Charlotte de Mille illuminates the pivotal role of Bergson’s philosophy for UK artists and art critics before 1914. Her interdisciplinary approach integrates philosophy, art criticism and art history, offering new avenues for investigation. An Epilogue considers the proximity of Bergson’s thought on temporality, intuition and subjectivity to art history, from Alois Riegl and Aby Warburg to practitioners today. This event will outline the book before focusing on Bergson’s forgotten artist sister, Mina, who as Moina McGregor Mathers became High Priestess of the Golden Dawn.
Chair: John Ó Maoilearca
Dr Charlotte de Mille is Associate Lecturer at The Courtauld Institute, and curates The Courtauld Gallery’s music programme. With them she co–authored Animating Art History, a joint initiative with Central St. Martin’s and the University for the Creative Arts, which was long–listed for a Clore Award in Museum Learning. She recieved a St Andrews University Public Engagement with Research Award 2018 (group award for ‘Virginia Woolf and Music’ project), and a Touring Exhibition Group Bursary in 2017. She was part of the Museums Association Transformers Influence Career Development Programme 2017. She was Visiting Scholar at Lingnan University, Hong Kong in 2018, and Mid-Career Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art 2020. This was followed by a Paul Mellon Centre Research Continuity Fellowship in 2021.Her MA special option is Music and Art: Appropriation, Remediation, Reproduction.
John Ó Maoilearca is Honorary Professor at Kingston University, London, and Associate Researcher at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen. His research tackles ideas in the fields of Continental Philosophy (Bergson, Deleuze, Henry, Laruelle, Badiou), metaphysics (especially of time and identity), film philosophy, and metaphilosophy. He iscurrently working on ordinary forms of time-travel. Ó Maoilearca has published twelve books, including (as author), Bergson and Philosophy (Edinburgh 1999), Post-Continental Philosophy (Continuum 2006), Philosophy and the Moving Image (Palgrave 2010), and All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy (Minnesota 2015). His most recent work, Vestiges of a Philosophy: Matter, the Meta-Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson (Oxford 2023) examines the convergence of ideas between philosopher Henri Bergson and his sister, the occultist Mina Bergson, in order to tackle themes in contemporary materialist philosophy, spiritualism, memory studies, and the relationship between mysticism and philosophy.
