Aesthetics Commons^™

Musical Ontology: Critical, Not Metaphysical, Jonathan A. Neufeld

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The ontology of musical works often sets the boundaries within which evaluation of musical works and performances takes place. Questions of ontology are therefore often taken to be prior to and apart from the evaluative questions considered by either performers as they present works to audiences or an audience’s critical reflection on a performance. In this paper I argue that, while the ontology of musical works may well set the boundaries of legitimate evaluation, ontological questions should not be considered as prior to or apart from critical evaluation. Rather, ontological claims are a type of critical evaluation made within musical …

Pushing The Limits: Risk And Accomplishment In Musical Performance, David Clowney, Robert Rawlins

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Using examples from musical performance of several kinds, we argue that risk-taking, showing off, virtuosity, and other forms of musical showmanship are in many cases, though not in all, an integral and appropriate part of the music as performed on that occasion. We reflect on the difference between cases where this is so and cases where it is not, using insights from John Dewey’s aesthetics as articulated in Art as Experience.

The Point Of Everyday Aesthetics, Kevin Melcionne

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The point of everyday aesthetic activity is well-being

Nancy And Neruda: Poetry Thinking Love, Joshua M. Hall

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

My intention in this paper is to respond to Jean-Luc Nancy’s claim that poetry, along with philosophy, is essentially incapable of what Nancy describes as “thinking love.” To do so, I will first try to come to an understanding of Nancy’s thinking regarding love and then of poetry as presented in his essay “Shattered Love.” Having thus prepared the way, I will then respond, via Pablo Neruda’s poem “Oda al Limón,” to Nancy’s understanding of poetry vis-à-vis “Shattered Love.” This response, in acting out Nancy’s thinking regarding love, will suggest a greater plurality within poetry than Nancy acknowledged

(Dis)Functions: Marxist Theories Of Architecture And The Avant-Garde, Michael Chapman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper investigates the relationship between architecture and theories of the avant-garde in the critical projects of the 1970s, with a focus on the theories of Peter Bürger and Manfredo Tafuri. Both Tafuri and Bürger were writing from within the context of a radicalized Marxism and were fueled by an intellectual pessimism towards the totalizing systems of cultural production that questioned the role of resistance in aesthetics and the inability of the historical avant-gardes to engage within the political and economic fields of contemporary society. While there is a common ancestry to these two approaches, and mutual acceptance of the …

Schiller Revisited: "Beauty Is Freedom In Appearance" Aesthetics As A Challenge To The Modern Way Of Thinking, Wolfgang Welsch

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay re-evaluates Schiller's idea of beauty as “freedom in appearance,” as brought forward in his Kallias or On Beauty(1793), against the backdrop of early modern and modern thinking that based itself on a fundamental split between nature and freedom, world and man. Schiller's claim that natural beauty results from freedom in nature bridges this gap. His suggestion is confirmed by modern science. Schiller's view is recommended and defended as a way of escaping modern bigotry

Fitness For Function And Dance Aesthetics, Eric C. Mullis

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay discusses the manner in which the appreciation of fitness for function can be applied to dance aesthetics. Drawing on Allen Carlson and Glenn Parsons’ work, the essay considers the problems of indeterminacy, translation, and dysfunction as they pertain to the appreciation of dance movement. It then argues that fitness for function can be used to critically assess post-modern task dances and contemporary dance works that do not rely on the execution of codified dance technique.

Smell And Anosmia In The Aesthetic: Appreciation Of Gardens, Marta Tafalla

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In his Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant defined the garden as a visual art and considered that smell plays no role in its aesthetic appreciation. If the Kantian thesis were right, then a person who has no sense of smell (who suffers from anosmia) would not be impaired in his or her aesthetic appreciation of gardens. At the same time, a visually impaired person could not appreciate the beauty of gardens, although he or she could perceive them through hearing, smell, taste, and touch. In this paper I discuss the role of smell and anosmia in the aesthetic …

Art As Person: Correlative Personhood In Aesthetic Representation, Michael Dufresne

UNF Undergraduate Capstone Projects and Honors Theses

In this paper, I argue that the metaphor of art as person should be implemented as a way to understand artistic interaction, such that the relationship between artworks and spectators should be understood as one between persons. I begin this argument by first juxtaposing Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of aesthetic representation with the values that constitute correlative person in Confucianism. This juxtaposition draws similarities between artworks and persons that make the metaphor of art as person a plausible means for understanding artistic interaction. I then appeal to Michel Foucault for two significant reasons: his subjectfication of the self solidifies the comparisons …

Fictional Emotions: Genuineness Of Emotions In Fictions, Lorien Giles

CMC Senior Theses

The common position in philosophy calls into question the ability of our emotions that derive from fictions to be genuine. In this paper I analyze this view, its motivating examples, and some unconsidered positions. In doing this I hope to offer a good defense of why our emotions that derive from fictions are in fact genuine and why the Paradox of Fiction is too broad.

