Philosophy Commons^™

Duchamp And The Science Of Art, Miklos Legrady

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

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.

Art Addressing The Anthropocene, Wolfgang Welsch

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The current diagnosis that the era we are living in ought to be conceived as anthropocene has two implications: 1. Human activity is changing the superficial as well as the deep structure of our planet to a formerly unknown degree; and 2. The foreseeable catastrophic consequences of our impact on life on this planet command a fundamental change of our technological-consumerist attitude. How can the arts address this situation?

One relatively superficial option is ecological art. But, despite all its good intentions, it often just contributes to the widespread sedation procedures that prevent us from taking the necessary measures. A …

Reconsidering Darkness, Matti Tainio

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Cosmography Of Aesthetics, Yrjö Sepänmaa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Representation And Transparency In Artistic Astronomical Photographs, Stephen Chadwick

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The development of astronomical photography has raised many interesting epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical questions, in addition to questions in aesthetics. One such question concerns the nature of the aesthetic properties possessed by these photographs. In this article I concentrate on one such property, namely representation. That artistic astronomical photographs are representational cannot be disputed, but whether this is an aesthetic property is open to question. In this article, I show that it is an aesthetic property and compare it with the analogous property associated with paintings and traditional artistic photographs. In order to do this, I explain what makes astronomical …

Recent Publications, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Notices, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

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

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

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

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Catholic Imagination, Y Bittner Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

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 …

On Dust: Memory As Performance And Materiality, Natasha Lushetich

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The world's "worldliness" is, to a large extent, perceptually constructed through touch, kinaesthetics, and proprioception. Gesture, too, is embedded in sedimentations of the body's prior sensory exchanges with the environment. Materiality is transitive; it triggers sensory landscapes through performance. Consisting of particles of pollen, human and animal skin, hairs, minerals, soil, and burnt meteorites, dust is usually seen as the antithesis of the performative-material nexus. In this paper, I propose a different view: that dust is and acts as a connective tissue. Borrowing from Hélène Cixous's écriture blanche, Quentin Smith's degree presentism, and theorizing nostalgia as a structuring absence, …

On Habits And Functions In Everyday Aesthetics, Kalle Puolakka

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

A group of theorists in everyday aesthetics, named restrictivists, have explicated the notion of the everyday in terms of a particular stance of everydayness that they believe, in time, comes to characterize people’s relationships to their daily things and environments. The everyday is revealed to be something habitual and routine that, despite its ordinariness, provides a pleasurable sense of safety and trust. In this paper, I present a series of considerations drawing on John Dewey’s notion of habit, on the one hand, and Jane Forsey’s account of the aesthetics of design, on the other, that call into question the general …

Appreciating Nature And Art: Recent Western And Chinese Perspectives, Glenn Parsons, Xin Zhang

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Landscape painting has played a significant role in shaping practices of nature appreciation in Western and Chinese cultures. Both cultures have also seen the recent emergence of philosophical views of nature appreciation that stress the importance of ecological understanding. However, these philosophical views differ in their response to the influence of the landscape painting tradition: whereas Western approaches have largely been critical, Chinese ecoaestheticians have embraced it. In this paper, we explore this difference and argue that it is not explained by differences between Western and Chinese art but by differences in Western and Chinese philosophers’ conceptions of ecology. We …

Autographic And Allographic Imitation: Revisiting Counterfeit In Linguistic And Musical Arts, Jeremy Orosz

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Imitation within sonic arts, linguistic, musical, or otherwise, broadly defined, is a heterogeneous set of practices ranging from comical impersonation to outright counterfeit or forgery. This paper provides a taxonomy of imitation and mimicry within both language and music, dividing each into two respective categories, autographic imitation and allographic imitation, the terms for which are repurposed from Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art.

