Speculative Art Histories

Abstract

Following the recent ‘speculative turn’ in Continental philosophy, the aim of this volume is to propose a ‘counter-discourse’ of speculative approaches to art history. How could today’s materialist, realist, pragmatist, vitalist or object-oriented speculations offer alternatives to the mere complementarity of philosophy of art and art history, often based on mutual recognition and critical limitation rather than imaginative crossovers? What new intermedial methodologies for art and art historical writing do they provide? Or vice versa, how can the encounter with art induce new forms of philosophy? How do speculative concepts of time, past and contingency challenge typically modern engagements with art’s ‘history’? Is there, for example, an unexpected contemporary relevance for pre-modern, e.g. or mannerist or gothic ideas of art? Is it possible for art history to experience a work of art in its novelty beyond its historical facticity? And what is the speculative potential of works of art themselves? Does the speculative open up new ways of extending art into fields of biology, mathematics or the digital? What is the ‘thing’ or ‘object’ of art, whether inanimate or animate? What does it mean to have an ‘idea’? And finally, what remains of ‘beauty’ and ‘expressivity’, after decades of critical mistrust and embarrassed deconstruction?