Aesthetics

Cette collection d'essais analyse des objets (image miraculeuse, tableau ou scène de théâtre), décortique des anecdotes et soulève des questions théoriques, comme le statut du plaisir dans la théorie de la peinture et la théologie des images. Qu;elles portent sur la peinture--et sa théorie profane ou sacrée--sur le théâtre ou sur l'exégèse, ces études ont en commun de s'intéresser à des œuvres qu'on ne peut saisir que d'un regard oblique : si elles désignent un objet c'est le plus souvent pour (...) en cacher un autre. En allant au-delà de ce qu'elles donnent à voir pour atteindre ce qu'elles donnent à ne pas voir, on peut dégager la théorie latente dont elles sont porteuses, et spéculer ainsi sur l'articulation entre visible et invisible, sur la relation perpétuellement réversible entre occultation et monstration, pulsion scopique et cécité. Ce qui revient à explorer la face cachée de la première modernité tout en interrogeant les voies tortueuses et les ressorts secrets de notre pulsion interprétative. (shrink)

Aus kunsthistorischer, literaturwissenschaftlicher und wissensgeschichtlicher Perspektive analysiert Mira Becker-Sawatzky bildkünstlerische Praxis und textverfasste Theorie in ihrem teils dialogischen, teils diskrepanten Verhältnis zueinander. Dazu werden in thematischen Clustern Malerei, Zeichnung, Bildhauerei, Dichtung und Traktatistik mit ihrer je spezifischen Medialität und Materialität zueinander ins Verhältnis gesetzt. Betrachtet werden Um-Ordnungen der Wissenshierarchie, die Pluralität des Paragone, die Virulenz grotesker Ästhetik, die Konzeption künstlerischer Stile, die Bedeutungsdimensionen von vaghezza und die Wurzeln der Mailänder Ambrosiana.

L'arte è l'espressione intima--ma concepita per essere condivisa--della sensibilità di alcuni individui che avvertono l'urgenza di manifestare il proprio sentire rispetto al reale, o al non-reale. Gli artisti e, di conseguenza, le loro opere non possono non accogliere le sollecitazioni provenienti dall'attualità che li anima elaborando le complessità del mondo contemporaneo. È quindi necessario intrecciare come in una mappa neuronale lo studio delle opere d'arte con altre discipline, come antropologia, filosofia, biologia, perché una più ampia libertà di indagine consente di (...) strutturare con maggiore armonia la storia e la critica d'arte. Realizzare dialoghi plurimi permetterà così una visione più piena e approfondita dell'arte stessa."--Back cover. (shrink)

Ezek az írások a megértés és az értelmezés egymástól el nem választható lehetőségeit vizsgálják. Az elmélet próbája az alkalmazás, ennek során válik láthatóvá, hogy a művészetelméleti elgondolások mire és mennyire használhatók. A művekhez fűződő viszonyunk - akarjuk vagy sem -, nem állandó, ezért azok a műalkotások is, amelyeknek látszólag jó ismerői vagyunk, hirtelen meglepetéssel szolgálhatnak. Ám éppen az élteti a műértést, amikor a korábbi olvasatok repedései mentén valami olyasmi tör a felszínre, ami teljességgel váratlan.

