Introduction -- The symbolic form of art -- Kant's theory of the mathematical sublime and the boundlessness of the symbolic form of art -- The classical sublimity of Judaism -- The classical form of art -- The original epic -- The ideal -- The transition to the revealed religion and the romantic form of art -- The revealed religion -- Representational thought and the romantic form of art -- Traces of left-hegelianism in Hegel's lectures on aesthetics -- The end of (...) mythology -- The significance of Kierkegaard's interpretation of Don Giovanni in relation to Hegel's theory of the end of art -- The end of art -- The opera as a modern art form -- Hegel and Lukács's on the possibility of a modern epic -- The problem of a modern epic -- The modern epic and history -- Civil society as the background to the modern epic -- Myth and society : a common theme in the thought of Hegel and Sorel -- Sorel's myth of the general strike -- Myth and modern ethical life. (shrink)

Mimicry, camouflage, transvestism, chance or cryptic anamorphism, fascination – all ways of changing clothes, habits and habitats in nature as well as in culture, in any symbolic field created by human beings during their history. Art and artification, aestheticization, stylization and beautification are all practices reflecting the need and desire for biological as well as social adaptation, all performances producing functional and fictional frames, boundaries or hierarchies in ordinary life, including the artworld. They can persuade and convince by creating (...) consensus and belief, but they can also lead to a different common sense, a sensorium – a sensorial medium and an aesthetic mediation open to a new world and to new experiences. -/- By investigating mimetism as a fundamental and polymorphic aesthetic performance, this issue of «Aisthesis» aims to rethink the concept, value, and function of mimesis and its media in the context of camouflage, simulation, and dissimulation, where images do not reveal themselves as such, but are to be perceived unambiguously as what they are not – as hieroglyphs or puzzles. In the animal kingdom, as well as in war or in ordinary public life, camouflage consists in taking on the traits, colours, and shapes of a given form or environment. This is a twofold process: on the one hand, by blending two or more shapes in one, the camoufleur seeks to remain hidden and to mislead the others in order to keep a vital secret or an ephemeral whim; on the other hand, however, he/she aims to be recognized by a specific milieu or group, thus betraying a craving for communication and familiarity, as well as a need to convey an agreeable appearance and to share a way of life. (shrink)

Alexander the Great and Egypt: History, Art, Tradition. Edited by Volker Grieb; Krzysztof Nawotka; and Agnieszka Wojciechowska. Philippika, vol. 74. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. Pp. 458, illus. €83.

Resumen: Este artículo estudia el poder de la visualidad en la política. Entre aquello que está permitido ver y aquello que está prohibido mostrar, el régimen escópico se define por la intervención del poder institucional respecto de la mirada del espectador. Este estudio se desarrolla entre la tradición filosófica y otras aportaciones multidisciplinares (estudios visuales, comunicación social, estética, historia del arte, teoría del arte) que evidencian a) el control político en los regímenes escópicos de la mirada del espectador; b) la (...) consolidación de una cultura visual que condiciona el modo de vida de los individuos y las sociedades; c) el dominio del espacio social por medio de la regulación del espacio visual; y d) la manipulación de los afectos por medio de la experiencia visual. En este estudio destacamos la apertura de la consciencia crítica en la modernidad a la estetización de la política. Abstract: This article studies the power of visual aesthetics in politics. Between what is allowed to see and what is forbidden to show, the scopic regime is defined by the intervention of institutional power on the viewer's gaze. This study is developed between the philosophical tradition and other multidisciplinary contributions (visual studies, social communication, aesthetics, art history, art theory) that show a) political control in the scopic regimes of the viewer's gaze; b) the consolidation of a visual culture that conditions the way of life of individuals and societies; c) the domain of social space through the regulation of visual space; and d) the manipulation of affects through visual experience. In this study we highlight the opening of critical consciousness in modernity to the aestheticization of politics. (shrink)

This paper considers recent experiments in art and artificial intelligence that crystallize around training algorithms to generate artworks based on datasets derived from the Western art historical canon. Over the last decade, a shift towards the rejection of canonicity has begun to take shape in art historical discourse. At the same time, algorithmically enabled practices in the US and Europe have emerged that entrench the Western canon as a locus and guarantor of aesthetic value. Operating within the epistemic framework of (...) a “view from nowhere,” this tendency in generative art inherits the coloniality of both art history and artificial intelligence. Producing “art histories from nowhere,” this tendency conflates the conceptual category of visual art with the histories of Western cultural production. It reproduces a set of aesthetic values that entrench the mythology of the artist-genius and his imputed whiteness and masculinity; the extolment of innovation and novelty as self-evident virtues; disembodied Cartesian models of knowing and sensing; and the erasure of contributions that have been occluded from canonical visibility. As we encounter systems trained on particular visions of art history and of the artist, how might we remain attentive to the specific lens through which they are taught to see? This essay addresses that question by bringing the coloniality of recent experiments into view, bridging data feminisms and decolonial studies to formulate alternative visions of encounters between art and AI. (shrink)

