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"Philosophy of art"
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Between discipline and a hard place : the value of contemporary art
Written from the perspective of a practising artist, this book proposes that, against a groundswell of historians, museums and commentators claiming to speak on behalf of art, it is artists alone who may define what art really is. Jelinek contends that while there are objects called 'art' in museums from deep into human history and from around the globe - from Hans Sloane's collection, which became the foundation of the British Museum, to Alfred Barr's inclusion of 'primitive art' within the walls of MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art - only those that have been made with the knowledge and discipline of art should rightly be termed as such. Policing the definition of art in this way is not to entrench it as an elitist occupation, but in order to focus on its liberal democratic potential. Between Discipline and a Hard Place describes the value of art outside the current preoccupation with economic considerations yet without resorting to a range of stereotypical and ultimately instrumentalist political or social goods, such as social inclusion or education. A wider argument is also made for disciplinarity, as Jelinek discusses the great potential as well as the pitfalls of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary working, particularly with the so-called 'creative' arts. A passionate treatise arguing for a new way of understanding art that forefronts the role of the artist and the importance of inclusion within both the concept of art and the art world.
eBook
Art and adaptability : consciousness and cognitive culture
\"Art and Adaptability' argues for a co-evolution of theory of mind and material/art culture. The book covers relevant areas from great ape intelligence, hominin evolution, Stone Age tools, Paleolithic culture and art forms, to neurobiology. We use material and art objects, whether painting or sculpture, to modify our own and other people's thoughts so as to affect behavior. We don't just make judgments about mental states; we create objects about which we make judgments in which mental states are inherent. Moreover, we make judgments about these objects to facilitate how we explore the minds and feelings of others. The argument is that it's not so much art because of theory of mind but art as theory of mind\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
Theory of the Art Object
Meaning in the visual arts centers on how the physical work makes its content or presence visible. The art object is fundamental. Indeed, the different object forms of each visual medium allows our experience of space-time, and our relations to other people, to be aesthetically embodied in unique ways. Through these embodiments, visual art compensates for what is otherwise existentially lost, and becomes part of what makes life worth living. The present book shows this by discussing a range of visual art forms, namely pictorial representation, abstraction, sculpture and assemblage works, land art, architecture, photography, and varieties of digital art.
eBook
The topological imagination : spheres, edges, and islands
\"Ordinary speech and the mathematical language of numbers appear to be light years apart, but this book counters that belief. The author joins two commonly separated domains of human creativity---the emotionally charged poetic imagination and the cool mathematical science of topology, which envisions how shapes change when objects are bent, twisted, or stretched without losing an invariant contact with their original forms. For topology, donuts and coffee mugs are \"the same,\" like musical variations on a persistent theme. Nine concise chapters indicate how such twin powers create a concern with value. Poetry, philosophy, fiction, and history all use metaphors to stretch our ability to interpret, their freedom derived from stressing metaphoric disparity, while topology strictly treats quality rather than measurement and quantity. Shakespearean speeches echo throughout this book, for their variations on quality mark discoveries by the great mathematician Leonhard Euler. In solving an old riddle, The Bridges of Königsberg, and through his Polyhedron Theorem, he demonstrated how shape could preserve \"permanence in change,\" like an aging though familiar human face. Current global concerns involve the connection between words, metaphors, mathematics, and transformational powers, among them our world climate; our oddly edgeless planet being structured by edges; theory of cyclical history reflecting biology; the Königsberg Bridges solution, describing networks and hence our modern algorithmic computation; the circulatory patterns of life in our biosphere; the spherical aspect of human time; the ethics derived from equitable scales; the significant topology of islands and their role in evolutionary theory and the human imagination.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Art as Human Practice
How is art both distinct and different from the rest of human life, while also mattering in and for it? This central yet overlooked question in contemporary philosophy of art is at the heart of Georg Bertram's new aesthetic. Drawing on the resources of diverse philosophical traditions – analytic philosophy, French philosophy, and German post-Kantian philosophy – his book offers a systematic account of art as a human practice. One that remains connected to the whole of life.
eBook
A philosophy of beauty : Shaftesbury on nature, virtue, and art
\"At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) placed beauty at the center of his worldview. It revolutionized Western philosophy. Thinkers such as Hume, Leibniz, Voltaire, Goethe, and Humboldt were all indebted to Shaftesbury's pioneering explorations of the experience of beauty and the role it can play in moral judgment, religious worship, and appreciation of the systems of nature. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, Shaftesbury's stature had greatly diminished, a result of his writing in a densely literary and narrative style out of step with the methodological approaches of later philosophers. This book rediscovers Shaftesbury's vibrant ideas of beauty. It explains how Shaftesbury developed those ideas, and why they remain compelling. The author intends to make several rather explicit and provocative claims: Shaftesbury was instrumental in the development of the idea that all of wild nature has beauty and intrinsic value; his religious views were more uncompromisingly rational than almost any contemporary, and they ushered in a more critical approach to the study of the Bible and religion in general; he advanced what was at the time the highly contentious claim that an atheist can be virtuous, which was one of the most significant development in secular ethical theory; he originated the sentimentalist view that moral judgment is based in affection, or moral sense, and he made significant strides in moral psychology; he engaged in serious philosophical discussion of what makes art successful, initiating the line of inquiry that would come to be called 'aesthetics'; and, finally, Shaftesbury was prophetic in identifying the dangers of partiality and what he saw as the difficulty of combining political activity in a highly charged partisan environment with impartial concern for humanity as a whole\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Introducing Philosophy of Art
Derek Matravers introduces students to the philosophy of art through a close examination of eight famous works of twentieth-century art. Each work has been selected in order to best illustrate and illuminate a particular problem in aesthetics. Each artwork forms the basis of a single chapter and readers are introduced to such issues as artistic value, intention, interpretation, and expression through a careful analysis of the artwork. Questions considered include what does art mean in contemporary art practice? Is the artistic value of a painting the same as how much you like it? If a painting isn't of anything, then how do we understand it? Can art be immoral? By grounding abstract and theoretical discussion in real examples the book provides an excellent way into the subject for readers new to the philosophical dimension of art appreciation.
eBook
Deleuze and the Map-Image
The map, as it appears in Gilles Deleuze’s writings, is a concept guiding the exploration of new territories, no matter how abstract. With the advent of new media and digital technologies, contemporary artists have imagined a panoply of new spaces that put Deleuze’s concept to the test. Deleuze’s concept of the map bridges the gap between the analog and the digital, information and representation, virtual and actual, canvas and screen and is therefore best suited for the contemporary artistic landscape. Deleuze and the Map-Image explores cartography from philosophical and aesthetic perspectives and argues that the concept of the map is a critical touchstone for contemporary multidisciplinary art. This book is an overview of Deleuze’s cartographic thought read through the theories of Sloterdijk, Heidegger, and Virilio and the art criticism of Laura U. Marks, Carolyn L. Kane, and Alexander Galloway, shaping it into a critical tool through which to view the works of cutting edge artists such as Janice Kerbel and Hajra Waheed, who work with digital and analog art. After all, Deleuze did write that a map can be conceived as a work of art, and so herein art is critiqued through cartographic strategies.
eBook