Aesthetics Commons^™

Book Reviews

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Adorning The Plainness Of Truth Equiano And The Art Of Narrative, Shaun Regan

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"Sickness Among The Slaves" Undermining Pathologies Of The African In Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative, Tara Czechowski

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Index

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"Neither A Saint, A Hero, Nor A Tyrant", Angelo Costanzo

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Olaudah Equiano African Or American?, Brycchan Carey

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Fictionalia As Modal Artifacts, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

There is much controversy surrounding the nature of the relation between fictional individuals and possible individuals.  Some have argued that no fictional individual is a possible individual; others have argued that (some) fictional individuals just are (merely) possible individuals.  In this paper, I offer further grounds for believing the theory of fictional individuals defended by Amie Thomasson, viz., Artifactualism, by arguing that her view best allows one to make sense of this puzzling relation.  More specifically, when we realize that the view allows for an identification of merely possible individuals with fictional individuals, we see that the utility, and hence …

Another One Bites The Dust!, Gabriela Salazar

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The contemporary landscape is rife with ruins, from circumscribed tourist attractions to urban decay and demolition sites. When examined, our aesthetic experience of these sites ranges from historical distancing to the sublime and, when found in our local communities (e.g., Providence, RI), to discomfort, displacement, and horror. In particular, this paper is interested in how certain forms of demolition, from slow and messy to explosively dramatic, can be understood as compressed and heightened experiences of the traditional sublime ruin. Additionally, as contemporary artists often use the vernacular of the ruin in their work, this paper considers how three artists, Gordon …

Media Effects: Cultural Appropriation And Attitudes Towards Cosmetic Surgery, Darlene Shauntanese Lee

Wayne State University Dissertations

The current study investigates media's influence on Caucasian women to culturally appropriate the physical features generally ascribed to African American women through non-surgical and or surgical cosmetic procedures and vice versa. Participants were 26 African American women and 54 Caucasian women who had previously undergone either non-surgical or surgical cosmetic procedures. Results indicate that African American women were more likely to culturally appropriate than Caucasian women. For African American women high media exposure to cosmetic surgery media messages played a significant role in the cultural appropriation process. Results also indicated that Caucasian women culturally appropriate at the same level, whether …

Aesthetics And The Philosophy Of Art, 1840-1900, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The question can be raised whether the category or discipline of philosophical aesthetics existed before the eighteenth century. Unlike "logic:' "ethics:' and "physics:' a traditional Stoic division of philosophy with great staying power, "aesthetics" is clearly a product of modernity. As Paul O. Kristeller demonstrated in "The Modern System of the Arts:' it was in the eighteenth century that the idea of the aesthetic as a distinctive human capacity and the parallel consolidation of the notion of the fine arts crystallized in the writings of (mostly) French, German, and English philosophers and critics. The modern concepts of art and aesthetics …

Notices

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Water And Stone: Contemporary Chinese Art And The Spirit Resonance Of The World, Mary Bittner Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

My claim that the new art in China operates at the level of matter and gesture, below that of discourse, is twofold. First, much of the art that is being made exemplifies principles articulated by Hsieh Ho (fifth century) and Shih Tao (seventeenth century) and refracted through the changes wrought by Mao in 1949 and Deng in 1979. Through their art, experimental Chinese artists ask what can art be in a world turned upside down, and what can it be to be artist in such a world and, in particular, to be a Chinese artist.

Second, in the course of …

Why Beauty Still Cannot Be Measured, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article focuses on the question of whether the latest results achieved in sciences such as evolution studies and brain research can help us understand the nature of aesthetic judgments. It suggests that such approaches may offer interesting insights for understanding many problems in aesthetics, but for clarifying aesthetic judgments one needs a philosophical point of view. Aesthetic judgments cannot be proven right or wrong by scientific methods, and beauty or other aesthetic qualities cannot be directly measured. The “method” of both making and analyzing aesthetic judgments is discussion, and the article clarifies why this is still the case, even …

A Functional Model Of The Aesthetic Response, Daniel Conrad

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In a process of somatic evolution, the brain semi-randomly generates initially-unstable neural circuits that are selectively stabilized if they succeed in making sense out of raw sensory input. The human aesthetic response serves the function of stabilizing the circuits that successfully mediate perception and interpretation, making those faculties more agile, conferring selective advantage. It is triggered by structures in art and nature that provoke the making of sense. Art is deliberate human action aimed at triggering the aesthetic response in others; thus, if successful, it serves the same function of making perception and interpretation more agile. These few principles initiate …

The Aesthetics Of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Mri): From The Scientific Laboratory To An Artwork, Silvia Casini

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article investigates the aesthetic potential of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a medical imaging technique, both inside the laboratory and in the arts. By combining Rancière’s understanding of aesthetics with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception, it argues that an image-generating technique conceived in the scientific field can successfully migrate into the realm of fine art, opening up new aesthetic and perceptual possibilities. Although aesthetic qualities are already present in the laboratory, they remain hidden by the necessity of reading the image-data obtained according to the interpretative framework of the medical discourse. Two paths are covered: the first goes from the …

Recent Publications

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Report: The Xviiith International Congress Of Aesthetics- "Diversities In Aesthetics" (Peking University, Beijing, China, 9-13 August 2010), Michael Ranta

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

A Symposium On Laurent Stern's Interpretive Realism, John Gibson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Response To Critics, Laurent Stern

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Allowing The Accidental; The Interplay Between Intentionality And Realism In Photographic Art, Katrina Mitcheson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

We experience photographs both as intentional and as prone to the accidental. The photograph is both capable of being an artwork with its own, constructed world and of drawing our attention to the reality of the objects used in creating it. In this article I employ the insights contained in the concepts of Barthes’ studium and punctum in order to explore how the artist’s intentions and the realism of photography interact aesthetically. I advance the idea that a unique aesthetics of photography can be rooted in the tension between the intentional, culturally coded message of a photograph and the emanation …