W.J.T. Mitchell - one of the founders of visual studies - has been at the forefront of many disciplines such as iconology, art history and media studies. His concept of the pictorial turn is known worldwide for having set new philosophical paradigms in dealing with our vernacular visual world. This book will help both students and seasoned scholars to understand key terms in visual studies - pictorial turn, metapictures, literary iconology, image/text, biopictures or living pictures, among many others - while systematically presenting the work of Mitchell as one of the discipline's founders and most prominent figures. As a special feature, the book includes three comprehensive, authoritative and theoretically relevant interviews with Mitchell that focus on different stages of development of visual studies and critical iconology.

Every human society displays some form of behavior that can be called "art," and in most societies other than our own the arts play an integral part in social life. Those who wish to understand art in its broadest sense, as a universal human endowment, need to go beyond modern Western elitist notions that disregard other cultures and ignore the human species' four-million-year evolutionary history. This book offers a new and unprecedentedly comprehensive theory of the evolutionary significance of art. Art, meaning not only visual art, but music, poetic language, dance, and performance, is for the first time regarded from a biobehavioral or ethical viewpoint. It is shown to be a biological necessity in human existence and fundamental characteristic of the human species. In this provocative study, Ellen Dissanayake examines art along with play and ritual as human behaviors that "make special," and proposes that making special is an inherited tendency as intrinsic to the human species as speech and toolmaking. She claims that the arts evolved as means of making socially important activities memorable and pleasurable, and thus have been essential to human survival. Avoiding simplism and reductionism, this original synthetic approach permits a fresh look at old questions about the origins, nature, purpose, and value of art. It crosses disciplinary boundaries and integrates a number of divers fields: human ethology; evolutionary biology; the psychology and philosophy of art; physical and cultural anthropology; "primitive" and prehistoric art; Western cultural history; and children's art. The final chapter, "From Tradition to Aestheticism," explores some of the ways in which modern Western society has diverged from other societies--particularly the type of society in which human beings evolved--and considers the effects of the aberrance on our art and our attitudes toward art. This book is addressed to readers who have a concerned interest in the arts or in human nature and the state of modern society.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays addresses idolatry, a contested issue that has given rise to both religious accusations and heated scholarly disputes. "Idol Anxiety" brings together insightful new statements from scholars in religious studies, art history, philosophy, and musicology to show that idolatry is a concept that can be helpful in articulating the ways in which human beings interact with and conceive of the things around them. It includes both case studies that provide examples of how the concept of idolatry can be used to study material objects and more theoretical interventions. Among the book's highlights are a foundational treatment of the second commandment by Jan Assmann; an essay by W.J.T. Mitchell on Nicolas Poussin that will be a model for future discussions of art objects; a groundbreaking consideration of the Islamic ban on images by Mika Natif; and a lucid description by Jean-Luc Marion of his cutting-edge phenomenology of the visible.

Darwin famously proposed that sexual competition and courtship is (or at least was) the driving force of "art" production not only in animals, but also in humans. The present book is the first to reveal that Darwin's hypothesis, rather than amounting to a full-blown antidote to the humanist tradition, is actually strongly informed both by classical rhetoric and by English and German philosophical aesthetics, thereby Darwin's theory far richer and more interesting for the understanding of poetry and song. The book also discusses how the three most discussed hypothetical functions of the human arts--competition for attention and (loving) acceptance, social cooperation, and self-enhancement--are not mutually exclusive, but can well be conceived of as different aspects of the same processes of producing and responding to the arts. Finally, reviewing the current state of archeological findings, the book advocates a new hypothesis on the multiple origins of the human arts, posing that they arose as new variants of human behavior, when three ancient and largely independent adaptions--sensory and sexual selection-driven biases regarding visual and auditory beauty, play behavior, and technology--joined forces with, and were transformed by, the human capacities for symbolic cognition and language.

Why does art matter to us, and what makes it good? Why is the role of imagination so important in art? Illustrated with carefully chosen colour and black-and-white plates of examples from Michaelangelo to Matisse and Poussin to Pollock, Revealing Art takes us on a compelling and provocative journey.

