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An Ethics and Aesthetics seminar chaired by Diarmuid Costello (Oxford Brookes University)
Noel Carroll - Art and Alienation
Through Modernist practice and aesthetic philosophy, ambitious art has been alienated from social life. In contrast to more
traditional views, morality and politics - for example - are not considered topics to which art qua art has anything to contribute.
Moreover, an adversarial stance toward the rest of society is also a feature, though in a different way, of much postmodernist
art, which takes its business to be cultural criticism. As a result of these tendencies the artworld, with a great deal of
philosophical assistance, has marginalized itself from broader society. Carroll’s talk will diagnose these developments, ciriticize
their philosophical foundations, and make limited suggestions about dealing with this impasse.
Adrian Piper – Political Art and the Paradigm of Innovation
The marketing of new art and the canonization of senior artists by the media, galleries and museums refute postmodernist claims
that originality and innovation are no longer values or goals in contemporary art. Indeed, the rhetoric of innovation in art
plays the same central role in promoting such work as it plays in promoting the creation of desire and the consumption of
commodities and services in free-market capitalist culture more generally. However, the economic and political requirements
of such a culture place rigid constraints on the scope of artistic innovation within it, such that no artistic innovation
is acceptable if it seriously undermines the very traditional power relations. Hence, political art that satisfies those constraints
is rewarded for its impotence, while political art that violates them is punished for its effectiveness. Maintaining a sharp
distinction between innovation and progress clarifies this dynamic.
Noel Carroll is Monroe C Beardsley Professor of the Philosophy of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of A Philosophy of Mass Art, Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays and several works in film theory including Theorizing the Moving Image.
Adrian Piper is a conceptual artist (whose work focuses on issues of race) and a philosopher. Retrospectives of her art have toured major
venues in Europe and the USA in recent years. Her main philosophical publications are in metaethics and the history of ethics,
including the two-volume Rationality and the Structure of the Self. Out of Order, Out of Sight: Selected Writings in Meta-Art and Art Criticism 1967-1993 is a collection of her art writings.
Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£8 (£6 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes refreshments
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