Will works of the imagination ever regain the power they once had to challenge and mould society and the individual? This was the question posed by Edgar Wind's influential Reith Lectures delivered in 1960 and later expanded into his book Art and Anarchy. The book examines the various forces that have fashioned the modern view of the art, from mechanization and fear of intellect to connoisseurship and--perhaps the fundamental weakness of our age--the dispassionate acceptance of art. In the course (...) of his discussion, Wind surveyed a wide range of topics in the history of painting, literature, music, and the plastic arts from the Renaissance to modern times. (shrink)

This volume is by no means out of place for a reader in the twenty first century as resemblances between the age of the machine and our own digital age are surprisingly numerous, particularly with reference to the patterns of intellectual response to unprecedented stimuli. The worrisome parallelisms and analogues are purposefully kept off stage for the imaginative audience to complement the plot of the real drama of the Industrial Revolution as it was witnessed by such imaginative medievalist 'knights' as (...) Carlyle, Cobbett, Southey, Pugin, Ruskin and Morris, intelligent thinkers who performed the universal 'type' rather than the subjective or egocentric in so far as their intellectual responses to the discrepancy between two dissimilar epochs was concerned. The reader is, therefore, expected to be engaged with the arguments of the 'neo-feudal', the 'moral-aesthetic' and the utopian 'social-aesthetic' arguments at the core of the book both imaginatively and intellectually. On the first level, he is requested to shuttle between two centuries separated by the length of a different century. On the second, however, he is expected not only to appreciate the artistically excellent literary works of prominent belletrists, but also to examine the clever polemics they developed as methods of treatment and persuasion aiming at a solution of the social and psychological problems that arose from the incongruity between the present and the past, with specific references to such significant concepts as those of time, history, progress and authority which are examined against the superheated touchstones of democratization, liberty, laissez-faire ethics, mechanization, poverty and social protest in the industrial city. (shrink)

Bell argues that the dialogue that emanate from the aesthetic realm cannot be understood through a solely art-historical approach; instead, they must be understood as part of a collective endeavour. In this sense, the 'art' of post-dictatorship is not something that belongs to art or the artists themselves, but is about how the subjectivities and imaginations of new generations engage with questions of response, ethics and justice; and, in so doing, re-align themselves in relation to the past and to the (...) future. This book provides a valuable resource for those interested in the law, politics, art and sociology of contemporary Argentina. It will be of immense use to those studying in these areas and to those concerned more widely with transitional justice and memory politics. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

The Warring States period was without doubt a time when reason thrived. The Confucians, Mohists, and Daoists, respectively, displayed three of its intellectual inclinations. One was reason with an exceptionally prominent moral flavor, and the cultivation of human character as its object. It calls on men to uphold the dignity, tranquillity, and loftiness of their inner selves. One was reason with a very strong practical flavor, and the realization of beneficent profit as its object. It leads men to address ways (...) of maintaining the stability of society, material wealth to support men's livelihoods, and individual survival. Apart from these two, there was reason that has spiritual transcendence and human immortality as its object, and which was manifested as a tendency toward anti-intellectualism. It tries to protect individual survival and freedom of the spirit, despite social pressures. As for those mystical ideas and techniques that seemed absurd, they gradually regressed into simplistic ceremonies, fables, and symbols among the cultural workers who pursued reason. The psychological attitude of "sacrificing to spirits as if they were present" led many cultural aristocrats to distance themselves from mystical ideas and techniques. Mysticism gradually disappeared from among men of culture, especially once it became increasingly difficult for those divination methods and technical arts, used merely to satisfy concrete needs, to avoid the scrutiny of reason. Some late Warring States period texts can help us understand the direction this way of thinking took. "Xian xue" in the Hanfeizi says,When the shaman priests pray for someone, they say, "May you live a thousand autumns and ten thousand years!" But the "thousand autumns and ten thousand years" are only a noise dinning on the ear: No one has ever proven [zheng] that such prayers add so much as a day to anyone"s life. For this reason people despise the shaman priests.". (shrink)

