01 Master Class: The Object of Art and the Art as Object with Ken Lum

Scholarship and financial aid to cover up to 50 per cent of the program fee is available to participants. Please see How to Apply.

The relationship between art and life (in terms of the potential collapse of one term into the other or the discursive separation between the terms) has underlined the primary function of the avant-garde in art. The dialectical tension between those objects deemed art or non-art is itself an institutional function of the cultural (social) category of art. How is artistic discourse produced to transform an object into art? In what ways does artistic discourse negotiate the question of the art object as commodity? What role does the artist play in this negotiation?

This Banff Master Class will study the operational functioning of the work of art within the constitution of the art world and in relation to different institutional frames. The relationship of art to the concept of “symbolic capital” and “artifactual production” will also be explored. As interest in art continues to accelerate and spread globally, the aim of this class will be to revisit the most fundamental questions about the status and function of art.

The class will take the form of a bi-weekly seminar. The first class of the week will critically examine an assigned reading. The final class of the week will be an open session moderated by the Master Class leader.