Costello, Diarmuid. (2012) Automat, automatic, automatism : Rosalind Krauss and Stanley Cavell on photography and the photographically dependent arts. Critical Inquiry, Vol.38 (No.4). pp. 819-854. ISSN 0093-1896

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Abstract

How might philosophers and art historians make the best use of one another’s research? That, in nuce, is what this special issue considers with respect to questions concerning the nature of photography as an artistic medium; and that is what my essay addresses with respect to a specific case: the dialogue, or lack thereof, between the work of the philosopher Stanley Cavell and the art historian-critic Rosalind Krauss. It focuses on Krauss’s late appeal to Cavell’s notion of automatism to argue that artists now have to invent their own medium, both to provide criteria against which to judge artistic success or failure and to insulate serious art from the vacuous generalization of the aesthetic in a media-saturated culture at large. Much in the spirit of ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’, paying attention to the medium is once again an artist’s best line of defence against the encroachment of new media, the culture industry, and spectacle. That Krauss should appeal to Cavell at all, let alone in such a Greenbergian frame of mind, is surprising if one is familiar with the fraught history of debate about artistic media in art theory since Greenberg. Cavell’s work in this domain has always been closely associated with that of Michael Fried, and the mutual estrangement of Fried and Krauss, who began their critical careers as two of Greenberg’s leading followers, is legendary.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BH Aesthetics N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Krauss, Rosalind E. -- Criticism and interpretation, Cavell, Stanley, 1926- -- Criticism and interpretation, Photography, Artistic, Automatism (Art movement)
Journal or Publication Title:	Critical Inquiry
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
ISSN:	0093-1896
Date:	2012
Volume:	Vol.38
Number:	No.4
Number of Pages:	36
Page Range:	pp. 819-854
Identification Number:	10.1086/667426
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/51087

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