‘A man with a golden touch’

Every Painter Paints Himself (www.epph.org), 2008

public lecture att KKH in Stockholm, Dec 2021 - to be published

In pursuit of a definition of sculptural practice for categorisation purpose One of the major problems found within the fields of archives, collections and throughout the museum industry is the classification of an item. Often an item is categorised on a subjective basis and as such it becomes increasingly easy for items who's existence spans many categories to become lost in areas where they may not be best placed. A prime example can be found within art, particularly sculpture where the parameters and definitions of what sculpture is change constantly.

2014

My thesis explores the role played by form in our experience of objects of consciousness as art. In doing so, I look at the concept of form as it was understood by prominent philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, as well as form in Immanuel Kant's aesthetics in The Critique of the Power of Judgment. My method is phenomenological and rooted in my experience of making and writing about art, as a student of studio art and of philosophy. To connect philosophical understandings of form to the experience of art in a way reflective of my experience, I show the connection between and influence on art critical understandings of form by philosophical understandings of form. In particular, I focus on Modernist formalism as Clive Bell, Roger Fry and Clement Greenberg articulated it. Modernist formalism played a role in the teaching style and content of art studio classes I attended. The role of form in our experience of art was problematized by Conceptual Art, which movement also deeply impacted the teaching style and content of my studio art classes. The tension I experienced between these two movements in art and its criticism led to my interest in this topic and informed my choice to limit the scope of my investigation to Modernist formalism and Conceptual Art. In particular, I focus on philosophically trained Conceptual Artists such as Adrian Piper and Joseph Kosuth. Changes in the way art was made and understood impacted the understanding of the concept of form not only for art critics, but also for philosophers. I include contemporary philosophical discussions of form by Bernard Freydberg and Rudolphe Gasché to show the movement and interrelatedness between art and philosophy about the concept of form. The conclusion I reach is that form in our experience of art is constructive of that experience if our consciousness of art objects is conceived of as an engaged, rather than disinterested. My rejection of disinterest in favour of engagement is adapted from Arnold Berleant's account of the aesthetic experience. I retain a place for the object as it is given, using H.J. Gadamer's terms "changing" and "unchanging aspects." The object's properties are its unchanging aspects while the shifting contextual ground on which art as an experience is built is the changing aspect. I conclude that form is a way of seeing that requires both of these aspects. Daniel Regnier, and my committee members Dr.s Karl Pfeifer and Eric Dayton. Dr. Regnier provided patient and generous support throughout the process, including hiring me as a research assistant during my second year. During my first year, I enjoyed the support of a Graduate Teaching Fellowship from the Department of Philosophy. In addition, Dr. Leslie Howe, kindly let me temporarily inhabit her home as a house-sitter while I was between places. Without the support of these individuals, and of the Philosophy Department at the University of Saskatchewan generally, I would not have entered graduate school, let alone finally finished this thesis. I must also acknowledge the role played by the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness, from whose staff I learned a great deal about teaching and assessment strategies and at which I eventually secured meaningful, fulltime employment. Finally, I acknowledge the support of my wonderful family and friends. Chapter Two-Form, Engaged Consciousness and context 2.1 Consciousness as Engaged-Arnold Berleant 2.2 Making art 2.3 Ways of Seeing-Art 2.4 Ways of Seeing-Meaning 2.

In the process of creation of learning and creation of Form, in Design, it is often felt that the professional and the student is approaching Art. To distinguish between the two vocations, which is a new apparent social condition, and deviating away from the idiom of "state of Art", it is vital to enquire the probabilities and effect on social psyche. It is not far from actual Art operatives, the effort to bring to a discursive and output, the artefacts speak, for themselves. In such circumstances that is observed it feeling to be art, the Design practicenor feels 1, that the output, are Art abstractions. This only occurs, when the creative has not had an experience as Art. Thus the situated feeling of the creative, due to the abstract nature of the work output, feels, is Art. Needing a definition of what Art is, which has been an endeavor since language was generated, and here too the writer would try the futile path, as a child to an adult, emulating as a creative proctor as to Master the Art of Criticism. When though a creative is operating through Design and any other wise by providing a working and a "felt" definition of Art, the purpose of the abstraction is to bring into a viewer a condition of critical thought, of those stimulated from the artefact. Since, in Form practice, the output communication is also abstraction, the similarity is felt. Greater the amplitude of the abstraction, more of that "art feeling" 2 , occurs. It is possible that Form becomes so abstract that, it is able to evoke at the thinking mechanisms of the viewer, minutiae of subtle and critical sensations, from self. It starts to regurgitate the abstract thinking mechanisms. Therefore, it needs a, situated even as a boundary condition, the approach to Art, visa -vis approach to Form. Good art would have good Form, through vice-versa might be rarely true. Form is condition of an artefact, that catalyzes as mentioned, abstract feelings. It is then the beginning of a process of critical thinking, and Form, is the initial stages of cognition and resolution of those crucial aspects. Since, at such time the perception of Form is attributed, there are not enough factual and operative structural facts, that can be easily verified, otherwise Form would have been purely a material science. Form explores the effect of shapes, volume and also colour(every medium has its own elements), on the psyche of humans, and its ability and recipe to bring to the priority of thinking, criticalities. In those respect, it is easily decipherable the difference of Art and Form, as the nature of criticalities that either evokes. Art has always been a social artefact, and Form an individuated observation, that in either case is a the placement of Self, within the enquiry or criticality. As a secondary criticality, as in Art and so too in Form, the "Self" gets enquired, and that itself, is an Art Utility. Form, has that purpose differing from Art, that it recalls the sensorial experiences,

