Commentary to Part 4: Space of Arts

Abstract

Current cosmology emphasises the interdependence (or perhaps even the identity) of space and time, and any history or theory of space is automatically a brief history of time as well. Artists from Fra Angelico to today have often exploited and explored the aporia and the singularities of our relation to time and space. What is interesting, in the space of art and aesthetics, is the way that artists can render problematic and/or explore, in subtle ways, our notions or intuitions of extension and intension, space and meaning. Some historians indeed believe that the space of art has shaped the world in a fundamental way, since our need for images seamy have laid the foundations of what we call “civilisation”. But perhaps we should be wary of any rigid determinism, since the space of art has subtly taught us a healthy form of pluralism that can guide us in both our cosmological and axiological endeavours.

What, then, is time?

If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, London, Dent, 1920, p. 272