MG: Lecture. "The Revival of Aesthetics in China"

Prof. dr. Gao Jianping
Tuesday, 26 June 2012, at 6 p.m., in the auditorium of the Moderna galerija, Cankarjeva 15.

You are invited to attend the lecture by prof. dr. Gao Jianping,organised by the Slovenian Society of Aesthetic, in collaboration with the Moderna galerija. The lecture will be in English.

Abstract:
There was a "Great Discussion in Aesthetics" in China in from 1950s to the earlier 1960s, and a "Craze for Aesthetics" from 1978 to 1985. From 1998 to the present, we have been witnessing new signs for the revival of aesthetics, or, I prefer to say, the "Renaissance of Aesthetics". The first and second periods of aesthetic heat were closely connected with politics. The first one was a part of the efforts to construct Marxist ideology in China. In the process of the "Great Discussion", different versions of Chinese Marxist aesthetics were formed. The second one, or the "Craze for Aesthetics" was taken place in a period immediately after the Cultural Revolution, a period when Kant's idea of the art autonomy and aesthetic disinterestedness were welcomed and dominated in China. The third one, or the "Renaissance of Aesthetics", has been a period not simply repeating the aesthetics prosperous in previous period, but attempting a new way of doing aesthetics. Aesthetics of this period have at least three characters: 1. It is no longer an aesthetics of disinterestedness and autonomy, but an aesthetics of engaging everyday life; 2. It is not an aesthetics developed isolatedly but open to dialogue with aestheticians outside of China; 3. It is an aesthetics that is no longer concentrating on philosophical speculation, but more focusing on literature, art, environment and everyday life.

About the speaker:
Gao Jianping, born in1955, graduated at Yangzhou University in 1982 with a Bachelor Degree of Art, and studied in Sweden from 1989 and received a Ph.D in Aesthetics in 1996 at the Institute of Aesthetics of Uppsala University, Sweden. He is now research fellow of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and professor of the Graduate School of the CASS. He serves as the Secretary-General of the International Association of Aesthetics (IAA) and the Vice-president of the Chinese Society for Aesthetics (CSA). Gao Jianping has published the following books: The Expressive Act in Chinese Art - From Calligraphy to Painting (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1996 in English). The Secrets in Painting - A Study of Chinese Aesthetics (Hong Kong: The Cosmos Books, 1995 in Chinese). Globalization and Chinese Art (Jinan: Jinan Education Press, 2008) Globalism vs. Localism: Aesthetics and Culture in A Comparative Perspective (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2009) He has also published more than 100 papers in Chinese and English in journals in China and abroad. Has also translated several books from English to Chinese and published in China, including John Dewey's Art as Experience, Monroe Beardsley's Aesthetics: From Ancient Greece to the Present.