In asking why responses to Sugimoto’s photographs turn on a dime from awe to scorn, I suggest that these strange works of art manage to escape human desires. My hope is that by moving the conversation away from entrenched dichotomies such aesthetics or anti-aesthetics and toward an analysis of the nature of objects and feelings, I can suggest the ethical and practical consequences of inhuman art.
David Raskin is Mohn Family Professor of Contemporary Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Editor-in-Chief of caa.reviews. He is author of Donald Judd (Yale University Press, 2010), and other scholarly publications, including essays on Noriyuki Haraguchi, Ad Reinhardt, Jo Baer, Olle Baertling, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Carl Andre, and pragmatic aesthetics. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the United States Study Centre, University of Sydney, Australia.
Date: Wednesday, 20th May 2015, 6:00pm
Venue: Theatre A, Rm 103, Old Arts, University, of Melbourne, Parkville Campus
Free to attend. Registration essential here .
Raskin’s visit to Australia has been supported by the United States Study Centre, University of Sydney.
Lecture #4 in the 2015 Contemporary Art Lecture Series presented in collaboration with Gertrude Contemporary and the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Photograph: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gemsbok, 1982, gelatin silver print, 41.9 × 54.61 cm. Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.