Visual & Critical Studies - School of Visual Arts
The Artist, The Autist, and the Fool Poster
Tuesday, February 19th, 7pm, SVA Theater
We have not ceased to be Romantics. For all the irony, cynicism, and calculation that govern the making and selling of art, we are still drawn to artists whose work seems to come from somewhere else, from “beyond.” Though the critical dogma of cool make this hard to express, we still want to discover the mantis, the human vessel through whom the uncanny passes, as through a pure, empty vessel. Our celebration of the so-called outsider art, the work of the autistic and mentally ill, is only the most obvious expression of this urge. But where does it come from? Not from the Romantics, though they felt it too. Its roots lie in deeper anthropological soil, in primitive religion, in ancient philosophy, in Saint Paul. The charm of innocence is old, and has yet to wear off.
Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, specializes in intellectual history, with a particular focus on Western political and religious thought. He taught in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and at New York University. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007), The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (2001),and G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern (1993). He has also edited The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001) with Ronald Dworkin and Robert Silvers, and The Public Face of Architecture (1987) with Nathan Glazer. He is currently writing a book titled Ignorance and Bliss, and another on the history of the idea of conversion.
The Artist, The Autist, and the Fool Poster
Tuesday, February 19th, 7pm, SVA Theater
We have not ceased to be Romantics. For all the irony, cynicism, and calculation that govern the making and selling of art, we are still drawn to artists whose work seems to come from somewhere else, from “beyond.” Though the critical dogma of cool make this hard to express, we still want to discover the mantis, the human vessel through whom the uncanny passes, as through a pure, empty vessel. Our celebration of the so-called outsider art, the work of the autistic and mentally ill, is only the most obvious expression of this urge. But where does it come from? Not from the Romantics, though they felt it too. Its roots lie in deeper anthropological soil, in primitive religion, in ancient philosophy, in Saint Paul. The charm of innocence is old, and has yet to wear off.
Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, specializes in intellectual history, with a particular focus on Western political and religious thought. He taught in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and at New York University. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007), The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (2001),and G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern (1993). He has also edited The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001) with Ronald Dworkin and Robert Silvers, and The Public Face of Architecture (1987) with Nathan Glazer. He is currently writing a book titled Ignorance and Bliss, and another on the history of the idea of conversion.