Revisiting Philistinism

Panellists:

Dave Beech, University of the Arts London

Gail Day, School of Fine Art, University of Leeds

Frances Hatherley, Birkbeck University of London

Malcolm Quinn, University of the Arts London

2021 marks 25 years since the publication of Dave Beech and John Roberts’ article ‘Spectres of the Aesthetic’ in the New Left Review (NLR), which initiated a new, post-Adornian debate on the history, genealogy and significance of the critique of art and aesthetics. This panel, which includes three people who were involved in the NLR debate and the book The Philistine Controversy (Verso, 2002) that emerged from it, will reconsider philistinism through current discourses on privilege, class and negation in the critical traditions of postcapitalism, postcolonialism and post-conceptual art. Although the debates on the philistine in the mid-1990s took some of their impetus from the vulgarity of Young British Art, they have carried more relevance for subsequent discussions of the ontology of cultural division and questions of the institutions, economies and infrastructures of art in the 21st century.

This session is not calling for papers.