Goodman, When is Art? (all)
  Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (all)

Art and Society: The Role of Representation

Berger, Ways of Seeing (all)
Brand, Can Feminist Art Be Experienced Disinterestedly?  (532-35)
Nochlin, Why Are There No Great Women Artists?  (74-82)
Dickie, Art as Social Institution (524-28)
Walton, Categories of Art (511-517)

Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (all)
Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook (all)
Bell, Form in Modern Painting  (10-13)
Greenberg, Modernist Painting (17-23)
Carrier, American-Type Formalism (23-28)
Gombrich, The Limits of Likeness  (35-39)
Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art  (46-50)
Danto, Aesthetics and the Work of Art  (50-56)

Scruton, Why Photography is Not Art (89-94)
Walton, Transparent Pictures (94-103)
Cohen, What’s Special About Photography? (103-110)
Barrett, Photographs and Contexts (110-116)

Langer, Virtual Space (155-159)
LeCorbusier, Towards and Architecture (166-169)
Scruton, Representation and Expression in Architecture (201-207)
Crawford, Nature and Art (207-217)