The System of the Arts Revisited
A lecture by Enrico Terrone

Wednesday 30 April 2025 at 10:30 am 
Kampus Hybernská – Hall A3 (building A, 3rd floor) 
Hybernská 4, Prague 1

The traditional “System of the Arts”, which is traced back to XVIII-century scholars, is based on six art forms: painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, dance. This system has three shortcomings. First, it is not systematic; it looks more like a list. Second, it cannot take subsequent art forms into account. Third, it focuses on visual and auditory art, overlooking other kinds of experiences such as olfactory, gustatory, tactile and agentive experiences. I propose to amend the System in such a way that avoids these shortcomings. I will do so by conceiving artworks as artifacts that are created to perform the function of generating experiences in virtue of their structure. I first make the System truly systematic by matching different kinds of structures with different kinds of experiences. Then, I will show how this new way of conceiving it can accommodate mass art and avant-garde. Finally, I will argue that the System so revisited has room  for forms of art based on olfactory, gustatory, tactile and agentive experience.

The lecture was organized by the Department of Aesthetics of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in collaboration with Are | are-events.org as part of the project Woods. Pastoral Twilight and supported by the Faculty of Arts, Charles University and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. Special thanks to the Emblem Prague Hotel.