Introduction Introduction / Jan de Vries 1 Art in History / Gary Schwartz 7 History in Art / J. W. Smit 17 Pt. I Art and Reality Market Scenes As Viewed by an Art Historian / Linda Stone-Ferrier 29 Market Scenes As Viewed by a Plant Biologist / Willem A. Brandenburg 59 Marine Paintings and the History of Shipbuilding / Richard W. Unger 75 Skies and Reality in Dutch Landscape / John Walsh 95 Some Notes on Interpretation (...) / E. de Jongh 119 Are These Girls Really So Neat? On Kitchen Scenes and Method / Jochen Becker 139 Didactic and Disguised Meanings? Several Seventeenth-Century Texts on Painting and the Iconological Approach to Northern Dutch Paintings of This Period / Eric J. Sluijter 175 The Changing Face of Realism / Lyckle de Vries 209 Pt. II Art, Economy, and Society Art History / Jan de Vries 249 The Volume and Value of Paintings in Holland at the Time of the Dutch Republic / Ad van der Woude 285 Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions / John Michael Montias 331 Conclusion Science, Commerce, and Art: Neglected Topics at the Junction of History and Art History / David Freedberg 377 Biographical Notes on the Authors 429 Index. (shrink)

This book explores aesthetic forms of the left to negotiate the political frontiers of post-colonial, post-partition South Asia. Spanning India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the contributors study art, film and literature to illuminate interconnections across regions and countries, and discuss the shifting political contours of the region during the latter half of the 20th century. With a clear focus and conceptualization this volume raises two key questions; how left-wing art generated cultural and social formations, and how aesthetic forms held (...) political value across the region. Reframing political aesthetics within a postcolonial and decolonised framework, it traces the trajectories and nuances the left-wing cultural movement took during decolonization, and focuses on connections and continuities across post-1947 India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Following the evolution of progressive culture in the 1950s and 60s, networks of leftist filmmakers and theatre activists in postcolonial Pakistan, and the changing fate of left cultural politics in Sri Lanka and India during the 1970s, this book looks to reinvigorate the entangled histories of the left cultural movement in post-partition South Asia. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper argues for the contemporary relevance of melancholy as something different than depression or a state of mental illness. Instead, through examples of a literary, philosophical, and artistic nature, it is shown that melancholy functions as a force-field – a topos where the finite and the infinite, the earthly and the heavenly, the physical and the spiritual come together and meet in huge tension. By means of an exploration of the historical notion of melancholy and a revisit of (...) Dürer’s Melencolia I (1514), coupled to a much more recent example, Lars von Trier’s film melancholia (DK/se/fr/de 2011), this paper shows how the melancholic motif continues to play an essential role in our contemporary society. The melancholic is described as a person who lives a life on the border: who intuits the point where two worlds meet and who longs for a revelation of the beyond – an apocalypse (literally: ‘an uncovering’). It is this longing – a nostalgia for being – that increasingly pervades our contemporary world, a world that represses the heterogeneous through numerous social and political conditions. The study of melancholy here undertaken therefore provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of melancholy in our (post-) modern time. (shrink)

Morris Grossman, the author of this captivating collection of essays Art and Morality: Essays in the Spirit of Santayana, was fond of quoting Santayana as saying, “when Peter tells you something about Paul you learn more about Peter than you do Paul.” This aphorism appears several times in this volume, and its emphatic repetition should clue us into Grossman’s approach to expository writing. While the book is ostensibly about figures from the history of philosophy and art in individual essays, (...) its real charm comes from getting a sense for Grossman’s intellectual temperament across the whole volume. One aspect of Grossman’s intellectual character which is favorably displayed portrayed in this book is his... (shrink)

This overview of the "sister arts" of the nineteenth century by younger scholars in art history, literature, and American studies presents a startling array of perspectives on the fundamental role played by images in culture and society. Drawing on the latest thinking about vision and visuality as well as on recent developments in literary theory and cultural studies, the contributors situate paintings, sculpture, monument art, and literary images within a variety of cultural contexts. The volume offers fresh and (...) sometimes extended discussions of single works as well as reevaluations of artistic and literary conventions and analyses of the economic, social, and technological forces that gave them shape and were influenced by them in turn. A wide range of figures are significantly reassessed, including the painters Charles Willson Peale, Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, George Caleb Bingham, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Mary Cassatt, and such writers as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and William Dean Howells. One overarching theme to emerge is the development of an American national subjectivity as it interacted with the transformation of a culture dominated by religious values to one increasingly influenced by commercial imperatives. The essays probe the ways in which artists and writers responded to the changing conditions of the cultural milieu as it was mediated by such factors as class and gender, modes of perception and representation, and conflicting ideals and realities. (shrink)

These two short, influential books, which grew out of Dewey’s hands-on experience in administering the laboratory school at the University of Chicago, represent the earliest authoritative statement of his revolutionary emphasis on education as an experimental, child-centered process. In The School and Society, he declares that we must “make each one of our schools an embryonic community life, active with types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society and permeated with the spirit of art, (...) class='Hi'>history, and science.” In The Child and the Curriculum he stresses the importance of the curriculum as a means of determining the environment of the child, and allowing the teacher to guide children in asserting themselves, exercising their capacities, and fulfilling their own nature. 8 black-and-white illustrations. (shrink)

