Arts and Humanities Commons^™

I, Others, World - A Glass Circuit, Ariel Aravot

Masters Theses

In the summer of 2022, I had an epiphany about what an art-work is in its most expansive form: a circuit, activated by art creation, between self and others, and between them to wider worlds, and back to the self. ‘A GLASS CIRCUIT’ is the tale of my ongoing exploration of myself as a glass artist, the conscious discovery of my path, which is both consistent and incessantly changing. My works are the stepping stones that sustain my creative process as a glass blower and at the same time introduce experimentality, new questions, and new research topics.

The circuit is …

Draw Down Books, Draw Down Books, Kathleen Sleboda, Christopher Sleboda, Zak Jensen, Nejc Prah, Daniel Eatock, Maziyar Pahlevan, Benoit Bodhuin, Bráulio Amado, Jost Hochuli, Ian Lynam

UNBOUND 2020 Archive

Draw Down Books exhibitors. Draw Down is an independent publisher located in the northeastern corner of the United States. Created in 2012, Draw Down publishes small books about graphic design, typography, illustration, photography, art, and architecture.

Ordinary Monsters: Ethical Criticism And The Lives Of Artists, Christopher Bartel

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Should we take into account an artist’s personal moral failings when appreciating or evaluating the work? In this essay, I seek to expand Berys Gaut’s account of ethicism by showing how moral judgment of an artist’s private moral actions can figure in one’s overall evaluation of their work. To expand Gaut’s view, I argue that the artist’s personal morality is relevant to our evaluation of their work because we may only come to understand the point of view of the work, and therefore the work’s prescribed attitude, by examining the values, attitudes, and behaviors of the artist. This view is …

An Alternative To “Rules” In Practice Approaches To Distinguishing Art Kinds, Larry Shiner

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Numerous contemporary philosophers have invoked the idea that art is best understood as a social practice in order to distinguish among art kinds or to distinguish Art from closely related practices such as Design. Many general accounts of social practices and of art practices in particular claim that sets of shared assumptions or norms are a key constituent of practices. But some standard accounts of social practices interpret these shared norms with the concept of “rules” or “agreements.” I argue that the idea of rules or agreements is theoretically inadequate and should be replaced by what the philosopher of science, …

Charting New Territory: The Aesthetic Value Of Artistic Visions That Emanate In The Aftermath Of Severe Trauma, Tania Love Abramson, Paul R. Abramson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Cosmography Of Aesthetics, Yrjö Sepänmaa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Thick Representation, Rafe Mcgregor

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to define the problem of thick representation and to show that the problem is a puzzle for representation rather than a puzzle for a specific art form or art, in general, as has previously been suggested. In the course of identifying and formulating the problem, I shall demonstrate why the solution proposed thus far fails to solve either the artistic problem at which it is aimed or the representational problem I define. I conclude by indicating two promising directions in which a solution might be found and by explaining the philosophical and critical …

Art By Jerks, Bernard Wills, Jason Holt

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Is it wrong to enjoy art created by immoral people? Some people express discomfort with listening to or reading the works of artists who have been abusive to others in their personal lives. In this paper, the authors argue that, generally speaking, moral and aesthetic judgment should be kept distinct, as authors and their works formally differ. Indeed, works by morally dubious artists may well contain crucial acts of moral imagination we should not deprive ourselves of as ethical beings. Nonetheless, the authors argue there are limits to how far the ethical and aesthetic can be divorced. Art that is …

The Difference That Art Makes, Mariana Ortega

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the following essay I discuss Monique Roelofs’s The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic. I show that Roelofs’s rich and complex notion of the aesthetic, informed by promises, modes of address, and aesthetic relationality, offers an important and novel way of understanding the aesthetic within a context attuned to questions of difference. I point out that Roelofs’s analysis may be enhanced by notions theorized by Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and María Lugones. Moreover, I raise a question regarding the intricate link between Roelofs’s notion of the aesthetic and morality

Risd Pod 2014 Alumni Research Report, Project Open Door

Publications + Documents

Research and report by Craig Dreeszen, Ph.D., Dreeszen & Associates with Dr. Paul Sproll, Head, Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design (TLAD) and TLAD MA research assistants, Karina Esperanza Yanez, En-Ling Lu, and Lauren Allen, Rhode Island School of Design Funding for the research provided by the Surdna Foundation. Dreeszen & Associates was commissioned to work with the Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design faculty and graduate research assistants. The research objective was to identify, find, and collect data and stories about the paths taken by Rhode Island teens (RI POD alumni) who …

The Cluster Account Of Art: A Historical Dilemma, Simon Fokt

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The cluster account, one of the best attempts at art classification, is guilty of ahistoricism. While cluster theorists may be happy to limit themselves to accounting for what art is now rather than how the term was understood in the past, they cannot ignore the fact that people seem to apply different clusters when judging art from different times. This paper shows that while allowing for this kind of historical relativity may be necessary to save the account, doing so could result in incorporating an essentially institutional component or making the theory extremely complex and virtually impossible to use.

