What is Art? The Search is Over

Panel Discussion & Book Launch

Thursday 19 October 2017, 5 – 8PM
Rooms SG1&2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT

Help artist Robert Good celebrate the launch of A New Dictionary of Art – a new approach to an old problem.

Robert will be joined by philosopher Professor Derek Matravers, artist John Clark and designer Jane Glennie for a lively and informative discussion about his project to collate over 3000 definitions of Art from the Internet. Includes a short reading, book signing, and refreshments.

Please book a place for this event via Eventbrite

A New Dictionary of Art – One word: 3,000 definitions.

“Both splendid and splendidly bonkers” – Professor Derek Matravers, philosopher

Robert Good, A New Dictionary of ArtThe definition of ‘Art’ has exercised philosophers, artists, and art-lovers for centuries, yet we are no nearer a consensus of what in fact it is. The one term not found in most dictionaries of art is the term ‘Art’ itself.

A New Dictionary of Art takes a refreshingly alternative approach, allowing you to take your pick from over 3,000 definitions compiled from the internet via chat-rooms and discussion forums as well as from more established authorities, artists and institutions. Passions run high as formal sits alongside informal, jocular alongside vulgar: all are left to fight it out on the page.

Each entry is carefully alphabetised and has been valiantly edited and annotated for accuracy and completeness to the point of absurdity. By retaining the format and formality of a dictionary in this way, A New Dictionary of Art acknowledges with humour our continuing desire for absolute knowledge and certainty.

 “Weirdly but powerfully provocative… one of the most useful things I’ve read in a while” – John Clark, painter

Panelists:

  • Robert Good is an artist based in Cambridge UK and Masters graduate from Cambridge School of Art, ARU
  • Derek Matravers is a philosopher of aesthetics at the Open University and a former Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge.
  • John Clark is a painter and maker based in Cambridge UK.
  • Jane Glennie is an artist and typographer and founder of Peculiarity Press.

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