Dr Clive Cazeaux

Reader in Aesthetics
Head of Research Degrees
e: ccazeaux@cardiffmet.ac.uk
t: +44 (0)29 2041 6680

Specialist Subject Areas

• metaphor and visual thinking in aesthetics and the theory of knowledge

• the philosophies of visual arts research and art-science practice

• ecological aesthetics and listening as responses to dualistic subject–object thought

Qualifications

PhD in Philosophy, University of Wales

MA in Philosophy, University of Wales

BA (Hons) Fine Art, University of London, Goldsmiths

Biography

I studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London (1984-87), and it was the questions I encountered there concerning the nature of representation in drawing which led me to Philosophy. An MA in Philosophy at Cardiff University allowed me to locate these questions in Kant’s theory of knowledge (1989-90), and prepared the ground for my PhD study – at the Technische Universität, Berlin (1992), and at Cardiff University (1990-95) – on how recent theories of metaphor in art and science can be informed by Kantian philosophy.

In 1995 I was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, part of the University of Central England as it was then. I took up a Senior Lectureship in Aesthetics at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, one year later. From 2003 I was Programme Leader for BA Art and Philosophy, and since 2007 I have been Head of Research Degrees.

Current research

My current work on metaphor and visual thinking develops metaphor as a research method for visual arts research. Metaphor figures prominently in the aesthetic judgments we make about works of art and design, but the value of these as claims to knowledge and as possible starting-points for new explorations is not fully recognized. In social and media studies, Gauntlett (2007) identifies metaphor as a device which allows people to explore one subject through the terms of another. But he does not go far enough, and does not harness recent work done in philosophy on the cognitive potential of metaphor.

Metaphor, the description of one thing as something else, is not just the drawing together of previously perceived similarities but, as Cazeaux (2007), Lakoff and Johnson (1999), and Ricoeur (1978) argue, an embodied principle of conceptual realignment which generates insight. I draw on the philosophical theories of Kant and Merleau-Ponty to present metaphor as a research method. As a way of thinking and talking about art and design practice, I show how metaphor (a) creates new frames of reference, (b) generates friction between these new frames and established terminologies (where this is a good thing), and (c) calls attention to the embodied nature of human being and the capacity which art and design have to enrich and enliven our embodied condition.

Principal Publications and/or Exhibitions

Click here to view Dr Cazeaux’ papers and publications on Cardiff Metropolitan University’s DSpace repository.

2011 The Continental Aesthetics Reader. London: Routledge. Expanded, second edition.

2010 Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder. In Doctor Who and Philosophy, eds. P. Smithka and C. Lewis. Chicago: Open Court, pp. 313-24.

2009 Locatedness and the objectivity of interpretation in practice-based research. Working Papers in Art and Design, vol. 5. [WWW] <URL: http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/ artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol5/ccabs.html>. Accessed 11 October 2009.

2008 Inherently interdisciplinary: four perspectives on practice-based research. Journal of Visual Arts Practice, vol. 7, pp. 107-32.

2007 Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida. New York: Routledge.

Modules Taught

ADA301 Theory-Practice
ADA307 Philosophical Enquiry
MAA7001 Research Methods
ADX7002 Critical Positions in Art and Design
ADX7003 Project Design

Supervision of Doctoral Research (titles or broad areas of investigation)

• metaphor and visual thinking in aesthetics and the theory of knowledge
• the philosophies of visual arts research and art-science practice
• ecological aesthetics and listening as responses to dualistic subject–object thought
• art and design as philosophy
• art and design writing
• interdisciplinarity