- Written specifically for beginning students. The sometimes personal, sometimes intellectual and speculative form of the essays will be refreshing to readers accustomed to the more technical, jargon-laden approach of many academic texts. - Brings aesthetics back into the contemporary discourse about art and architecture - not in order to escape the necessity of political or historical understandings of art and architecture, but to ground such approaches in our actual lived experience of works. - This book will appeal to readers who might not have much, or any, background in the plastic arts. An important premise of this book is the idea that highly nuanced aesthetic concepts can be explored and presented in fairly simple and accessible prose and thus made accessible to this audience. - Takes an interdisciplinary approach, considering canonical works of art, but also many buildings, gardens, and works of design, arguing that well-designed functional objects can establish a special bridge between the fine arts and our everyday lives.

- Written specifically for beginning students. The sometimes personal, sometimes intellectual and speculative form of the essays will be refreshing to readers accustomed to the more technical, jargon-laden approach of many academic texts. - Brings aesthetics back into the contemporary discourse about art and architecture - not in order to escape the necessity of political or historical understandings of art and architecture, but to ground such approaches in our actual lived experience of works. - This book will appeal to readers who might not have much, or any, background in the plastic arts. An important premise of this book is the idea that highly nuanced aesthetic concepts can be explored and presented in fairly simple and accessible prose and thus made accessible to this audience. - Takes an interdisciplinary approach, considering canonical works of art, but also many buildings, gardens, and works of design, arguing that well-designed functional objects can establish a special bridge between the fine arts and our everyday lives.