Diarmuid Costello
https://channel.hammer.ucla.edu/video/550/philosophers-discuss-racial-identity-in-adrian-pipers-artwork
"Miss Piper, you're about as black as I am," a talk on the relation of Adrian Piper's art and philosophy to questions of race at the "Deconstructing the Truism of Race as a Social Construct" conference, UCLA Hammer Museum of Art on 3 November 2018. My talk runs from 1.30.20 through 2.09.10.
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Current Research
My research draws on both analytic and continental approaches to aesthetics and the philosophy of art, and is informed by recent debates in art history and theory. Until recently, it focused on two main goals:
1. To contest widespread assumptions in the philosophy of photography regarding the nature of photography, particularly as an artistic medium, in part by showing that it is predicated on a narrow diet of examples that distorts philosophers' understanding of the field, and in part by developing an alternative conception of photographic agency. The former draws on resources in art history, the latter on the philosophy of action.
2. To defuse antipathy to aesthetics in art theory by showing that kinds of art typically thought challenging to aesthetics can be accommodated by a sufficiently rich aesthetic theory. To this end I have drawn on the neglected semantic potential of Kant's theory of art, and endeavoured to show various supposedly anti-aesthetic artforms, notably Conceptual Art, can be accommodated by the resulting aesthetic theory.
There is a book project associated with each. The former, On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry, was published by Routledge in 2018. The latter, Aesthetics after Modernism, has just appeared appear in Oxford University Press's 'Thinking Art' series (Sept 2024). Both involve substantive engagement with recent art and photography. Artists whose work has been important for these projects, respectively, include: (1) Peter Henry Emerson, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Strand, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and James Welling, and; (2) Robert Barry, Lawrence Weiner, Art & Language, Sol LeWitt, Jeff Wall, Gerhard Richter, James Coleman, William Kentridge and Ed Ruscha.
3. I am now working on a book that models a way of doing substantive work in the philosophy of art that departs from dominant methodologies in both analytic and continental aesthetics. I call the proposed methodology "philosophical criticism." Provisionally titled Spurs to Thought: Engaging Philosophically with Contemporary Art, it consists largely of stand alone essays, each of which considers a small number of works by a particular artist in relation to a concept of philosophical interest, and associated philosophical debates. I see these essays as a kind "proof of concept" for the proposed methodology. Projected chapters include: Martin Creed (the heuristic value of stupidity); Adrian Piper (racism from the inside); Lee Friedlander (self-portraiture and asymmetry of shame); Rineke Dijkstra (trust in self-presentation); Santiago Sierra (staging exploitation); Jeremy Deller (political agency versus political art); Richard Long (treading lightly on the surface of the earth); Zina Saro-Wiwa (the metaphysics of habitat); Elisabeth Price (the limits of executive agency), and Stephan Balkenhol (the beauty of the everyman). These art focused chapters will be framed by two methodological chapters setting out how my approach departs from dominant philosophical approaches to art, whether analytic or continental, and the benefits of my proposed alternative.
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Academic Biography
After originally training in Fine Art, I switched to Philosophy as a graduate student. While completing my PhD, I took on my first permanent academic post teaching aesthetics and art theory. I came to Warwick in 2006. From 2004-2012 I was a member of the British Society of Aesthetics executive committee, from 2008-12 as Chair of the Society. I have been a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow (2004-5, and again in 2023-5), and a Humboldt Experienced Researcher at the Institut für Philosophie, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt (2012-13, 2015). From 2007-11 I was Co-Director, with Margaret Iversen (Dept of Art History & Theory, University of Essex), of the major AHRC research project, ‘Aesthetics after Photography.' There were two post-doctoral fellows, three special journal issues, various publications, workshops and conferences, and an exhibition associated with this project. I was a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College, between 2010-14. In 2023-25 I will be on leave as a Leverhulme Research Fellow to work on Spurs to Thought: Engaging Philosophically with Contemporary Art.
I am happy to hear from PhD candidates wishing to work on projects connected to any of the research areas detailed above.
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Work in progress
'Felix Eats Garri and Egusi Soup: Zina Saro-Wiwa and the Metaphysics of Habitat,' (with Katrin Flikschuh)
'Die Schönheit des Mittelmenschen: Stephan Balkenhol's Everyday Beauty' (journal article, under review)
'Wrongful, Degrading, or merely Indecent? Exploitation in three works by Santiago Sierra'
'Self-Presentation and External Validation: Vulnerability and Trust in Rineke Dijkstra's Portraiture'
'"Lost but Alert:" agency and automatism in Elizabeth Price’s USER GROUP DISCO and RESTORATION'
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Some of these papers will also serve as chapters in my current book project:
Spurs to Thought: Engaging Philosophically with Contemporary Art
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Work forthcoming
'Could the Artist not be Wrong? Sherri Irvin's Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press) to appear with a reply by Irvin in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 82:4 (Winter 2024).
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Work Published
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1. Books
Aesthetics after Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024): here. This will be the subject of a book symposium with Studi di Estetica to appear in 2025.
On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry (London: Routledge, 2018): here.Link opens in a new window Now translated into Farsi by Iman Amirteimour for Aban Book, Tehran (2003).