In the course of the ‘long’ eighteenth century, ways of thinking in the Western world transformed in fundamental ways; even words that remained the same took on new meanings. In the field of the history of ideas, the period 1700–1850 is also called the ‘saddle-period’. Philosophers of history have argued that the new basic concepts that emerged at this time indicate how social reality has come to be comprehended in the modern era. Various segments of the population relied (...) on them to act, understand, interpret and reform reality. These concepts are crucial to the discursive constitution of the world—in the economy, politics, science, art, education and so on. They play their part in the dissolution of the ‘old’ world and the emergence of a ‘new’ one. They can thus also be studied with regard to their functioning as both factors in and indicators of evolutionary processes. This article deals with a small aspect of the historical co-evolution of concepts and structures in education. It examines the non-random character of the variations in the discourses on the social function of education, especially in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Looked at in one way, the existence of art continues to be an unsolved puzzle. The need for science as an irreplaceable technique for acquiring knowledge about the objective world is hardly subject to doubt. But as concerns art, which for thousands of years has absorbed enormous material and human resources and the most precious creative forces, there is still no equally clear-cut determination of why it is necessary and irreplaceable. How much richer society could become materially if there (...) were no need for art'. But when the Puritans forbade "vain," secular art, they were unable to kill it either in England or its North American provinces. At all times in history, talented young people have gone into the arts en masse, condemning themselves to incredibly difficult labors that in 99 cases out of 100 brought them neither fame nor wealth nor even a personal sense of success. Yet they have gone on without wavering, like fish up rapids and past all obstacles to spawn in river deltas, dying in vast numbers en route, so as to perform the great duty stipulated by nature. (shrink)

The article begins by noting that the widespread assumption that the social basis of more difficult or cosmopolitan art has been undermined in later modernity should lead to blander, less controversial art. An alternative interpretation is briefly described in which cosmopolitan art has become a spectacular tourist attraction. Significant questions that would follow such a development are: how national cultural institutions have been co-opted into a global spectacular culture and whether the work displayed in these settings can be radically critical (...) of dominant social values; and the implications of the development of a public culture focused on spectacular attractions for notions of cultural citizenship. In the article these questions are explored through a brief history of changing attitudes and values in British public culture, leading to a suggestion that we are experiencing an era of cultural fragmentation. The article concludes with a consideration of the possibilities for cultural citizenship in these changing circumstances. (shrink)

Art has the power to affect our thinking, changing not only the way we view and interact with the world but also how we create it. In Art in Mind , Ernst van Alphen probes this idea of art as a commanding force with the capacity to shape our intellect and intervene in our lives. Rather than interpreting art as merely a reflection of our social experience or a product of history, van Alphen here argues that art is a (...) historical agent, or a cultural creator, that propels thought and experience forward. Examining a broad range of works, van Alphen—a renowned art historian and cultural theorist—demonstrates how art serves a socially constructive function by actually experimenting with the parameters of thought. Employing work from artists as diverse as Picasso, Watteau, Francis Bacon, Marlene Dumas, and Matthew Barney, he shows how art confronts its viewers with the "pain points" of cultural experience-genocide, sexuality, diaspora, and transcultural identity-and thereby transforms the ways in which human existence is conceived. Van Alphen analyzes how art visually "thinks" about these difficult cultural issues, tapping into an understudied interpretation of art as the realm where ideas and values are actively created, given form, and mobilized. In this way, van Alphen's book is a work of art in itself as it educates us in a new mode of thought that will forge equally new approaches and responses to the world. (shrink)

When the modern artist is seen as moving about in a nebulous area between two opposing worlds, that of life or immediate experience and that of art or established truth, I think it is appropriate to discuss this activity in terms of metaphor. Indeed the present concern for metaphor in the academic and artistic communities is but one of many reflections of our sense that life is a process of the gradual attainment of knowledge through experience, whether sensuous or intellectual. (...) Like our artists, we strive to create a picture of our world, yet that picture is never complete; for we continually pass on to new experiences and new images of reality. Not only do we grow and change but our world seems to change with us. Although the truths revealed through our art are founded in our experience, they seem more permanent and public than the acts of discovery leading to them. A principle once established and integrated with a body of other established truths enters into recorded history perhaps to be revered, disputed, or reinterpreted, but nevertheless to remain. The individual experience or discovery, however, passes; with the individual, only the sense of the continuing search yields personal identity. In a changing world, metaphor renders the truth of experience as the truth of knowledge, for it is the means of passing from individual immediacy to an established public world; the new must be linked to the old, and the experience of any individual must be connected with that of his society. Excluding the possibility of the creation of entirely new worlds and the resultant transformation of all personal identities, acts of genius or dramatic breakthroughs in fields of study can affect our present world order only if they are joined to it by means of a powerful metaphor. Indeed establishing the metaphoric bridge itself may be considered the act of genius, and the entry into new areas of knowledge is its consequence. Richard Shiff is associate professor of art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Seeing Cézanne" and, with Carl Pletsch, "History and Innovation". (shrink)

