Drawing on art, media, and phenomenological sources, Showing Off!: A Philosophy of Image challenges much recent thought by proposing a fundamentally positive relationship between visuality and the ethical. In philosophy, cultural studies and art, relationships between visuality and the ethical are usually theorized in negative terms, according to the dyadic logics of seeing on the one hand, and being seen, on the other. Here, agency and power are assumed to operate either on the side of those who see, or on the side of those who control the means by which people and things enter into visibility. To be seen, by contrast - when it occurs outside of those parameters of control- is to be at a disadvantage; hence, for instance, contemporary theorist Peggy Phelan's rejection of the idea, central to activist practices of the 1970's and 80's, that projects of political emancipation must be intertwined with, and are dependent on, processes of 'making oneself visible'. Acknowledgment of the vulnerability of visibility also underlies the realities of life lived within increasingly pervasive systems of imposed and self-imposed surveillance, and apparently confident public performances of visual self display. Showing Off!: A Philosophy of Image is written against the backdrop of these phenomena, positions and concerns, but asks what happens to our debates about visibility when a third term, that of 'self-showing', is brought into play. Indeed, it proposes a fundamentally positive relationship between visuality and the ethical, one primarily rooted not in acts of open and non-oppressive seeing or spectating, as might be expected, but rather in our capacity to inhabit both the risks and the possibilities of our own visible being. In other words, this book maintains that the proper site of generosity and agency within any visual encounter is located not on the side of sight, but on that of self-showing - or showing off!

Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann's contributions to chemistry are well known. Less well known, however, is that over a career that spans nearly fifty years, Hoffmann has thought and written extensively about a wide variety of other topics, such as chemistry's relationship to philosophy, literature, and the arts, including the nature of chemical reasoning, the role of symbolism and writing in science, and the relationship between art and craft and science. In Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry, Jeffrey Kovac and Michael Weisberg bring together twenty-eight of Hoffmann's most important essays. Gathered here are Hoffmann's most philosophically significant and interesting essays and lectures, many of which are not widely accessible. In essays such as "Why Buy That Theory," "Nearly Circular Reasoning," "How Should Chemists Think," "The Metaphor, Unchained," "Art in Science," and "Molecular Beauty," we find the mature reflections of one of America's leading scientists. Organized under the general headings of Chemical Reasoning and Explanation, Writing and Communicating, Art and Science, Education, and Ethics, these stimulating essays provide invaluable insight into the teaching and practice of science.

When thinking about the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel's haunting words resound like an echo of the sea and its millenary history. From Prehistory until today, the Mediterranean has been setting, witness and protagonist of mythical adventures, of encounters with the Other, of battles and the rise and fall of cultures and empires, of the destinies of humans. Braudel's appeal for a long duree history of the Mediterranean challenged traditional views that often present it as a sea fragmented and divided through periods. This volume proposes a journey into the bright and dark sides of the ancient Mediterranean through the kaleidoscopic gaze of artists who from the Renaissance to the 21st century have been inspired by its myths and history. The view of those who imagined and recreated the past of the sea has largely contributed to the shaping of modern cultures which are inexorably rooted and embedded in Mediterranean traditions. The contributions look at modern visual reinterpretations of ancient myths, fiction and history and pay particular attention to the theme of sea travel and travellers, which since Homer's Odyssey has become the epitome of the discovery of new worlds, of cultural exchanges and a metaphor of personal developments and metamorphoses.

"A History of Visual Culture" is a history of ideas. The recent explosion of interest in visual culture suggests the phenomenon is very recent. But visual culture has a history. Knowledge began to be systematically grounded in observation and display from the Enlightenment. Since them, from the age of industrialization and colonialism to today's globalized world, visual culture has continued to shape our ways of thinking and of interpreting the world. Carefully structured to cover a wide history and geography, "A History of Visual Culture" is divided into themed sections: Revolt and Revolution; Science and Empiricism; Gaze and Spectacle; Acquisition, Display, and Desire; Conquest, Colonialism, and Globalization; Image and Reality; Media and Visual Technologies. Each section presents a carefully selected range of case studies from across the last 250 years, designed to illustrate how all kinds of visual media have shaped our technology, aesthetics, politics and culture.

"THE ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE AND EXPRESSIVE ARTISTRY" identifies the nine root elements common to all artistic disciplines. Whether you are a writer, visual artist, or a performer, learning these root elements will help you unlock your full artistic potential and create art that is more expressive, dramatic, and engaging.

Hundreds of relevant art examples, citations, and quotations from prominent art professionals, philosophers, and scientists inform the pages of "THE ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE AND EXPRESSIVE ARTISTRY." Authors, painters, sculptors, dancers, and artists from nearly every creative field provide knowledge and insight into many different forms of art, including visual arts, literary arts, dramatic arts, musical arts, dance arts, and various hybrid art forms.

For advanced artists and art professionals looking to bring depth and nuance to their work, "THE ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE AND EXPRESSIVE ARTISTRY" presents thirty-six new elements that branch from the nine root elements and offer additional avenues of exploration for a lifetime of artistic development. For the art critic, it also presents a fundamental basis on which to evaluate artistic work of any domain. Even the non-artist who possesses a general love for art will develop a deeper appreciation of art by understanding the nine root elements.