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2. Edited Collections and Special Journal Issues
The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics. Co-edited with Dominic Willsdon, London: Tate Publishing and Cornell UP, 2008: here
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3. Journal Articles:
'Aesthetic judgement after de Duve or what, exactly, did Kant 'get right'? nonsite.org. 44 (Oct 2023): https://nonsite.org/aesthetic-judgement-after-de-duve-or-what-exactly-did-kant-get-right/
'Conceptual Art and Aesthetic Ideas,' Kantian Review 26:4 (Dec 2021), 603-618: https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S1369415421000388
'On the Very Idea of a "Political" Work of Art,' The Journal of Political Philosophy 29:1 (March 2021), 25-45: https://0-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1111/jopp.12217
'New Theory Reconsidered: Reply to Scott Walden and Dominic McIver Lopes', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77:3 (Summer 2019), 313-320.
'Spontaneity and Materiality: What Photography Is in the Photography of James Welling,' co-authored with Dominic McIver Lopes, Art History 42:1 (Feb 2019), 154-176.
'Whither Photography Theory? Reply to Catharine Abell and Paloma Atencia-Linares' in 'The New Theory of Photography: Symposium on Dominic McIver Lopes, The Four Arts of Photography and Diarmuid Costello, On Photography, Aisthesis, 11:2 (Dec 2018) (special issue on the Aesthetics of Photography), 230-234.
'What is Abstraction in Photography?', The British Journal of Aesthetics 58:4 (October 2018), 385-400.
'What's So New About the "New" Theory of Photography?Link opens in a new window,' Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 75th anniversary issue, 75:4 (Fall 2017), 439-452.
'"But I am killing them!" Reply to Palermo and Baetens on Agency and Automatism', Critical Inquiry, 41:1, Fall 2014, 178-210.
"Action and Automatism" in NONsite, Issue 11: Photography and Philosophy (Winter 2013/14), np.
'Pictures, Again,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 8:1, 2008, 11-42.
'On the Very Idea of a "Specific" Medium: Michael Fried and Stanley Cavell on Painting and Photography as Arts,' Critical Inquiry, 34:2, Winter 2008, 274-312.
'Whatever Happened to "Embodiment?:" The Eclipse of Materiality in Danto's Ontology of Art,’ Angelaki, 12:2, 2007, 83-94: here
Translated as: 'Cosa mai è successo all'"incorporazione"? L'eclisse della materialità nell'ontologia dell'arte di Danto', a special issue of Rivista di Estetica 'Artworld & Artwork: Arthur C. Danto e l'ontologia dellarte' ed. Tiziana Andina e Alessandro Lancieri, 35:2, 2007; pp. 113-128.
‘Greenberg’s Kant, and the Fate of Aesthetics in Contemporary Art Theory,’ The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65: 2, Spring 2007, 217-228.
‘On Late Style: Arthur Danto’s The Abuse of Beauty,’ British Journal of Aesthetics, 44:4, October 2004, 424-439.
'Lyotard’s Modernism' in 'To Jean-François Lyotard,' special issue of Parallax (17); October 2000, 76-87: here.
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4. Papers in Edited Collections:
'Abstraction in Photography, Revisited' in Chiara Ambrosia and Julia Sánchez-Dorado, Abstraction in Science and Art: Philosophical Perspectives, London: Routledge, 2024, pp. 51-76: paper here, open access book here.
'S T U P I D A R T,' in Elisabeth Schellekens and Davide Dal Sasso (eds.) Martin Creed and Philosophy, London: Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 45-62.
'Photography as a Category of Art,' in Sonia Sedivy (ed.) Art Representation and Make-Believe: Essays on the Philosophy of Kendall L. Walton, New York: Routledge, 2021, pp. 177-195.
'Without Shame: Lee Friedlander's Late Self-Portraits,' in Hans Maes (ed.) Portraits and Philosophy, London: Routledge, 2020, pp.171-188.
'Xenophobia, Stereotypes and Empirical Acculturation: Neo-Kantianism in Adrian Piper's Performative Conceptual Art,' in Connie Butler and David Platzker (eds.) Adrian Piper: A Reader, New York: MoMA Press, 2018; pp. 64-117.
'On the (So Called) Problem of Detail: Michael Fried, Roland Barthes, and Roger Scruton on Photography and Intentionality,' in Mathew Abbott (ed.) Michael Fried and Philosophy: Modernism, Intention, and Theatricality, London: Routledge, 2018; pp. 151-170.
'Doing Justice to the Art in Photography,' in Dominic McIver Lopes, Four Arts of Photography, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016; pp. 135-146.
'Leaning into the Wind: Poiesis in Richard Long' in Aron Vinegar and Amanda Boetzkes (eds.) Heidegger and the Work of Art History, Ashgate 2014; pp. 141-169..
5. Curatorial Projects:
6. Exhibition Catalogues:
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Undergraduate Modules
Aesthetics: Art, Beauty and the Sublime
Work & Concept: Philosophy and Contemporary Art
Issues in Contemporary Aesthetics
Graduate Modules
Topics in Philosophy and the Arts
Work & Concept: Philosophy and Contemporary Art
Office
S2.47
Office Hour
I am on leave in 2023/2024
Links
American Society of Aesthetics
European Society of Aesthetics