"Surgi sans crier gare, ce 'ça' du sacré bouleversait la perspective : non seulement il devenait parfaitement clair (et, de fait, À la Recherche du temps perdu l'illustre de bout en bout) qu'il ne s'agissait en aucune façon de monter à la vérité, mais plutôt de creuser pour y descendre, à la verticale du temps chronologique où se déploient nos existences; plus encore c'était, au regard de l'art, toute une conception de l'ordre et du désordre qui s'en trouvait concrètement bouleversée, (...) dans le désert spirituel qui est le nôtre." S'inscrivant dans une lignée qui passe assurément par le Contre Sainte-Beuve de Marcel Proust, mais aussi bien par les écrits de Roger Caillois, Hélène Cixous ou Vassily Kandinsky, Puissances de l'art ou la Lance de Télèphe a l'ambition de développer une pensée strictement littéraire, et donc artistique, de la notion de connaissance."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Après les Grecs, les questions esthétiques ont longtemps été subordonnées à la théologie. Il faut attendre le XVIIIe siècle pour voir surgir une nouvelle philosophie de l'art, sous la forme de considérations d'allures esthétiques cherchant à s'émanciper de la théologie. Ce retour du discours philosophique à l'art est contemporain de la naissance de l'esthétique, et de la crise moderne ouverte par Kant : celle de la scission entre l'être du sujet et sa pensée (sa conscience). Ce livre cherche les traces (...) de l'effraction esthétique de l'art, dans le discours philosophique, en lisant à rebours les philosophes de la première et de la seconde modernité (Kant et Nietzsche), ceux de la dernière modernité (Benjamin, Adorno), ceux d'après la fin de la modernité (Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida), et de la postmodernité (Lyotard, Rancière). Comment ces philosophes ont-ils laissé s'inscrire, parfois à leur insu ou à leur corps défendant, l'écriture moderne de l'art, la césure, la fragmentation, le morcellement venus de l'Autre, de l'inconnu, de l'inconscient? Comment l'effraction esthétique atteint-elle la sensibilité et la pensée, jusque dans leurs conditions de possibilité et leurs limites?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

How can artists (and others) who find themselves in positions of privilege think differently about the way they do what they do in order to create the conditions for better, more just relations to flourish? Finding an answer to that question is at the heart of this book. After critiquing the relationship between contemporary art, race and privilege the author brings together First Nation and feminist philosophies of relationality, the game of string figuring, and her own history as an artist (...) to propose an alternate methodology that puts relation at the centre of practice. She introduces the multivalent concept of "tacking"-a movement at an oblique angle to prevailing winds-in order to traverse the waters of contemporary art to challenge power and create a more just future. (shrink)

Passer à l'acte. Arrêter d'attendre. Se lancer sans filet. Dans la psychanalyse, la criminologie ou le langage courant, le passage à l'acte désigne un acte impulsif autant qu'irrationnel. Et si c'était le contraire? Et s'il y avait dans le passage à l'acte un véritable élan de pensée et de création? Et si le passage à l'acte était avant tout une manière d'accorder une puissance propre à l'étincelle de l'instant, à l'intensité de l'appel d'air? Dans cet essai, on suivra la trajectoire (...) transgressive d'une meurtrière dans un roman de Marguerite Duras, ou encore la ligne de fuite d'un philosophe braqueur de banques. Au plus près des œuvres de Chantal Akerman, Pierre Michon ou Francis Ponge et des idées de Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan ou Gilles Deleuze, Léa Bismuth propose une réflexion inédite sur le rôle que jouent les crises, les bifurcations brusques, les explosions qu'il est devenu impossible de contenir dans des existences que nous croyons maîtriser. Et si l'art de passer à l'acte était avant tout l'art des commencements aventureux? Et si l'art de passer à l'acte était l'art de vivre la vie elle-même? (shrink)

This book explores the contexts, questions, challenges and opportunities for creative exploration of form, materials, and the body, in space. Presenting 9 original case studies from artwork shaped by the unique physical and psychological conditions of space, and informed by exclusive interviews with artists working in the field, it highlights collaborations between artists, engineers, and theorists that have recontextualized the perception and use of weighted materials and subject positions in art practice.

An encounter with a large object may induce feelings of fear, awe, attraction, and more. But it is not simply the physical dimensions of an object that account for our sense that something is "big." Big Culture is a study of large objects and images that works to identify the qualities and effects of bigness. In doing so, David Wittenberg offers a philosophical proposal for reconceptualizing the problem of magnitude. The book explores examples of bigness that are simultaneously familiar and (...) singular in the cultural landscape, such as skyscrapers, atomic bomb explosions, and cinematic special effects. From these examples, Wittenberg postulates a new aesthetics of magnitude that is better able to account for the special role that bigness plays in our everyday perception of objects and images. Big Culture argues that bigness is a more primal, a more absolute, and even a more violent or erotic encounter with the objective world than the scalar relativism that tends to characterize our lives. Ultimately, Wittenberg insists that bigness comes before scale, even before size itself. (shrink)

This book invites us to linger on the threshold that both separates and joins the real and the iconic world.

