Matilde Carrasco Barranco Aesthetics and the language of art criticism - ART (Aesthetics Research Torino), Torino 17 Aprile 2018
The next lecture of ART (Aesthetics Research Torino) Philosophical Seminar will be delivered by Prof. Matilde Carrasco Barranco on April 17th at 3 p.m.
Location: Università di Torino Aula Guzzo, Via Po 18 - Torino
Matilde Carrasco Barranco
Aesthetics and the language of art criticism
For decades now, the debate on the role of aesthetics in art criticism often concerns the usefulness of aesthetic terms and this remains controversial. At least since F. Sibley's work reinvigorated the interest in the existence and nature of aesthetic qualities, the main question has been the justificatory power of these qualities in artistic evaluation. Literature on the matter distinguishes judgements that globally assign positive or negative aesthetic value by using terms like "beauty" and "ugliness", and judgments which ascribe more specific-value properties, like "powerful", "eloquent" or "delicate" but also "dull", "garish", or "clunky", which are meant to found the global evaluation of objects. The point is whether aesthetic qualities actually exist and are not the mere expression of a subjective preference, and so to what extent aesthetic judgments that assign qualities to objects are capable of bearing an evaluation with enough normative force, since all of them, qua aesthetic, imply the affective response of the viewer. While for many the critical use of aesthetic qualities would seem undermined by their acclaimed subjective and emotivist nature, my aim is to reinforce such use, however, by looking at the previous role that aesthetic qualities, including their affective component, can play in the critical description of artworks in order to interpret their meaning. This perspective has received much less attention although it was addressed by the latest work of the philosopher and art critic A. Danto, not without loose ends. The further exploration of this new perspective can help us not only to expand the role of aesthetics in art criticism but also question the seemingly expected task of art criticism, that of reaching a verdict that others should follow.
MATILDE CARRASCO BARRANCO is Doctor in Philosophy by the University of Granada. From 2004, she has taught Aesthetics and Theory of Arts in the University of Murcia, where she becomes Senior Lecturer in 2008. In 2012, she was elected member of the Executive Committee and Conference Organizer of the European Society of Aesthetics. Her main research interests include the relationship between aesthetic value and other values of art, art criticism, and art and politics. Her latest publications include "¿Es posible el regreso de la belleza? Estética, Belleza y Política en el Arte Contemporáneo" [ Ágora. Papeles de Filosofía, 36/2, 2017, pp. 151-17], "Valores artísticos y experiencia estética" [en F. Pérez Carreño (ed.) El valor del arte, Madrid: Antonio Machado, 2017, pp. 49-76], "Au-delà du conceptualisme: l'esthétique et l'art d'aujourd'hui". [Nouvelle revue d'esthétique.1-15, pp.149 - 161. 2015]
ART (Aesthetics Research Torino) is a periodic philosophical seminar
organized by the Department of Philosophy and Educational
Sciences of the University of Turin and the PhD Program FINO. It is coordinated by Prof. Alessandro Bertinetto.
ART addresses different topics of the contemporary debate in
Aesthetics: philosophy of beauty, philosophy of the arts, theory of
sensory experience, philosophy of image and imagination, and history of aesthetics.
ART is supported by:
Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sulla Morfologia Francesco Moiso (CIM)
Centro di Ricerca Interdipartimentale di Logica, Linguaggio e Cognizione (LLC)
Centro Studi Arti della Modernità
Laboratorio di Ontologia (Labont)
ART is sponsored by:
Italian Society for Aesthetics (SIE)
European Society for Aesthetics (ESA)