Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Terrorist Aesthetics As Ideal Types: From Spectacle To "Vicious Lottery", Marshall Battani, Michaelyn Mankel

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay builds on Arnold Berleant’s concept of the negative sublime and his less-appreciated image of the vicious lottery to engage the ongoing discussion about the importance of aesthetic analysis for understanding terrorism. Sociological definitions of aesthetics and terrorism are presented as potential tools to aid in the analyses of terrorist aesthetics. Three aesthetic types of terrorism are developed in the tradition of Weberian sociological ideal typification. The article discusses the appropriateness and applicability of that typology for enriching our understanding of terrorism and counterterrorism.

Everyday Aesthetics And Everyday Behavior, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article addresses everyday aesthetics from the point of view of everyday behavior. I suggest that the ordinary daily interaction of people with each other is one of the most important areas of everyday aesthetics. I present an interpretation of the concepts of both the everyday and aesthetics, and argue that in the context of everyday social relationships, it is wise to understand everyday aesthetics in a way that emphasizes the very everydayness of aesthetics, not its opposite, namely non-everyday or extraordinary aesthetics. This does not mean that extraordinary aesthetics would not have its place in other contexts, but it …

Autonomania: Music And Music Education From Mars, Thomas A. Regelski

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Traditional aesthetic theory has posited an account of music, and the other arts, as autonomous of social meanings, relevance, and conditions. In the case of music, “absolute music” is sequestered from social and other roots that bring music into being in the first place. The typical claim, thus, is that classical music is music for its own sake, divorced from the many and highly evident social dimensions that it serves. It ignores all other genres of music, most of which are more appreciated than can be accounted for by the theory of autonomania. This aesthetic theory of music, one of …

Away With Green Aesthetics!, Mateusz Salwa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

On The Front: Aesthetics Vs. Popular Arts And Mass Culture - Ii, Ken-Ichi Sasaki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The popular arts and mass culture represent our environment. The flood of their products reduces high art to minority status. This situation leads us to reconsider the privileged status of high art and the role of aesthetics as its theory, which is my main focus here. I take up three different cultural eras: early modern times, when the notions of art and aesthetics as a philosophical discipline were founded; our own day as the time of mass culture; and, lastly, the popular culture in the Edo period in Japan, the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, which reflected different choices.

In …

On The Front: Aesthetics Vs. Popular Arts And Mass Culture - I, Ken-Ichi Sasaki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The popular arts and mass culture represent our environment. The flood of their products reduces high art to minority status. This situation leads us to reconsider the privileged status of high art and the role of aesthetics as its theory, which is my main focus here. I take up three different cultural eras: early modern times, when the notions of art and aesthetics as a philosophical discipline were founded; our own day as the time of mass culture; and, lastly, the popular culture in the Edo period in Japan, the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, which reflected different choices.

In …

Painting, Mindfulness And Crowther's Aesthetics, Colleen Fitzpatrick

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper addresses the notion of painting as a mindfulness-based intervention. This premise is justified as it relates to Crowther’s phenomenological aesthetics. Crowther’s theory of painting makes use of a number of features that characterize mindfulness practice and reflect the mindful attitude. These include attention, self-consciousness, universality, otherness, empathy and temporality. Painting and mindfulness practice are seen as interventions upon experience that expand being through greater engagement. Heightened perceptual awareness and embodiment are central to this discussion as they are at the root of aesthetic experience and mindfulness practice. The development of self-consciousness is a key consideration in this context. …

Imagination In The Stars: The Role Of The Imagination In Artistic Astronomical Photography, Stephen Chadwick

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article I discuss the role the imagination plays in the production of what I call artistic astronomical photographs. I examine the entire creative process, which has been defined as “that stretch of mental and physical activity between the incept and the final touch.”[1] I begin with an examination of some of the ways in which the imagination is exercised in traditional artistic photography and in observational painting, in order to tease out the similarities and differences. Following a brief explanation of the way artistic astronomical photographs are produced, I examine these similarities and differences and, in doing so, …