This is a landmark study on Aby Warburg's life and work, translated into English.In ""Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism"", Charlotte Schoell-Glass provides an unprecedented look at the life and writings of cultural critic Aby Warburg through the prism of Warburg's little-known political views. Schoell-Glass argues provocatively based on archival research that Warburg's work and teachings developed as a reaction to the growing anti-Semitism in Germany, which he saw as a threat to classical education and university scholarship. Translated into English for the first time, ""Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism"" sheds much needed light on Warburg's views on Judaism and the politics of his time.Aby Warburg, scion of a well-known Jewish banking family in Hamburg, sacrificed his birthright to pursue a career as a private scholar. As an independent art historian, he devoted himself almost exclusively to reinterpreting the revival of antiquity within the Renaissance, urging other art historians to approach their work as a brand of the larger study of image making and philosophy. In this study, Schoell-Glass examines Warburg's most influential essays on Durer, Rembrandt, and the Sassetti Chapel and his most innovative concepts - the accessories of motion, the pathos formula, and the afterlife of antiquity - to illustrate how Warburg persistently showed a deep concern over a disappointing and unstable outside world within his own work. Schoell-Glass shows how Warburg attempts to make a response to anti-Semitism the only way he knew how, despite his awareness of the diminishing societal relevance of that response.From this study of Warburg, Schoell-Glass produces a multilayered case study of the encounter between twentieth-century politics and scholarship. Art historians, German historians, and scholars of Jewish studies and cultural studies will be grateful for this volume.

A study of controversy in the arts, and the extent to which such controversies are socially rather than just aesthetically conditioned. The collection pays special attention to the vested interests and the social dynamics involved, including class, religion, culture, and - above all - power.

Maggie Nelson has established herself as one of our foremost cultural critics in this landmark work about representations of violence in art. An important and frequently surprising book . . . could be read as the foundation for a post-avant-garde aesthetics. ?. . . Nelson, who is also a poet, is such a graceful writer that ?I . . . just sat back and enjoyed the show. Laura Kipnis, New York Times Book Review, front-page review Nelson s] critiques of individual artists are delightfully fierce without being mean spirited. . . . Fascinating and bracingly intelligent. . . . The Art of Cruelty s prose is often gorgeous. Troy Jollimore, Boston Globe A lean-forward experience, and in its most transcendent moments, reading it can feel like having the best conversation of your life. Rachel Syme, NPR Books I hope that critics, and aspiring critics, and those who are interested in the relationship between art and ethics, read The Art of Cruelty]. Susie Linfield, New Republic/The Book"

This survey of art theory in the context of Western visual art consists of 41 original essays written by experts in the field. Following an extensive introduction on the formation of modern art theory, the "Companion" is organized chronologically so that readers can trace developments of visual art theory, from classical and medieval sources and modern conceptions of art as they have been theorized since the Renaissance, through to some current theoretical preoccupations.

In addition to outlining and describing various theoretical positions, the book's chapters articulate some assumptions that underpin them and raise more general questions about the nature of theorizing about art. In this way the "Companion" provides both an introduction to main themes of Western art theory and a source for critical enquiry into the purposes, possibilities and limitations of theory in the context of artistic practice.

The work can also be used alongside the three "Art in Theory" anthologies published by Blackwell, as a further art theory resource.

This anthology fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue between the mathematical and artistic approaches in the field where mathematical and artistic thinking and practice merge. The articles included highlight the most significant current ideas and phenomena, providing a multifaceted and extensive snapshot of the field and indicating how interdisciplinary approaches are applied in the research of various cultural and artistic phenomena. The discussions are related, for example, to the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, art history, art theory, artistic practice, cultural studies, ethno-mathematics, geometry, mathematics, new physics, philosophy, physics, study of visual illusions, and symmetry studies. Further, the book introduces a new concept: the interdisciplinary aesthetics of mathematical art, which the editors use to explain the manifold nature of the aesthetic principles intertwined in these discussions.

