Calls for papers

In the 2017 a hundred years will have passed since the Society of Independent Artists rejected the work entitled Fountain by unknown artist Richard Mutt. Marcel Duchamp – who was hiding under this pseudonym and had been present during the deliberations of organizing committee – wrote in response to charges presented by his colleagues: “Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object”. This short quotation presents a number of problems any contemporary theory of art should confront: the problem of artifactuality of the work of art and problems concerning artistic (re)production; the problem of a work’s context and the difference between artistic and instrumental value; the challenge of conceptual art for aesthetic theory and also a question of the relationship between an aesthetic theory and aesthetic experience.

Duchamp’s oeuvre functions in a contemporary discourse on art as a paradigm of radical change, as an example of “aesthetic cut” (analogue to the scientific “epistemic cut”). It is an object of study and inquiry of such different philosophers and theoreticians of art as: Arthur C. Danto, Jean-François Lyotard, Thierry de Duve, Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, and Hans Belting. For the ordinary spectator, it is a symbol and example of the alleged “decline” of traditional aesthetic values, showing the aesthetic alienation of the average beholder of contemporary art. We would like to invite philosophers, theoreticians of art, and art historians, as well as art critics, to meditate on Duchamp’s legacy for contemporary art and art practice.

Editor: Piotr Schollenberger
piotr.schollenberger@uw.edu.pl

Deadline for submissions: