A Workshop at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Time: April 11, 2025
Venue: Fabianinkatu 24A, 3rd floor, Common Room
Formalists argue that the meaning, understanding, and value of art depends first and foremost on the specifically artistic or formal features or art. Motivated by a deep commitment to art's intrinsic value and autonomy, formalism typically downplays the expressive or cognitive gains of art. In philosophy of art, authors like Immanuel Kant and Eduard Hanslick are often celebrated as the great protagonists of formalism. But some artists, too, have aligned with and promoted the view, either by working with methods that center on form and technique or by recommending a formalistic approach to their field of art – Igor Stravinsky, Jackson Pollock, and Gerhard Richter are cases in point here. This one-day workshop brings together artists and philosophers of art to discuss formalism, its theoretical foundations, benefits, and pitfalls.
The workshop continues the conversation between academic research in the arts, artistic research, and art that began in the Panel Discussion Artistic Research and Research on the Arts: Distinctions and Interfaces organized at Think Corner in the Fall 2024.
Program
10:15 Welcome
10:30 Matteo Ravasio: Hanslick's Formalism?
11:45 Lunch
13:00 Jason Waite: Kinship and Art: Curating Relations in Exhibition-Making
13:45 Kalle Puolakka: Literary Form as an Epistemic Virtue
14:30 Coffee
15:00 Magnus Quaife: Painting, Formalism, and Artistic Autonomy
15:45 Hanne Appelqvist: Why Kant Had to Be a Formalist
16:30 Reception
Registration for Lunch
Admission to this event is free and does not require registration. However, if you would like to join us for lunch at the HCAS Common Room, please register by completing the form below by April 2, 2025:
Registration for Lunch: Who's Afraid of Formalism? Perspectives from Philosophy and the Arts.
If you would like to cancel your participation, please notify HCAS Technical Assistant Siiri Virta via email at siiri.virta@helsinki.fi