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art provides an extensive research resource to the burgeoning field of Asian aesthetics. Featuring leading international scholars and teachers whose work defines the field, this unique volume reflects the very best scholarship in creative, analytic, and comparative philosophy. Beginning with a philosophical reconstruction of the classical rasa aesthetics, chapters range from the nature of art-emotions, tones of thinking, and aesthetic education to issues in film-theory and problems of the past versus present. As well as discussing indigenous versus foreign in aesthetic practices, this volume covers North and South Indian performance practices and theories, alongside recent and new themes including the Gandhian aesthetics of surrender and self-control and the aesthetics of touch in the light of the politics of untouchability. With such unparalleled and authoritative coverage, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art represents a dynamic map of comparative cross-cultural aesthetics. Bringing together original philosophical research from renowned thinkers, it makes a major contribution to both Eastern and Western contemporary aesthetics.

"To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing."

Camus's powerful lecture, as relevant today as ever, argues against 'art for art's sake', while his Nobel Prize speech brilliantly sets out his vision of the artist's role and responsibilities.

Hailed as "exhilarating and suggestive" (Spectator), "thought-provoking and entertaining" (David Lodge, Sunday Times), and "incisive and inspirational" (Guardian), What Good are the Arts? offers a delightfully skeptical look at the nature of art. John Carey--one of Britain's most respected literary critics--here cuts through the cant surrounding the fine arts, debunking claims that the arts make us better people or that judgments about art are anything more than personal opinion. But Carey does argue strongly for the value of art as an activity and for the superiority of one art in particular: literature. Literature, he contends, is the only art capable of reasoning, and the only art that can criticize. Literature has the ability to inspire the mind and the heart towards practical ends far better than any work of conceptual art. Here then is a lively and stimulating invitation to debate the value of art, a provocative book that "anyone seriously interested in the arts should read" (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post).

This book provides a unique, philosophical interpretation of a significant twentieth-century painter - Wassily Kandinsky. Michel Henry was one of the leading French philosophers of the twentieth century. His numerous works of philosophy are all organized around the theme of life. In contrast to the scientific understanding of life as a biological process, Henry's philosophy develops a conception of life as an immediate feeling of one's own living."Seeing the Invisible" marks Henry's most sustained engagement in the field of aesthetics. Through an analysis of the life and works of Wassily Kandinsky, Henry uncovers the philosophical significance of Kandinsky's revolution in painting: that abstract art reveals the invisible essence of life. Henry shows that Kandinsky separates colour and line from the constraints of visible form and, in so doing, conveys the invisible intensity of life - a force rooted in the corporeity and pathos of all living beings. More than just a study of art history, this book presents Kandinsky as an artist who is engaged in the project of painting the invisible and thus offers invaluable methodological clues for Henry's own phenomenology of the invisible.

This philosophical theory of art, addressed to anyone with a serious interest in the arts, has three main objectives: to shift the focus of aesthetics from the question "What is art?" to the question "What is art for?"; to describe the social and historical situation of art today; and to combine aesthetics with poetics and hermeneutics. A distinctive feature of the book is its argument that music exemplifies the current condition of art in a particularly revealing fashion.

