Aesthetics Commons^™

V.1 Fall 2018, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Fall 2018 issue contains articles on art writing and the place of the self, student reflections on politics, practice, and dogma across generations. Articles look back on historic manuscripts, to past projects and recent events, and forward. This issue's content presents the various expressions of truth that artists and designers work within.

That Some Of Sol Lewitt's Later Wall Drawings Aren't Wall Drawings, P. D. Mangus

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

That Some Of Sol Lewitt’S Later Wall Drawings Aren’T Wall Drawings, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Art And Trauma: Yet Another Arthur Danto Zombie, Tania Love Abramson, Paul R. Abramson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

"A Self-Propelling Wheel": Prefigured Recurrence In Nietzsche's The Birth Of Tragedy, Jared R. Mcswain

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

One of Friedrich Nietzsche’s central doctrines, the doctrine of eternal recurrence, asks us to consider how we would feel if we had to repeat our lives exactly as we have lived them. Rather than despair at this possibility, Nietzsche describes the kind of attitude we would adopt if we desired nothing more. He labels such an attitude as “Dionysian”: we rejoice in every pain and every joy that has colored our lives and use them as creative fodder for the future. This identification links the doctrine to Nietzsche’s earlier work on aesthetics, The Birth of Tragedy, where he describes the …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

The Catholic Imagination, Y Bittner Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Of The Silmarils And The Ring: J. R. R. Tolkien's Fiction And The Importance Of Creation And Art, Michael Hartinger

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

J. R. R. Tolkien embodies the opposing ideals of Enchantment and the Machine in the Silmarils and the One Ring respectively. These created objects oppose each other just as Tolkien’s ideals of art do. Enchantment is art’s ideal, it's purpose is to glorify and enrich the beauty of reality through subcreation. The Silmarils exhibit the delight of making and perceiving beauty. Whereas the Machine is art’s shadowy reflection that utilizes apparatuses or devices rather than personal talent in order to coerce others and reality itself. Overall Tolkien's aesthetic theories reflect many fears surrounding modern attitudes toward weaponizing art. Tolkien supplies …

Theater As A Civic Practice, Charlie Santos

Senior Honors Projects

Contemporary artists are working within a cultural moment saturated with political fervor. The ideologies of social and political movements such as Black Lives Matter, Queer Rights, and Gun Control weigh heavily on the minds of young artists. More and more, I see actors, writers, and creators struggling to reconcile their identities as artists and identities as political beings. How do artists resolve the internal dissonance between their artistic and political spheres? Is activist art an opportunity to synthesize these two spheres? Or might creating art for political ends pose ethical and/or aesthetic hazards? On the one hand, creating political art …

Where Literature And Philosophy Meet And Diverge, Clare C. Hagan

Undergraduate Theses

Many writers and philosophers have asked “What is art?” or “What is philosophy?” but it is difficult to encounter a text where these questions are set beside each other. Many works of philosophy appear very literary in form and content, just as there are many literary works that are very philosophical in nature. This essay examines the intersection of literature and philosophy, using Kant’s Critique of Judgement as a way into analyzing Plato’s Phaedo, as an example of literary philosophy; and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as an example of philosophical literature. The first section deals with literature and philosophy as texts, looking …

On Superhero Stories: The Marvel Cinematic Universe As Tolkienesque Fantasy, A.G. Holdier

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

By considering the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a case study, I bring Tolkien’s explication of mythopoesis in “On Fairy Stories” to bear on the current popularity of superhero films to argue that such works qualify as cinematic examples of Tolkienesque fantasy tales. After summarizing Tolkien’s criteria for the genre in Nietzschean aesthetic terms, I both demonstrate how the builders of the MCU have crafted a sub-created fictional world and defend the existence of fairy stories in visual media from Tolkien’s own criticism of such a possibility.

