Gotthold Lessing in his seminal enlightenment work, Laocoön, wrote about the strengths of the arts in representing different aspects of reality, and created the groundwork both for renewing the link between the perception of reality and mimetic representation, and for distinguishing the domain of the different arts in what they can faithfully capture. In contrast, August Schlegel’s work, distinguished between ancient and the modern aesthetics, by both problematizing the very nature of representation in art, and as a consequence the distinct separation of fields of art.

Schlegel is chiefly remembered today as a central figure of the German Romantic movement. He argued that modern art relates to an environment that arose within specific historical conditions, and, as a result, requires a completely new framework of understanding. Art cannot be seen to mimic nature, an aspiration of ancient art that was re-affirmed in the Enlightenment and the classicist tradition. For Schlegel, art could not be a mere ‘imitation’ or ‘representation’ of nature; it is the product of a creative force and, therefore, of expression. Thus he writes in relation to poetry, “the poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours is that of desire” (Schlegel, 2015 [1845], 10).

This workshop examines the potential relation and dialogue between plastic arts and economics. Both terms are widely used, but definitions are elusive. If plastic arts essentially relate to the world as something that can be moulded, shaped and transformed, then it is nothing more than a mode of expression, a state of mind. Is, then, economics with all its devices and other trappings another plastic art? According to some of its practitioners, economics appears to be a rational, enlightenment-inspired machine to uncover social and economic reality. Economic theory has been described as representing, predicting, abstracting, imagining, mimicking and simplifying reality, in its effort to define how it relates to the social sphere. Also, economic theory is not monolithic and different traditions that emanate from past eras and strands within the discipline come up with a range of answers on the relation between economic theory and reality. Perhaps, one result of this plurality may be to see economic theory as a romantic reengineering of our society, its values and its processes. This leads us to the following questions: Does theory explain and uncover natural, immutable and ever-present tendencies or does it form and transform our understanding of the social environment by appealing to modern aspirations? How does art mediate this difficult relation between reality, representation and transformation? These are the themes that this workshop investigates.