Guy Dammann/ Simon Glendinning
Tuesday 17 January 2012, 6.30-8.00pm
Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE
Guy Dammann, music critic of the Times Literary Supplement, and a critic and commentator for The Guardian. He teaches at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Chair: Simon Glendinning, Reader in European Philosophy, European Institute, LSE and Director of the Forum for European Philosophy
It is a truism to assert that judgements about art and beauty are subjective. That such judgements are relative, accountable solely to direct personal experience, has long been axiomatic to the philosophy, criticism and practice of art. Guy Dammann argued that we now exaggerate this degree of relativity, and do so at the expense of artistic experience. In particular, we misunderstand the meaning of criticism if we consider it purely as the expression of personal preference rather than as a vehicle for renegotiating the relation between individual sensibility and the values enshrined in culture. Art has the power to change us for the better, but only when we agree to meet it half-way.