Philosophy at the Art Museum - The Prindle Institute for Ethics

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Philosophy at the Virtual Art Museum fosters philosophical discussions using works of art from genres like landscape or portraiture and styles of art like abstraction. The questions for each work of art will spark discussion on issues in a variety of different philosophical areas, such as the philosophy of mind and ethics as well as the philosophy of art. Start exploring the works of art one-by-one, or choose a category from the filter on the left to see all of the works of art in a particular genre.

Photograph of a gallery installation of "Language Is Not Transparent" by Mel Bochner. It is a black rectangle painted directly onto a white wall. The bottom edge of the rectangle is not a straight line; it is uneven and has many drips of black paint that run almost to the gallery floor. The following handwritten message is written in white chalk in all capital letters inside the black rectangle: "1. LANGUAGE IS NOT TRANSPARENT."

Mel Bochner, Language is Not Transparent, 1970

A colorfully-painted portrait of a white woman with red hair wearing a large late-nineteenth century hat and dress. Her face and neck are painted with strokes of green, pink, orange, yellow and red. She looks at the viewer over her shoulder with a pensive expression.

Henri Matisse, Woman with Hat, 1905

An oil painting of a large smiling woman with big eyes and hands clasped under her chest. The artist has painted the woman with colorful, energetic, and almost messy brushstrokes. The canvas is filled with brushstrokes.

Willem de Kooning, Woman V, 1952-53

Oil portrait of a black man looking at the viewer. The background is composed of an all-over pattern of flowers and leaves on a bright orange-red ground. Some of the flowers and leaves come out of the background and spill over the man's jersey.

Kehinde Wiley, Michael Borges Study, 2008

Black and white photograph of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz. The photograph is taken from below, so that O'Keeffe is looking slightly down at the camera/viewer. She is wearing an all-black garment that covers her neck and arms completely. She also wears a small black hat that creates a circle around her face. She is not smiling.

Alfred Steiglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1923

A woodblock print in color with a huge wave about to crash over two ships. Mount Fuji is in the background, but it is much smaller than any of the waves in the ocean.

Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1830-1833

Square canvas tilted 45 degrees so that it is a diamond. Squares and rectangles of varying sizes neatly painted in an uneven grid pattern. Each square and each rectangle is either red, blue, yellow, gray, black or white.

Piet Mondrian, Victory Boogie Woogie, 1942

Photographic portrait of Carol Janeway by Maya Daren is a black-and-white photograph of a young white woman's face. The portrait is overlaid with a grid of smaller rectangles, making it look like a contact sheet. The is unsmiling and stares off into the distance.

Maya Daren, Portrait of Carol Janeway, 1943

A group of translucent colored circles in varying sizes grouped inside of a black circle. In the background a thick, translucent green ray crosses with another thick, translucent light brown ray shape. The crossing shapes run from the outer edges of the canvas through the circles to create an off-center "x" shape.

Wassily Kandinsky, Circles in a Circle, 1923

The Scream

Edvard Munch, 1893

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch. A walkway with a fence cuts diagonally from the bottom right to the middle left edge of the canvas. On the walkway, a figure dressed in black holds its head in its hands and makes a screaming expression. The sky above the figure is painted with lurid red, orange and yellow brushstrokes.

Photograph of a gallery installation of the conceptual work of art "One and Three Chairs" by Joseph Kosuth. The installation consists of a wood folding chair, a mounted photograph of a chair, and mounted photographic enlargement of the dictionary definition of the word "chair."

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965

Vincent Van Gogh's painting of a bedroom with wooden floors, blue walls and a bed with red bedding. The perspective is a little skewed so that the walls and the floor and the bed all seem to be tilted in an unnatural way.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Bedroom, 1888

Oil painting of a sunny landscape scene with trees, a shrub, grasses dappled with leaf shadows and a bit of blue sky in the background. The brushstrokes are small dots and dashes, which makes the shapes a little hazy and active.

Claude Monet, Landscape: The Parc Monceau, 1876

Nickel Tailings 30 Sudbury Ontario by Edward Burtynsky is a saturated color photograph of copper-colored chemical runoff. The land is covered in the runoff, and looks like rivers of bright orange liquid.

Edward Burtynsky, Nickel Tailings #30, Sudbury, Ontario, 1996

Painted portrait of a white man with curly gray hair wearing a large black beret and a dark brown cloak. The man's forehead and the left side of his face are highlighted by a light coming from above. He stares directly at the viewer with pursed lips and a wrinkled brow.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait, 1660

Landscape painting featuring a dark foreground with trees, bushes, a castle in ruins and a church steeple. The sky is blue with clouds. The whole image is dark.

Jacob van Ruisdael, A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church, 1665-70

Painting by Rene Magritte called "The Treachery of Images." The background is a flat light yellow-brown color. On this background, a brown pipe is painted in a naturalistic way and takes up about 3/4 of the canvas. Below the pipe, the following phrase is written in neat cursive: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" which translates to "This is not a pipe."

René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe), 1929

Four horizontal bars, varied in width with soft edges stacked against a soft red background. Three of the bars are brownish red and one is black.

Mark Rothko, Four Darks in Red, 1958

Full-length portrait of a white woman with reddish-brown hair standing in front of a table in an elegant black dress with silver straps. Her arms and neck are exposed.

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Madame X, 1884

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