Kieran explores some of the most important questions we can ask ourselves about art: how can art inspire us or disgust us? Is artistic judgement simply a matter of taste? Can art be immoral or obscene, and should it be censored? He brings such abstract issues to life with fascinating discussions of individual paintings, photographs and sculptures, such as Michelangelo's Pieta, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Francis Bacon's powerful paintings of the Pope.

He also suggests some answers to problems that any one in an art gallery or museum is likely to ask themselves: what is a beautiful work of art? and can art really reveal something true about our own nature?

Revealing Art is ideal for anyone interested in debates about art today, or who has simply stood in front of a painting and felt baffled.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Is Art Sacred? 2. Beauty Resurrected 3. Revealing Art 4. Art and Morality 5. The Truth in Humanism

Beauty is not arbitrary; there is a logic which informs its infinite variety of manifestations. It is not enough just to know what we like; the experience of beauty is that much richer when we know why we like it.

It is only worth examining the experience of aesthetic pleasure if there are grounds for believing that there are objective truths underpinning the subjective experience of beauty. This book explores the roots of aesthetic perception within the framework of individual taste and collective fashion.

Its aim is to offer mental tools for the critical analysis of buildings and urban configurations with the purpose of enhancing appreciation of the built environment. It is some of the recent branches of science and biomathematics which provide a platform for a theory of aesthetics which transcends the subjective without undermining subjectivity.


eBook available with sample pages: 0203401891

Women have been making art for centuries, yet their work has been seen as secondary or has gone unrecognised altogether. Women Making Art asks why this is so, and what it would take for us to realise the extent of women's extraordinary contribution to the arts. Marsha Meskimmon mobilises contemporary feminist thinking to reconsider how and why women have made art. She examines work by a wide range of women artists from different cultures and historical periods, including Rebecca Horn, Rachel Whiteread, Shirin Neshat and Maya Lin, emphasising the diversity of women's art and the importance of differences between women.

Most known for her bold and darkly painted portraits, Brooks was revolutionary in her feminist renderings of women in resistance. Openly queer, she challenged conceptions of gender and sexuality in her art, which also served as her refuge. While many of her male counterparts were disfiguring and cubing their subjects-often women-Brooks gave personhood and power to the figures she painted. Her frank approach to her complicated relationship with her mother, faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender is complemented by a keen wit that echoes the gray tones of her work. Though her paintings are held in major collections, Brooks's influence in modernist circles of the early twentieth century is largely underexplored. This new publication, guided by Brooks's own impressionistic musings, bridges an important gap between the art and the artist. An introduction by Lauren O'Neill-Butler explores Brooks's role as an artist in the early twentieth century through the lens of gender and sexuality.

"Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art "features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today.
Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art
Topics addressed include the nature of beauty, aesthetic experience, artistic value, and the nature of our emotional responses to art.
Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by eminent scholars, and especially commissioned for the volume.
Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion.
Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in aesthetics, while also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers

Authorship critically examines emergent themes in contemporary architecture by revisiting the seemingly defunct notion of design authorship. As we revel in the death of the master architect, how do we come to terms with the shifting role of creativity in architecture's cultural production? In Authorship, a cross-disciplinary group of designers and scholars explores this topic through a myriad of lenses. Subjects include the impact of digital tools and computational scripts on the conception of buildings in the age of robotics, the current climate of appropriation and sampling as a counter-form of authorship, and the rise of reauthored materials in a postdigital age. These questions are cast against alternative ideas of authorship that, in turn, reposition the history of architecture. Featured essays investigate the separation between the personal and the authored while other contributions expose meaning, symbolism, and iconography as the subjects of authority-not authorship. Ultimately, this book dismantles, realigns, and reassembles disparate architectural conditions to form new ways of thinking. Discourse is a biannual publication series that presents timely themes on and around architecture. A selective compilation of essays, interviews, roundtable discussions, featured exhibitions, photo-essays, and collateral materials-such as architectural models, sketches, and built works-highlight architectural culture, practice, and theory.

