Art and Institution: Aesthetics in the Late Works of Merleau-Ponty

Introduction / 1. Matisse in Slow Motion / 2. Art and Natural Being / 3. Proust and the Significant Event / 4. Reversibility Between the Arts / Concluding Remarks / Bibliography / Index

Rajiv Kaushik is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brock University, Canada.

Art and Institution takes its starting point from the relatively neglected middle period of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetic thinking, in comparison with its opening moment in Cezanne, and reads it forward into the late ontological figures of Eye and Mind and The Visible and the Invisible. Thus, the notions of institution, language, expression, history, passivity, unconscious, mythic time, and desire are central motifs as well as the art of Matisse and Klee, the cave paintings of Lascaux, and the involuntary memory of Proust's Recherche. Rajiv Kaushik has given us an original study of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics with new accents that re-awaken and re-energize the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty for our times. -- Galen A. Johnson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Rhode Island, USA Kaushik's significant exploration of the implications of Merleau-Ponty's claims for art will refigure our understanding not only of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics, but also of the relationship of art to philosophy. In addressing themes such as painting and the originary institution of expression, art and nature, Proust and the event, as well as the relation of literature to gesture, Kaushik thinks through the institution of meaning that, though originary, still comes out of a style of being that belongs to its time. It is thus always an active passivity. Art and Institution is itself an original work of depth, and precision and is important for those interested in either Merleau-Ponty's philosophy or for those coming to phenomenology through aesthetics. -- Helen Fielding, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada Rajiv Kaushik's Art and Institution is a book of intrinsic merit, an original work whose scope, profundity, and daring radically reconfigure and revitalize Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics and shape the contours of a new research agenda for the emerging generation of Merleau-Ponty scholars. -- Patrick Burke, Notre Dame Philosophical