For decades, aesthetics has been subjected to a variety of
critiques, often concerning its treatment of beauty or the autonomy
of art. Collectively, these complaints have generated an
anti-aesthetic stance prevalent in the contemporary art world. Yet
if we examine the motivations for these critiques, Michael Kelly
argues, we find theorists and artists hungering for a new kind of
aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral
and political demands.
Following an analysis of the work of Stanley Cavell, Arthur
Danto, Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, and other philosophers of the
1960s who made aesthetics more responsive to contemporary art,
Kelly considers Sontag's aesthetics in greater detail. In "On
Photography" (1977), she argues that a photograph of a person who
is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's
pleasure, yet she insists in "Regarding the Pain of Others" (2003)
that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political
effect precisely because of its aesthetics. Kelly considers this
dramatic change to be symptomatic of a cultural shift in our
understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. He discusses
these issues in connection with Gerhard Richter's and Doris
Salcedo's art, chosen because it is often identified with the
anti-aesthetic, even though it is clearly aesthetic. Focusing first
on Richter's Baader-Meinhof series, Kelly concludes with Salcedo's
enactments of suffering caused by social injustice. Throughout "A
Hunger for Aesthetics," he reveals the place of critique in
contemporary art, which, if we understand aesthetics as critique,
confirms that it is integral to art. Meeting the demand for
aesthetics voiced by many who participate in art, Kelly advocates
for a critical aesthetics that confirms the limitless power of
art.
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