CSP 1 Painting and Philosophy

The principal aim of the course is to develop ways of thinking about the visual arts as an indispensable companion to philosophy for a liberal minded engagement with our identities as persons. The method followed will be that of a conversational close reading of individual works (or oeuvres) of Western artists from different historical and stylistic periods, pairing them with philosophical texts. From a more disciplinary, or scholarly point of view, the course will involve bridging the disciplines of philosophical aesthetics and critical art-history by pursuing the question: 'What is pictorial thought?'. The answer will be sought in the ways in which works of art combine formal and representational aspects of depiction to "think" self-reflexively about their own identity and purpose. Students will also receive a grounding in how artists working in different media and genres (including film and photography) and scholars in different disciplines engage aesthetic issues such as style, perspective, representation, intentionality, materiality, genre, etc. as well as a guide for further developing their own interests in these areas. The historical structure of the course will further allow us to consider questions about "progress" in the arts as well as questions about modernity and Modernism. Students will be required to write papers combining analytical close reading of works of art and philosophical texts. Museum visits (Getty, LACMA) will form an integral part of the course.