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.

Politics And Aesthetics: Partitions And Partioning In Contemporary Art, Jonathan Owen Clark, Joao Lima Duque

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Jacques Rancière defined the “distribution of the sensible” as the effect of a type of aesthetico-political decision-making that creates a partitioning of the realm of the perceivable in relation to both art and society. The artworld itself constructs its own particular types of curatorial partitioning: between “art” and “non-art,” between “dominant, residual, and emergent,” and between “mainstream” and “periphery.” This essay examines certain “boundary effects” that develop as a result of the act of the partitioning itself and closely examines what arguably are two new categories in contemporary art: “crossover” and “interventionist.” Both categories have a certain relationship to a …

Harnessing The Imagination: The Asymmetry Of Belief And Make-Believe, Elisa Galgut

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Contemporary philosophical discussion on the nature of the imagination has been influenced by recent empirical work in cognitive science. Our imaginative and emotional engagement with works of fiction has been explained by appealing to the similarities between our ordinary cognitive functioning and the workings of our imagination. Believing and imagining, it is argued, are governed by a “single code.” I argue against this claim, and suggest that our imagination – and in particular our literary imagination – in many respects functions very differently from ordinary cognition.

Anti-Essentialism, Tom Leddy

Faculty Publications

From the late nineteenth century to the 1950s one of the main foci of aesthetic inquiry was the attempt to develop definitions of art and such related concepts as visual art, music, tragedy, beauty, and metaphor. Clive Bell (1958) famously stated that either all works of visual art have some common quality or when we speak of “work of art” we speak nonsense. DeWitt H. Parker (1939) argued more generally that the assumption underlying every philosophy of art is the existence of some common nature present in all the arts. This search for a common quality or nature …

Everyday Aesthetics And Photography, Tom Leddy

Faculty Publications

Everyday aesthetics as a new subdiscipline within aesthetics benefits by constantly going back to and borrowing from earlier theorists, even those who were primarily concerned with the aesthetics of art. To that end, I will begin my discussion of everyday aesthetics and photography with a look at that classic formalist aesthetician from the beginning of the 20th century, Clive Bell (1958). Bell was notoriously very negative about photography. He basically saw photographs as mechanical imitations of reality. He also famously criticized illustrative or descriptive painting for doing what photography can do better. One of the problems he had with people …

Cinema In The Digital Age: A Rebuttal To Lev Manovich, Barbara Cail

Philosophy

In his book The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich claims the index is an ontological condition of cinema. Manovich asserts digital cinema can never be indexical and therefore has fundamentally altered the very nature of cinema, reducing it to a form of animation. This paper offers a refutation of Manovich’s redefinition of cinema, showing that digital cinema can be indexical, but indexicality is not an ontological condition of cinema.

Earth’S Garden-Happiness: Nietzsche’S Geoaesthetics Of The Anthropocene, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This essay proposes a reading of the concept and metaphor of the garden in Nietzsche’s philosophy as a contribution to exploring his aesthetics of the human earth and, accordingly, of his idea of the Sinn der Erde. Following Zarathustra’s agreement with his animals’ repeated declaration that „the world awaits you as a garden,” after his ordeal in struggling with the thought of eternal recurrence, the essay draws on Z and other writings to explore the senses of cultivation, design, and perspective which the garden embodies. Nietzsche recognizes and endorses another dimension of the garden in his discussions of Epicurus’ …

Review Of Living In An Art World: Reviews And Essays On Dance, Performance, Theater, And The Fine Arts In The 1970s And 1980s By Noel Carroll, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Apocalyptic Beauty, Brian T. Scalise

Liberty Theological Review

A potent and formative text for a theological aesthetics faithful to the God revealed in the Scriptures is the Apocalypse of John (Revelation). An apocalyptic viewpoint is beautiful inasmuch as it observes the whole from within the part of time/space and inasmuch as the apocalyptic vision provides considerable unity of diverse theological themes with various expansions and enhancements, hence mimicking the very function of theological beauty to communicate the whole (God) in the part (here, in space-time). This essay traces major themes throughout Scripture, utilizing inter-textual interpretation en route, and seeks to clarify the Book of Revelation's role in recapitulation, …

