Lecture "Art in the Era of Critical Theory. And after it" by Illia Levchenko
On October 4, the PinchukArtCentre hosted a lecture by Illia Levchenko "Art in the Era of Critical Theory. And after it" as a part of the public program of the exhibition of Zhanna Kadyrova Flying Trajectories.
Illia Levchenko is an art historian, an assistant at the Department of Art History of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and a curator of the educational project of the NGO "Museum of Modern Art".
In the lecture, Ilya Levchenko talked about the influence of critical theory on art. Together with the participants of the event, they talked about:
● PluralityAfter World War I, thinking in the category of integrity became impossible. In art, this is manifested in the absence of a single style: when we talk about modernism, we mean a lot of different phenomena at the same time. A new way of understanding art is being formed, which is connected with multiplicity.
● Paralyzing infertilityWhat used to be critical, causing acceptance/rejection becomes normative. The formal reproduction of what is already inscribed in the collective mode of taste is parasitism and the creation of a product that will appeal to the majority, but will not cause critical perception and, accordingly, will not lead to the search for a new state of affairs.
● New agents in artA curator or an artist collides work and ideas from different times in one space, changing the content of the work and thus activating it, making it fruitful again. If linearity was important to classical art, the new artist used anachronism as a method.
● About the fact that aesthetics is banished from artIn the '60s, art finally turned to language. The most important thing happens in the process of the game between texts and word meanings. Behind a work of art now stands the philosophy and theory of a particular artist. At the same time, there is always room for the viewer to bring his experience to the text/work and his own interpretation.
● The transforming essence of artSince the 1989-90s, art has become an arena for political and social activism. Artists deform reality, do not improve the object, but deprive it of its original function, and do not reflect, but transform it. Art ceases to be a territory of relaxation and distraction.