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 …

Atmospheric Design And Experience With An Exemplary Study Of Olafur Eliasson's "The Weather Project", Zhuofei Wang

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In past decades, the subject of atmosphere has gone beyond the physio-meteorological scope and become a new concept of aesthetics. As the primary sensuous reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the perceived object, atmosphere is neither a purely subjective state nor an objective thing, but essentially is a quasi-object pervaded by a specific emotional quality and a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our life experience. In this respect, a decisive factor is not what we perceive but how we perceive. Furthermore, the quasi-objective quality of atmospheric phenomena makes it possible that atmosphere is producible. A practical dimension …

Aesthetics In Digital Worlds, Ossi Naukkarinen, Darius Pacauskas

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Aesthetics is often seen as a philosophical academic discipline focusing on questions about art, beauty, the nature of aesthetic experiences, and many other related issues. However, there is another, non-academic side of aesthetics where similar issues are addressed. Non-academic cases of aesthetics, on the internet and elsewhere, far outnumber anything academic aestheticians can ever produce. However, how the picture of aesthetics looks like outside academia is not necessarily very actively considered in academic contexts, as professors, lecturers, and students tend to form their understanding of the field through scholarly literature and academic datasets. In this essay, we explore how close …

Replicating Paintings, Matteo Ravasio

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this paper, I discuss cases of replication in the visual arts, with particular focus on paintings. In the first part, I focus on painted copies, that is, manual reproductions of paintings created by artists. Painted copies are sometimes used for the purpose of aesthetic education on the original. I explore the relation between the creation of painted copies and their use as aesthetic surrogates of the original artwork and draw a positive conclusion on the aesthetic benefits of replica production by artists. A skeptical conclusion follows regarding the use of such replicas as surrogates for the original painting. The …

The Private Character Of Natural Beauty: Shanshui Painting As A Model For Unity Of Self And Natural Environment, David Adam Brubaker

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

How can each of us develop an aesthetic appreciation of nature as our home and not a resource to be exploited? Chen Wangheng answers that environmental beauty provides a sense of home through a unity of subject and object that belongs to the private character of the natural environment. But how is the display of the natural environment private? To uphold Chen’s remarks, I inspect the model of shanshui (山水 mountain-water) painting, as Chen suggests. I find that the private character of the natural environment and the related element zhi (質substance) in shanshui painting cannot be described in the object-oriented …

Two Types Of A Doctrine Of Objectivity In The Aesthetic Appreciation Of Nature, Fuxing Xue

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Allen Carlson develops and justifies a doctrine of objectivity in the aesthetic appreciation of nature by means of epistemology. This doctrine is quite significant for the self-knowledge of aesthetic appreciation of nature and the healthy development of the aesthetics of nature. However, for concepts in environmental ethics and the requirements of contemporary environmentalism, another kind of doctrine of objectivity for aesthetic appreciation of nature is needed, namely, a doctrine of ethical objectivity, which rests the aesthetic appreciation of nature on acknowledging the intrinsic value of nature and respect for nature. Because of this doctrine, appreciators construe the good of nature …

Introduction: Thinking The Present Of East Asian Aesthetics, Joosik Min

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Issue Of Newness Viewed Through Korean Aesthetics, Joosik Min

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In Korean traditional aesthetics, discussions on newness are rare. The tendency to value old things and recognize them as standards is deeply rooted in Korean culture, and such customs seem to be no exception in aesthetics. It cannot be denied that Korean arts also has a social tendency towards tradition, which has been dominated by morality, and thus reflects past-centered or past-recalling ways of thinking rather than dynamic or forward-looking ways of thinking. Then, what does artistic creation mean in Korean culture? Is creation possible? In my view, the logic of change and development does not seem to gain much …

The Aesthetic World And Formalistic Structure Of Korean Dance, Hee-Wan Chae

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Two aspects of a unified concept made up of labor-play-gut, the latter being shaman ceremony performance, form the fundamental basis of Korean traditional dance. One is formalism or characteristic structures, and the other is Korean consciousness, or the aesthetic world. The aesthetic consciousness reflected in Korean traditional dance relates to naturalism that sheds light on the concept of being danced, rather than to dance; the beauty of curved lines, as shown in taegeuk (the Great Ultimate); moments in stillness that are permeated by the energy of the universe; no'gyeong that makes possible the progression from nothingness to being; …