Symposium
14-15 July 2026
St John’s College, Oxford
Organizers:
Louise Braddock (Independent Psychoanalytic Thought network), Elisa Galgut (University of Cape Town), Niall Gildea (Edge Hill University), Derek Matravers (Open University).
Theme:
It is well known, if not particularly well understood, that core notions in Wollheim’s philosophy of art depend on his commitment to the psychoanalytic model of the mind owed to Freud and developed by Klein. Many themes and ideas link Wollheim’s philosophy of art and psychoanalytic thought, in particular complex projection which both underpins his account of expression and plays a role in his account of the creation of, and understanding of, painting. Also prominent are conceptions of affect and drive drawn from Freud, and phantasy and subject-object relations in Kleinian theory. Most broadly, art for Wollheim could be said to be the link between corporeality and aesthetic experience; the ‘voice’ of the unconscious.
Hence the body is central, both to Wollheim’s psychoanalytic philosophy of mind and to his philosophy of art. Predominantly, the flow of his ideas has been from psychoanalysis into the philosophy of art, where their influence is largely recognized and integrated into the canon. But while philosophical understanding of art has benefited from Wollheim’s understanding of the mind, gained from psychoanalysis, equally his understanding of the mind was formed by his understanding of art. The colloquium will open up this line of enquiry onto the less-explored flow of ideas from art to the psychoanalytic picture of the mind.
The symposium is organised as part of ‘After Wollheim’, a programme of the Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Thought network. It receives support from St John’s College, the British Society of Aesthetics, and the Independent Social Research Foundation.
Registration:
The symposium is a two-day event. There is no charge but it will be in-room only and space is limited. Places will be allotted in order and the final programme (order of talks, and venue) will be sent in July to those registered. Please email your request to attend and affiliation (university, professional, or other giving details) with ‘Symposium attendance’ in the subject line, by 31 May 2026 to: wollheimcentenary@gmail.com.
Speakers and titles:
Paolo Babbiotti (Turin), ‘”Psychoanalysis and Value” in Richard Wollheim’.
Jim Berryman (Glasgow), ‘Taste and the “Fault of Faultlessness” in Nineteenth-Century French Academic Painting: Gombrich’s Psychoanalytic Interpretation’.
Marissa Sappho Bitton (Aurora Center, New York City), ‘Complex Projection and the Body: Pictorial Meaning in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You‘.
Chiara Brozzo (Birmingham) and Enrico Terrone (Genoa), ‘Olfactory Depiction and Evocation’.
David Collins (Cambridge), ‘The Influence of Psychoanalysis on Wollheim’s and Collingwood’s Aesthetics’.
Whitney Davis (Berkeley), ‘On Parts and Wholes: Richard Wollheim’s Art Criticism’.
Elisa Galgut (Cape Town), ‘Narrative and its Vicissitudes’.
Louise Gyler (Australian Psychoanalytical Society), ‘A Tear in the Fabric of Being’.
Susanne Herrmann-Sinai (Magdalen College School, Oxford), ‘Kleinian Psychoanalysis in Dialogue with Hegel’s Anthropology’.
Natalia Perez Juncal (Madrid), ‘Sublimation, the Semiotic, and Aesthetic Experience in Julia Kristeva’.
Anna Samsudova (Oxford), ‘Hearing Before Seeing: Music, Corporeality, and the Pre-Imagistic in Wollheim’s Psychoanalytic Aesthetics’.
Edward Winters (Independent), ‘Kara Walker’s Framings of the Body’.
After Wollheim: The Richard Wollheim Centenary Project, phase 3 