ART and MORAL CONSCIENCE Art and Moral Conscience Proceedings of the 2019 Company of Ideas Forum at Te Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park
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ART AND MORAL CONSCIENCE ART Art and Moral Conscience Proceedings of the 2019 Company of Ideas Forum of The Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park Art and Moral Conscience Proceedings of the 2019 Company of Ideas Forum at Te Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park 2019 Forum Convenor Dr. James Fox Co-Editors Dr. James Fox & Mahat Karuna (Karun) Koernig Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park Curator and Manager Mahat Karuna (Karun) Koernig ISBN 978-0-9917154-5-9 Copyright © 2020 Te Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park Published in Canada. All rights reserved. To obtain reproduction permission, please contact the publisher: 2750 Shingle Spit Road, Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada. [email protected] www.rubinofsculpturepark.org Photo Credits front: Photo of Series 9–6 (2015). J Rubinof, JRSP Collection, photo by Don Peterson 2018. back: Photo of Series 2–3 (1982). J Rubinof, JRSP Collection, photo by Bill Turnbull 2019. Table of Contents Preface ..................................................................................................4 DAY ONE Welcome address Mrs Kennedy and Mr Koernig ..........................6 Introduction: Jefrey Rubinof and Moral Conscience by Dr James Fox .................................................8 Artist’s Conscience, Art’s Tendency, and the “Hard Problem” of Beauty by Dr Vid Simoniti ..............13 Dialogue Session (V. Simoniti) .......................................................19 Art and its Freedom to Be Political by Dr Sarah Hegenbart.......29 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Dialogue Session (S. Hegenbart) ....................................................40 Title: Art and moral conscience : proceedings of the 2019 Company Ethics and Style by Prof. Nick Riggle .............................................45 of Ideas Forum at the Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park / 2019 forum convenor, Dr. James Fox ; co-editors, Dr. James Fox & Dialogue Session (N. Riggle) ..........................................................54 Mahat Karuna (Karun) Koernig ; Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park curator and manager, Mahat Karuna (Karun) Koernig. Open dialogue on all Day One presentations ...............................58 DAY TWO Names: Company of Ideas Forum (12th : 2019 : Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park, B.C.), author. | Fox, James, 1982- editor. | Romanticism, Responsibility, Disobedience: Pacifst Aesthetics Koernig, Mahat Karuna, 1975- editor, organizer. in Britain during World War Two by Prof. Mark Antlif ............67 Description: Includes bibliographical references. Politics and ‘Te Decisive Moment’: Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Ethical Anarchism by Prof. Patricia Leighten ...............................79 Identifers: Canadiana 20200404342 | ISBN 9780991715459 Morality and Social Agency in the work of Kevin Pyle (sofcover) by Prof. Allan Antlif ........................................................................93 Subjects: LCSH: Art—Moral and ethical aspects—Congresses. | Open dialogue on all Day Two presentations ............................ 101 LCSH: Rubinof, Jefrey, 1945-— Congresses. | LCSH: Jefrey Rubinof Sculpture Park (B.C.)—Congresses. | LCGFT: Biographies of speakers ................................................................ 122 Conference papers and proceedings. Student delegates ........................................................................... 126 Classifcation: LCC N72.E8 C66 2020 | DDC 701/.03—dc23 Suggested Preparatory Readings for Delegates ......................... 127 Preface Tis volume is a record of the proceedings of the Company of To what extent are artists able to follow their own moral Ideas Forum On Art and Moral Conscience held at Te Jefrey consciences? Rubinof Sculpture Park June 24 to 26, 2019. Are artists obliged to hold up a mirror to their society? Te Company of Ideas was established by Jefrey Rubinof in 2008 to discuss major issues relating to art and society. Of Rubinof’s Can art address social issues without being representational? many concerns, the most fundamental related to morality and conscience. Rubinof believed that a ‘mature individual conscience’ What audiences can the morally committed artist hope to was not only the basis for original art but also for sustained social reach? engagement. He was convinced that serious artists were obliged to address the biggest issues of their time, which in his view were How efective can artistic protests be? the ‘existential threats’ of nuclear weapons and human genetic engineering. In doing so, they could infuence their audience’s Can a moral or political agenda