Silenced by Aesthetics?
Gregory P. Levine
(Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art, University of California at Berkeley)
4:00-6:00 p.m. Jan. 30th, Friday
CWAC 156
Abstract
What has Art History to do with Ecology? This paper considers art historical praxis in an age of ecological decline. How does art history, a system of knowledge, concern itself with systems of organisms and hibitats constituting planetary ecology? Do art historians practice according to Commoner’s dictum “…everything is connected to everything else” or Bateson’s relations over relata? How might art history contribute to ecological thingking, perhaps in ways that the natural sciences cannot? Can “art objects” be “ecological subjects”? Might an “eco-arthistory” move art history away from traditional binary structures?