The Presocratic philosophers, writing in Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, invented new ways of thinking about human life, the natural world, and the structures of reality. They also developed novel ways of using language to express their thought. In this book, Victoria Wohl examines these twin innovations and the productive relation between them in the work of five figures: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. Bringing these thinkers into conversation with modern critical theorists on questions of shared (...) concern, Wohl argues for the poetic sophistication of their work and the inextricable convergence of their aesthetic form and philosophical content. In addition to offering original readings of these fascinating figures and robust strategies for interpreting their fragmentary, rebarbative texts, this book invites readers to communicate across entrenched divisions between literature and philosophy and between antiquity and modernity. (shrink)

The essay gives a brief account of the aesthetics of the Graz school, focusing on the standpoint of the object as well as on that of emotions. Meinong's reflection on aesthetics stems from a psychological background and subsequently receives an ontological grounding. After examining the notions of imagination, fantasy representation, relation and complexion, I show how both the theory of production of representations and that of higher-order objects develop under the impulse of Ehrenfels's concept of Gestalt quality; both these theories (...) may be applied to aesthetics in the explanation of artistic creation and of aesthetic objects. Meinong identifies the specific object of aesthetics with the objective and distinguishes aesthetic feelings, which are true feelings, from imaginary ones. Witasek develops a psychological aesthetics built on the conceptual framework of Meinongian philosophy: aesthetic properties are ideal and extraobjective, they connect the aesthetic object to the subject's mental attitude; an aesthetic object is an object endowed with aesthetic properties, such as beauty, which depends on the degree of pleasure or displeasure the object may induce in the subject. Witasek, though, parts from Meinong as regards both the role of objectives, which he views as mere intermediaries of beauty, and the conception of imaginary and aesthetic feelings. In the last part, I present the reactions to Witasek's aesthetics, both positive and negative, within the Graz school itself, and I sketch Ehrenfels's and Veber's aesthetic views. (shrink)

Hardcore increases the speed, intensity, and contradictions of punk rock. Considering prevailing theories of rock music ontologies in the light of hardcore art practices provides reasons to rethink what we thought. Hardcore shows how recording-centered ontologies, underemphasizing what goes into playback, miss the materiality of some recording artworks. Hardcore art practices also show how performance-centered ontologies force us to divorce the played music from its full, embodied performanced artwork. In both cases, I highlight hardcore art practices and how they conceive (...) of artworks in a more multi-faceted fashion than either predominant view can fully capture. (shrink)

This article is a critical notice of Sherri Irvin’s Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art (2022). After introducing Irvin’s project, notably how she understands the role of “custom rules” for the display and conservation of, and participation in, works of contemporary art, I focus on two case studies that motivate her argument: Jan Dibbets’ work, All shadows that occurred to me (1969) and Sarah Sze’s Migrateurs (1997). According to Irvin, both works require the participation of museum conservators not merely for their (...) preservation, but also realization. Granting the latter, I consider its implications. Prior to the involvement of conservators the works in question appear indeterminate in crucial respects. The conservators’ role is to seek enough clarity about various rules governing the work to afford future installations of the work without consulting the artist. But both case studies reveal considerable artistic whimsy when it comes to abiding by the rules supposedly underwriting these works’ identity, raising worries for their persistence over time. Given their constitutive role, I consider whether there is room, on Irvin’s account, for the conservators to be right and the artist wrong about the nature of the works in question. (shrink)

Is finding someone funny a way of treating them as an object? And if so, does that make it immoral? In this paper, I argue that seeing someone as comic involves failing to take into account their subjectivity, which makes it a form of objectification. As for the morality of this ‘comic objectification’, I argue that regarding someone with a comically objectifying attitude is wrongful when such an attitude plays a role in legitimating the oppression of members of their social (...) group. (shrink)

