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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Summer 2013: Art and politics

Summer 2013: Art and politics

Chicago, New York

Saturdays 1–4PM CST

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
112 S. Michigan Ave. room 920

Sundays 2–5PM EST

New School University
Eugene Lang College
65 W. 11th St. room 258


Summer 2013

Art and politics

• required / + recommended reading


Required preliminary reading

• Chris Cutrone, "The relevance of Critical Theory to art today" (2011)

• Cutrone, "An incomplete project? Art and politics after postmodernism" (2010)


Week 1. The meaning of art | Jun. 22–23, 2013

[Artists'] work is to sustain the critical moment of aesthetic experience. [Critics' work] is to recognize it.
-- Susan Buck-Morss, response to Visual culture questionnaire (1996)

• Susan Buck-Morss, response to Visual culture questionnaire (1996)
+ Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms [PNG]
+ Kant's 3 Critiques [PNG] and philosophy [PNG] charts of terms
• Immanuel Kant, Preface and Introduction, Critique of Judgment (1790) [full book PDF]


Week 2. Modern aesthetics of art | Jun. 29–30, 2013

• G.W.F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics first section:
1 Prefatory Remarks
2 Limitation and Defence of Aesthetics
3 Refutation of Objections
4 Scientific Ways of Treating Beauty and Art
5 Concept of the Beauty of Art
6 Common Ideas of Art
(i) The Work of Art as a Product of Human Activity
(ii) The Work of Art, as being for Apprehension by Man’s Senses, is drawn from the Sensuous Sphere
(iii) The Aim of Art


Week 3. Art and politics in our epoch | Jul. 6–7, 2013

• Leon Trotsky, "Art and politics in our epoch" (1938)
• Clement Greenberg, "Avant-garde and kitsch" (1939)


Week 4. Revolutionary art? | Jul. 13–14, 2013

• Walter Benjamin, "Experience and poverty" (1934)
• Benjamin, "The author as producer" (1934)
• Jürgen Habermas, "Modernity: an incomplete project" (1981)


Week 5. Art and the commodity form | Jul. 27–28, 2013

• Stewart Martin, “Critique of relational aesthetics” (2007)
• Stewart Martin, “The absolute artwork meets the absolute commodity” (2007)
• Theodor Adorno, "Art's self-evidence lost" and "Society", Aesthetic Theory (1970)