The aims of this volume are to reflect on the fundamental issues in the theory and practice of connoisseurship of Chinese painting in particular and those of connoisseurship of art in general. One of the most important challenges facing art historians and museum professionals today is that graduate schools have produced art historians with serious weakness, particularly a lack of direct firsthand experience with works of art in the original. If we base our construction of art history on works of calligraphy and painting and on the inscriptions, colophons, and seal impressions that accompany them, we must first make sure of their authorship and identity. "This fascinating book, the first one in which connoisseurship in Chinese painting and in European painting are discussed together, enables us not only to confront several approaches in the authentication of Chinese painting, but also to benefit from the Western art studies in connoisseurial analysis and the complex nature of copywork." -Michele Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens, formerly Curator of Far Eastern Art of the Musee Guimet, Paris, currently Directeur d'etudes, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, author of La Civilisation du Royaume de Dian a l'epoque Han, La Chine des Han: histoire et civilization, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766): Peintre et Architecte a la Cour de Chine, and editor of Storia Universale dell'Arte: La Cina. "These thoughtful essays, addressing a range of historical, cultural, and philosophical issues, should remind all of us that the objectness of objects is the starting point from which all else follows." -Peter Sturman, Chair, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China. "Connoisseurship is the most fundamental yet often overlooked aspect of art history: it has the ability to affirm or completely change our understanding of an art work, the artist's oeuvre, or even art history itself. This volume is the first extensive investigation of Chinese connoisseurship as a general and theoretical discipline." -Pauline Lin, Bryn Mawr College, has published articles in The Review of Politics and Dictionary of Literary Biography: Classical Chinese Writers and is working on a book, Nature Inside Out: The Culture of Landscape from the City of Ye (196-240). "Connoisseurship is the necessary base of art history, for until we know who made what when, we cannot engage in interpretation of paintings. Bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds, this volume provides the necessary basis for the most important task facing art historians today, the creation of a true world art history." - David Carrier, Champney Family Professor, Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Art and author of Sean Scully, Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries, and A World Art History.

This definitive text explores the complex relationship between participation in the arts and participation in politics in America. It traces the American perspective on the arts through the evolution of democratic theory and the historical link with participation in the arts. The author suggests that the arts and humanities are essential for preserving the human elements of our society, and and for enriching the quality of human life. Democracy can be capable of fostering works of artistic excellence, as well as capable of creating broad-based audiences for such works. How the arts affect a political system is explored, along with the question of whether a political system can be beneficial or detrimental to the arts. This study provides a model for the creation of an American society in which the artistic community reinforces the skills of participation for a maximum number of citizens, helping to build a stronger participatory society.

"Democracy and the ArtS" gives a brief overview of specific theories of democracy and promotes discussion of the concepts of active and passive participation. The examination of the interrelationship of the arts and politics is demonstrated through three specific historical periods. Ancient Greece is seen as a pure example of a democratic political system where the arts flourished. The Jacksonian era is viewed as the purest American example of democracy, yet the performing arts did not flourish. The arts and politics in twentieth-century America are analyzed. Political science and arts management students, as well as arts advocates, will find that this text provides a clear picture of participation in the arts and politics in America.

This innovative book takes the concept of translation beyond its traditional boundaries, adding to the growing body of literature which challenges the idea of translation as a primarily linguistic transfer. To gain a fresh perspective on the work of translation in the complex processes of meaning-making across physical, social and cultural domains (conceptualized as translationality), Piotr Blumczynski revisits one of the earliest and most fundamental senses of translation: corporeal transfer. His study of translated religious officials and translated relics reframes our understanding of translation as a process creating a sense of connection with another time, place, object or person. He argues that a promise of translationality animates a broad spectrum of cultural, artistic and commercial endeavours: it is invoked, for example, in museum exhibitions, art galleries, celebrity endorsements, and the manufacturing of musical instruments. Translationality offers a way to reimagine the dynamic entanglements of matter and meaning, space and time, past and present. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in translation studies as well as related disciplines such as the history of religion, anthropology of art, and material culture.

Women, the Arts and Globalization: Eccentric Experience is the first anthology to bring transnational feminist theory and criticism together with women's art practices to discuss the connections between aesthetics, gender and identity in a global world. The essays in Women, the Arts and Globalization demonstrate that women in the arts are rarely positioned at the center of the art market, and the movement of women globally (as travelers or migrants, empowered artists/scholars or exiled practitioners), rarely corresponds with the dominant models of global exchange. Rather, contemporary women's art practices provide a fascinating instance of women's eccentric experiences of the myriad effects of globalization. Bringing scholarly essays on gender, art and globalization together with interviews and autobiographical accounts of personal experiences, the diversity of the book is relevant to artists, art historians, feminist theorists and humanities scholars interested in the impact of globalization on culture in the broadest sense.

