Artful Objects
Graham Harman on Art and the Business of Speculative Realism
What is an object? This question was addressed by Graham Harman, the originator of object-oriented philosophy and a central figure of speculative realism, in a lecture at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Providing a thorough exposition of the object from an ontological standpoint, and putting forward a concept of the object beyond reductionism, Harman declares an approach that brings together philosophy and the arts where an object is not reducible to its components or effects and must instead be approached obliquely or indirectly.
The lecture was held on the occasion of “Sculpture after Sculpture,” an exhibition of work by Katharina Fritsch, Jeff Koons, and Charles Ray. In the exhibition hall with the show’s thirteen sculptures, thirteen questions about the object were posed to Graham Harman by interlocutors from the worlds of art, business studies, and philosophy.
