Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dell'Educazione

PIC Students ART Workshop

17 Gennaio 2020, h 10-14

Aula Guzzo, Via Po 18, Torino

Aesthetic Authenticity

Francesco Roletti (PIC, Università di Torino)

Sentimentalism as Aesthetic Fallacy: the Authenticity of Artistic Expression

In this paper we offer an analysis of artistic expression, structured around the problem of its possible authenticity. We will proceed by presenting plausible criteria that the artwork must satisfy in order to be considered successful and therefore authentic. These criteria will be derived through an analysis of modern ethics of authenticity. Later, by referring to the work of Francisca P. Carreño, who claims that sentimentality is an aesthetic and moral fallacy, we will propose a definition of sentimental art. We will do this by focusing on the main feautures that seem to characterize the sentimentalist, namely fiction and artificiality. It will be shown that the expressiveness inherent in sentimental art does not satisfy the previously established criteria of authenticity and that consequently, at least in this respect, it should be considered inauthentic.

Alessandra Lanivi (PIC, Università di Torino)

Photographic Authenticities

As for every art, the analysis of photographic authenticity must take into account the specific aspects that characterize it. For the intrinsic reproducibility of photography, in fact, the genetic authenticity of prints is difficultto establish: defining what is a copy or a fake is problematic because the definition of the element that can make a specific print authentic is complex. Because of the close relationship of dependence that photography has with the object of its reproduction, then, the definition of the authenticity of the content of the photo is also challenging: in addition to the authenticity of the photo itself and that of its photographer it’s necessary to decide whether to take into account and how that of the object reproduced. Finally, as with any art, it will be necessary to focus on how the relationship with the public may or may not change the authenticity of the photograph.

Leonardo Pietropaolo (PIC, Università di Torino)

Style and Authenticity: A Possible Development of A.C. Danto’s Notion of Style

A. C. Danto defines style in three writings: The Artworld, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and Narrative and Style. This notion, in his philosophy of art, is grounded on an immediate relation between the artist and the works. “Style is the man”, Danto says, meaning that there are some essential properties of a personality that bank into the works and form what he calls the style of an artist. What we will try to show is that this notion partly relies on a naïve idea of authenticity, and this aspect engenders a static view of style. Through a more dynamic and structured notion of authenticity, taken from moral philosophy (Alessandro Ferrara, Charles Taylor), we will try to improve this notion of style.

Discussant: Adam Andrzejewski (Uniwersytet Warszawski)