Martha Banta reaches across several disciplines to investigate America's early quest to shape an aesthetic equal to the nation's belief in its cultural worth. Marked by an unusually wide-ranging sweep, the book focuses on three major "testing grounds" where nineteenth-century Americans responded to Ralph Waldo Emerson's call to embrace "everything" in order to uncover the theoretical principles underlying "the idea of creation." The interactions of those who rose to this urgent challenge--artists, architects, writers, politicians, and the technocrats of scientific inquiry--brought about an engrossing tangle of achievements and failures. The first section of the book traces efforts to advance the status of the arts in the face of the aspersion that America lacked an Art Soul as deep as Europe's. Following that is a hard look at heated political debates over how to embellish the architecture of Washington, D.C., with the icons of cherished republican ideals. The concluding section probes novels in which artists' lives are portrayed and aesthetic principles tested.

The Re-enchantment of the World is a philosophical exploration of the role of art and religion as sources of meaning in an increasingly material world dominated by science. Gordon Graham takes as his starting point Max Weber's idea that contemporary Western culture is marked by a "disenchantment of the world"--the loss of spiritual value in the wake of religion's decline and the triumph of the physical and biological sciences. Relating themes in Hegel, Nietzsche, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and Gadamer to topics in contemporary philosophy of the arts, Graham explores the idea that art, now freed from its previous service to religion, has the potential to re-enchant the world. In so doing, he develops an argument that draws on the strengths of both "analytical" and "continental" traditions of philosophical reflection.
The opening chapter examines ways in which human lives can be made meaningful as a background to the debates surrounding secularization and secularism. Subsequent chapters are devoted to painting, literature, music, architecture, and festival with special attention given to Surrealism, 19th-century fiction, James Joyce, the music of J. S. Bach and the operas of Wagner. Graham concludes that that only religion properly so called can "enchant the world," and that modern art's ambition to do so fails.

Black is Beautiful identifies and explores the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life, providing a long-overdue synthesis and the first extended philosophical treatment of this crucial subject. * The first extended philosophical treatment of an important subject that has been almost entirely neglected by philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of art * Takes an important step in assembling black aesthetics as an object of philosophical study * Unites two areas of scholarship for the first time philosophical aesthetics and black cultural theory, dissolving the dilemma of either studying philosophy, or studying black expressive culture * Brings a wide range of fields into conversation with one another from visual culture studies and art history to analytic philosophy to musicology producing mutually illuminating approaches that challenge some of the basic suppositions of each * Well-balanced, up-to-date, and beautifully written as well as inventive and insightful

Design Philosophy is becoming increasingly important as the nature of design practice and design education change. "The Design Philosophy Reader" presents and explains the recent emergence of Design Philosophy, illustrates the main concerns of Design Philosophy and demonstrates why Design Philosophy has emerged in recent years, why it is needed, what it can do, how it can be done and where it is going. Comprised of an eight thematic sections, each with a short introduction, to contextualise theory and highlight its implications, and annotated bibliographies, the Reader presents both an argument for the need for Design Philosophy and an overview of its emergence. With texts ranging from writing on design that is informed by philosophy; philosophically informed writing on culture, relevant to the thinking of design; ancient and contemporary philosophy that directly, or by implication, addresses design; and exegesis and commentary on philosophical texts relevant to design.

New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics and Documentary Theory is the first book to offer a lengthy examination of the relationship between fiction and documentary from the perspective of art and poetics. The premise of the book is to propose a new category of nonfiction film that is distinguished from - as opposed to being conflated with - the documentary film in its multiple historical guises; a premise explored in case-studies of films by distinguished artists and filmmakers (Abbas Kiarostami, Ben Rivers, Chantal Akerman, Ben Russell Pat Collins and Gideon Koppel). The book builds a case for this new category of film, calling it the 'new nonfiction film,' and argues, in the process, that this kind of film works to dismantle the old distinctions between fiction and documentary film and therefore the axioms of Film and Cinema Studies as a discipline of study.

Intersections of Value investigates the universal human need for aesthetic experience. It examines three appreciative contexts where aesthetic value plays a central role: art, nature, and the everyday. However, no important appreciative context or practice is completely centered on a single value. Hence, the book explores the way the aesthetic interacts with moral, cognitive, and functional values in these contexts. The account of aesthetic appreciation is complemented by analyses of the cognitive and ethical value of art, the connection between environmental ethics and aesthetics, and the degree to which the aesthetic value of everyday artefacts derives from their basic practical functions. Robert Stecker devotes special attention to art as an appreciative context because it is an especially rich arena where different values interact. There is an important connection between artistic value and aesthetic value, but it is a mistake to reduce the former to the latter. Rather, artistic value should be seen as complex and pluralistic, composed not only of aesthetic but also ethical, cognitive, and art-historical values.

It is thought that every work of art possesses multiple interpretations, depending on each viewer. Analyzing personal assessments of artwork can help enable us to gain an understanding of one another, as well as broaden our own opinions and views. Interpretation of Visual Arts Across Societies and Political Culture: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a detailed reference source that breaks down the ways art can be evaluated, and addresses how this type of analysis can influence an array of social groups and regions. Highlighting relevant topics such as artistic impression, modern art, culture wars, and freedom of expression, this publication is an ideal resource for artists, academics, students, and researchers that are interested in expanding their knowledge of the arts.