Beauty: How to Make It Safe for the 21st Century, Dominic McIver Lopes

Critiques of beauty in art and in everyday life assume the traditional idea that aesthetic value is a kind of power to please. An entirely new picture comes from a close look at intricately structured networks of agents who interact with each other in aesthetic enterprises. Aesthetic values give us reasons to act in the context of social practices. The “network theory” explains why, despite the critiques, beauty never disappeared from art, why it’s as humanly important as ever, and how it can be harnessed to address pressing social problems.

Introduction by Noël Carroll, CUNY Graduate Center

a lecture by Dominic McIver Lopes
Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, the author of Understanding Pictures, Sight and Sensibility,  Computer Art, Beyond Art, Four Arts of Photography, and Being for Beauty (in progress).

6pm, Wednesday, 27 September
Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College
(North Building, 4th Floor)

Sponsored by the departments of
Art and Philosophy