Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Though French thinker Jean Baudrillard died in 2007, his ideas are still widely read and discussed. This issue of the Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum (referred to below as the Journal) takes “Baudrillard: Thoughts and Art” as its topic for a collection of essays, including revised versions of papers delivered at a pair of conferences held in France and Taiwan on related topics. In themselves, these two conferences amply testify to the fact that Baudrillard continues to be enthusiastically discussed and that his ideas serve as a major spark for contemporary thought and have not passed away with his person.

For this issue of the Journal, “Baudrillard: Thoughts and Art,” we have invited three essays from the 2014 Nanterre conference.1 One is by professor Françoise Gaillard, who early on attended Baudrillard’s lectures at the University of California, San Diego and has a deep familiarity and understanding of the full body of Baudrillard’s thought and style. Another paper from the Nanterre conference comes from Jean-Paul Curnier. Curnier previously collaborated with Baudrillard on the idea of “insider language,” and from this point of view offers his own explanations and interpretations of a series of attacks Baudrillard raised against contemporary art. A former comrade in arms of Baudrillard, he also expounds upon the term “contemporary art” and its historical development in France as a background to these events, which in itself is worthy of interest. Another essay of French origin comes from Baudrillard himself. It is a transcription from a 1999 public dialogue at an exhibition of photography at the art center of the University of Toulouse II - Le Mirai, a university in the southwest of France.

This theme section will also publish four essays in Chinese. Of these, the essays by Chu Yuan-horng, Pascal K. Kao and myself were previously presented in earlier versions as part of “Baudrillard: Thought and Art”, a conference organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (referred to below as TFAM).

Contents

3Chief Editor's Note

8Petit Journal de bord / Marine Baudrillard

Theme  Jean Baudrillard: Thoughts and Art 

17Jean Baudrillard: un penseur radical / Françoise Gaillard

39Baudrillard et le « Complot de l'art » (nullité et nudité des idoles) / Jean-Paul Curnier

67"Only what is not art can still be art": On Baudrillard's Pretense of Tenses, or Play Intense / Chu Yuan-horng

81Jean Baudrillard: Sedutionof Photography / Lin Chi-ming

97Baudrillard's Art of the Image: Virtual Reality and Reality TV / Pascal K. Kao

127The Concept of the Hyperreal in Jean Baudrillard: His Views on the Problem of Representation in Contemporary Art and the Structure of Reality / Yen Yu-tyan

Selected Translations of Original Texts

147C'est l'objet qui nous pense: Conférence-débat de Jean Baudrillard / Anne Sauvageot

General Essay

191Creative Thought and Transcendence of Art: The Inspiration from Deleuze's Theory of "Difference" / Hsieh Yu-ching

221Appendix1 Summary of Contents of the Journal

226Appendix2 Call for Contributions