On Hannah Arendt: The Conquest of Space

15 Feb-2 Apr 2022

Carey Young, Contracting Universe, 2010. Credit: Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery. Photo by Ben Westoby.

Overview

"It has been the glory of modern science that it has been able to emancipate itself completely from all such anthropocentric, that is, truly humanistic, concerns" ⁠— Hannah Arendt

The concluding show in Richard Saltoun Gallery's 14-month program dedicated to the writings of Hannah Arendt, The Conquest of Space will present paintings and works on paper by Sylvia PLIMACK MANGOLD (b. 1938) in the UK for the first time and pivotal early works by Elaine REICHEK (b. 1943) from her first solo show at Rina Gallery, New York in 1975. It will also include a focused selection of works with two new photographs by Carey YOUNG (b. 1970).

Hannah Arendt's essay "The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man" was first published as "Man's Conquest of Space" in The American Scholar in autumn 1963. It appeared later that year in a special edition of the magazine The Great Ideas Today, before being added to the revised and expanded second edition of Between Past and Future in 1968. For The Great Ideas Today, Arendt was invited to contribute to the section "A Symposium on Space" which addressed the question: Has man's conquest of space increased or diminished his stature?

With characteristic vision and incisiveness, Arendt's contribution avoided the aggrandizement of science. Instead, it conjured a dark picture of the human race's journey into outer space, where our established methods of understanding and engaging with the world are rendered inadequate. She argues that the role of the scientist is to stand outside and beyond anthropocentrism; and that debates on the nature and status of humankind only constrain scientific inquiry. Inspired by Arendt's preference for defining herself as "a kind of phenomenologist," the exhibition moves between theoretical and phenomenological considerations of space and its explorations by three remarkable artists.

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On Hannah Arendt: The Conquest of Space | Press Release
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