Some lines of poetry rhyme to certain readers and not to others because of how their words are pronounced in different accents. And because the accent in which a person speaks is tied in significant ways to aspects of their social identity (such as their age, race, gender, and class), some poems rhyme in the voices of the privileged and not in the voices of the disadvantaged. This paper argues that appreciators can incur aesthetic harms when they are excluded from (...) participating in aesthetic goods that are more fully available to others, and that these harms can constitute aesthetic injustices when they are part of a wider pattern of socio-economic hardship. Poems that embody objectionable gatekeeping practices can thus perpetuate aesthetic injustice. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Nat Hansen and Zed Adams argue for an aesthetic discourse governing principle they call Hope. Inspired by the work of Stanley Cavell, they argue that when we speak with each other about the aesthetic value of an object we hope that our attitudes about the object will converge. They characterize this shared hope as involving the exercise of rational capacities in the service of sharing feelings and attitudes, and as accommodating enough to sanction even acrimonious aesthetic (...) exchanges. To establish their view, they critically discuss Nick Riggle’s view that aesthetic discourse is governed by a ‘vibing’ norm: When we speak with each other about aesthetic value we presuppose that we ought to vibe, or supportively engage with each other’s individuality. Here I argue that Hansen and Adams’s criticisms of Riggle are unconvincing and there are substantial reasons to abandon Hope. (shrink)

Intercultural Approaches between Europe and China via Art? -/- Two landscapes from different cultures, Europe and China, that are both considered masterpieces are the focus of a study by Martina Sauer. To what extent are they each perceived as beautiful? Can the differences in aesthetic understanding tell us something about the respective cultures? Do the results have the potential to contribute to intercultural rapprochement between Europe and China? The possibility that these ideas can be fruitful for intercultural connections and understanding, (...) and for a re-evaluation of the interaction between humans and nature, is considered and analysed using the tools and theory of vitality semiotics (VS). -/- The task is examined by taking up premises from the philosophy of emotions by Sabine A. Döring, from the art history by Heinrich Wölfflin, from the infant research by Daniel N. Stern and from the empirical research in neuroscience on vitality forms by the research group around Giacomo Rizzolatti. -/- Cf. Martina Sauer, Vitality Semiotics: The Ever Beautiful and Its Potential for an Intercultural Approach: In Atmospheric Design and Everyday Aesthetics, edited by David Brubaker & Zhuofei Wang [Contemporary Aesthetics, Special Volume 12, 2024]: 1-11. (shrink)

The starting point for the considerations in the article is the statement of Keiko Yamanaka that the Japanese know nothing about resistance to the bacterium represented by another human being. In the article, however, we put forward the thesis that Japanese culture has developed a collective immune system resulting not from individual but from shared systemic immunology in connection with the performance of family, professional and social functions. The analysis of Japanese ‘cultural immunology’ includes an examination of the ways of (...) functioning of the body in contemporary Japanese culture. To this end, we first discuss the relationship between humans and nature in Japanese religious-ethical tradition. Next, we examine the Japanese relationship to the body as a special part of nature. Then we analyze the tension in the Japanese culture between individual and sociocultural bodies. In conclusion, we show what the sociocultural body is and how it functions in the system of ‘cultural immunology’ in contemporary Japan. (shrink)

On Annie Ernaux and Simone de Beauvoir, writing, philosophy, and shame.

