Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, Jason Gaiger (eds.): Art in Theory 1648-1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (2001)

“Art in Theory (1648-1815) provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of documents on the theory of art from the founding of the French Academy until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Like its companion volumes, Art in Theory (1815-1900) and Art in Theory (1900-1990), its primary aim is to provide students and teachers with the documentary material for informed and up-to-date study. Its 240 texts, clear principles of organization and considerable editorial content offer a vivid and indispensable introduction to the art of the early modern period.

Harrison, Wood and Gaiger have collected writing by artists, critics, philosophers, literary figures and administrators of the arts, some reprinted in their entirety, others excerpted from longer works. A wealth of material from French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Latin sources is also provided, including many new translations.

Among the major themes treated are early arguments over the relative merits of ancient and modern art, debates between the advocates of form and color, the beginnings of modern art criticism in reviews of the Salon, art and politics during the French Revolution, the rise of landscape painting, and the artistic theories of Romanticism and Neo-classicism.

Each section is prefaced by an essay that situates the ideas of the period in their historical context, while relating theoretical concerns and debates to developments in the practice of art. Each individual text is also accompanied by a short introduction. An extensive bibliography and full index are provided.”

Publisher Blackwell, 2001
ISBN 9780631200642
1220 pages

Reviews: Richard Woodfield (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2003), Patricia Railing (Art Book, 2004).

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-18)

Alain Badiou: Metapolitics (1998–)

“Metapolitics argues that one of the main tasks of contemporary thought is to abolish the idea that politics is merely an object for philosophical reflection.

Badiou indicts this approach, which reduces politics to a matter of opinion, thus eliminating any of its truly radical and emancipatory possibilities. Against this intellectual tradition, Badiou proposes instead the consideration of politics in terms of the production of truth and the affirmation of equality. He demands that the question of a possible “political truth” be separated from any notion of consensus or public opinion, and that political action be rethought in terms of the complex process that binds discussion to decision. Starting from this analysis, Badiou critically examines the thought of anthropologist and political theorist Sylvain Lazarus, Jacques Ranciere’s writings on workers’ history and democratic dissensus, the role of the subject in Althusser, as well as the concept of democracy and the link between truth and justice.”

First published in French as Abrégé de métapolitique, Seuil, Paris, 1998

Translated and with an Introduction by Jason Barker
Publisher Verso, 2005
ISBN 184467035X, 9781844670352
159 pages

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Jean-François Lyotard: Discourse, Figure (1971/2011)

“Discourse, Figure is Lyotard’s thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan’s influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting and sculpture. Lyotard argues that because rational thought is discursive and works of art are inherently opaque signs, certain aspects of artistic meaning such as symbols and the pictorial richness of painting will always be beyond reason’s grasp.

A wide-ranging and highly unusual work, Discourse, Figure proceeds from an attentive consideration of the phenomenology of experience to an ambitious meditation on the psychoanalytic account of the subject of experience, structured by the confrontation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as contending frames within which to think the materialism of consciousness. In addition to prefiguring many of Lyotard’s later concerns, Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard’s passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language.”

Originally published in French as Discours, figure by Klincksieck, 1971

Translated by Antony Hudek and Mary Lydon
Introduction by John Mowitt
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2011
Cultural Critique Books
ISBN 0816645655, 9780816645657
512 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-11-4)