Our next Aesthetics Work Group meeting it this coming Thursday, 9/24 at 4:30 (NOT 4:00 as originally planned). Mathew Rabon (Philosophy student, CofC) will present his “Hat Rack David: A Social Ontology of Art.” Matt argues that artworks are social objects. That is, they are objects that owe their existence as the kinds of objects they are to human intentionality. For example, readymades like Duchamp’s Fountain (an ordinary urinal disconnected from plumbing and put in a museum) are indistinguishable from ordinary objects. They only thing making them art is the artist and the artworld treating them as such. Plausible though this might sound, there is a worry about how, or whether, artworks can persist through time. If artworks really are only artworks because we treat them that way, then would Michelangelo’s David stop being a work of art if it was used as a hat rack? Are artworks, in a sense, mortal?

We will meet in 14 Glebe, as usual. 

Looking forward to a good discussion!

jn
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Jonathan A. Neufeld
Department of Philosophy