This article mainly focuses on one of the most refined movements in world aesthetics and fine art—one that spread when Chinese Renaissance ideas arose during the Song Epoch and that was called the Intellectual Movement. The ideological sources of intellectual aesthetics are discussed—as well as the distinctive nature of its fundamental theoretical views and of its creative principles in relation to a changing historical, cultural, and ideological contexts. The greatest attention is devoted to a complex analysis of the attitudes (...) toward the artistic creation of the most typical intellectuals, Su Shi and Mi Fu; the close interaction between the principles of painting, calligraphy, and poetry is emphasized; a special attention is paid to the landscape genre and to conveying the beauty of nature. This article discusses in detail the most important components of artist’s creative potential, the opportunities to employ them during the creative act, and the influence of Confucian, Daoist, and Chan aesthetic ideas. The various external and internal factors influencing the intellectual creative process are analyzed; artist’s psychological preparation before creating is discussed along with the characteristics of his entrance into the creative process. This article highlights the meditational nature of artistic creation typical of representatives of this movement, the freedom of the spontaneous creative act, and the quest for the inner harmony of the artist’s soul with expressions of beauty in the natural world. (shrink)

From the point of view of reflected postmodernity, Ágnes Heller constructs her own discourse of aesthetics on the basis of György Lukács’s contribution. She locates aesthetics in her social philosophy, philosophy of history, and ethics, transforming aesthetics from a ‘Marxist Renaissance’ to a ‘post-Marxist’ position, and points out that the paradoxes of modern culture can be avoided by a personality that is autonomous and moral in action. The notion of the beautiful character in everyday life is a symbol of (...) the ideal type of society and of the good life in contrast to the God-forsaken world of modern dilemmas and the domination of the sublime in postmodernism. It is the expression of freedom and democracy in the contemporary age. Heller’s neo-humanist aesthetics is in essence the presentation of her cultural politics as a Great Republic. (shrink)

"The question of complex systems is relatively new for critics today. Analyzing complex systems in Renaissance texts shows that the Christian kabbalistical concept of harmonia mundi led to an aesthetical development, reflecting the worldview of harmonious parallel worlds. Failure to perceive the esoteric text uniting apparently contradicting themes has often led Renaissance scholars to elaborate a theory of the instability of atmospheres characterizing the English Baroque. This article gives an example of a complex system in Shakespeare's Antony and (...) Cleopatra revealing that the Christian kabbalistical Hercules unifies contradicting metaphors and intertexts of the play, and reintegrates this work in a form of semantic stability more in harmony with the aesthetics of its time. In the case of postmodern literature, contradictory intertexts appear as a device to deconstruct all values and logic previously established. With the study of a text structured by the optical questions around the refraction of light, this paper shows that in the case of Nabokov, the unifying system of apparently contradicting semantic systems is the underlying logic of scientific theory. In Nabokov's text, failing to perceive the fundamental intertext of scientific debate leads one to assimilate Nabokov's writing to a form of postmodern deconstruction. Both cases studied tend to show a continuity of a form of aesthetics through different epistemological eras.". (shrink)

Thee paper presents Marcilio Ficino’s aesthetics which is of a specific kind and differs from what we usually understand under the term. It expresses more than only thoughts on beauty and art, speaks about more than only the varieties of beauty, and deals with more than just the work of art—the object of art—and its relation to beauty. Traditional concepts played an important part in Ficino’s aesthetics, but alongside narrowly understood “proper” aesthetics, he offered another, very broad view of the (...) entire aesthetic sphere, which allows his entire philosophy to be viewed as aesthetically rooted: love and beauty, which are among the driving ideas of his philosophy, are also aesthetic concepts. There are two other important elements in Ficino’s philosophy, God and the world, bound by a special relation based on his concept of the circuitus spiritualis. A cardinal theme in his philosophy, the circuitus spiritualis combines God with the world and is at once beauty, love and the highest degree of happiness. (shrink)

