Philosopher: Robert Gooding-Williams, Columbia University

Artwork: The Garden, Louise Glück, 1976

Words: The dramatic speaker, a tragic chorus of one, can barely bear to observe a naïve young couple, wanting in awareness of the difficulties that await them, wanting in perspective, and doomed to sadness —a sadness occasioned by departures and separations, even fleeting ones, “even here, even at the beginning of love;” a sadness we may feel free to disregard, falsely thinking that we can secure our relationships against it.  The poem, through its rhythm and tone, conveys the ineluctability of that sadness, thus exemplifying poetry’s power to affect and affectively to form our understanding of the faults that fall between us.

Philosopher: Stefanie Rocknak (philosopher and sculptor), Hartwick College

Artwork: Toter Christus (Dead Christ), Zacharias Hegewald, 1630, 26.9 cm x 10.5 cm, wood carving/statuette

Words: Although I’m not religious, this piece took my breath away. It is rather small, just 26 centimeters long—if you could break into the case and pick it up, it could be cradled with one hand. Preciously carved, and, as evidenced by the darker spots on the wood, preciously touched for hundreds of years. The artist, Zacharias Hegewald, threw himself into this figure; he left nothing on the field.

Philosopher: Timothy Yenter, University of Mississippi

Artwork: Sense and Sensibility, written by Jane Austen, read by Juliet Levenson, unabridged audio recording, 11 CDs, 12h 43m, copyright 2005

Words: Jane Austen’s family loved reading aloud. Austen debuted new work this way, usually to her family’s acclaim, so she was troubled by her mother’s poor reading of Pride and Prejudice. Reading aloud is even praised by Fanny in Mansfield Park, who seriously objects to acting.

But what is the relationship between a novel and its public reading? Can a recording of Juliet Stevenson’s excellent reading of Austen’s novels be an artwork? Is it a performance, interpretation, translation, artwork, or all four? Does Austen’s expectation that her novels would sometimes be read aloud matter?

Philosopher: Chuck Goldhaber, University of Pittsburgh

Artwork: Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Picture) /  Gerhard Richter / 1999 [Catalogue Raisonné: 858-4] / Painting, Oil on Alu Dibond / 50 cm x 72 cm

Words: Not all art must be architecture.  Some works need no floorplans, no precalculations.  Richter’s abstracts attract me through their randomness and ease.  They are made by running a huge squeegee over paint pooled on a panel in bands of contrasting color.  The squeegee drags the bands, sometimes covering one with another, sometimes smearing several together, sometimes scraping some away to reveal forgotten colors of a base coating.  This process is, at best, hardly controllable; Richter is, at most, a collaborator.  Nature—the secret laws of the mediums—does most of the work.  Richter’s main contribution is to judge when nature has succeeded

Philosopher: Sheryl Tuttle Ross, University of Wisconsin—La Crosse

Artwork: “The Problem We All Live With”, Norman Rockwell, 1964 (Painting, Oil on Canvas, 91 cm x 150 cm, Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts)

Words: On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges, six years old, bravely walked to school, surrounded by four U.S. Marshalls who were protecting her in the face of outright hatred because of the color of her skin and her role in desegregating public schools. We are still dealing with the repercussions of America’s original sin: slavery. Still struggling to fully realize that Black Lives Matter. Perhaps, to serve as a reminder of the power of self-respect in response to racism, President Obama placed this painting in the Oval Office—indeed, useful as positive propaganda while we bend history’s arc toward justice.

[Ed. note: Ruby Bridges, the first black child to attend an all-white public elementary in the South turned 62 yesterday, September 8.]

Philosopher: Ben Blumson, National University of Singapore

Artwork: Self-Portrait with Lens Cap On, Johnny Manahan, 1972

Words: Johnny Manahan’s photographs are monochrome squares in the tradition of Malevich or Rauschenberg but in the medium of photography.

There are many examples of the informational content of photographs outstripping their intentional content – an accidentally taken photograph, for example, conveys information about a scene without having been intended to depict that scene. But Manahan’s self-portraits are illustrations of the reverse, since they are intended to depict Manahan, but – since the photographs would have been the same, even if his appearance had been different – they carry no information about his appearance.