"The Traffic in Culture takes us along exciting new avenues in the investigation of art and society, global encounter, and the marketing of culture. These essays will become required reading to scholars in fields as diverse as art history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies."--Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University "These essays break new ground in charting out a critical ethnography of art. They address the complexities of cultural difference while ceasing to respect the boundary between 'Western' and 'non-Western' art (...) which has defined the scope of the anthropology of art for too long. This is contemporary critical anthropology at its best."--Nicholas Thomas, Australian National University. (shrink)

In this book the author seeks to explain the distinct character of Islamic art as a manifestation of the spiritual realities of the Quranic revelation in the world of forms. The book undertakes to study certain important facets of Islamic art ranging from calligraphy, painting and architecture to music, literature and plastic art, and underlines the sacred and spiritual nature of each. While the author has dealt with Islamic art, as produced in various countries of the Islamic world, his universe (...) of discourse is primarily Persian art. For Nasr, Islamic art is essentially an outcome of the inner dimension of Islam which is inextricably related to Islamic spirituality. This esoteric aspect has all along molded the soul of the Muslim artist by imbuing in them certain transcendental attitudes and virtues derived from the Quran and the prophetic traditions. In support of his esoteric thesis Nasr argues that many of the greatest masterpieces of Islamic art were created much before the sciences of the Quran and the Hadith were fully codified and accepted in the world of Islam as the ultimate authoritative works produced in those fields. If Islamic art leads to the inner chamber of the Islamic tradition it is because this art is a message from the noumenal world sent to those qualified to harken to its liberating message. It also provides a climate of peace and equilibrium for society as a whole in conformity with the nature of Islam. (shrink)

First published in 1959, this book is concerned with the methodology of art history, and so with questions about historical thinking; it enquires what scientific history of art can accomplish, what are its mean and limitations? It contains philosophical reflections on history and begins with chapters on the scope and limitations of a sociology of art, and the concept of ideology in the history of art. The chapter on the concept of "art history without names" (...) occupies the central position in the book — thoroughly discussing the basic philosophical outlook for the whole work. There are also further chapters on psychoanalysis, folk art and popular art. The chapter on the role of convention in the history of art points the way for further study. (shrink)

At first sight, classical architecture, with its continuous revivals and reworking of the forms of Greek and Roman building, would appear to offer a privileged field in which to apply Warburg's central notion of the survival of classical forms and his view of art history's unfolding as a process of remembrance. Yet Warburg himself did not write on architecture. The topic has also largely vanished from the pages of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, though in the (...) past the journal has been the venue for influential publications on classical architecture. By comparing two Warburg circle publications from 1949 — Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower's British Art and the Mediterranean World and Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism — this article shows that architectural history of this kind, developed in the context of the Warburg Institute, is connected not only to Aby Warburg's ideas on Nachleben der Antike and Mnemosyne, but also to the organization and holdings of the Warburg Institute Library. Working in the Warburg Library gives architectural historians the intellectual space to think about architecture in terms of design issues, but moreover as an actor shaping society and culture. This article concludes that Warburg's thought offers important, and thus far hardly explored, starting points for new investigations of the built classical heritage. (shrink)