The article investigates the peculiarities of Durer's aesthetic views in the context of Renaissance philosophy and the theory of cognition of Modern times. Its provisions are compared with fragments of texts by L.-B. Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael. The semantic interrelationships of Durer's positions with mysticism, pantheism, natural philosophy and empiricism of Modern Times are emphasized. The interrelation of the problem of knowledge with the theme of freedom and beauty is considered in detail. The authors analyze various opinions and (...) ways of comprehending the beautiful, presented in the philosophical constructions of Durer, his concept of "rational knowledge", "scientific ignorance". Special attention is paid to the boundaries of freedom in Durer's representation. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the presented concept of the evolution of A. Durer's aesthetic views helps to comprehend those contradictory trends that existed in the Renaissance itself. Thus, Durer believed that freedom conditioned by knowledge ends where attempts to transcend nature begin. A necessary condition for freedom is the understanding that the beautiful is relative. From the understanding of the relativity of the beautiful, from the concrete utopian program of its achievement, an imperative grows, meaning denial, the completion of the aesthetics of Rebirth. According to him, the artist should not limit himself to one type, but should be knowledgeable in various ways of depicting all kinds of types. In order to make such an image as is required of him. Thus, the professionalism of the artist, his experience, knowledge, recognition of the power of knowledge and, at the same time, understanding of its relativity – all this, as an achievement of the Renaissance theory of art, loses its meaning. All this is sacrificed to the tastes of employers. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 57, Issue 1, Page 46-59, March 2022.

'ith the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify, and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an original investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought. (...) 'Some of the most striking observations in this impressive book involve stepping outside the history of ideas to ground these theories in a more general social history.' -- British Journal of Aesthetics 'This brilliant, stimulating study in the history of ideas should become indispensible for renaissance art historians, and for philosophers interested in the history of the philosophy of mind and in what might be called thepre-history' of aesthetics.' -- ChoiceWith the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain. (shrink)

This collection offers a set of new readings on the history, meanings, and cultural innovations of the grotesque as defined by various current critical theories and practices. Since the grotesque frequently manifests itself as striking incongruities, ingenious hybrids, and creative deformities of nature and culture, it is profoundly implicated in early modern debates on the theological, philosophical, and ethical role of images. This consideration serves as the central focus from which the articles in the collection then move outward along different (...) lines of conceptualization, chronology, cultural relevance, place, and site. They cover a wide spectrum of artistic media, from prints to drawings, from sculptures to gardens, from paintings to stuccos. As they do this, they engage with, and bring together, theoretical perspectives from writers as diverse as Plato and Paleotti, Vitruvius and Vasari, Molanus to Montaigne. Whether travelling a short distance from Nero's Domus Aurea to Raphael's Vatican logge, or across the ocean from Italy to New Spain, this volume goes further than any previous study in defining the historic understanding of grotesque and, in so doing, providing us with a more nuanced resource for our understanding of an art form once viewed as peripheral. (shrink)

The paradigmatic moment of the opposition between the verbal and the visual arts may be seen in Lessing's treatise on the Laocoön sculptural group, written in 1766; a moment that is identified within a historical framework of modern aesthetics that begins with Lessing, goes through Pater, and then culminates in Greenberg. The author delineates the opposition as a history of diffusions, displacements and idealist reparations of class division.

Written by an eminent authority on the Renaissance, this collection of essays focuses on topics such as humanist learning, humanist moral thought, the diffusion of humanism, Platonism, music and learning during the early Renaissance, and ...

A comprehensive reassessment of the concept of mimesis in the history of ancient Greek aesthetics and philosophy of art, with particular attention to Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, and neoplatonism. There is also a wide-ranging review of arguments pro and contra the idea of artistic mimesis from the Renaissance to modern literar theory. The book challenges standard accounts in numerous respects and builds a new dialectical model with which to make sense of the entire history of mimeticist thinking in aesthetics.

With the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought.

Applying Aesthetics to Everyday Life surveys current debates in the field of everyday aesthetics, examining its history, methodology and intersections with cognate research areas. Lisa Giombini and Adrián Kvokacka bring together an international team of renowned scholars who are shaping the present and future of the discipline. They demonstrate how the historical origins of everyday aesthetics emerges across the history of Western aesthetic thought, from Renaissance thinkers to the modern German philosophers Baumgarten, Kant and Heidegger. Chapters shed light on (...) the field's methodological underpinnings, tracing its theoretical foundations back to epistemology and ethics and assess the potential of everyday aesthetics as a theoretical tool. They reveal its interdisciplinary nature and how it assists various fields of inquiry, including environmental and urban aesthetics, conservation ethics and the philosophy of art. Through fresh explorations of its origins, background and contemporary developments, this collection advances a new definition of everyday aesthetics and provides a cutting edge reflection on the world we inhabit today. (shrink)