Pharmacologies Of Texts And Images, Noel Fitzpatrick

Conference Papers

The problematic of Ekphrasis will be the central tenant of this paper, a relationship between text, language and image. Ekphrasis broadly understood as the relationship between images and words, however, in the case of this paper it will be taken to mean the relationship between words and images in relation to memory. Bernard Stiegler’s work has become well renowned in relation to his exploration of texts and in particular the relationship between texts and technology; an intimate relationship, if writing is to be considered as a form of technology, a mnemonic form. However, there is also another aspect in the …

Revisiting Ekphrasis: The Early Hermeneutic Phenomenology Of Paul Ricoeur., Noel Fitzpatrick

Conference Papers

Through revisiting the notion of the symbol and sign in the relatively early work of Paul Ricoeur it hoped to point to a yet unexplored element of his work in relation to Aesthetics and contemporary Critical Theory. This paper will focus on a particular point in the work of Paul Ricoeur, a point where the problematic of language begins to come to the fore within his structural phenomenology of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The publication of The Symbolism of Evil in 1960 represents a definite departure from the structural Phenomenology of his earlier works where the central concern …

Defining Maximalism: Understanding Minimalism, Patrick Templeton

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

As little more than a buzz-word, maximalism has circulated around architectural discourses over the past decade. To illuminate the implications of the term and to explore its potential, this research explores minimalism in art and architecture to establish a foundation for a reciprocal definition for maximalism.

All-Nighter 2013, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

All-Nighter was a digital student publication that began in 2011 as all-nighter.com. The Spring 2013 issue is the only known print issue. It contains writing previously published online as well as new content. Highlights include photographs from Senior Open Studios; articles on the Quad mosaics, community gathering spaces, the timing of Thanksgiving break, Saturday night dinner parties in Ewing House, dining employees around campus, how Mike Fink saved Carr House, and the trouble with summer subletting; as well as comics by Maddy Trower, Jackie Ferrentino, and Casey Roonan.

Stability Of Art Preference In Frontotemporal Dementia, Andrea R. Halpern, Margaret G. O'Connor

Faculty Journal Articles

We examined aesthetic preference for reproductions of paintings among frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients, in two sessions separated by 2 weeks. The artworks were in three different styles: representational, quasirepresentational, and abstract. Stability of preference for the paintings was equivalent to that shown by a matched group of Alzheimer's disease patients and a group of healthy controls drawn from an earlier study. We expected that preference for representational art would be affected by disruptions in language processes in the FTD group. However, this was not the case and the FTD patients, despite severe language processing deficits, performed similarly across all three …

The Aesthetic Unconscious, Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Within the context of recent European history, examines the phrase "aesthetic ideology" and attendant conceptual considerations. Discusses Jacques Rancière’s work and his unequivocal rejection of what he calls “this great anti-aesthetic consensus,” and the central category of the “distribution of the sensible” (le partage du sensible). Rancière calls some level of political engagement “primary aesthetics” and opposes it to actual “aesthetic practices.”

Further, considers Alain Badiou’s critique of Rancière’s Disagreement. Badiou summarizes Rancière’s argument by calling it “a democratic anti-philosophy that identifies the axiom of equality, and is founded on a negative ontology of the collective that sublates the …

A Symposium On Aesthetic Engagement

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

What Is 'Everyday' In Everyday Aesthetics?, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The theme of everyday aesthetics has recently been addressed by numerous authors. However, the question of what is actually the nature of the everyday, as contrasted with the non-everyday and how this nature affects the aesthetics of the everyday has not been sufficiently elaborated. The purpose of this essay is to clarify the everydayness of the everyday and combine the general notion of everydayness with the key points of everyday aesthetics

The Propaganda Power Of Protest Songs: The Case Of Madison's Solidarity Sing-Along, Sheryl Tuttle Ross

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The aim of this paper is to examine the propaganda power of Madison’s Solidarity Sing-Along. To do so, I will modify the Epistemic Merit Model of propaganda so that it can account for a broader spectrum of propaganda. I will show how this is consistent with other accounts of musical pragmatics and the potential political function of songs and music. This will provide the ground for a robust interpretation of the political meanings of the Solidarity Sing-Along. I will assume the Madison protests and the Solidarity Sing-Along can be considered a paradigm case of peaceful protest as it has been …

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 …

Front Matter

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

No abstract provided.