Is art only art insofar as it refuses to be useful? How do people understand art's ability to know the world, to develop ethics, to express sense of historical belonging and to be, in different ways to different people, useful? Starting with the premise that art is best understood in dialogue with the social sphere, publication examines how the exchange between art, knowledge and use has historically been set up and played out. Theorists and artists included in this volume seek (...) an answer to the question: how can art know, and change, the world? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society, and Artistic RationalisationJohn C. McEnroeJeremy Tanner. The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society, and Artistic Rationalisation. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xvi + 331 pp. 62 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $99.In his introductory chapter, Jeremy Tanner quotes J. J. Winckelmann's eighteenth-century description of the Apollo Belvedere: "Among all the (...) works of antiquity which have escaped destruction, the statue of Apollo is the highest ideal of art... In the presence of this miracle of art, I forget all else, and I myself take a lofty position for the purpose of looking on it in a worthy manner" (6). Tanner makes it clear that Winckelmann, widely regarded as the founder of modern art history, was not simply recording a personal reaction. Instead, Winckelmann's notion of artworks as autonomous objects of aesthetic experience was deeply rooted in the transformation of the basic institutions of art during [End Page 423] the Enlightenment. These included changes in patronage and production, and the introduction of the new philosophy of aesthetics. The new conception of art as a form of individual expression was tied not only to the notion of personal liberty but also to the growing obsession with national identities. Winckelmann's rapturous response to the Apollo Belvedere is understandable only as a part of this broader set of social and intellectual currents.The kinds of art history that Tanner is concerned with in this book are quite distinct from Winckelmann's and belonged to profoundly different cultural networks. Tanner lays out three goals for the book: first, to analyze art as a form of material culture that was both shaped by society and, in turn, helped to shape society; second, to develop an analytic framework for comparing classical and modern art history without conflating the two; third, to move art history to the explanatory level, exploring not only how classical art developed over the long term, but why. Tanner's approach is sociological, drawing especially on the work of the once influential American sociologist, Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). As a result, Tanner shifts from the traditional focus on artists to the interaction of artists, patrons, and viewers.In chapter 2 ("Rethinking the Greek Revolution," 31–96) Tanner addresses one of the central problems in art history, the apparently sudden transformation from abstraction to naturalism in Greek art in the beginning of the fifth century B.C.E., famously described by E. H. Gombrich as "the Greek Revolution." Why, after generations of continuity within the Archaic style, did Greek artists, alone among the artists working in the broader Middle Eastern tradition, develop the naturalistic style of art represented in, for example, Polykeitos's Doryphoros? For Gombrich, the "Greek Revolution" was fundamentally a matter of artists breaking from ingrained patterns and attempting, as individuals, to match the appearance of their statues with the natural world. Other writers, including several contributors to Diana Buitron-Oliver, ed., The Greek Miracle: Classical Sculpture from the Dawn of Democracy (Washington, D.C., 1992), have described the change in terms even more deeply grounded in Winckelmann: the revolution in style was a product of the birth of individuality and personal freedom that accompanied the birth of democracy in classical Greece.Tanner is specifically concerned with what the "Greek Revolution" meant for cult statues. While he rejects the simplistic equation democracy = naturalism as an explanatory device, Tanner nevertheless holds that political changes, marked by the Kleisthenic reforms, had profound effects on both the makers and the viewers of art. Through most of the sixth century B.C.E., the aristocracy was in firm control of religious art. Through the forms of the kouros and kore, aristocrats merged their identities with those of the gods. Through their sponsorship and control of the sanctuaries, they controlled the access ordinary viewers had to images of the sacred. While the immediate effects of the Kleisthenic reforms may have been more complex than Tanner implies, over the course of a generation the authority of the traditional aristocracy declined, and the sponsorship of cult images was... (shrink)

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Excerpt from History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education: Under the Auspices of the Aristotelian Society of Marquette University God and Philosophy (the Powell lec tures of 1940) New Haven, Yale University Press, and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1941, 144 pages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving (...) the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This book takes an interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-cultural approach to reflect on, critically examine, and challenge the surprisingly robust practice of making art after death in an artist's name, through the lenses of scholars from the fields of art history, economics and law, as well as practicing artists. Works of art conceived as multiples, such as sculptures, etchings, prints, photographs and conceptual art, can be - and often are - remade from original models and plans long after the artist (...) has passed. Recent sales have suggested a growing market embrace of posthumous works, contemporaneous with questioning on the part of art history. Legal norms seem unready for this surge in posthumous production and are beset by conflict across jurisdictions. Non-Western approaches to posthumous art, from Chinese emulations of non-living artists to Native American performances, take into account rituals of generational passage and emotional aspects foreign to Western ideas. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the art market, art law, art management, museum studies, and economics. (shrink)

_Transcendence and History_ is an analysis of what philosopher Eric Voegelin described as “the decisive problem of philosophy”: the dilemma of the discovery of transcendent meaning and the impact of this discovery on human self-understanding. The explicit recognition and symbolization of transcendent meaning originally occurred in a few advanced civilizations worldwide during the first millennium?.?.e. The world’s major religious and wisdom traditions are built upon the recognition of transcendent meaning, and our own cultural and linguistic heritage has long since absorbed (...) the postcosmological division of reality into the two dimensions of “transcendence” and “immanence.” But the last three centuries in the West have seen a growing resistance to the idea of transcendent meaning; contemporary and “postmodern” interpretations of the human situation—both popular and intellectual—indicate a widespread eclipse of confidence in the truth of transcendence. In _Transcendence and History_, Glenn Hughes contributes to the understanding of transcendent meaning and the problems associated with it and assists in the philosophical recovery of the legitimacy of the notion of transcendence. Depending primarily on the treatments of transcendence found in the writings of twentieth-century philosophers Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, Hughes explores the historical discovery of transcendent meaning and then examines what it indicates about the structure of history. Hughes’s main focus, however, is on clarifying the problem of transcendence in relation to historical _existence_. Addressing both layreaders and scholars, Hughes applies the insights and analyses of Voegelin and Lonergan to considerable advantage. _Transcendence and History_ will be of particular value to those who have grappled with the notion of transcendence in the study of philosophy, comparative religion, political theory, history, philosophical anthropology, and art or poetry. By examining transcendent meaning as the key factor in the search for ultimate meaning from ancient societies to the present, the book demonstrates how “the decisive problem of philosophy” both illuminates and presents a vital challenge to contemporary intellectual discourse. (shrink)