Taking my cue from the longest-standing theory of beauty to date, which identified beauty with formal properties such as order, harmony, and proportion, I argue that wellformedness—understood under a tripartite account comprising abstract, categorial, and functional species—is a necessary condition for beauty, which itself comprises three corresponding species. To this end, I offer a new conception of wellformedness along with a clear taxonomy of both beauty and wellformedness. My account reverses the common tendency to treat species of beauty that are (...) independent of considerations of objects’ functions or kinds as paradigmatic and others as derivative, construing instead all three species as interrelated. In doing so, my proposal sheds considerable light on the concept of beauty, provides a measure of objectivity in our understanding thereof, clarifies the conceptual terrain in the philosophy of beauty, and elucidates some central links between beauty, form, and our interests and values. (shrink)

We regularly talk about music as if it has moods or, at least, expresses moods. However, the relationship between psychological and musical moods remains mysterious. Music doesn’t have feelings, so how could it have moods? To make up for that, many philosophers have provided theories of expression that don’t rely on music actually possessing anything mood-like. In this paper, I argue that if we take seriously an account of psychological moods that includes patterns of attention as part of the mood (...) itself, we can explain how music can, in fact, have moods; namely, by having a structure that resembles the structure of a mood. I then explain how this not only solves the puzzle of how music expresses moods but also helps us explain how we interact with musical moods. (shrink)

Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: Politika ve Estetik Üzerine adlı kitabında uzlaşımı (consensus) şiar edinen post-demokratik devletin, bireyin toplumun bir parçası olarak tanımladığını belirterek politikanın Platon’un Devlet diyaloğunda sunduğu polis’e indirgendiğini öne sürmektedir. Çözüm olarak politikanın, birey (tikel) ile toplum (tümel) arasındaki uyuşmazlığın (dissensus) teşhir edilmesi olarak yeniden düşünülmesini öneren Rancière, Platon’un bir tür an-arşi olarak gördüğü demokrasinin politikayı olanaklı kılması sayesinde aslında ‘daha iyi bir yaşamı’ (eu zen) vaat ettiğini öne sürer. Böylece, post-demokraside öznelliği uzlaşıma dayanan bir söylemde karışan bireyin sesi, (...) politika aracılığı ile yeniden duyulabilir ki Rancière buna duyulurun dağılımı (distribution of sensible) adını verir. Bu makalede, filozofun politika düşüncesinde, polis ile politika kavramları arasındaki ayrım tartışılacak ve bu minvalde, kendisinin uyuşmazlık kavramı çözümlenecektir. Son olarak, Rancière’in siyaset ile estetik arasında aísthêsis (duyumsama) kavramı üzerinden kurduğu bağlantı, kendisinin ‘estetik sanat rejimi’ terimi ile demokrasi yorumu arasında kurulacak benzerlikler üzerinden açıklanacaktır. Sonuçta, post-demokratik bir devlette yalnızca birer tüketici olarak tanımlanan bireye Rancière’in düşüncesinin sağlayabileceği alternatiferden biri örneklenmiş olacaktır. (shrink)

The Human Agenda is the first Special Edition of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art (CJLPA), an interdisciplinary journal founded at the University of Cambridge. Focused on the unique intersections of law, politics and art in the context of human rights, contributors to the Special Edition include David Baragwanath, Luis Moreno Ocampo, Nadia Murad, Nancy Hollander, Andrew Clapham, Vladimir Osechkin, Mansour al-Omari, and many others. A full table of contents is available through the publication's own page.

Liberal-minded basic income scholars often argue that UBI has two key properties that work together to justify it. Let us call these the freedom justification and the narrative justification. On the one hand, UBI is defended because it gives people more freedom to do what they want to do. (Stigler, 1946, Friedman, 1962; Van Parijs, 1995; Widerquist, 2013) They exhibit primary concern for the purely formal properties of the regime of liberal neutrality. On the other hand, many scholars, including many (...) of the same liberal scholars, argue that UBI also pushes society substantively towards desirable social outcomes. They combine the freedom justification with substantive predictions and expectations. (Rifkin, 1995; Murray, 2016; Weeks, 2020) However, I show that both existentialist philosophy (Sartre) and complexity theory (Knight, Hayek, Schumpeter) suggest that a liberal social order is compatible, at best, with rough pattern prediction about a multiply realizable future that remains narratively open to multiple possible trajectories. Liberal neutrality, to the extent that it nourishes radical freedom, is incompatible with strong, stable narrative predictions. As Nozick put, it “liberty upsets patterns”. This is true of all liberal UBI models, and liberal institutions in general. (shrink)