Myth. Genius. Art: The Autumn School of Department of Art History of the University of Tartu

Abstract

The Autumn School organised by the Department of Art History of the University of Tartu called “Myth. Genius. Art” was held on October 15th and 16th of this year. And as has been the tradition, the fourth Autumn School was conducted in cooperation with the University of Tartu Art Museum. In some respects, this time the event consciously continued the provocative approach of last year’s Autumn School (the title in 2014 was “Art and Beauty”) – with the goal of “revitalizing” concepts and phenomena that have been relegated to the background in art theory during recent decades. Based on the presentations that were heard during the two days, one can say that the choice of topics within the framework of the designated title ended up covering an extremely wide spectrum, which was the other goal of the Autumn School, i.e. to broaden the circle of topics to include as many facets as possible by including presentations by specialists from different fields. Philosopher and man of letters Ulo Matjus, who is the Professor of Estonian Philosophy at the University of Tartu, started the first day off with his presentation, “Art in the Era of Realizing Modern History”. Well-known for having “Estonianized” the works of Martin Heidegger, Matjus dealt with the change in the meaning of art in the present day through the author. Based on Heidegger’s statement that art is a machin-