IAEME PUBLICATION, 2020

One of the major topics of discussion apropos of aesthetic appreciation is the form of beauty. We can identify a person, an animal, or a flower, reflecting certain features of their beauty. What characteristics do they share, which give them that status? One of the main problems that emerged was concerned with the definition of "form". The first gap is related to the "demarcation" problem of form, whether a form is confined by boundaries or limits, like a frame or lines, or the concept of form should be the ambient environment extending beyond the bounding lines? Furthermore, how much extension should have been considered to call it a "form"? To the incertitude of beauty form, we need also to include agreements and disagreements related to the solid Pythagorean tradition. The question is-Can we evaluate a beauty form only through its perfection and symmetry? The first tentative to answer the disoriented domain, has been covered by Clive Bell, who suggested that beautiful forms have to convey something meaningful; not all forms are able to convey a meaning, only a "significant form" has the gift of transmission to convey the "aesthetic experience". We also studied how theories of form have to consider the thesis of the inseparability of container and its very quintessence. The internal form cannot be segregated from the external one-what is seen externally is a reflection of the internal viewpoint. The interesting point of reflection remains Kant's theory of sublime, according to which the sublime should be considered formless. What is shocking cannot belong to any cognitive category. If on the one hand, Kant claims that the sublime is formless, then the theory of Bell's significant form remains inapplicable to the sublime. According to Clive Bell, everything we see should have a significant form, so the sublime remains an area of further analysis. Albeit Bell relates the concept to visual form, we can work on the margins to expand the concept of form to the sublime, as a container of significance.

Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 3rd ed., ed. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (Routledge, forthcoming)

Sherri Irvin Sculpture has received comparatively little attention from philosophers of art. However, sculpture, in its classical and contemporary forms, raises distinctive questions about the ontology, representational character and appreciation of art, and is thus well worth attending to. DEFINING SCULPTURE Before the turn of the twentieth century, nearly all sculptures in the Western fine art tradition were three--dimensional representations of recognizable objects, most often human figures. Most sculptures were freestanding objects, though bas--relief sculpture on buildings and altarpieces also constituted a notable form. Sculptures were typically static objects made of durable materials such as stone, bronze, clay and wood. But over the past century, the range of sculptural materials, subject matters and practices has exploded. Many sculptures, such as the abstract works of Barbara Hepworth or Louise Nevelson, are not obviously representations of objects, even imaginary ones. Kinetic sculptures, unlike their static predecessors, involve movement and, sometimes, sound elements. Installation artworks frequently involve an immersive environment that we explore by moving through it, rather than an object that we view by circling it; and they may incorporate multimedia elements such as film and video. Earthworks involve interventions, sometimes on a very large scale, in exterior landscapes. I favor a treatment of sculpture that includes all of these developments, since they are outgrowths of earlier sculptural traditions and practices. I also aim to maintain the traditional divisions separating sculpture from painting and architecture, and to distinguish sculpture from performance art, which raises interesting but distinct issues. Sculptures must also be distinguished from three--dimensional non--art objects, no small feat now that artists have begun to incorporate a wide array of artifacts into their work. Sometimes a snow shovel is just a snow shovel; other times it is Marcel Duchamp's (1915) In Advance of the Broken Arm. A simple, neat definition of sculpture is thus precluded by the great diversity of sculptural works and by the complex contours of the boundaries that distinguish sculpture from other domains, which are the product more of historical traditions and practices than of rational calculation. Moreover, there is no defining sculpture without having already made some decisions about what to include, as I have indicated above. And once those decisions have been made, much inquiry about sculpture could proceed-and has proceeded-by looking at a variety of cases without trying to unify them under a definition.

2001

1 I use the slightly less contentious term 'qualities' rather than 'properties' in the hope of avoiding discussions of whether artworks can actually possess properties, or that there can be real, objective properties of things independent of us.

nonsite.org, 2017

Formalism in the visual arts won’t quite go away. Attacked by many as a solipsistic ‘aestheticist’ position, it is just as often countered that any true attention to the way that works of art ‘work’ is impossible without an appeal to form. This article examines both sides, attempting to explain why this divide has come about and to contribute to an explanation of what’s at stake in the latter (more positive) appeal to form. Literature on the historicist claims of formalism is discussed, with a unifying aspect of many formalisms found in form’s role - as the element in between producing artist and consuming viewer - in a very limited sense of communication. The article concludes with reflections on the practicalities and consequences of ‘form’ when taken to be the basis of the ability to recreate or recuperate the original functioning of the work.

Qui Parle, 2014

A familiar way of starting to think about art is to submit it to the standard form of philosophical investigation defined by the sequence of an existential statement followed by a question. The existential statement concerns a particular class of things. The question concerns what makes these things possible. Let us say preliminarily: the question concerns the potential whose actualization is to be understood as a thing of that particular kind.