Note on Agamben on art criticism and the art object as medium

ABSTRACT

The ‘Note’ shows that Agamben’s book, The Man Without Content, raises the question of art criticism and in so doing also raises questions relating to the nature of art and the medium.

KEYWORDS:

• Agamben
• art criticism
• medium

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Danto (1981, 153), cited by Harman (2019, 151). The significance of consciousness as a medium is that it is transparent.

2 See: https://artwizard.eu/jackson-pollock-ar-29.

3 It is interesting that Harman frequently refers to Duchamp’s object as a ‘urinal’ rather than as ‘Fountain’, thereby diminishing its artwork status (see for example, 2019, 157).

4 It is well known that Breton decked out his Paris apartment at 42, rue Fontaine with Oceanic, North American, African and Australian Aboriginal art and artefacts. For a discussion plus images of Breton’s apartment, and the implications of Breton’s ‘surrealist’ appropriation of non-Western objects, see Conley (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Lechte

John Lechte is Emeritus Professor in Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney. His books include: Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image (2012); Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights (with Saul Newman) (2013); The Human (2018); and Violence and the Image (forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press).