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Art as 'Night' proposes a type of ahistorical dark knowledge (atheology and theology, at once) crossing painting since Velázquez, but reaching back to the Renaissance, especially Titian and Caravaggio. As a form of formalism, this 'night' is also closely allied with forms of intellection that come to reside in art as pure visual agency or material knowledge while invoking moral agency, a function of art more or less bracketed in modern art for ethical and/or political agency. Not a theory of meta-painting, Art as 'Night' restores coordinates arguably lost in painting since the separation of natural and moral philosophy in the Baroque era. It is with Velázquez that we see a turning point, an emphasis on the specific resources of painting as a form of speculative intellect, while it is with contemporary works by Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer that we see the return of the same after the collapse of modernism, and after subsequent postmodern maneuvers to make art discursive yet without the austerities of the formal means present in Art as Art. Art as 'Night' argues for a non-discursive form of intellection fully embodied in the work of art and, foremost, painting. A synoptic and intentionally elusive and allusive survey of painting, through the collapse of the art market in late 2007, Art as 'Night' suggests by way of this critique of an elective 'night' crossing painting that the art world is an endlessly deferred version of pleroma (Hegel's Absolute Knowledge), a fully synthetic world given to an exploration and appropriation of the given through classical mimesis and epistemology and its complete incorporation and transfiguration in a theory of knowledge and art as pure speculative agency. In effect, Art as 'Night' is an incarnational theory of art as absolute knowledge
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Art as “Night” Art as “Night”: An Art-Theological Treatise By Gavin Keeney Art as “Night”: An Art-Theological Treatise, by Gavin Keeney This book first published 2010 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2010 by Gavin Keeney All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2401-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2401-9 To Nicholas … TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Part I: Spanish “Night” Chapter One................................................................................................. 3 Nightfall Into the “Night” The End of All of That Why There is Not Nothing Art as “Night” Velázquez What is Left? Art as Moral Agency What is “It”? Saturn and the Sublime What is Not? Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 21 What is Fate? Auto-Portrait of the Same The Dark Background What is “in” Titian? Next Worlds Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 43 Tenebrous Rays Ortega y Gasset Visuality Itself Art and Theology viii Table of Contents Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 69 The Icon Moments The Grand Glass Coda: Parallel Worlds Calderón and Gracián Theology as Philosophy as Ideology Part II: Universal “Night” Chapter One............................................................................................. 101 Universal “Night” García Lorca Universal