One thing to expect from a theory of absolute music is that it explains what makes it so significant to us. Kant rightly observes that the essence of absolute music is our affective response to it. Yet none of the standard 18 th century theories, arousal theory and aesthetic rationalism, can explain both the universality of a judgment of taste and its subjective emotional content. The paper argues that Kant’s own aesthetic theory of aesthetic ideas is on the right path (...) for explaining the emotive significance of music, but that Kant does not further pursue this route because his interest in a “theory of music” is only peripheral to his systematic interest as a transcendental philosopher. For both philosophical and historical reasons, Kant does not have a “theory of music.” Nevertheless, if we free Kant’s conception of aesthetic idea and its restriction to Geist from the background of its 18th century humanism, then Kant’s aesthetics of free play becomes a good theory to account for the broad variety of emotions in absolute music as a fine art proper. (shrink)

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted fantasy, (...) and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the (...) world in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

Niedenthal et al. recognize that cultural differences are important when interpreting facial expressions. Nonetheless, many of their core observations derive more from individualistic cultures than from collectivist cultures. We discuss two examples from the latter: (1) lower rates of mutual eye contact, and (2) the ubiquity of specific These examples suggest constraints on the assumptions and applicability of the SIMS model.

The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle (1746) by Charles Batteux was arguably the most influential work on aesthetics published in the 18th century. James O. Young presents the first complete English translation of the work, with full annotations and a comprehensive introduction, which illuminate Batteux's continuing philosophical interest.

The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single PrincipleBatteuxCharlesoup. 2015. pp. 151. £40.00.

Postcolonial discourse is incredibly diverse and postcolonial art in Australia has numerous critical modes. This paper describes an approach in Contemporary Indigenous art that attempts a critique of the law from within the law rather than outside of it. It takes a radical form of over-proximity, rather than avant-garde distance, and finds the gap and failure in law’s attempt at creating legal subjects of us all. In the work of Gordon Bennett, Danie Mellor and the duo Adam Geczy and Adam (...) Hill, there is a working through the political and legal ramifications of the Indigenous subject in contemporary Australia. The focus on processes of initiation and subjectivization, or what Althusser called “interpellation” and show the effects of this interpellation in the Indigenous subject and offer modes of resistance. The artists are informed by Lacanian notions of subjectivization and utilise this approach to semiotics and power as the starting point for their critique. (shrink)

Dans certains récits poïétiques, des artistes trouvent par hasard au sein de leur expérience perceptive une solution à un problème de réalisation artistique en un moment imprévu, en un lieu inattendu, à la suite d’un temps devenu vacant par un retard ou une circonstance involontaires. De Léonard de Vinci à l’artiste surréaliste Max Ernst, sont analysées les relations entre ces temps vacants de diverses natures psychologiques et circonstancielles avec la capacité, qui leur succède, à saisir une sollicitation imprévue pour l’intégrer (...) à leur démarche artistique. Tournure stylistique et dramatique pour mieux faire ressortir l’instant fertile sérendipien? Rhétorique de l’ironie, qui retourne la durée morne en moment d’intense création? Repos nécessaire pour mieux aiguiser l’attention qui succède? Ou plongée dans l’inconscient riche d’images, qui souffle parfois des solutions époustouflantes de justesse? Ces moments vides, quelle qu’en soit la teneur, tiennent probablement un rôle plus soutenu qu’il n’y paraît dans la temporalité de la démarche sérendipienne chez nombre d’artistes. Aussi, même s’il n’est pas question ici de sacraliser leur activité, faut-il considérer leurs temps apparemment vides, comme une chance d’une possible sérendipité artistique. (shrink)

As the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Joshua Reynolds played a pivotal role in shaping the course of British art in the 18th century. In these discourses, Reynolds reflects on the nature of art, the role of the artist, and the importance of aesthetic education. With insightful commentary on the works of the Old Masters and a wealth of practical advice for aspiring artists, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of art or (...) art theory. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

At the start ofthe twenty-first century there has been a rapid development ofart museums in the Arab world, especially in the Gulf This is retlected in a renewed interest in trying to work out the parameters oflslamic art and especially what an Arab art might be and how it should be defined. What makes that task so difficult is the fact that Arab art is to be characterized in a way that is aligned with what it is to be an (...) Arab in this period, and that is also a complex issue, especially given the wide variety of cultural contexts in which Arabs now Ji ve. Various types of Arab art are discussed and sorne are criticized for being stereotypical and not grasping the challenge ofmodernity and what lies beyond it, while others are part ofwhat could be called world art. The sudden growth ofmuseum building is not really a retlection ofanything especially new in Arab art but more of the ways in which very wealthy rulers compete for status and recognition on the world cultural stage. Nonetheless, this outburst of creativity in both Arab art and its museums, however they are defined, is an indication that these art traditions are joining the mainstream art world. (shrink)