In trying to say what modernism is , we must remind ourselves that it cannot and must not—to be properly described and understood—be confined only to the arts of music, literature, painting, sculpture, theater, architecture, those arts with which we normally associate the term “culture.” Modernism can be said to embrace, in the broadest terms, not only the arts of Western culture but also science, technology, the family, marriage, sexuality, economics, the politics of democracy, the politics of authoritarianism, the politics (...) of totalitarianism, and such academic disciplines as philosophy and the social sciences of sociology and anthropology . Its influence and effects have been all-pervasive. No corner of twentieth-century life has escaped its profound alteration of both the individual and society. It has radicalized all levels of human existence.What, then, is modernism?Some have described it as a state of “chronic revolution,” that is, revolution against the past, against tradition, against history itself. Others have pointed to its voracious appetite for innovation, for the search for the “new,” for the hunger to be “original”—to be the first and last with something unique and difference, whatever that something might be or in whatever area of human endeavor it might arise.Still others have characterized modernism as the application to all realms of human life of forms of structural rationalization, that is, finding rationally structured ways of being and doing regardless of consequences and, more especially, rationalizing away the mysteries and questions which have to do with meaning, that is, morality and ethics—those areas that lie outside the purely rational. And still others have viewed modernism as a condition of freedom within which the individual can be himself, unfettered and uninhibited, released from the drag of superego and conscience, a separate entity of being, unanswerable to others whether in the form of individuals or society as a whole.Last but not least, there are those who continue to see modernism as a self-perpetuating form of avant-gardism, always at the point of the interface between the present and the future, always ready to move on to the next stage because living itself is a process of constant change, constant motion, perpetual transformation. George Rochberg is the composer of a large body of musical works and the author of a recently published collection of essays, The Aesthetics of Survival, A Composer’s View of Twentieth-Century Music. He is currently writing his fifth symphony, on a commission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1983 he retired from the University of Pennsylvania as Emeritus Annenberg Professor of the Humanities. (shrink)

The literature on aesthetics often emphasizes the need to set into motion processes that promote the overcoming of alienation. In characterizing the realm of activity and the various causes of this phenomenon, it is necessary to direct attention to the fact that in contemporary aesthetics, the social aspect of art has been given pride of place. Without going beyond the bounds of preliminary systematization of its many-faceted connections, embracing both preconditions in the realm of history as well as ideology, (...) it should be observed here that the rise of interest in problems of social aesthetics coincides in time with the appearance of Marxist philosophy and that this interest became more acute because of the revolutionary triumph of Marxism and the organization of the first socialist state. Of course, it would be oversimplifying to reduce all the problems of social aesthetics that merit attention solely to the influence of Marxism, but the role of Marxist philosophy in shaping the priorities of problems of art and society in contemporary aesthetics is beyond question. The views of the founders of Marxism are undoubtedly the impulse that stimulated the development of social aesthetics. It is no accident that Western researchers who are interested in this subject and who polemicize with Marxism, such as H. Read, W. D. Gottschalk, T. Munro, nonetheless are significantly influenced by its methodology, system of categories, and the like. (shrink)

In the process of interpreting works of pictorial art, it is easier to understand not the "style", but the "theme", that is, not how to write, but what to write. In the history of modern art, which attaches more importance to "style", the problem of "theme" is not fundamental and is among the primitive issues worthy of the attention of amateurs who do not understand art. However, sometimes it is in simplicity that the essence lies. The simplest questions that (...) interest almost everyone are the link between works of art and society. When analyzing the "topic", the subject under study is not confined to one work of art, since an integrated approach to the consideration of the problem should be used. The author's main contribution to the study of the history of the development of Chinese painting is a new perspective – the analysis of works based on the "theme". The results of the study revealed the main themes of Chinese pictorial art, identified the main reasons for referring to them, and also established their symbolic meaning, connection with philosophical and literary traditions. The important role of literary scientists in determining the directions of thematic development of Chinese landscape painting is revealed, the significance of the images of the fisherman and the traveler as carriers of the spiritual content of the landscape is determined. The conclusion is made about the prominence of certain themes in the pictorial art, depending on the processes of social development of China. (shrink)

