Heidegger Among the Sculptors: Body, Space, and the Art of Dwelling

Heidegger's encounters with art are not so well understood. This rather learned piece documents his work in the 1960s with three artists and makes a compelling case for Dasein in the world of art. If it has a weakness, it is in the mingling of a critical stance with the inside look, as some of the facts get difficult to find in the middle of such compelling thoughts. They can, however, be unravelled with a bit of work. Lovely extension of the thinking.

Good insight into Heidegger and space. He was way ahead of his time in regards to space and place.

fabulous document

Andrew Mitchell is an excellent Heidegger scholar who has translated his "Four Seminars." This text is an exploration of the seldom discussed topic of Heidegger's work on sculpture and spatiality. During the 1950s and 1960s, Heidegger engaged with a number of prominent sculptors, e.g. Ernst Barlach, Bernhard Heiliger, as well as Eduardo Chillida in ways that go far and beyond his somewhat problematic remarks in "On the Origin of the Work of Art." Mitchell explores the relation of these sculptors works to Heidegger's own preoccupations with bodies and space, which is to say in terms of their phenomenality and the strange and beautiful ways in which sculptural works can express and transform what it means to be-in-the-world. Although I do not agree with Mitchell's brief claim that "there are no things" in Being and Time, I found myself deeply moved and impressed by his remarks about spatiality in relation to the body--the way in which "our bodies do not end at our skin" (95). This is a tremendous text that brings Heidegger's difficult thinking into a critical conversation with contemporary art/sculpture.

Well done.