This essay links Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of fine art to his description of Christian love. It does so by carefully showing how Marion's overall project is closely related to Kant's well-known account of the relationship between aesthetics and morality. While Kant and Marion both believe that aesthetic experience can lay the groundwork for moral action, their contrasting views of morality lead them to very different articulations of such a relationship. While Kant sees encounters with fine art as preparing (...) individuals for the particular kinds of disinterested judgments characteristic of moral decision-making, Marion sees artwork as preparing the subject for the openness toward intuitive excess that is necessary for love. (shrink)

Dans son livre d’anthropologie esthétique sur L’art chorégraphique occidental, une fabrique du féminin, inspiré de sa thèse soutenue en 2005 à l’Université de Toulouse 2, Virginie Valentin propose d’étudier le « nœud entre émotion esthétique et danse classique » (p. 11) qui donnerait aujourd’hui aux jeunes filles françaises l’envie de pratiquer le ballet. Croisant entretiens de danseuses professionnelles et amatrices sur leurs expériences de l’apprentissage du ballet, avec une analyse littéra...

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant (...) or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. (shrink)

Introduction: The problem of vitalism : active/passive -- Brain, system, model : the affective turn -- Vitalism and theoria -- Inorganic art -- Inorganic vitalism -- The vital order after theory -- On becoming -- Living systems, extended minds, gaia -- Conclusion.

‘Antony Gormley’, Royal Academy of Arts, 21 September–3 December 2019.

Most people encounter art images as digital reproductions on a computer screen instead of as originals in a museum or gallery. With the development of digital technologies, high-resolution artworks can be accessed anywhere and anytime by a large number of viewers. Since these digital images depict the same content and are attributed to the same artist as the original, it is often implicitly assumed that their aesthetic evaluation will be similar. When it comes to the digital reproductions of art, however, (...) it is also obvious that reproductions do differ from the originals in various aspects. Besides image quality, resolution, and format, the most obvious change is in the representation of color. The effects of subjectively varying surface-level image features on art evaluation have not been clearly assessed. To address this gap, we compare the evaluation of digital reproductions of 16 expressionist and impressionist paintings manipulated to have a high color saturation vs. a saturation similar to the original. We also investigate the impact of viewing time and expertise, two other aspects that may impact the perception of art in online contexts. Moreover, we link these dimensions to a recent model of aesthetic experience [the Vienna Integrated Model of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processes in Art Perception ]. Results suggest that color saturation does not exert a major influence on liking. Cognitive and emotional aspects, however, are affected – to different extents for experts and laypersons. For laypersons, the increase in color saturation led to more positive assessments of an artwork, whereas it resulted in increased confusion for art experts. This insight is particularly important when it comes to reproducing artworks digitally. Depending on the intended use, increasing or decreasing the color saturation of the digitally reproduced image might be most appropriate. We conclude with a discussion of these findings and address the question of why empirical aesthetics requires more precise dimensions to better understand the subtle processes that take place in the perception of today’s digitally reproduced art environment. (shrink)

In the year 2000 the artist Eduardo Kac made TV news by declaring he had ordered the « creation » of a genetically modified bunny. In 2004 the artist Steve Kurtz was detained by the FBI on the suspiscion of bioterrorism, because of the laboratory equipment he uses in installations that demistify biotechnology. The contrast between an artist-publicist who lends a showy allure to biotech and an artist-researcher who critiques its effects serves as the departure point for an examination of (...) the functions of science and art in a neoliberal society. Faced with trade secrets, the privatization of knowledge and ever-tightening control of laboratories, the artist-researcher can intervene to make public the research process and the consequences of commercializing a given discovery, particularly by using installations that allow the participant to manipulate both lab equipment and scientific concepts. But to do so, the artist must also interrupt the normal functioning of the neoliberal art world, where institutions supported by private sponsorship retain exclusive rights over fetishized products, destined to feed financial speculation. The article closes with a look at the work of Brandon Ballangee, an artist-researcher working in the field of ecology. (shrink)

This article examines the artistic potential of forms of image-making that involve registering the features of real objects using mind-independent processes. According to skeptics, these processes limit an agent’s intentional control over the features of the resultant “automatic images,” which in turn limits the artistic potential of the work, and the form as a whole. I argue that this is true only if intentional control is understood to mean that an agent produces the features of the work by their own (...) bodily movements alone. Not only is this an unrealistic standard to uphold, but I show that a definition of intentional control based on the skeptic’s position does not prohibit an agent from realizing the features of an image by means beyond their own actions. An agent can exercise intentional control over the features of an image if they successfully anticipate the effect that the remote consequences of their actions will have on these. This, I argue, entails that to exert intentional control over the features of an image is to exercise “creative agency,” which is a species of executive agency. Consequently, I defend the idea that the origin of automatic images in creative agency grounds their artistic significance. (shrink)

The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle by Charles Batteux was arguably the most influential work on aesthetics published in the eighteenth century. It influenced every major aesthetician in the second half of the century, and is the work generally credited with establishing the modern system of the arts: poetry, painting, music, sculpture and dance. Batteux's book is also an invaluable aid to the interpretation of the arts of eighteenth century. And yet there has never been a complete (...) or reliable translation of The Fine Arts into English. Now James O. Young, a leading contemporary philosopher of art, has provided an eminently readable and accurate translation. It is fully annotated and comes with a comprehensive introduction that identifies the figures who influenced Batteux and the writers who were, in turn, influenced by him. This book will be of interest to everyone interested in the arts of the eighteenth century, French studies, the history of European ideas, and philosophy of art. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Two Caveats Distinguishing Interests and Values Relations Between the Pornographic and the Artistic Notes.