compromise artistic quality? thinking and contribute to historical change. Rubinof, of course, was not alone. Te moral duties of artists have been debated since antiquity, and amid the unprecedented violence of the twentieth century those roles became more neces- sary than ever. From Otto Dix’s eviscerating critiques of World War One to the anti-Vietnam protests by the Fluxus Group, modern artists consistently took a stand against the politics of their time. Tis moral positioning is now a dominant feature of contemporary art, with artists tackling issues like the refugee crisis (e.g. Ai Weiwei), environmental degradation (e.g. Agnes Denes), and social justice (e.g. Jeremy Deller). At this year’s Forum, we explore the relationship between art and moral conscience. Over the course of two days, academics and students will interrogate a cluster of questions that were of funda- mental importance to Jefrey Rubinof. Tese include, but are not limited to: 4 5 — DAY ONE — in 2017 and it has been very successful. We have had several wonderful awardees, and this year we are having Zachary come to do some research on the sculpture. He will come back and have a presentation on an aspect of Jefrey’s work in 2020. Welcome address by Betty Kennedy, We also have Vid Simoniti, the Rubinof Junior Research Fellow in JRSP board chair and Karun Koernig Art as a Source of Knowledge at Churchill College in Cambridge. JRSP Manager and Curator Vid held that position for four years and has since moved on to a position as assistant professor at the University of Liverpool. He has been a member of the Company of Ideas for many years and continues to work with us as co-editor of a book on Art and Betty Kennedy: Welcome everybody. It would make Knowledge with James Fox. I would also like to recognize Allan Jefrey very happy to see you all here. Te students are so impor- Antlif, who is a professor of Art History at the University of tant to him. He would be delighted to see how the Forum has Victoria and is a contributor to the book on Art and Knowledge grown and that we still have our local contingent sticking with us. as well. So, we are very pleased to have members of the Company So, welcome everybody. Enjoy your few days here, and I hope it of Ideas with us in diferent roles. turns out well. We are very pleased to announce that Churchill College at Karun Koernig: We have been so fortunate to have this Cambridge University has chosen Joshua Fitzgerald to be the opportunity thanks to the generosity of the Jefrey Rubinof successor to the Jefrey Rubinof Junior Research Fellowship in Foundation and the Rubinof family, as well as all the people in Art as a Source of Knowledge. Jefrey’s life that were important to him. Tey continue to steward the work of the foundation and the work of the sculpture park. So welcome, everybody, to the eleventh Company of Ideas Forum. I just wanted to thank all those people who keep the park running smoothly, as well as our volunteers. Vaughan and Susan do a lot of volunteering, as well as John Kirk. John has worked with Jefrey for thirty years doing all the shaping and sculpting of the lands. Ambreen is with us for the second time. She is the Rubinof Scholar at the University of Victoria, and we will hear from her later. I am also excited that we have James Nguyen, the Jefrey Rubinof Post-Doctoral Award winner, and Zachary Weinstein, a Rubinof Graduate Essay Award Winner. We started these award programs 6 7 Introduction: Jeffrey Rubinoff and and character”. When his parents eventually settled in London, Ontario, they became pillars of the local community and great Moral Conscience philanthropists. Jefrey himself was a great philanthropist, and I think we should always remember that all of us here are benef- Dr James Fox ciaries of his and Betty’s generosity. Tis notion of conscience for him, though, was not simply inher- ited. He found it himself. He dates it to a very specifc moment. Tis Forum is about art and moral conscience and as an introduc- He was 19 years old and, on a bus, reading an article by Simone de tion I would like to say a bit about how these issues are important Beauvoir, one of his heroes. She was talking about French collab- to Jefrey Rubinof and why this is one of the subjects that we are orators with the Nazis, and specifcally how ordinary people, exploring in our Forums. whether they were engineers or schoolmasters or train drivers, went about doing their daily jobs in collaboration with the Nazis, Jefrey was not only an artist, but also a wide reader, a deep never questioning their own morality. She contrasted them with thinker, and a completely distinctive writer. He came to know the people who, at great risk to their own lives, tried to resist the a lot about a bewildering variety of subjects. He had read more Vichy government. Her conclusion, as far as Jefrey remembers it, German Idealism than many professional philosophers. He was that “our very existence itself depends on acts of individual thought