PHIL 280

PHIL 280: Philosophy of Art
Instructor: Jennifer Welchman

Course Description:

Boston’s Museum of Bad Art [MOBA] is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting “Art too Bad to be Ignored.” Like any museum, MOBA has standards, rejecting anything it doesn’t consider art, no matter how bad. MOBA’s activities invite a host of questions. What makes bad art bad? If it’s really bad, is it still art at all? And what justifies a judgment that a work of art is ‘bad’? This course will introduce you to philosophical theorizing about art and artworks that can help you answer these questions for yourself. We will review philosophical analyses of the different features of art works (representation, form, and expression) and the relation of their aesthetic and moral qualities. We will also consider traditional and contemporary views on the nature of critical judgment about them.
Please note: This course focuses on philosophical debates about art, not art history or connoisseurship. And be warned, you should expect to be seeing, reading, and hearing examples of really poor and sometimes questionable ‘art.’

Text:

No textbook is required for this class