Philosophical Skepticism as the Subject of Art: Maria Bussmanns Drawings

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The artwork of Maria Bussmann, a trained academic German philosopher and a significant visual artist, provides an ideal test case for a philosophical study of visual art. Bussmann has internalized the relationship between art and philosophy. In this exploration of the history of German aesthetics through Bussmann's work, David Carrier places the philosophical tradition in the context of contemporary visual culture. Each chapter focuses on the arguments of a major philosopher whose concerns Bussmann has dealt with as an artist: Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein and Arendt. Offering comparative accounts of artists and philosophers whose work is of especial relevance, Carrier shows how Bussmann responds visually to writings of philosophers in art that has an elusive but essential relationship to theorizing. Tackling the question of whether philosophical subjects can be presented visually, Carrier offers a fresh perspective on the German idealist position through the visual art of 21st-century artist steeped in the tradition and continually challenging it through her work.

Reviews

Few contemporary artists have opened up the dialogue between the conceptual and the visual more insistently than Maria Bussmann. Carrier takes the reader boldly into the challenging world of her philosophically-inspired, genre-defying drawings as he probes her engagement with philosophers from Spinoza, Kant and Hegel to Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty and Arendt. * Allen Speight, Professor of Philosophy, Boston University, USA *
David Carriers singular and fascinating book provides its readers with a philosopher-art historian-art critics stimulating reflections on aesthetics and also detailed interpretations of numerous works of a visual artist, also a philosopher, whose visual representations engage in dialogue with philosophic theories. This makes for a rich brew of ideas, philosophical and interpretative, all presented with clarity and reasoned argument. It provides both pleasure and illumination from its beginning to its end. * Herbert Morris, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus Professor of Law and Emeritus Dean of Humanities, UCLA, USA *

Author Bio

David Carrier has taught philosophy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and art history in Cleveland, Ohio. A former Getty Scholar and a Clark Fellow, he has been Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Class of 1932 Fellow in Philosophy, Princeton University, USA.