ANNUAL LESLIE BROOKS LECTURE:

Professor Boris GROYS

New York University A COLD WAR BETWEEN THE MEDIUM AND THE MESSAGE

21 June 2018, 17:30, ER201 Elvet Riverside II, Durham University

Modernism presents itself as self-criticism of art that takes seriously the famous Plato’s critique of art. For Plato art produces affects whereas philosophy produces knowledge. The affects are good – or, rather, bad – for the ordinary people. The knowledge is worth of the efforts by the best people. Here the great divide between aesthetically good art and aesthetically bad art is drawn – and at the same time between the Western modern art and the Eastern Socialist Realism. Clement Greenberg famously stated that the production of affects is directly related to the mechanisms of recognition: people are emotionally moved when they are confronted with realistic, naturalistic representations of the world. However, inside the Modernist tradition itself one can find a view that is perfectly opposed to the view professed by Greenberg and the majority of the post-greenbergian authors. One may think here of the theoretical writings by Wassily Kandinsky. According to Kandinsky the representations are neutral, merely factual – they do not transport any moods and do not affect the spectator. On the contrary, it is the “pure painting” that produces and transports affects and feelings. A picture may be figurative or abstract—what matters is that it uses forms and colors that are needed for the visualization and efficient transmission of certain moods and emotions.