In spite of its carefully planned - and fully justified - modesty, the title of this book might very well surprise more than one potential reader. It is not normal to see such controversial concepts as "Renaissance," "Renaissance Thought," "Spanish Renaissance," or even "Spanish Thought" freely linked together in the crowded intimacy of one single printed line. The author of these essays is painfully aware of the com plexity of the ground he has dared to cover. He (...) is also aware that all the assumptions and connotations associated with the title of this book have been the subject of great controversy among scholars of high repute who claimed (and probably had) revealing insight into human affairs and ideas. That these pages have been written at all therefore needs some justification. I am convinced that certain of the disputes among historians of ideas do not touch upon matters of substance, but rather reveal the taste and intellectual idiosyncracies of their authors. Much of the disagreement is, I think, a matter of aesthetics. Those who find special gratification in well-defined labels, clear-cut schemes, and compre hensive generalizations, can hardly bear the company of those who insist upon detail, complexity, and organic growth. The nightmarish dilemma, still unresolved, between Unity and Diversity, between the Universal and the Individual, haunts the History of Ideas. (shrink)

The paper highlights analytic aesthetics’ unacknowledged assumption that art is timeless, a view it inherited from Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume and Kant, who in turn inherited it from the Renaissance. This view, I contend, is no longer tenable because it is at odds with our experience of the art of the past. Analytic aesthetics bypasses this dilemma because it confines its attention to topics such as the nature of aesthetic pleasure, whether the appreciation of art should be disinterested (...) and so on, which it partitions off from historical change and encases in a world where time stands still and where, by consequence, the temporal nature of art, including art’s capacity to transcend time, can be ignored. (shrink)

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, (...) painting, and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey. Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art. Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

Resumen: Presentamos una recuperación del espíritu humanista en la corriente estética del arte de medios de las ciberculturas. Para mostrar el giro cultural hacia el neorrenacimiento, hacemos un recorrido por los conceptos que fundan el humanismo clásico y que aproximan el arte contemporáneo a la racionalidad tecnológica y mediática. Este artículo revisa el encuentro del hombre consigo mismo, las subjetividades del arte y la expresión en el paradigma de las nuevas tecnologías, la ciencia y la creatividad, así como la renovación (...) de una emergente epistemología visual que desplaza la concepción moderna de obra de arte, de la figura del artista y del lugar del espectador.: We present a recovery of the humanistic spirit in the current aesthetics of the media art in the cybercultures. To show the cultural shift towards Neo-Renaissance, we tour the concepts underlying the classical humanism and contemporary art closer to technologic and mediatic rationality. This article reviews the meeting of man with himself, the subjectivities of the Art and the expression in the paradigm of new technologies, science and creativity, as well as the renewal of an emerging visual epistemology that moves the modern concept of the work of art, the figure of the artist and the place of the viewer. (shrink)

This anthology of writings addresses the producers of the very forms that are judged aesthetically - students of architecture, graphic design, interior design, fashion, and industrial design. The selections are from philosophy, art history, literary criticism, architectural practice, Renaissance scholarship, critical theory, and the cognitive neurosciences. They represent varying points of view, formats, lengths and intents. Some are complete book chapters or essays, some excerpts from writings on topics seemingly distant from aesthetic theory. All offer insights into the importance (...) of considering form relative to its aesthetic qualities and influence. Each selection is accompanied by head notes that glean the core arguments, enhance understanding, and provide a critical educational tool so anyone involved in the act of design, whether for an urban cultural space or the packaging for a cosmetic product, can be informed about the aesthetic theories that consider the relationship between form and its impact on the individual and society. (shrink)

Through a series of provocative conversations, Frederick Luis Aldama and Herbert Lindenberger, who have written widely on literature, film, music, and art, locate a place for the discomforting and the often painfully unpleasant within aesthetics. The conversational format allows them to travel informally across many centuries and many art forms. They have much to tell one another about the arts since the advent of modernism soon after 1900—the nontonal music, for example, of the Second Vienna School, the chance-directed music and (...) dance of John Cage and Merce Cunningham, the in-your-faceness of such diverse visual artists as Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, and Damien Hirst. They demonstrate as well a long tradition of discomforting art stretching back many centuries, for example, in the Last Judgments of innumerable Renaissance painters, in Goya’s so-called “black” paintings, in Wagner’s Tristan chord, and in the subtexts of Shakespearean works such as King Lear and Othello. This book is addressed at once to scholars of literature, art history, musicology, and cinema. Although its conversational format eschews the standard conventions of scholarly argument, it provides original insights both into particular art forms and into individual works within these forms. Among other matters, it demonstrates how recent work in neuroscience may provide insights in the ways that consumers process difficult and discomforting works of art. The book also contributes to current aesthetic theory by charting the dialogue that goes on—especially in aesthetically challenging works—between creator, artifact, and consumer. (shrink)

