Towards a Post-Formalist Aesthetics

• Applicant: Dr. Jakub Stejskal
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy ; Art History
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 341940171

This research project reflects the move of recent art history towards a more inclusive framework. It is situated at the crossroads of philosophical, art-historical, and anthropological theories of visual art, but remains philosophical in character. It takes inspiration from recent art-historical post-formalist writings with the aim of developing post-formalist principles for an aesthetic theory of uncommonly striking visual objects - an aesthetics that would be sensitive to the various historical and ethnographic contexts of art use described by post-formalist art history and recent anthropology of art/image as not involving the kind of aesthetic experience Western art theories have tended to take for granted. The proposed aesthetics therefore understands the art object broadly as an artefact becoming effective in virtue of attaining an uncommonly striking visibility. It is central to such a post-formalist aesthetics to provide a comprehensive understanding of this process and its possible configurations. In order to make the central premise plausible - namely, that visual art objects gain their efficacy by attaining an uncommonly striking visibility - the outlined project tackles three major questions: (1) what can make the presence of an artefact unusually visible?; (2) how can uncommon visibility become effective?; and (3) what ends is it suited to serve? In response to these questions, the following tasks will be pursued: (1) developing a general post-formalist description of how art objects become effective in virtue of their uncommon visibility; (2) explaining the role of strangeness or difficulty in encounters with art objects: (3) devising a general framework for the relationship between the art object and the agency it serves.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants