(1) Interpretation and Art: A Case Study in Hermeneutic Phenomenology

This lecture explores how a phenomenological approach bridges objective analysis with embodied, pre-theoretical experience in art, using hermeneutics to examine the emergence of meaning. It also addresses the tension between interpreting art through the artist's intention versus acknowledging a plurality of viewer experiences.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘Preface’, trans. Colin Smith, in Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 1962), vii-xxiv. [«Avant-propos», Phénoménologie de la perception (Gallimard, 1945), 12-28].

Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Aesthetics and Hermeneutics’, trans. David E. Linge, Philosophical Hermeneutics, (University of California Press, 1977), 95-104. [„Aesthetik und Hermeneutik“, Kleine Schriften II: Interpretationen (J.C.B. Mohr, 1967), 1-8].

Paul Ricoeur, ‘Structure, Word, Event’, trans. R. Sweeney, in The Conflict of Interpretations, (Northwestern University Press, 1988), 77-95. [ « La structure, le mot, l'événement », Le conflit des

interprétations (Seuil, 1969), 80-96].

Gerald Bruns, Hermeneutics, Ancient & Modern (Yale University Press, 1992)

E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (Yale University Press, 1967)

• Phenomenology

• Phenomenology, Interpretation and Art

• Truths in Interpretation: Accepting Plurality or Going Back to the Artist’s Intention?

• A Case Study in Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Gerald Cipriani, ‘Art and the Paths of Interpretation’, in Art in the Making: Aesthetics, Historicity and Practice, ed. K. Mey. (Peter Lang AG, 2005), 141-160. [Edited]

(2) Availability, Creativity, Appeal: Art and Ethical Phenomenology

This lecture addresses ethical issues relating to interpretation and artistic experience. It explores an alternative to both modern institutional authority and Western postmodern nihilism by referring to the concept of ‘creative fidelity’ developed by the French ‘existentialist’ philosopher Gabriel Marcel. As it is well known, contemporary radical reactions against the excesses of modernity in the Western world have led to a profound mistrust in the idea of subject/object, and have as a result favoured attitudes which tend to dissolve such a dichotomy. These attitudes, by expressing the contingency, indeterminacy, or groundlessness of meaning, have triggered the disappearance of the Self, authorship, authenticity and in-sight. How is it therefore possible to interpret, make, or even teach art in a meaningful manner without imposing frameworks, closures, boundaries, or perspectives? This, it is argued, can be achieved by understanding the vital complementary relationship between innovation and faith, creativity and fidelity, renewal and consideration, appeal and response, offering thus a possible alternative to today’s crisis of meaning in contemporary culture.

Gabriel Marcel, G., ‘Creative fidelity’, in Creative Fidelity, trans. R. Rosthal (Fordham University Press, 2002), 147-174.  [«Fidélité créatrice», Du Refus à l’ Invocation (Gallimard, 1940)].

Bullnow, O.F., ‘Marcel’s Concept of Availability’, in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, eds. P. A. Shilpp & L. E. Hahn (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991)

Jean-Louis Chrétien, L’appel et la réponse (Editions de Minuit,1992)

Gerald Cipriani, ‘The Art of Renewal and Consideration: Marcelian Reflections’, in Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, Universidade Católica de Braga, Portugal, Tomo 60, Fasc. 1 (2004), 167-175.

(3) Merleau-Ponty is Dead, Mon œil ! Phenomenology and the Invisible Field of Perception in Art 

This lecture initially provides a general account of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology in order to understand the nature of our perceptual experiences of art. The lecture subsequently elaborates on the idea of “invisible field of perception” made of the objective world as much as networks of sensible entities. Fundamentally, the invisible field of perception must be understood in relation to the perceived visible, calling thus for a descriptive method of rendering that is no longer phenomenological but mesographical.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Preface,” in Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald Landes (London: Routledge, 2012). [Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard, 1945]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt,” in Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992). [Sens et non-sens, Paris: Nagel, 1948]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Indirect Language,” in The Prose of the World, trans. John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). [La prose du monde, Paris: Gallimard, 1969 (1951)] 

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Primacy of Perception, trans. William Cobb (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964).  [L’œil et l’esprit, Paris: Gallimard, 1964]  

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). [Le visible et l’invisible, Paris: Gallimard, 1964]

(4) The Moving Mind-Art: A Poststructuralist Account of Imagery

This lecture is an introduction to one of the most striking examples of an attempt to overturn Western metaphysics and in particular Platonism: Gilles Deleuze’s poststructuralist aesthetics. The lecture focuses on key concepts mainly from his Logique du sens (1969) and Différence et répétition (1968), such as copy, representation, model, original, difference, repetition, and simulacrum, followed by a discussion of how his aesthetics is enacted in the painting of British artist Francis Bacon as expounded in his Francis Bacon, Logique de la sensation (1981).

Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. M. Lester (Columbia University Press, 1990) [Logique du sens (Éditions de Minuit, 1969)].

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton (Columbia University Press, 1994) [Différence et répétition (Presses Universitaires de France, 1968)].

Charles Stivale, Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005).

Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. D.W. Smith (University of Minnesota Press 2005) [Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation (Éditions de la Différence, 1981)].

Anne Sauvagnargues, Deleuze and Art, trans. S. Bankston (Bloomsbury, 2013).

Gerald Cipriani, ‘The Deconstructed Deconstructing Subject: Postmodern Ethos or Incarnate Fidelity?’, in Synthesis Philosophica, International Edition of Filozofska Istrazivanja, Vol. 17, fasc. 2 (2002): 317-325.