Aesthetics Commons^™

Experiencing Photographs Qua Photographs: What's So Special About Them?, Jiri Benovsky

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Public Aquariums And Marine Aesthetics, Nola Semczyszyn

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Given the inaccessibility of the marine environment, the closest many of us come to viewing it is at public aquariums. Aquariums also provide us with rich aesthetic experiences, but it is not clear whether we appreciate the marine environment at aquariums. I present the dilemma of aquarium appreciation as an inconsistent triad: 1) we treat aquariums as places to appreciate marine environments, 2) aquariums are artifacts, not natural objects, and 3) nature and art should be appreciated differently. I argue that aquarium displays are scientific models of marine environments with aesthetic, educational, and scientific aims. My solution to the dilemma …

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 …

Perspectives East And West, Ken-Ichi Sasaki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

In Praise Of Ambiguity: Musical Subtlety And Merleau-Ponty, Tiger C. Roholt

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

When a jazz, rock, or hip-hop drummer strikes certain notes in each measure slightly late, instead of hearing the degree to which those notes are late, we typically hear the effects of those variations; namely, a groove, the "feel" of a rhythm. Slight variations of pitch function similarly. In this essay, I argue that certain analytic theorists go astray due to their preoccupation with the variations themselves. By invoking Maurice Merleau-Ponty's insights into subtle visual perceptions, and his notion of perceptual indeterminacy, I avoid an account of musical subtlety suggested by Daniel Dennett that is too coarse-grained, as well as …

The Definition Of Everyday Aesthetics, Kevin Melchionne

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article responds to recent controversy in the aesthetics of everyday life with a succinct definition designed to clarify the domain of study. The article is intentionally designed for brevity and accessibility in order to facilitate usage.

The Aesthetics Of Resistance, Giuseppe Patella

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Talking about resistance means raising the question of opposition, of denying all attempts at neutralizing opposites, which would be typical of ideological construction, either political or aesthetic. This essay investigates the meaning and the reasons of resistance according to a theoretical, aesthetic, and cultural point of view. The thesis is that resistance has to be considered as an articulation of difference, and that means following a different logic of thought, no longer rigid or monolithic but plural, like a new grammar, syntax, and practice of creativity, challenge, provocation, multiplicity, and pluralism. In this sense the aesthetics of resistance is an …

Hegel's Symbolic Stage: An Old Perspective On Contemporary Art, Laura T. Disumma-Koop

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper proposes an evaluation of contemporary art works in light of some of the concepts embedded in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s symbolic stage. My belief is that an analysis of Hegel’s conditions for the affirmation of art opens the door to a discussion of contemporary artistic trends, a discussion that also takes distance from the (perhaps) abused question of what defines art. Art does more than question itself; art questions, and challenges, the nature of our perception.

The World Achieved: Film And The Enacted Mind, John M. Carvalho

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Stanley Cavell taught us that films give us a view of a world that differs from the world in which we view films only by not being that world. Films, that is, screen a world for us and screen us from a world that is not our own. Cavell’s view is based on a photographic conception of film images. A film is composed of photographic images collected on reels and put in motion at twenty-four frames per second. In “More of the World Viewed,” Cavell dares us to come up with a theory of perception that challenges the assumption that …

Recent Publications

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Kierkegaard, Paraphrase, And The Unity Of Form And Content, Antony Aumann

Journal Articles

On one standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no particular flair for the poetic. However, Kierkegaard himself rejects this view. He says we cannot paraphrase in a straightforward fashion some of the ideas he expresses in a literary format. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy direct communication. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I trace its origins to concerns raised by Lessing and Mendelssohn about the relationship between form and content in works of art. I maintain that Kierkegaard follows early German …

Editorial

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Notices

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Violence Of Post-Racial Memory And The Political Sense Of Mourning, Alfred Frankowski

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this paper I argue that “post-raciality” entails a way of remembering that depoliticizes the social meaning of memory and thus of history. Through aesthetic critique, I attempt to show how the hyper-production of memory obscures the very real forms of violence directed toward non-whites. By developing the aesthetic critiques of W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter Benjamin, I argue that representing former violence as social memory fails to adequately address subtle forms of cultural and residual violence. Furthermore, I argue that post-racial memory produces sites and representations of the past only to enact a type of social forgetting in the …

Report On The Xixth International Congress Of Aesthetics, Michael Ranta, Jale N. Erzen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Pornography And Disgust, Laurent Stern

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Disgust about material objects and moral behavior are both at issue in understanding pornography. Previous debates were fueled primarily by moral disgust. Erotic art may elicit moral disgust, but only hard-core pornography elicits material disgust. I discuss the role of attraction and aversion in labeling artworks pornographic. Since we always have a choice between acknowledging and ignoring a disgust elicitor, aversion may be a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for such a label. In submitting our choice to rational critique, we must ask: what do we accept as a consequence of the claim that that x is disgusting? Relying …

The Aesthetics Of City Strolling, Heinz Paetzold

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Rediscovering The Wheel, Brooke Hodge, Risd Xyz

RISD XYZ Fall/Winter 2013: Out of Bounds

What does architecture have to do with pottery? For Adam Silverman BArch 88, these two seemingly disparate creative practices are inextricably intertwined.

Brooke Hodge, director of exhibitions and publications at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, writes frequently about architecture and design for major publications. This text is excerpted from a longer essay in the new book Adam Silverman Ceramics, published this fall by Skira/Rizzoli.

The Terror Of Possibility: A Re-Evaluation And Reconception Of The Sublime Aesthetic, Kurt Fawver

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While the sublime aesthetic has a long and complex critical history, it is nonetheless a schizophrenic concept. Indeed, in the over two thousand years since the sublime became a subject of learned inquiry, it has not been resolved into any one concrete idea, but has become, rather, an expansive tapestry of disparate if interconnected theoretical threads from which aestheticians may pick and choose to define what they mean by the term "sublime." Kant postulates one sort of sublime, Burke another, and Lyotard, Zizek, and the Romantics still others. In this way, the contemporary sublime aesthetic is, in essence, an ever-extending …

Philosophische Figuren, Frauen Und Liebe: Zu Nietzsche Und Lou, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.