Diarmuid Costello

Aufenthalt

August 2012‒Juli 2013

Forschungsthema

»Art after Aesthetics? A Critique of Theories of Art after Modernism«

Projektbeschreibung

This book I will be working on aims to: i. explain the widespread hostility to aesthetics in art practice and theory since the mid-1960s; ii. undermine such hostility by showing that it relies on an unacceptably restrictive conception of what makes art aesthetic and; iii. propose an alternative aesthetic theory adequate to the challenges of art after modernism. The first aim is empirical: it involves looking closely at the historical uses and abuses of aesthetic theory in the artworld prior to its rejection. The second aim is conceptual: it involves arguing against modernist aesthetics, and showing why various attempts to get beyond or reject it failed to break free of its underlying assumptions. The third aim is substantive: it involves outlining an aesthetic theory capable of accommodating the hard cases (e.g. ›non-perceptual‹ conceptual art) that motivated artworld rejections of aesthetics. Part I focuses on Clement Greenberg, Part II on Rosalind Krauss, Michael Fried, Stanely Cavell, Arthur Danto and Thierry de Duve, Part III on Immanuel Kant. As a whole, the book defends a much ›thicker‹ notion of art after modernism’s aesthetic dimension than is typical.

Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl)

• Art after Aesthetics? A Critique of Theories of Art after Modernism (in Arbeit).
• On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry, London: Routledge. (erscheint 2017).
• »Doing Justice to the Art in Photography«, in: Dominic McIver Lopes (Hg.), Four Arts of Photography, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.
• »Leaning into the Wind: Poiesis«, in: Richard Long' in Aron Vinegar and Amanda Boetzkes (Hg.), Heidegger and the Work of Art History, Surrey: Ashgate 2014.
• »But I am killing them! Reply to Palermo and Baetens on Agency and Automatism«, in: Critical Inquiry, 41:1, 2014.
• »Action and Automatism«, in: NONsite, Issue 11: Photography and Philosophy (Winter 2013/14).
• »The Question Concerning Photography«, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70:1 Winter 2012, S. 101-113.
• The Media of Photography, co-edited with Dominic McIver Lopes (special issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70:1 (Winter 2012)) and Oxford: Blackwell, 2012.
• Agency and Automatism: Photography as Art since the 1960s, co-edited with Margaret Iversen and Joel Snyder (special issue of Critical Inquiry, 38:4 (Summer 2012)).
• »Automat, Automatic, Automatism: Rosalind Krauss and Stanley Cavell on Photography and the "Photographically Dependent" Arts«, Critical Inquiry 38:4, Summer 2012.
• »Kant and Danto, Together at Last?« in: Mark Rollins (ed.): Danto and his Critics, 2nd Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012; pp. 153-171.
• Photography after Conceptual Art, co-edited with Margaret Iversen (special issue of Art History, 32:5 (December 2009)) and Oxford: Blackwell, 2010.
• »On the Very Idea of a "Specific" Medium: Michael Fried and Stanley Cavell on Painting and Photography as Arts«, Critical Inquiry, 34:2, Winter 2008, S. 274-312.
• »Greenberg’s Kant, and the Fate of Aesthetics in Contemporary Art Theory«, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65:2, Spring 2007; S. 217-228.
• »Kant after LeWitt: Towards an Aesthetics of Conceptual Art«, in: Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens (eds.): Philosophy and Conceptual Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; S. 92-115.