What happened in art following the consolidation of capitalist globalisation after 1989? Drawing on work in art history, curating, critical theory, political economy and sociology, essays in Economy: Art, Production and the Subject in the 21st Century frame and substantiate the increasing attendance to economic relations as a defining trend in contemporary art's history and one that brought to an end the hegemony of the cultural subject encountered in postmodern discourse. Contributions include reflections on art in its relation to property as well as to speculation and finance, immaterial labour and the avant-garde, the lessons of the past in pursuing an aesthetics of the economy, the ethics of care and the role of the art document, queer politics and class, the new feminist critique of economic subjects, migration, precarity and empowerment, the ambivalence of the commons, and a range of perspectives on the possibility of opposition, in the art world and beyond, to the biopolitical rule of global capital as the arbiter of human relations. Building on, extending and querying the curatorial project ECONOMY (Edinburgh and Glasgow 2013), the book puts forward a proposition that cuts across a number of 'turns' in the art of the past two decades, including socially engaged practices, seeking to connect localised approaches with the broader organisation of production and the unprecedented apparentness of the economy in the passage from the 20th to the 21st century. Contributors: Massimo de Angelis, Angela Dimitrakaki, Melanie Gilligan, Kirsten Lloyd, Renate Lorenz, Dimitris Papadopoulos & Vassilis Tsianos, Andrea Phillips, John Roberts, Alberto Toscano, Gregory Sholette, Marina Vishmidt. Editors: Angela Dimitrakaki is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Edinburgh Kirsten Lloyd is Teaching Fellow in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and Associate Curator at Stills, Edinburgh

What is it like to be an artist? Drawing on interviews with professional artists, this book takes the reader inside the creative process. The author, an artist and a psychotherapist, uses psychoanalytic theory to shed light on fundamental questions such as the origin of new ideas and the artist's state of mind while working. Based on interviews with 33 professional artists, who reflect on their experiences of creating new works of art, as well as her own artistic practice, Patricia Townsend traces the trajectory of the creative process from the artist's first inkling or 'pre-sense', through to the completion of a work, and its release to the public. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, particularly the work of Donald Winnicott, Marion Milner and Christopher Bollas, the book presents the artist's process as a series of interconnected and overlapping stages, in which there is a movement between the artist's inner world, the outer world of shared 'reality', and the spaces in-between. Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist's Process fills an important gap in the psychoanalytic theory of art by offering an account of the full trajectory of the artist's process based on the evidence of artists themselves. It will be useful to artists who want to understand more about their own processes, to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in their clinical work, and to anyone who studies the creative process.

Reimagines black and brown sensuality to develop new modes of knowledge production In Sensual Excess, Amber Jamilla Musser imagines epistemologies of sensuality that emerge from fleshiness. To do so, she works against the framing of black and brown bodies as sexualized, objectified, and abject, and offers multiple ways of thinking with and through sensation and aesthetics. Each chapter draws our attention to particular aspects of pornotropic capture that black and brown bodies must always negotiate. Though these technologies differ according to the nature of their encounters with white supremacy, together they add to our understanding of the ways that structures of domination produce violence and work to contain bodies and pleasures within certain legible parameters. To do so, Sensual Excess analyzes moments of brown jouissance that exceed these constraints. These ruptures illuminate multiple epistemologies of selfhood and sensuality that offer frameworks for minoritarian knowledge production which is designed to enable one to sit with uncertainty. Through examinations of installations and performances like Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, Kara Walker's A Subtlety, Patty Chang's In Love and Nao Bustamante's Neapolitan, Musser unpacks the relationships between racialized sexuality and consumption to interrogate foundational concepts in psychoanalytic theory, critical race studies, feminism, and queer theory. In so doing, Sensual Excess offers a project of knowledge production focused not on mastery, but on sensing and imagining otherwise, whatever and wherever that might be.

Past philosophical ideas about arts influence contemporary artistic practices. We still use traditional Idealist concepts, such as the autonomy of art or the subjective expression of the artist. At the same time, today's art often attacks and abandons Idealist thinking. The author of this book analyses this relation between the Idealist conception of the arts including literature and present-day reality. The aim is to create a link between past and present artistic practices and theoretical, philosophical thinking. The author also questions the Idealist notions of history and the relation between the theoretical, the aesthetic and the practical, and seeks new ways to deal with the relation between the past and the present.

