Sea-Monsters in the Lunch Lecture
In the Lunch Lecture Friday November 12 Ignacio López Moreno, a visiting scholar from Universidad de Murcia (Spain) Fine Arts Department, will discuss the functional interpretation of the sublime as theoretical approach to the study of Icelandic Sea-monsters. The Lunch Lecture will begin at 12.10 in the University Centre cafeteria and is open to all. The talk will be in English.
Philosophical approaches to art interpretation through the concept of the sublime have underestimated a functional dimension of the objects to which it has been applied that should be reconsidered. Although the sublime as an aesthetic concept can be said to be properly used to evaluate art products that are the result and operate in the disinterested sphere that defines our concept of art, previous uses of the word sublime and the objects to which it was related offer relevant clues to reinsert their relevance in contexts that are alien to modern aesthetic distance. In one of these contexts an experience of wonder connected to the pathological effect-affect of encounters with monsters, or their images, would take place and be specially valued for human practical goals. Sea-monsters have for centuries shaped the way Icelandic people relate to their geographical habitat. If we intend to overcome the limitations of our philosophical concept of art, we should consider the extraction of Icelandic cultural heritage from the playful, disinterested sphere of imagination and approach its participation in social and psychological contexts.
Ignacio López Moreno is professor in the Fine Arts Department of Universidad de Murcia (Spain) and Phd. candidate in Universidad de Granada. He combines his teaching and research duties with his audiovisual and painting art practice. He has been a graduate student at University of California, Irvine and Visiting scholar at Columbia University, He is currently working on a research project for the Sea-Monster Museum in Bildudalur, supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Financial Mechanism, and supported and coordinated by Universidad Compltense de Madrid. After a month stay in Bildudalur, Ignacio intends to complete his research project through meetings with the archaeologist Þorvaldur Friðriksson and other specialists in the next two months of his stay in Iceland.
Philosophical approaches to art interpretation through the concept of the sublime have underestimated a functional dimension of the objects to which it has been applied that should be reconsidered. Although the sublime as an aesthetic concept can be said to be properly used to evaluate art products that are the result and operate in the disinterested sphere that defines our concept of art, previous uses of the word sublime and the objects to which it was related offer relevant clues to reinsert their relevance in contexts that are alien to modern aesthetic distance. In one of these contexts an experience of wonder connected to the pathological effect-affect of encounters with monsters, or their images, would take place and be specially valued for human practical goals. Sea-monsters have for centuries shaped the way Icelandic people relate to their geographical habitat. If we intend to overcome the limitations of our philosophical concept of art, we should consider the extraction of Icelandic cultural heritage from the playful, disinterested sphere of imagination and approach its participation in social and psychological contexts.
Ignacio López Moreno is professor in the Fine Arts Department of Universidad de Murcia (Spain) and Phd. candidate in Universidad de Granada. He combines his teaching and research duties with his audiovisual and painting art practice. He has been a graduate student at University of California, Irvine and Visiting scholar at Columbia University, He is currently working on a research project for the Sea-Monster Museum in Bildudalur, supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Financial Mechanism, and supported and coordinated by Universidad Compltense de Madrid. After a month stay in Bildudalur, Ignacio intends to complete his research project through meetings with the archaeologist Þorvaldur Friðriksson and other specialists in the next two months of his stay in Iceland.
