2026 Anderson Lecture #2

Art and Aesthetic Appreciation by Description

Catharine Abell | University of Oxford  

Tuesday, 6 October | 5:45pm doors for 6:00pm start

The appreciation of many artworks requires us to perceptually experience them or recordings, copies or reproductions of them. This is consistent with the view that aesthetic appreciation is essentially perceptual. However, there are some artworks we do not need to perceive to appreciate. Descriptions of the non-aesthetic properties of some avant-garde and contemporary artworks can put those with the requisite background knowledge in a position to appreciate them. Either our appreciation of such artworks is not aesthetic, or such artworks show that aesthetic appreciation is not essentially perceptual. I will argue for the latter view and will explore its implications for the nature of aesthetic appreciation.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Catharine Abell is Professor of Philosophy of Art at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford. She is the author of Fiction: A Philosophical Analysis (2020, Oxford University Press). She has published articles on a wide range of topics in the philosophy of art, including the nature of art, pictorial representation, genre, photography and film.

ABOUT THE ANDERSON FELLOWSHIPS:
Anderson Fellowships are bestowed through a bequest of the estate of John Anderson (1893-1962), an influential Australian philosopher and Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1927 to 1958. They fund travel to the University of Sydney for up to two distinguished fellows in philosophy each year with the aim of promoting collaboration between members of the philosophy department and leading researchers around the world.

Join us for some refreshments after the lecture.

Images: courtesy of WikiArt