In the popular imagination, art history remains steeped in outmoded notions of tradition, material value and elitism. How can we awaken, define and orientate an ecological sensibility within the history of art? Building on the latest work in the discipline, this book provides the blueprint for an 'ecocritical art history', one that is prepared to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene, climate change and global warming. Without ignoring its own histories, the book looks beyond - at politics, posthumanism, new materialism, feminism, queer theory and critical animal studies - invigorating the art-historical practices of the future. -- .

As the twenty-first century moves towards its third decade, applied theatre is being shaped by contemporary economic and environmental concerns and is contributing to new conceptual paradigms that influence the ways in which socially engaged art is produced and understood. This collection offers fresh perspectives on the aesthetics, politics and histories of applied theatre. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book illuminates theatre in a diverse range of global contexts and regions. Divided into three sections - histories and cultural memories; place, community and environment; and poetics and participation - the chapters interweave cutting-edge theoretical insights with examples of innovative creative practice that traverse different places, spaces and times. Essential reading for researchers and artists working within applied theatre, this collection will also be of interest to those in theatre and performance studies, education, cultural policy, social history and cultural geography.

Theory for Art History provides a concise and clear introduction to key contemporary theorists, including their lives, major works, and transformative ideas. Written to reveal the vital connections between art history, aesthetics, and contemporary philosophy, this expanded second edition presents new ways for rethinking the methodologies and theories of art and art history. The book comprises a complete revision of each theorist; updated and trustworthy bibliographies on each; an informative introduction about the reception of critical theory within art history; and a beautifully written, original essay on the state of art history and theory that serves as an afterword. From Marx to Deleuze, from Arendt to Ranciere, Theory for Art History is designed for use by undergraduate students in courses on the theory and methodology of art history, graduate students seeking an introduction to critical theory that will prepare them to engage the primary sources, and advanced scholars in art history and visual culture studies who are themselves interested in how these perspectives inflect art historical practice. Adapted from Theory for Religious Studies by William E. Deal and Timothy K. Beal.

The first English collection of writings by Henry van de Velde, one of the most influential designers and theorists of the twentieth century. Belgian artist, architect, designer, and theorist Henry van de Velde (1863-1957) was a highly original and influential figure in Europe beginning in the 1890s. A founding member of the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements, he also directed the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, Germany, which eventually became the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius. This selection of twenty-six essays, translated from French and German, includes van de Velde's writings on William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts movement, Neo-Impressionist painting, and relationships between ornament, line, and abstraction in German aesthetics. The texts trace the evolution of van de Velde's thoughts during his most productive period as a theorist in the artistic debates in France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Katherine M. Kuenzli expertly guides readers to see how van de Velde's writings reconcile themes of aesthetics and function, and expression and reason, throughout the artistic periods and regions represented by these texts. With introductory discussions of each essay and full annotations, this is an essential volume for a broad range of scholars and students of the history of fine and applied arts and ideas.

The Photography Cultures Reader: Representation, Agency and Identity engages with contemporary debates surrounding photographic cultures and practices from a variety of perspectives, providing insight and analysis for students and practitioners. With over 100 images included, the diverse essays in this collection explore key topics, such as: conflict and reportage; politics of race and gender; the family album; fashion, tourism and surveillance; art and archives; social media and the networked image. The collection brings together essays by leading experts, scholars and photographers, including Geoffrey Batchen, Elizabeth Edwards, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Martha Langford, Lucy R. Lippard, Fred Ritchin, Allan Sekula and Val Williams. The depth and scope of this collection is testament to the cultural significance of photography and photographic study, with each themed section featuring an editor's introduction that sets the ideas and debates in context. Along with its companion volume - The Photography Reader: History and Theory - this is the most comprehensive introduction to photography and photographic criticism. Includes essays by: Jan Avgikos, Ariella Azoulay, David A. Bailey, Roland Barthes, Geoffrey Batchen, David Bate, Gail Baylis, Karin E. Becker, John Berger, Lily Cho, Jane Collins, Douglas Crimp, Thierry de Duve, Karen de Perthuis, George Dimock, Sarah Edge, Elizabeth Edwards, Francis Frascina, Andre Gunthert, Stuart Hall, Elizabeth Hoak-Doering, Patricia Holland, bell hooks, Yasmin Ibrahim, Liam Kennedy, Annette Kuhn, Martha Langford, Ulrich Lehmann, Lucy R. Lippard, Catherine Lutz, Roberta McGrath, Lev Manovich, Rosy Martin, Mette Mortensen, Fred Ritchin, Daniel Rubinstein, Allan Sekula, Sharon Sliwinski, Katrina Sluis, Jo Spence, Carol Squiers, Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, Ariadne van de Ven, Liz Wells, Val Williams, Judith Williamson, Louise Wolthers and Ethan Zuckerman.

