Art MeetsSocienty, Society Meets Art

The link between art and society has been discussed through diverse and contrasting approaches. Art and artistic quality have been defined as the product of a complex institutional configuration operating through experts and authorities independently of any necessary and fixed qualities or characteristics inherent to the work; art and its nature have been defined as the product of processes of socialization (learning and initiation) that make it possible to identify an object as a work of art, “make it speak” and reveal its supposedly hidden significance and meaning; art has been defined as a means for instigating a systematic institutional critique of the modes of production and representation of the artistic object and sphere, as well exposing hidden structures, dominant forces, foundational narratives, categorizations, classifications, and “silenced” voices; in other contexts it has been defined as a form of encounter, convergence, thinking and debating that functions as a site of (mental and practical) potential that touches on ideas and conceptions rooted outside distinctly artistic contexts (for example: society, politics, ecology and so on) and conventional “logical”, “objective” and “linear” patterns of inquiry. The course will be dedicated to these interrelations, to the socio-historical conditions that have structured them and to the licenses and restrictions they entail – in the field of plastic art in particular and culture in general.