From Cézanne’s Doubt to Ai Weiwei’s Subversive Engagement

Abstract

Within the large field of our conference on “Aesthetics and Life-World,” which takes on an even broader dimension in the framework of the Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy – I will, in what follows, concentrate on only two main protagonists: Paul Cézanne and Ai Weiwei. This restriction not only allows a more concise focus of my analyses, more importantly, merely reflecting on art or indeed aesthetics in general would precisely give away the actual concern. By proceeding in an abstract, conceptual fashion, we would, speaking with Kant, neither see the artist’s constitutive “originality” nor the “exemplary,” let alone the talent to “give the rule to (fine) art.” Although the notion of “genius” is today as obsolete as it is unclear – and neither Paul Cézanne nor Ai Weiwei would even consider regarding themselves as geniuses – I would like to show how their artistic activity works on the lifeworld itself, which is, in turn, where they – just as all of us – originate from. Therefore, their artistic production and their very existence as artists constitutively is at issue and at stake, even if, or rather, precisely because both come from different and very distinct cultures, lifeworlds, times, and understandings of art and artistry. Thus, the title “From Cézanne’s Doubt to Ai Weiwei’s Subversive Engagement” by no means refers to some coherent art-historical trajectory. In fact, it points to the possibility of examining the relationship of “aesthetics and lifeworld” – or as I would rather say, of “aisthetics and lifeworld” –, along with its presuppositions and preconditions, from an intercultural perspective. This means that perception or experience on the one hand and lifeworld or form of life on the other hand have to be analyzed in their reciprocal conditionality and contouring. This involves also that the aesthetical – to be understood, for once,