Home » LAF: Material, Medium, and Sculptural Imagining

LAF: Material, Medium, and Sculptural Imagining

When:
February 27, 2019 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
2019-02-27T16:00:00-01:00
2019-02-27T18:00:00-01:00
LAF

London Aesthetics Forum

Jonathan Gilmore (City University of New York)

Date
27 February 2019, 4.00pm – 6.00pm

Venue
Room 246, Second Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Abstract
The standard charge made against sculpture in the paragone or contest among the arts was that, compared to painting and literature, the scope of what it can represent is limited by a too-close dependence on the actual shape of its depicted subject. Armed with this claim, many theorists (as least as early as Pliny) explained sculpture’s capacity to elicit reactions from audiences as depending on their confusing the sculpture with a real thing it represents. There are, of course, now better ways than positing a delusion to account for our feelings for sculpture. The familiar framework that I adopt identifies the object of our response as not the physical artifact before us but what that artifact elicits us to represent via the imagination.

In this talk, I lay out some features of that framework that apply more or less invariantly across our traffic with different kinds of artworks. I then turn to the grounds or causes of our responses to sculpture in particular. My question is, once we distinguish the imagined object that explains our emotions and other responses from the physical artifact before us that elicits that imagining, does the claim that sculpture is “too close” to its represented subject still hold? When I imagine x in engaging with a sculpture, do I respond consistently with how I would if I were to believe or perceive x, that is, if I were to encounter it as a real thing face to face? I answer No. Rather, I show how certain affective responses to a sculpture can be justified by its material constitution although not justified by the real thing the sculpture depicts.

The London Aesthetics Forum (LAF) is a Forum of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. With lectures on topics in aesthetics and philosophy of art, LAF aims to stimulate philosophical reflection on art. Our events are free and open to all.

View our programme of events, sign up for the newsletter, or browse our archives and podcasts.
Now available, episodes of Aesthetics Bites, a collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum and Philosophy Bites (made possible by a grant from the British Society of Aesthetics).
We are generously sponsored by the British Society of Aesthetics