Society for Cultural Anthropology

Oral Presentation Session

The Art of Cogitation

Presenter(s)

• TE

  TAREK ELHAIK

  University of California, Davis, Department of Anthropology

In this talk I open a zone of mutual intrusion between aesthetic anthropology and art history in order to account for what I call the "Art of Cogitation."  In the art works and writings of conceptual artists Adrian Piper and Anna Maria Maiolino I identify alternate genealogies of abstraction the study of which demands a two-fold inquiry: 1) art historical, by exploring the image-work and conceptual strategies of the avant-garde movements known as Concrete Art and Neo-Concretismo (Mondrian, Torres Garcia, Lygia Clark); and 2) geo-philosophical, by examining the anthropological problem of 'cogitation', i.e. the intermediary faculty and power of tajrid (abstraction) 12th century Cordoban philosopher Ibn Rushd (Latin. Averroes) located between the imagination and intellection.