Atopia & Aesthetics. A Modal Perspective, Yves Millet

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Living in an era where global exchanges of forms and ideas are the norm raises some questions about the status of artistic practices. To explore these questions, we use Roland Barthes’ notion of atopia and the complementary yet related notion of Neutral on which Barthes commented in his later years. Atopia highlights the fact that rather than viewing current artistic activities as searches for homogenous identity, we need to view them as belonging to plural communities of practices offering modal and qualitative distinctions. We suggest that adopting this perspective sheds light on the capacity of any individual to act creatively …

Crafty Entanglements: Knitting And Hard Distinctions In Aesthetics And Political Theory, Kate M. Daley

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Many theoretical writings on aesthetics and politics rely on hard distinctions between what is and is not art, and what is and is not political. In this article, I draw on the work of theorists, knitters, and fiber artists to argue that hand knitting provides a lens through which to unsettle some of these distinctions. I illustrate some of the ways in which aesthetic theory relies on hard distinctions between art and not-art and politics and not-politics, with particular focus on the work of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Rancière. I explain how knitting is often seen as falling clearly outside …

When Is Artification?, Roberta Shapiro, Nathalie Heinich

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

How do people do or make things that come to be seen as works of art? In other words, when is there artification? The answer to this question is simultaneously symbolic, material, and contextual. It has to do with meanings, objects, interaction, and institutions. We seek to define not what art is nor how it should be considered, but how and under what circumstances it comes about by way of methodical observation and inquiry in a variety of fields. Circus acrobats, break-dancers, fashion designers, chefs, graffiti artists, printers, photographers, and jazz musicians are some of the examples we explore. This …

Artification Of Sport: The Case Of Distance Running, Matti Tainio

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article deals with the possibilities of artification in sport, using distance running as an example. Sport is viewed as one phenomenon in the history of physical cultures, with both predecessors and also the possibility of developing into something new. Sport was first defined primarily as a competitive activity but, by the end of the twentieth century, it had developed as part of the athletic trend towards exploring experience-seeking fitness sports. Through the developments of contemporary visual art, sport has also become a possible medium of art. These developments, both in sport and art, provide an opportunity to look for …

Risd Pod 2011 Evaluation & 2012 - 2015 Strategic Plan, Project Open Door

Publications + Documents

This evaluation report and strategic plan documents key findings of an external review of Project Open Door and agreement and the 2012-2017 Project Open Door Strategic Plan. The plan represents consensus among Project Open Door faculty, staff, and Dean of Graduate Studies, Research and Engagement, and Advisory Committee members to strengthen and institutionalize the program. Dean Phillips asked that the review “...evaluate the current condition of the program, confirm its scope, scale, and feasible and fruitful staffing scenarios, explore ways to successfully institutionalize it both within and outside of RISD, and identify pathways for the future, including greater visibility for …

Integrative And Disintegrative Art, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article compares and analyzes two seemingly opposite approaches to visual arts that can be called integrative and disintegrative. They are usually seen to be contradictory, and the latter is often favored in contemporary art discourse. The article suggests, however, that the integrative approach can still be quite as favorable to art as the disintegrative one. Both views are useful for certain purposes and in the context of individual art works they are often actually intertwining. Especially from the perspective of art education, it is easy to understand the different implications of these views. This is because in that context …

Unlimited Additions To Limited Editions, Christy Mag

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this paper I target the relationship between two prints that are roughly qualitatively identical and share a causal history. Is one an artwork if and only if the other is an artwork? To answer this, I propose two competing principles. The first claims that certain intentional relations must be shared by the prints (e.g., editioned prints vs. non-editioned prints). The second appeals only to minimal print ontology, claiming that the two prints need only be what I call 'relevantly similar' to one other. In the end, I endorse the second principle. There are no trumping features over and above …

The Divine Geometry Of Chocolate: Artist's Essay, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The artist discusses her series of paintings, The Divine Geometry of Chocolate, using a reappraised notion of the universal in the context of contemporary Latin American abstraction.

Not Just Mere Things, Thomas E. Wartenberg

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper examines Arthur Danto's contention, put forward in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, that at a certain point in its history art becomes philosophy. The similarities and differences between Danto's view and the Hegelian one from which it is derived are examined. Using Danto's favorite example of a philosophical work of art, Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (1965), it is argued that a more plausible interpretation of the meaning of the work undermines Danto's claims about art's transformation into philosophy.