Material Imagination examines the interrelated concepts of matter, materialism, and materiality in postwar European art, from 1946-1972. * Provides a unique perspective on European art by prioritizing material dimensions over concept or context, while also paying attention to theoretical and historical concerns * Explores artists methods and materials in order to better understand the social and cultural environments in which their works of art were made * Demonstrates how materials can be harnessed to affect the critical interpretation of artwork * Brings together exceptional illustrations and new research in eight essays by art historians and scholars

A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the color blue throughout the ages Blue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now cite it as their favorite color. In this fascinating history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings of blue from its rare appearance in prehistoric art to its international ubiquity today. Any history of color is, above all, a social history. Pastoureau investigates how the ever-changing role of blue in society has been reflected in manuscripts, stained glass, heraldry, clothing, paintings, and popular culture. Beginning with the almost total absence of blue from ancient Western art and language, the story moves to medieval Europe. As people began to associate blue with the Virgin Mary, the color became a powerful element in church decoration and symbolism. Blue gained new favor as a royal color in the twelfth century and became a formidable political and military force during the French Revolution. As blue triumphed in the modern era, new shades were created and blue became the color of romance and the blues. Finally, Pastoureau follows blue into contemporary times, when military clothing gave way to the everyday uniform of blue jeans and blue became the universal and unifying color of the Earth as seen from space. Beautifully illustrated, Blue tells the intriguing story of our favorite color and the cultures that have hated it, loved it, and made it essential to some of our greatest works of art.

Set within the broader context of post-war Austria and the re-education initiatives set up by the Allied forces, particularly the US, this book investigates the art and architecture scene in Vienna to ask how this can inform our broader understanding of architectural Postmodernism. The book focuses on the outputs of the Austrian artist and architect, Hans Hollein, and on his appropriation as a Postmodernist figure. In Vienna, the circles of radical art and architecture were not distinct, and Hollein's claim that 'Everything is Architecture' was symptomatic of this intermixing of creative practices. Austria's proximity to the so-called 'Iron Curtain' and its post-war history of four-power occupation gave a heightened sense of menace that emerged strongly in Viennese art in the Cold War era. Seen as a collective entity, Hans Hollein's works across architecture, art, writing, exhibition design and publishing clearly require a more diverse, complex and culturally nuanced account of architectural Postmodernism than that offered by critics at the time. Across the five chapters, Hollein's outputs are viewed not as individual projects, but as symptomatic of Austria's attempts to come to terms with its Nazi past and to establish a post-war identity.

Visual images and imagery, optical metaphors and iconic quotations are common features in the literary work of Antonio Tabucchi, along with references to the world of painting, photography, and cinema. This book explores the "iconic temptation" of the Italian author, pointing out his visual strategies of representation and poetic thought. By focusing on the visual intertextuality of his fiction, it discusses questions of style and content whilst also emphasizing the role of images as a privileged means of narrative knowledge and philosophical insight. Drawing on the visual studies and on postmodernist theory and criticism, this study offers a comprehensive inquiry into the visual poetics of one of Europe's most innovative writers.

In this thought-provoking book Lambert Wiesing asks simply: What is luxury? Drawing on a fascinating range of examples, he argues that luxury is an aesthetic experience. Unlike experience gained via the senses, such as seeing, hearing or tasting, he argues that luxury is achieved by possessing something - an aspect of philosophy that has been largely neglected. As such, luxury becomes a gesture of individual defiance and a refusal to conform to social expectations of restraint. An increasingly rational and goal-oriented ethos in society makes the appeal of luxury grow even stronger. Drawing on the ideas of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger and the novelist Ernst Junger, as well as sociologists such as Thorstein Veblen and Theodor Adorno, A Philosophy of Luxury will be of great interest to those in philosophy, art, cultural studies and literature as well as sociology.