This title offers a Marxist take on a selection of artistic and cultural achievements from the rap music of Tupac Shakur to the painting of Van Gogh, from HBO's Breaking Bad to Balzac's Cousin Bette , from the magical realm of Harry Potter to the apocalyptic landscape of The Walking Dead , from The Hunger Games to Game of Thrones .

Colour is largely assumed to be already in the world, a natural universal that everyone, everywhere understands. Yet cognitive scientists routinely tell us that colour is an illusion, and a private one for each of us; neither social nor material, it is held to be a product of individual brains and eyes rather than an aspect of things. This collection seeks to challenge these assumptions and examine their far-reaching consequences, arguing that colour is about practical involvement in the world, not a finalized set of theories, and getting to know colour is relative to the situation one is in – both ecologically and environmentally. Specialists from the fields of anthropology, psychology, cinematography, art history and linguistics explore the depths of colour in relation to light and movement, memory and landscape, language and narrative, in case studies with an emphasis on Australian First Peoples, but ranging as far afield as Russia and First Nations in British Columbia. What becomes apparent, is not only the complex but important role of colours in socializing the world; but also that the concept of colour only exists in some times and cultures. It should not be forgotten that the Munsell Chart, with its construction of colours as mathematical coordinates of hues, value and chroma, is not an abstraction of universals, as often claimed, but is itself a cultural artefact.

Peg Rawes examines a "minor tradition" of aesthetic geometries in ontological philosophy. Developed through Kant's aesthetic subject she explores a trajectory of geometric thinking and geometric figurations--reflective subjects, folds, passages, plenums, envelopes and horizons--in ancient Greek, post-Cartesian and twentieth-century Continental philosophies, through which productive understandings of space and embodies subjectivities are constructed.
Six chapters, explore the construction of these aesthetic geometric methods and figures in a series of "geometric" texts by Kant, Plato, Proclus, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson, Husserl and Deleuze. In each text, geometry is expressed as a uniquely embodies "aesthetic" activity because each respective geometric method and figure is imbued with aesthetic "sensibility" and geometric "sense" (rather than as disembodies scientific methods). An ontology of aesthetic geometric methods and figures is therefore traced from Kant's Critical writings, back to Plato and Proclus Greek philosophy, Spinoza and Leibniz's post-Cartesian philosophies, and forwards to Bergson's "duration" and Husserl's "horizons" towards Deleuze's philosophy of sense.

The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture explores the re-invention of the early European Baroque within the philosophical, cultural, and literary thought of postmodernism in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Gregg Lambert argues that the return of the Baroque expresses a principle often hidden behind the cultural logic of postmodernism in its various national and cultural incarnations, a principal often in variance with Anglo-American modernism. Writers and theorists examined include Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Octavio Paz, and Cuban novelists Alejo Carpentier and Severo Sarduy. A highly original and compelling reinterpretation of modernity, The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture answers Raymond WilliamsGCO charge to create alternative national and international accounts of aesthetic and cultural history in order to challenge the centrality of Anglo-American modernism.

Outreach and engagement initiatives are crucial in promoting community development. This can be achieved through a number of methods, including avenues in the fine arts. The Handbook of Research on the Facilitation of Civic Engagement through Community Art is a comprehensive reference source for emerging perspectives on the incorporation of artistic works to facilitate improved civic engagement and social justice. Featuring innovative coverage across relevant topics, such as art education, service learning, and student engagement, this handbook is ideally designed for practitioners, artists, professionals, academics, and students interested in active citizen participation via artistic channels.

"Scruton's Aesthetics" is a comprehensive critical evaluation of one of the major aestheticians of our age. The lead essay by Scruton is followed by fourteen essays by international commentators plus Scruton's reply. All discuss matters of enduring importance.