Alteration & Dissolution of the Artistic Genres: For Another Reading of Modernity

Alteration & Dissolution of the Artistic Genres: For Another Reading of Modernity

A Genealogy of the «Verfransung»

This colloquium is aiming at analyzing the link between the arts – but also the link between the art and the arts, and between the art and what is extrinsic to art. The issue will be to expand and refine Adorno’s analysis in his book The art and the arts. We will aim to provide a theoretical overview of the collapse of the artistic genres in the mid-sixties, and consider its link with the birth of French Avant-Garde and with the decline of the system of Fine Arts. The whole process that we would like to analyse starts with a mere imbrication of the arts, and reaches its culmination with a proper dislocation of its boundaries, as a result of successive stages that are locatable in the past. This will lead us to examine the stages before the outright collapse of artistic genres, to identify the triggers that ultimatly result in this paradigmatic change. Can we consider that the seeds of this dissolution are already planted in what led to the birth of the Avant-Garde? Is it reasonable to think that the postmodernity was already part of the modernity, as an inevitable shift which finds its fulfillment in the early sixties? Does the movement from the specific to the generic (de Duve) render the Adornian notion of Verfransung obsolete? What kind of “generic alterations” can we identify within the contemporary art and among its productions? What is the status of non-art in regard to the Adornian negative dialectics? Can one consider that it represents a “stopped dialectics” – a moment of freedom in the dialectics of enlightenment? What is the role of the music in this phenomenon, was it the paragon of the other artistic genres?

The submitted papers will have to be rooted, as far as possible, in concrete examples. The hypothesis must emerge from singular works of art and will have to highlight some specific interactions. Hence, can we identify, in this entire process, some structuring phases – some of which would appear as amplified echos of the others? The authors might try to answer the questions while taking cross-sections and samples from the debate.

For a Hermeneutical Perspective

We wish to continue our analysis from a hermeneutical perspective, and see if the dissolution of the boundaries of artistic genres has played a key role in the antagonism between contemporary art and the public. Can we draw a parallel between this antagonism and the “crisis of contemporary art”? Where are we today in terms of this debate?

Autonomy of Art after the Dissolution of the Arts

The issues related to the dissolution of boundaries between the arts – i.e. the porosity between the genres or generic alterations – will lead us to evaluate and interpret the Adornian arguments regarding the need for autonomy in art. (For Adorno, this autonomy is paradoxical: the work of art is involved in empirical reality but acquires its own autonomy when it is separated from this reality and become the receptacle of a truth content). Can we nowadays defend the idea of an autonomy of art? Is it then necessary to adapt its definition in the light of current works of art? Does the adornian conception of

autonomy remain relevant? Can we consider that, for instance, installation or performance perpetuate the exigences of modernism and create a “new Avant-Garde”?

Lines of thought

• -  The different modalities of exchange between the arts.

• -  The analysis of the links between the arts from iconographical, æsthetic or epistemological points of view.

• -  Evaluative criteria for contemporary art.

• -  The notion of graphein and its link with the works of art that bring an extra- æsthetical content within themselves ( videography, phonography...)

• -  The Gesamtkunstwerk and its resonances.

• -  Happening, installation.

  A diversity of approaches will be encouraged – Art Theory, Art History, Literature, Musicology, Filmology, Philosphy, Visual Arts, Danse..

  Please submit your papers to [email protected] Deadline : September, 15th, 2014.