With its lush and diverse landscapes, ancient ruins, and stunning architecture, China is a photographer’s dream. Exploring this visually rich and evocative country, Photography and China highlights Chinese photographers and subjects from the inception of photography to the present day. Drawing on works in museums, and archival and private collections across China, the United States, Europe, and Australia, Claire Roberts locates images from commercial, art, and documentary photography within the broader context of Chinese history. She focuses on the images (...) as well as the studios and individuals who created them, describing the long tradition of Chinese artistic culture into which photography was first absorbed and subsequently expanded. As she recounts the stories of practitioners—from China and overseas—who were agents in that process of change, she also examines the commercial, political, and artistic purposes for which they used photography. Featuring one hundred striking, little-known images, Photography and China will make a significant contribution to photography, Chinese art, and twentieth-century history. (shrink)

One of the twentieth-century's most exciting and challenging intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze's writings covered literature, art, psychoanalysis, philosophy, genetics, film and social theory. This book not only introduces Deleuze's ideas, it also demonstrates the ways in which his work can provide new readings of literary texts. This guide goes on to cover his work in various fields, his theory of literature and his overarching project of a new concept of becoming.

The years following the end of World War II were characterised by reconstruction and regeneration, providing a rich ground for the reformation of social and educational policies and practices. Brit...

Traduction et édition critique des manuscrits médicaux (1666-1670) sur la respiration, les maladies, l'anatomie, l'art médical, son progrès et ses méthodes, l'ouvrage interroge l'identité de Locke philosophe à partir de ses années de formation à la médecine et à la chimie à Oxford.

The paper examines two philosophical origins of multicultural education -- postmodern philosophy and critical theory. Critical theory is closely connected to grand narrative of liberation, while postmodern tradition rejects such narrative. The ambivalence of fundamental assumptions makes multicultural theory vulnerable to criticism. However, author maintains, this ambivalence can be a strength rather than a weakness of the multicultural theory. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of polyphony, author attempts to show that incompatible theoretical perspectives may productively coexist within framework of dialogical engagement. (...) The result of such dialogical relations is reciprocal change and not an eventual merge. (shrink)

How do we perdure when we and everything around us are caught up in incessant change? But the course of this change does not seem to be haphazard and we may seek the modalities of its Logos in the transformations in which it occurs. The classic term "Metamorphosis" focuses upon the proportions between the transformed and the retained, the principles of sameness and otherness. Applied to life and its becoming, metamorphosis pinpoints the proportions between the vital and the aesthetic significance (...) of life. Where could this metaphysical in-between territory come better to light than in the Fine Arts? In this collection are investigated the various proportions between the vital significance of the constructivism of life and a specifically human contribution made by the creative imagination to the transformatory search for beauty and aesthetic values. Papers by: Lawrence Kimmel, Mark L. Brack, Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez, William Roberts, Jadwiga Smith, Victor Gerald Rivas, Max Statkiewicz, Matti Itkonen, George R. Tibbetts, Linda Stratford, Jorella Andrews, Ingeborg M. Rocker, Stephen J. Goldberg, Leah Durner, Donnalee Dox, Catherine Schear, Samantha Henriette Krukowski, Gary Maciag, Kelly Dennis, Wanda Strukus, Magda Romanska, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Ellen Burns, Tessa Morrison, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Gary Backhaus, Daniel M. Unger, Howard Pearce. (shrink)

An invitation. A puzzle. A provocation to engage with unknown potentialities. At first encounter, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet as a physical artifact is deliberately indeterminate. Its format: a topsy-turvy/front-to-back/backto-front arrangement, disrupts any notions of a point of entry, throwing the reader back on themselves to decide how to proceed, how far to apply learned templates of conventionality, or how far to take the opportunity to pursue less conditioned responses. From the outset, this book offers an explosion of (...) possibilities.Inspired by the conference Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2014, and a follow-up conference held in... (shrink)

Peter Kivy is the author of many books on the history of art and, in particular, the aesthetics of music. This collection of essays spans a period of some thirty years and focuses on a richly diverse set of issues: the biological origins of music, the role of music in the liberal education, the nature of the musical work and its performance, the aesthetics of opera, the emotions of music, and the very nature of music itself. Some of these subjects (...) are viewed as part of the history of ideas, others as current problems in the philosophy of art. A particular feature of the volume is that Kivy avoids the use of musical notation so that no technical knowledge at all is required to appreciate his work. The essays will prove enjoyable and insightful not just to professionals in the philosophy of art and musicologists, or to musicians themselves, but also to any motivated general reader with a deep interest in music. (shrink)