Osborne returned to the University of Bristol in 1988 to become a
lecturer in the philosophy department. Then, in 1989, he lectured in the undergraduate philosophy department at
Middlesex University, remaining there until he became, first, a
senior lecturer (in 1992), then a
reader in the graduate programme, before becoming a
professor in 1997. Osborne's books include:
The Postconceptual Condition: Critical Essays (2018);
Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (2013);
The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (1995/2010);
Marx (2005);
Conceptual Art (2002); and
Philosophy in Cultural Theory (2000). He also edited the three-volume
Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory (2005). Osborne's writing on
contemporary art includes contributions to the journals
Afterall,
Art History, October, and Oxford Art Journal Catalogues accompanying exhibitions including:
Matias Faldbakken: The Shock of Abstraction, the
National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo and Ikon, Birmingham, 2009;
The Quick and the Dead, the
Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2009; and ''
Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art'', The Office of Contemporary Art
Oslo, Norway, 2009. Osborne teaches and publishes on Modern European
Philosophy and the philosophy of modern and contemporary art — with particular reference to Conceptual Art. He has written catalogue essays for the
Tate Modern art gallery in London, the
Biennale art festival of
Sydney, Australia, the Walker Art Center, and the Norwegian National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. He has acted as a consultant to the Education Programme at the
Tate Britain art gallery in London and In Defence of Philosophy] on the Tate Channel)
Transition from Middlesex to Kingston In April 2010, Middlesex University decided to close down Philosophy, its highest research-rated subject. Middlesex students and staff, and thousands of their supporters in the UK and around the world, campaigned to save it. The website set up as part of the effort to do so is still running today and is continually updated vis-à-vis related campaigns and issues.
Background and project Broadly speaking, Osborne's project has followed the conception and function of philosophy as 'its own time comprehended in thought' (
Hegel). (At a talk at the ICA that was held in response to the (then) plans to close the philosophy department when Osborne and the CRMEP was based at Middlesex, he spoke of the fact that as a practise, philosophy is not
quantifiable; that is, it is not something that is easily measurable by time.) Osborne completed his doctoral thesis at the
University of Sussex in England in 1988. Entitled
The carnival of philosophy: philosophy, politics and science in Hegel and Marx, Osborne's first book,
The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (
Verso Books, 1995, reprinted 2011) was reflective of his general understanding of the modern European tradition of philosophy as being "first and foremost a philosophy of time", stemming from the work of Immanuel Kant, as founder of modern philosophy. Osborne discussed the politics of time in relation to contemporary art in a discussion organised by the Frieze Art Foundation and held in conjunction with the London
Frieze Art Fair in 2008. In a recent exchange with his colleague Eric Alliez at the Stanley Picker Gallery on 27 April 2007, Osborne explained that at "the end of the Eighties, my project became to "mediate
Aesthetic Theory with the history of contemporary art since the 1960s" (understanding Adorno's project as "the project of mediating the transdisciplinary post-Kantianism of Benjamin's thought with the history of
modernism") specifically, through the reinvention of 'the
dialectic of construction and expression' (
Philosophy and Contemporary Art After Adorno and Deleuze: An Exchange)). The late work of Adorno anticipates the breakdown of the difference between the arts that Osborne is interested in coming to terms with (see Art Theory and
Aesthetics, below). The follow-up to "The Politics of Time",
Philosophy in Cultural Theory, was concerned with what is currently (2011) being pursued further by the CRMEP; namely, the transdisciplinary status of philosophy, as opposed to its traditional self-understanding as a self-contained discipline.
Art theory and aesthetics Conceptual Art (
Phaidon Press, 2002), constituted an authoritative survey of the art of the late Sixties and early Seventies (and beyond).
Conceptual art challenged the aesthetic definition of the work of art, and attempted but failed to be absolutely anti-aesthetic. Nonetheless, it made the conceptual aspects of all art explicit to subsequent generations of artists. For Osborne, a crucial juncture in the transformation of the
ontology of the work of art (what art most fundamentally is) is marked by the work of American artist
Robert Smithson. According to this view, the traditional practise of art according to mediums (
painting,
sculpture,
architecture) is understood to have been historically destroyed ontologically by a transcategorial practise and field — inaugurated by work like Smithson's. This is intimated in the title for a lecture he gave on Smithson at the Centre for Contemporary Art in 2008: 'An interminable avalanche of categories': conceptual issues in the work of Robert Smithson (or, once more, against 'sculpture'), as part of a series of lectures given by significant art historians under the title
Cornerstones. Osborne later made the speculative claim elsewhere that "contemporary art is
post-conceptual art" in a public lecture delivered at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti (FAR), Villa Sucota, in
Como, Italy, 9 July 2010. It is a claim made at the level of the ontology of the work of art (rather than say at the descriptive level of style or movement). Around the same time, he gave a lecture in conjunction with
Pavilion on the concept of the contemporary and the work of The Atlas Group entitled
The Fiction of the Contemporary: Speculative Collectivity and the Global Transnational. He subsequently published an essay in issue 15 of the
Pavilion Journal for Politics and Culture, entitled:
Imaginary Radicalisms: Notes on the Libertarianism of Contemporary Art. In 2013, Osborne published
Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art, which develops the speculative claim "contemporary art is post-conceptual art". ==Works==