By:Zhou Xingzi

At 7:00PM on 14th May, the fifth lecture of the SFL entitled Art and Language was held successfully in Lize A204. The lecture was hosted by Dr. Richard Stopford, who holds a PhD in Philosophy from Durham University and specializes in aesthetics and philosophy of art. Many students and oversea teachers came to his lecture.

What’s the relationship between art and language? With a brief introduction of the concept of art and aesthetics, Dr. Richard Stopford posted some questions to the students. Some people hold the opinion that for the actual moment people are in front of the art work, there is no any concept in it. But after that, concept emerges with the forming of people’s experiences. Dr. Richard Stopford thought that because the nature of people’s experience is conceptual, they could still describe their feeling to others. However, actually it was very uneasy for them to convey their private feeling in an exact way. By taking the example of the smell of durian, Dr. Richard Stopford illustrated the distance between language and concepts to students. After that, he turned to the topic of art and language. He played a piece of Bach’s music to make students consider their own ideas of the relationship between art and language.

In the second section of the lecture, Dr. Richard Stopford introduced The Case of Richard Mutt, which opened a new page of conceptual art. The new form of art made people begin to reconsider the definition of art and observe different things in different aspects. However, there would be another argument for people to consider the relationship between language and this new form of art.

The lecture showed a brand new way for students to think about the language. When it came to the Q&A, not only the students, but also oversea teachers raised many questions.