Christopher Kul Want

Biography

Educated in art history and theory at Manchester University, Kul-Want pursued postgraduate research in French Romanticism and, subsequently, Continental philosophy (University of Greenwich, dissertation: ‘Nietzsche’s The Will to Power as Art’). As a lecturer he has taught at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London (Department of Visual Arts) and Byam Shaw School of Art, where he established the Masters course in Fine Art in 2000.

Kul-Want is Course Leader of MRes Art, and Leader of the Art Theory and Philosophy pathway at Central Saint Martins. Focusing upon the relationship of philosophy, politics and the arts, the pathway is designed to support the interests of both writers and artists.

As a writer, my work embraces wide-ranging aspects of critical theory and continental philosophy, especially with regard to art, visual culture and cinema. I also utilise psychoanalytic theory to focus on the relationship between contemporary art and drawing practices and the emergence of new addictive disorders in society today.

My book Philosophers on Cinema, From Bergson to Badiou: A Critical Reader (Columbia University Press) - a sequel to Philosophers on Art, From Kant to the Postmodernists: A Critical Reader (Columbia University Press, 2010) - is forthcoming.