By moving beyond traditional aesthetic categories (beauty, the sublime, the religious), Eco-Aesthetics takes an inter-disciplinary approach bridging the arts, humanities and social sciences and explores what aesthetics might mean in the 21st century. It is one in a series of new, radical aesthetics promoting debate, confronting convention and formulating alternative ways of thinking about art practice. There is no doubt that the social and environmental spheres are interconnected but can art and artists really make a difference to the global environmental (...) crisis? Can art practice meaningfully contribute to the development of sustainable lifestyles? Malcolm Miles explores the strands of eco-art, eco-aesthetics and contemporary aesthetic theories, offering timely critiques of consumerism and globalisation and, ultimately, offers a possible formulation of an engaged eco-aesthetic for the early 21st century. (shrink)

As social, locative, and mobile media render the intimate public and the public intimate, this volume interrogates how this phenomenon impacts art practice and politics. Contributors bring together the worlds of art and media culture to rethink their intersections in light of participatory social media. By focusing upon the Asia-Pacific region, they seek to examine how regionalism and locality affect global circuits of culture. The book also offers a set of theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms for thinking about contemporary art (...) practice more generally. (shrink)

The Companion Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive work to cover all the principal lines and themes of the history and philosophy of mathematics from ancient times up to the twentieth century. In 176 articles contributed by 160 authors of 18 nationalities, the work describes and analyzes the variety of theories, proofs, techniques, and cultural and practical applications of mathematics. The work's aim is to recover our mathematical heritage and show the importance of mathematics today by treating its interactions with (...) the related disciplines of physics, astronomy, engineering and philosophy. It also covers the history of higher education in mathematics and the growth of institutions and organizations connected with the development of the subject. Part 1 deals with mathematics in various ancient and non-Western cultures from antiquity up to medieval and Renaissance times. Part 2 treats developments in all the main areas of mathematics during the medieval and Renaissance periods up to and including the early 17th century. Parts 3-10 are divided into the main branches into which mathematics developed from the early 17th century onwards: calculus and mathematical analysis, logic and foundations, algebras, geometries, mechanics, mathematical physics and engineering, and probability and statistics. Parts 11-13 review the history of mathematics from an international perspective. The teaching of mathematics in higher education is examined in various countries, and mathematics in culture, art and society is covered. The Companion Encyclopedia features annotated bibliographies of both classic and contemporary sources; black and white illustrations, line figures and equations; biographies of major mathematicians and historians and philosophers of mathematics; a chronological table of main events in the developments of mathematics; and a fully integrated index of people, events and topics. (shrink)

First published in 1959, this book is concerned with the methodology of art history, and so with questions about historical thinking; it enquires what scientific history of art can accomplish, what are its mean and limitations? It contains philosophical reflections on history and begins with chapters on the scope and limitations of a sociology of art, and the concept of ideology in the history of art. The chapter on the concept of "art history without names" (...) occupies the central position in the book — thoroughly discussing the basic philosophical outlook for the whole work. There are also further chapters on psychoanalysis, folk art and popular art. The chapter on the role of convention in the history of art points the way for further study. (shrink)

Scatological shock-merchants, untrained social workers, conflict-zone tourists: from a certain standpoint the relationship between contemporary art and ethics involves a string of negative conjunctions. At their center stands the artist, whose personality and intentions often serve as an ethical measure of the work. This book operates on the basis of a different premise: that artworks themselves have ethical effects, and looking at these effects can tell us about wider processes of social change. As the first full-length study of its kind (...) to outline a positive vision of the ethics of contemporary art, this book distances itself from previous accounts that focus on transgression. The critique of transgressive art is not made on the basis that it is wrong, but that it no longer succeeds on its own terms in societies where language, prohibition and morality are more plastic than they once were. By drawing on the work of Félix Guattari and Jacques Lacan, the book develops a novel theoretical framework that emphasizes the effect of art on subjectivity. Along the way artworks by Kader Attia, Artur Zmijewski, Dora Garcia and others serve as springboards launching discussions of the varied pathways along which a renewed ethics of contemporary art might develop. (shrink)

Cutting across boundaries of art and science, evolution is a fundamental process that has beguiled thinkers through the ages. This collection draws together world renowned thinkers and communicators with their own intriguing insights. In these essays they offer a feast of dazzling thoughts and ideas to challenge and enthrall the reader. Why and how do civilisations and societies change over time? Why do our cells develop the way they do? Why are some villages still villages while others have grown into (...) vast cities? Can we learn from our evolutionary past to plan a better future for our health and society? Tracing a line from the history of biological evolution, through the evolution of cultures, society, science and the universe, Evolution brings together intriguing parallels from all levels of life. From the evolution of the developing embryo to the evolution of a developing star, common threads develop into a fascinating story. (shrink)