"The People Are Missing", Maryvonne Saison

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

It is through the ideal of a sensus communis that Aesthetics has offered to Philosophy an articulation to Politics. I will question the idea of an "aesthetic sociability" through the concept of "régime esthétique" (aesthetic regime) proposed by Jacques Rancière to define the 18th century fundamental change carried by Aesthetics in order to think art and sensibility together.

One question will be the central core of my essay, which is how to understand nowadays Deleuze’s assertion that art should be "contributing to the invention of a people."

Consensus and dissensus are two reefs between which art and philosophy navigate at …

Aesthetics And The Environment: Repatriating Humanity, Nikolaos Gkogkas

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

If aesthetics is to claim its place among the fundamental philosophical disciplines, it must adequately deal with the ecological challenge, that is, the need to explain the continuity-relation between human and non-human environments. To that effect, Arnold Berleant's aesthetics of engagement constitutes an attractive proposal. Its critics (Allen Carlson and others) seem to miss its point and attack it on the basis of a particular understanding of Kantian aesthetics (mainly the disinterestedness thesis). But not only can Berleant's aesthetics meet the ecological challenge; it is also possible that it encourages a re-evaluation of traditional aesthetic categories (like disinterestedness) without necessarily …

Architecture Vs. Art: The Aesthetics Of Art Museum Design[1], Larry Shiner

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Many art critics have complained that the most dramatic art museum designs of the last decade have upstaged or interfered with the art within. This essay examines eight contemporary cases before drawing some lessons for art museum design, and ends by setting the architecture vs. art problem in the context of the philosophy of architecture, focusing on the issues of function and symbolism.

Art And Embodiment: Biological And Phenomenological Contributions To Understanding Beauty And The Aesthetic, Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Increasing awareness of the crucial and complex role of the body in making and experiencing art has led to a diverse range of biological and phenomenological philosophies of art. The shared emphasis on the role of the body re-connects these contemporary theories of art to aesthetics' pre-Kantian origin as a science of sense-perception (aesthesis) and feeling. Tracing some of the current positions in such diverse thinkers as Dissanayake, Langer, and Merleau-Ponty, this paper will examine their shared interest in art as a pre-reflective, non-discursive mode of knowing, symbolizing, and being-in-the-world. This paper argues that while some biologically based theories have …

Colorization Revisited, Julie C. Van Camp

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article is both philosophical and practical in its intent. It endeavours to bring into focus an idea with an Ancient Greek lineage, poiesis, and determine whether it may revitalise our thinking about the 'making' of art. The art-making considered in this paper will concentrate exclusively on Western art and its historical and contemporary manifestations. I suggest that poiesis - that which "pro-duces or leads (a thing) into being'" - may enable practitioners in the varying art forms, and aestheticians who reflect upon them, to come to a deeper sense of how artworks work: that they realize themselves inter-dependently …

Poiesis And Art-Making: A Way Of Letting-Be, Derek H. Whitehead Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article is both philosophical and practical in its intent. It endeavors to bring into focus an idea with an Ancient Greek lineage, poiesis, and determine whether it may revitalise our thinking about the 'making' of art. The art-making considered in this paper will concentrate exclusively on Western art and its historical and contemporary manifestations. I suggest that poiesis - that which "pro-duces or leads (a thing) into being'" - may enable practitioners in the varying art forms, and aestheticians who reflect upon them, to come to a deeper sense of how artworks work: that they realize themselves inter-dependently …

Penny Dreadful Commission Comics No. 5, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Penny Dreadful Commission was a student organization that wanted to "demonstrate the range and expressive power of comic art by presenting a varied collection of work." All comics were student-submitted, and the publication was entirely student-run. This is issue No. 5 from May 1, 1989.

Penny Dreadful Commission Comics No. 4, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Penny Dreadful Commission was a student organization that wanted to "demonstrate the range and expressive power of comic art by presenting a varied collection of work." All comics were student-submitted, and the publication was entirely student-run. This is issue No. 4 dated April 1, 1989.

Penny Dreadful Commission Comics No. 3, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Penny Dreadful Commission was a student organization that wanted to "demonstrate the range and expressive power of comic art by presenting a varied collection of work." The issue of March 1, 1989 has a cover that parodies Time magazine.

Penny Dreadful Commission Comics No. 2, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Penny Dreadful Commission was a student organization that wanted to "demonstrate the range and expressive power of comic art by presenting a varied collection of work." This is issue No. 2 dated February 1, 1989.