Berlin Symposium on Post-culturalist Art History Cover Image

Berlin Symposium on Post-culturalist Art History
Berlin Symposium on Post-culturalist Art History

Author(s): Whitney Davis, Hans Christian Hönes, Jakub Stejskal
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Aesthetics
Published by: Helsinki University Press
Keywords: post-culturalist art history;art history;Davis W.;cultural studies;art theory;artistic autonomy

Summary/Abstract: Following the request by the editorial board, the contributions to the Berlin Symposium on Post-culturalist Art History are included as one indexed scholary article. The list of single articles included in one piece is: 1. Whitney Davis Visuality and Vision: Questions for a Post-culturalist Art History 238 2. Hans Christian Hönes Reconnecting with Culture: A Reply to Whitney Davis 258 3. Jakub Stejskal A Post-culturalist Aesthetics? A Commentary on Davis’s ‘Visuality and Vision’ 267 4. Whitney Davis Responses to Stejskal and Hönes 277 ‘Post-culturalist art history’ doesn’t take for granted the ontological fact of culture as the context and content in dealing with the concrete material things and aesthetic practices which make up the putative ‘objects’ of art history. And therefore it doesn’t take for granted the epistemological primacy of cultural history in interpretation and explanation of its objects. It means offering a nontautological analysis of the social emergence and partial consolidation of visual culture, including traditions of pictorial art. What this analysis claims and does in its terms and details is less important than the very fact of a strenuous effort to provide it. Precisely because post-culturalist thinking doesn’t take for granted the fact of culture and the primacy of cultural history, potentially it can situate itself in productive and practical ways in relation to non-cultural inquiries in art history and in studies of art. The present essays began as presentations given at a symposium organized by Jakub Stejskal at the Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin, in April 2016.

  • Issue Year: LIV/2017
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 238-292
  • Page Count: 55
  • Language: English