In the Renaissance the beauty of a garden was for people a source of energy, it nurtured their inherent love of plant life, enchanted them and gave them a sense of pure aesthetic contentment. This fascination with nature and the values nurtured by the emerging culture of the garden also had broader reasons than just the desire for subjective experience. They can be sought in the belief that the style of an epoch is reflected not only in all the (...) forms of pure art, but also in the sphere of applied art. The aesthetic criteria which determined the early-Renaissance conception of the garden were at least twofold: first, the then-emerging culture of the garden co-formed the identity of the entire era as one of the few enclaves of a rising trend away from the classical tradition. The culture of the garden contested the adulation of the Antique that was common at the time and ruled supremely in art. (shrink)

This paper aims at presenting the work of Dutch architecture Hans van der Laan through a comparison with the Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti by stating the similarity of the role assigned to proportion in architectural design by both architects. In particular, the study will show how both Van der Laan and Alberti understood proportion and the perceptive and aesthetic values of proportioned forms as the result of an intellectual appreciation.

This book examines the revival of antique philosophy in the Renaissance as a literary preoccupation informed by wit.

This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the ‘Scientific Revolution’. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers (...) a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past. (shrink)

In this Volume, published in1998, Fifteen scholars reveal the ways of preserving, conceiving and creating beauty were as diverse as the cultural influenced at work at the time, deriving from antique, medieval and more recent literature and philosophy, and from contemporary notions of morality and courtly behaviour. Approaches include discussion of contemporary critical terms and how these determined writers' appreciation of paintings, sculpture, architecture and costume; studies of the quest to create beauty in the work of artists such as Botticeli, (...) Leonardo, Raphael, Parmigianino and Vasari; and the investigation of changes functioning of the eye and brain, or to technical innovations like those found in Venetian glass. (shrink)

Those who know anything about black history and culture probably know that aesthetics has long been a central concern for black thinkers and activists. The Harlem Renaissance, the Negritude movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the discipline of Black British cultural studies all attest to the intimate connection between black politics and questions of style, beauty, expression, and art. And the participants in these and other movements have made art and offered analyses that wrestle with clearly philosophical issues. In (...) _A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics_, I propose to identify and explore the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life. The book will consist of eight short chapters, each of which will discuss a complex of related themes and phenomena. Every chapter will begin with one or two illustrative real-world examples, and then use the complexities of these opening cases to introduce the relevant issues. Many people in several fields have explored various bits of the terrain that I’ll cover. But none has surveyed the entire terrain in the name of aesthetics, and none has conducted this survey from an explicitly philosophical perspective. Setting up the project in this way means that its main conclusions will come in two forms. One kind of conclusion will emerge from the way I frame the issues. The two most important points here are that the field of aesthetics ought to cover more than the study of western fine art, and that the field of black aesthetics allows and requires the sort of comprehensive and philosophical analysis that I’ll offer. Another set of conclusions will emerge from my treatment of the specific issues in each chapter. In each case the aim will be to defend, albeit briefly, some position on the major issues raised in each chapter. (shrink)

Norm and Form contains eleven essays, written over a period of about twenty years. It is the first of two volumes of Professor Gombrich’s essays on the Renaissance. This collection is united by the fact that all the essays deal with what the author describes as ‘the Renaissance climate of opinion about art’ and its influence on artistic practice. In other words, the essays discuss the influence of aesthetic norms on artistic forms—hence the title.

Norm and Form contains eleven essays, written over a period of about twenty years. It is the first of two volumes of Professor Gombrich’s essays on the Renaissance. This collection is united by the fact that all the essays deal with what the author describes as ‘the Renaissance climate of opinion about art’ and its influence on artistic practice. In other words, the essays discuss the influence of aesthetic norms on artistic forms—hence the title.

Abstract:It is difficult to approach a phenomenon as complex as the renaissance of pragmatism without considering the contemporary significance of pragmatist aesthetics. At the same time, however, one ought to note that pragmatist aesthetics has not yet reached its full potential. This is primarily due to the legacy of John Dewey's aesthetics. In pragmatist studies, the problematic consequences of Dewey's idealism in aesthetics have been insufficiently criticized. In order to confront this desideratum, pragmatist aesthetics ought to establish a dialogue (...) with continental aesthetics. This essay advances the argument that pragmatist aesthetics will profit from considering Nietzsche's radical insights and far-reaching suggestions. Concentrating on a comparison between Dewey and Nietzsche, the essay discusses three aspects: the relation between art and life; the question of art's noncognitivism; and the question of aesthetic form and its significance for modern art. (shrink)

