Art Talk On Line...

The preliminary recording of my upcoming lecture at Oakland's St. Margaret Mary's is online. Please note that I call it preliminary. I keep thinking of ways to improve the last sections. The final version might well be quite different. Then again, maybe it won't.

What I shorted was the section on a philosophy of art. The main reason is that the topic is big, important, and should be done in a multi-week seminar. I would rather get people to start looking at art and start reading/thinking about a philosophy of art than to stand up there and give a micro-summary of my own thoughts on the matter.

My own philosophy of art is a work in progress (hopefully it is progress, although there are moments when I wonder). Every day for the past month and a half I have done a little more reading on the matter, and every day I make at least a minor adjustment to my own thinking about the issue. So to say "well, I think this about the philosophy of art" and give a neat five or ten point summary is pretty worthless. Especially compared to you going out and spending time looking at art and thinking about what it is all about and why it is important and so forth.

The second thing that is seriously lacking in the talk, as it stands, is in selections and quotes from major sources in the development of a Catholic view of art. Again, this is mostly due to time, and I would much rather get the art viewing off on solid footing. One of the main points that I am trying to make is that theory is good, but it must not obscure our direct experience with the art itself.

Making a critique of a theory of a particular school of painting, rather than trying to see what is actually in a particular painting is an easy trap to fall into, a trap I sometimes find myself trying to get out of.

So, at this moment I will probably let the lecture stand pretty much as recorded, but a couple of hours ago I was contemplating some major revisions to the last section. We will see.