For The Sake Of The Intellect, Let Them Have Art: A Possible Reconciliation For The Value Of Mimetic Arts In The 'Republic', Breanna Liddell

Theses

This paper explores the possibility of a cohesive philosophy that recognizes both Plato’s concern about art as a moral danger in the Republic and the aesthete’s—a worthy adversary—position of art as something worth preserving. Plato understood the arts as mimêsis, or imitative and representational. Additionally, this paper suggests that Plato’s take on art extends beyond the limited realm of the performative arts that depict the misguided actions of Greek heroes and gods and how those arts positively or negatively impact the educational development of a citizen of the Republic. Rather, I assert that what he means by “art” is …

Inventing An Ethics: Existentialism And Engagement Through Literature, Michael Foster Wickham

LSU Master's Theses

The existentialist ethics of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir offers a unique perspective that challenges a traditional, normative picture that has been dominant throughout the history of ethical thinking and continues to dominate in contemporary discourse. The perspective in question refuses to rely on essence to ground its positions, opting instead to focus on the contingency of the subject and the interpersonal as being fundamental in the invention of moral values and ethical practices. This thesis looks to – in the first chapter – explore the relationship between the subjective and the interpersonal through a discussion of Heidegger’s Mitsein …

Curating Illustrations Of Lewis Carroll’S Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland, Lindsay Persohn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the 150 years since Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel (1865/1866) first published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, various illustrators have found inspiration in this story to recreate its images again and again. Since Carroll and Tenniel, Wonderland has concerned itself with sociocultural ideas and the work of artists who re-illustrated this story provide ways to trace history of these ideas.

Accordingly, the purpose of this project was to examine connections and breaks with tradition in illustration that contribute to an evolution of meaning in the Wonderland story. Additionally, through this project, I worked to interpret ideas from different artists in …

Sargent's Women: Four Lives Behind The Canvas, By Donna M. Lucey, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017 (Book Review), Anne-Taylor Cahill

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Aesthetics Of Silence: A Matter Of Spatial Critique In The Works Of Marcel Broodthaers, Elsbeth Dekker

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In 1967 Susan Sontag published her essay, "The Aesthetics of Silence,” on the craving towards silence in artistic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even though it appears that notions of silence are still influential within the visual arts, theoretical writings on silence are nearly absent. This article explores how notions of silence emerged in the early works of Marcel Broodthaers, by scrutinizing his works, related to Pense-Bête, together with the writings of Susan Sontag and related ideas from Stéphane Mallarmé and Theodor Adorno. Through a vivisection of these early works of Broodthaers, this article argues how silence …

Rhizomatic Mnemosyne: Warburg, Serres, And The Atlas Of Hermes, María Del Carmen Molina Barea

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay aims to examine Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas according to two conceptual perspectives that seem deeply interwoven, Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of rhizome and Michel Serres’s metaphor on Hermes. Both theoretical approaches cast light on the epistemological implications of the Mnemosyne Atlas and explore its intriguing composition from an innovative point of view. Specifically, this paper excavates the disrupted nature of the Warburgian Atlas, paying particular attention to the schizophrenic proliferation of unexpected connections. In this scenario, it will be necessary to elucidate the terminological opposition between ‘atlas’ and ‘archive,’ as studied by Boris Groys, Foucault, and Derrida, …

Contemporary Chinese Living Aesthetics And Contemporary Chinese Art History, Liu Yuedi

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Living aesthetics was understood by most Chinese scholars as a way to bridge the living world and aesthetic activity today. This article discusses contemporary Chinese art from the perspective of the new thinking of living aesthetics. We shall diachronically describe the historical relationship between aesthetics and art and also try to synchronically examine the theory connecting living aesthetics and contemporary Chinese art with each other.

Aesthetics Studies Of Chinese Leisure Culture, Liyong Pan

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Given the present situation and problems of the research on contemporary China’s leisure culture and aesthetics, it is the highest priority of leisure studies to make leisure return to the nature of human self-creation and self-improvement; to learn to intelligently spend leisure time in the realm of aesthetics; to deeply examine and carry forward the national tradition and wisdom of Chinese leisure; and to establish a modern leisure culture and theory with Chinese characteristics and Chinese discourse.

Meanwhile, it is the highest priority of aesthetic research to transcend the tradition of discussing abstract concepts and focusing only on art; to …