A lecture by Viktor Arslanov. What Would Mikhail Lifshitz Say to a Can If It Started Speaking?

Date

Schedule

19:30

Place

Garage Auditorium

DESCRIPTION

In this talk, art historian Viktor Arslanov starts with the following question: Why did Mikhail Lifshitz persist in his decadence in the time of orthodox Marxism, only to become dogmatic in a more liberal era?

Arslanov’s argument is that Mikhail Lifshitz’s and György Lukács’ theory picked up where Walter Benjamin’s had left off.

Viktor Arslanov believes that Lifshitz had a better and deeper understanding of the avant-garde than modernists themselves: he saw it as “a complex spiritual meta-structure.” “Although I have no desire to impose my beliefs or tastes on anyone,” Lifshitz wrote, “I must admit that so-called avant-garde art sometimes seems to me to have been pure charlatanry; at other times, it looks like a malicious trend, or a social disease that spread among the most talented and honest people. But most often it appears to have been an ‘overdone caricature of stupidity,’ as Leo Tolstoy has put it. I do not, however, mean to question the significance of the reasons that have given rise to such ill, ridiculous distortions in the consciousness of the modern man.”

How does artistic convention turn into the absolute truth of the viewer’s sensory experience? Viktor Arslanov will discuss the concept of “complementarity” in the works of Lifshitz and Derrida, “the secret plot of two churches,” Lifshitz’s theory of “the crevice,” which served as the basis for the Restaurtio Magna program, and Valery Podoroga’s idea of Lifshitz as “the ghost of modernity.”

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Viktor Arslanov (b. 1947) holds a PhD in art theory and philosophy. He is a professor at the Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Arts, and author of around 80 articles in the Voprosy filosofii, Voprosy literatury, Khudozhnik, and Iskusstvo journals. His publications include The Myth of the Death of Art: Frankfurt School Aesthetics from Walter Benjamin to the New Left (1983); Western Art Theory in the 20th Century (2005); Being and Nothing: Postmodernism and Tertium Datur in 20th Century Russian Culture (2015); and The Theory and History of Art Studies in five volumes (2015). After Mikhail Lifshitz’s death, Arslanov edited and published his works in 15 books, which include Dialogue with E. Ilyenkov (2003); What Is Classic? (2004); Why Am I Not a Modernist? (2009); M. Lifshitz and G. Lukács: Correspondence 1931–1970 (2011); and Essays on Russian Culture (2015). In 2010, the Institute of Philosophy at the Russian Academy of Sciences published the book M. A. Lifshitz, edited by Arslanov.