Perennial Philosophys Theory of Art

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Perennial Philosophys Theory of Art

• David S. Oderberg (University of Reading)
• Royal Academy of Arts, 14 June 2003

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St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)
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Penetrating the Veil of Appearances (Swiss,
c.1500)
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Cimabue (1240-1302?), Madonna Enthroned (detail)
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Dora Maar (1939)
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Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Virgin on the
Rocks (detail)
Willem de Kooning(1904 -97), Marilyn Monroe (1954)
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Sir Anthony Caro (1924-), Saddle (1976)
Michelangelo (1475-1564), Pieta (1499)
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Fra Angelico (1395-1455), The Entombment
Lucian Freud (1922-), Painter Working -
Reflection (1993)
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Francis Bacon (1909-92), Study for Portrait of
Lucian Freud, 1965
Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530), Last Supper
(detail)
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Damian Hirst (1965-), Away from the Flock (1994)
Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), Agnus Dei
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Hans Holbein (c.1497-1543), Christ Entombed (1521)
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Hans Holbein, Sir John Godsalve
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Oh Thou that dost the world in everlasting order
guide! Fate directs the motion of all things and
determines their places, forms, and time. This
unfolding of the temporal order, united in the
foresight of Gods mind, is providence. Boethius
(c.480-524).
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Caravaggio (1571-1610), Still Life with Fruit on
Stone Ledge
Picasso (1881-1973), Still Life with Skull, Leeks
and Pitcher (1945)
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Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Eliezer and Rebecca
(1648)
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Mark Rothko (1903-70)
Ben Nicholson (1894-1982)
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Picasso, Violin and Guitar
Barbara Hepworth (1903-75), Pendour (1947-8)
In practice we call abstractall works of art
which, though they may start from the artists
awareness of an object in the external world,
proceed to make a self- consistent and
independent aesthetic unity in no sense relying
on an objective equivalence. Herbert Read, Art
Now (1948)
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Rachel Whiteread (1963- ), Negative Charge. A
domestic light switch box, cast inversely in
delicate plaster, becomes an impenetrable source
of embalmed energy. http//www.parkettart.com/
Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), The Kiss. What
is real is not the external form but the essence
of things.
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Gustave Courbet (1819-77), Burial at Ornans (1849)
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Pogodin, All Russian Congress of Soviets (1955)
Vera Mukhina, Industrial Worker and Collective
Farm Girl (1937)
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Caravaggio, Beheading of St John the Baptist
(1608)
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Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St Peter (1601)
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Freud, Sleeping By the Lion Carpet (1995-6)
Freud, The Queen (2001)
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Jake Dinos Chapman, Zygotic Acceleration,Biogene
tic, Desublimated Libidinal Model (1995)
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Fiona Banner, Arsewoman in Wonderland (2002
Turner Prize nomination)
Fiona Banner, Concrete Poetry
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The End