CPKP Talk

Eli Friedlander – Walter Benjamin on Form and Identity

May 2, 2024, 16-18h University of Potsdam
Haus 11, Room 0.09

Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469 Potsdam

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Abstract: In my talk I explore the philosophical grounds of Benjamin’s aesthetics by relating them to the legacy of Kant and German Idealism. In particular I will focus on his relatively unknown early theory of painting. In so doing I wish to rethink not only such philosophical concepts as intuition, imagination, form, construction and space, but also relate them to painterly notions such as pictorial space, medium, surface and depth, mark, as well as color. As I will try to argue, it is the standpoint of identity, in contrast to the more prevalent notion of form, that is the central moment of this aesthetics of painting.

My talk is drawn out of a larger project on color and painting in Benjamin, in which I develop in some detail case studies drawn out of scattered remarks of his regarding Picasso and cubism, Franz Marc’s Animal Paintings, as well as the significance of modernism in Klee and Kandinsky.