Academic Sessions: Glasgow 2010
AAH Annual Conference 2010
15 - 17 April, University of Glasgow
Heidegger and the Work of Art History
Session Convenors:
Amanda Boetzkes, University of Alberta, boetzkes@ualberta.ca
Aron Vinegar, Ohio State University, vinegar.2@osu.edu
Although Martin Heidegger’s philosophy stands at the heart of the modern critique of metaphysics, his work has, with few notable exceptions, had little impact in art history. This is hardly surprising since he considered the discipline to be relatively untroubled by its two constituent terms ‘art’ and ‘history’, or simply a subjectivist aesthetics barely concealed in the guise of a quasi-scientific method. Furthermore, Heidegger saw modern art as predominately ‘installation art’, that is to say, a form of technological enframement. Yet ultimately, he was unwilling to concede that art could no longer count for us in the deepest ways. In our era when the question of technology is more pressing than ever (and is always related to the question of art), when ecological questions are becoming increasingly hard to ignore in the discipline, when we seem to be immersed in an ‘experience’ economy, and when there is an increasing difficulty of imagining art that is not subsumed within culture, a creative encounter with Heidegger’s thought seems more important than ever.
This panel considers the future possibilities of Art History through a historiographical and theoretical rethinking of Heidegger’s work. It includes papers that deal with a range of practices from early modern art, to modernist painting, photography, and contemporary new media.
Speakers:
Matt Bowman (University of Essex)
Melancholic Distance, De-Distancing, and Spanning in Art-Historical Writing
Diarmuid Costello (University of Warwick)
The Question Concerning Photography
Neil Cox (University of Essex)
Out in ‘the Open’ with Braque and Saint-John Perse: L’ordre des oiseaux, 1962
Nicola Foster (The Open University)
Photography: The Materiality of the Event of Art?
Michael Gnehm (University of Zurich)
Vergegenwärtigung und Geschichtlichkeit: art history and the afterlife of two phenomenological concepts
Hanneke Grootenboer (University of Oxford)
Dwelling in Painting: On Space and Thought in Heidegger and Bachelard
Robert Jackson (Plymouth University)
Heidegger, Harman, and Alogorithmic Allure
Lori Nel Johnson (University at Buffalo, New York)
A Dwelling Place: Sensing the Poetics of the Everyday in the Work of Pierre Bonnard
Lily Mitchem (City University of New York)
The Clearing and the Sphere: Heidegger, Arendt and Space in Art History
Ileana Parvu (University of Geneva)
The Internal Void: Heidegger and the Thing
Philip Tonner (University of Glasgow and Glasgow Museums)
Art, materiality and the meaning of being: Heidegger on the work of art and the significance of things
Bronwen Wilson (University of British Columbia)
Early Modern Portraiture and the Faces of Things