Why do I Love You? (The Structures of The Beautiful)
Offered by Kari ROSENFELD and Sheila ZAGO on Sunday mornings and/or evenings.
The course will be hosted for early birds from 10 am to 1:00 pm AND night owls from 5 pm to 8:00 pm provided that no less than five participants sign up per class.
"Why do I Love You? (The Structures of The Beautiful)” is a theoretical course aimed at understanding why we think the things that are beautiful are beautiful and therefore what we determine as worthy of the title of art. The Enlightenment lead to a strict categorization of the beautiful as an autonomous “aesthetic” realm. This course will look at the development of the “autonomous aesthetic realm” to understand this strict categorization and then look at how institutional structures such as museums and the practice of curation have contributed the development to this imaginary realm of autonomous art. We will look at how social, historical, and political context, the development of philosophy, our neurological constitution, and history have affected the way this mysterious sense of beauty moves inside of us. The course will look at “The Fate of Art” by J. W. Bernstein, the history of beauty from the perspective of Umberto Ecco, the development of the museum and curatorial practices, post-colonial theory, feminism, the effect of of class structures on desire, and at what neuroscience has revealed to us about the way the brain understands love and want. Through the semester we will explore the question: can art show us what is really beautiful?
We recommend this course to anyone interested in learning more about the history of art, the development of aesthetic theory, and those interested in proposing alternatives to the structures of art as they see it. We also recommend that this course be taken in conjunction with the Media Lab.
Topics by week:
Offered by Kari ROSENFELD and Sheila ZAGO on Sunday mornings and/or evenings.
The course will be hosted for early birds from 10 am to 1:00 pm AND night owls from 5 pm to 8:00 pm provided that no less than five participants sign up per class.
"Why do I Love You? (The Structures of The Beautiful)” is a theoretical course aimed at understanding why we think the things that are beautiful are beautiful and therefore what we determine as worthy of the title of art. The Enlightenment lead to a strict categorization of the beautiful as an autonomous “aesthetic” realm. This course will look at the development of the “autonomous aesthetic realm” to understand this strict categorization and then look at how institutional structures such as museums and the practice of curation have contributed the development to this imaginary realm of autonomous art. We will look at how social, historical, and political context, the development of philosophy, our neurological constitution, and history have affected the way this mysterious sense of beauty moves inside of us. The course will look at “The Fate of Art” by J. W. Bernstein, the history of beauty from the perspective of Umberto Ecco, the development of the museum and curatorial practices, post-colonial theory, feminism, the effect of of class structures on desire, and at what neuroscience has revealed to us about the way the brain understands love and want. Through the semester we will explore the question: can art show us what is really beautiful?
We recommend this course to anyone interested in learning more about the history of art, the development of aesthetic theory, and those interested in proposing alternatives to the structures of art as they see it. We also recommend that this course be taken in conjunction with the Media Lab.
Topics by week:
- Kant’s Beautiful and the Museum
- Class, Trend, Fashion, and Physical Beauty
- After post-colonialism: ideas of decolonization through art
- The Personal: attachment theory and our brains
- Identity: shades, identity and impacts beyond “The West”
- Post-Feminism and Gender
- Heidegger and Phenomenology’s answer to Kant
- Censorship, limits and polices control in the art world
- Adorno: capitalism and domination
- Social engaging art: new perspectives, proposed alternatives
- The Ugly
- Pulling it all together
Kari ROSENFELD is from Houston, Texas. She worked as a fashion photographer and producer before studying analytic philosophy at the University of Texas. She has since worked as an artist using writing, video, and photography. She serves as the Artist in Residence at CILAS Alex.
Sheila ZAGO, The Nomad Curator, is an art professional, an educator, an institution and a woman. She founded an art collective in Brazil in 2008 and has been working around the world for the past years. Latest projects include art and educational programs with Conexus Project for Palestinian and Syrian refugees (Beirut, Beqaa Valley, Damascus, Miniara and Tripoli), curated exhibitions in Doha, Venice and Islamabad, a collaborated art program in the Brooklyn Children's Museum (New York), a workshop for Azerbaijani emerging artists at Yarat Contemporary Art (Baku), multiple projects on decentralisation of art in Cairo and other Egyptian cities and the participation as a curator and art educator at Something Else - Off Biennale Cairo. Currently based between Beirut and Cairo, and with the collaboration of international and local art institutions, The Nomad Curator offers an international art residency, educational programs, consultancy for solo and group exhibitions and development of independent projects.