The popular conception of the Renaissance as a culture devoted to order and perfection does not account for an important characteristic of Renaissance art: many of the period's major works, including those by da Vinci, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Ronsard, and Montaigne, appeared as works-in-progress, always liable to changes and additions. In Perpetual Motion, Michel Jeanneret argues for a sixteenth century swept up in change and fascinated by genesis and metamorphosis. Jeanneret begins by tracing the metamorphic sensibility in sixteenth-century science (...) and culture. Theories of creation and cosmology, of biology and geology, profoundly affected the perspectives of leading thinkers and artists on the nature of matter and form. The conception of humanity (as understood by Pico de Mirandola, Erasmus, Rabelais, and others), reflections upon history, the theory and practice of language, all led to new ideas, new genres, and a new interest in the diversity of experience. Jeanneret goes on to show that the invention of the printing press did not necessarily produce more stable literary texts than those transmitted orally or as hand-printed manuscripts—authors incorporated ideas of transformation into the process of composing and revising and encouraged creative interpretations from their readers, translators, and imitators. Extending the argument to the visual arts, Jeanneret considers da Vinci's sketches and paintings, changing depictions of the world map, the mythological sculptures in the gardens of Prince Orsini in Bomarzo, and many other Renaissance works. More than fifty illustrations supplement his analysis. (shrink)

The chapters of this book discuss in differing ways the transition in the second millennium of the Common Era from the Renaissance, through Enlightenment and subsequently, Romanticism, with a focus in Europe and the Pacific from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The book highlights salient features of each movement, using examples from the lives and works of critical exponents of each artists, poets, playwrights, philosophers, engineers, navigators, and explorers. The aim has been to impart knowledge of each period, (...) describe characteristics of the way in which the three movements transitioned from one to another through a particular thematic or topical focus, and outline central terms and concepts pertaining to them. In doing so, it is clear that the period of European and Pacific history that spanned the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries brought tremendous change on the human psyche and saw unprecedented development of industry, culture, arts, science and a flowering of the human imagination as well as a strengthening of the human capacity for reason. The Renaissance, and the transition between Enlightenment and Romanticism was indeed, a 'first-light' after the long dark ages in Europe, America and the Pacific West; it provided the impetus for the forces of change that impel progress in the present day. To make 'observations' of key figures and texts at various stages and events of the half-millennia in focus is also to reveal the perplexing change, society and human understanding of it was undergoing and to explore critical ideas and inventions of art and science that shaped the modern world. (shrink)

Karl Morrison discusses historical writing at a turning point in European culture: the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century. Why do texts considered at that time to be masterpieces seem now to be fragmentary and full of contradictions? Morrison maintains that the answer comes from ideas about art. Viewing histories as artifacts made according to the same aesthetic principles as paintings and theater, he shows that twelfth-century authors and audiences found unity not in what the reason read in a (...) text but in what the imagination read into it: they prized visual over verbal imagination and employed a circular, or nuclear, spectator-centered perspective cast aside in the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Twelfth-century writers assimilated and transformed a tradition of the conceptual unity of all the arts and attributed that unity to the fact that art both conceals and discloses. Recovering that tradition, especially the methods and motives of concealment, provides extraordinary insights into twelfth-century ideas about the kingdom of God, the status of women, and the nature of time itself. It also identifies a strain in European thought that had striking affinities to methods of perception familiar in Oriental religions and that proved to be antithetic to later humanist traditions in the West. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Everyday Aesthetics was born in the 21 st Century as a sub-discipline of Anglo-American Aesthetics and it has spread in the international debate. However, the contribute of historical perspective has not properly explored yet. Is it possible to trace the history of everyday aesthetics before the official birth of this discipline? I will try and give an affirmative answer by focusing on an exemplary category: that of the decorum. Using the history of ideas, I will analyse the Greek concept of (...) prepon and the similar Latin concepts of decorum which express the idea of ‘convenience’ or ‘fitness to purpose’ in the ethical and rhetorical sphere. Later I will analyse the evolution of the concept of decorum in the theory of Ancient and Renaissance architecture (Vitruvius, Leon Battista Alberti). My goal is to demonstrate that in Ancient and Renaissance culture decorum is a category that refers to the objects and practices of everyday life but also a principle that regulates appropriate behaviour in the sphere of good manners. Consequently, given its pervasiveness in the different areas of everyday life, the concept of decorum can be a paradigmatic example to trace the history of everyday aesthetics. (shrink)

In discussions of arts and culture, food and drink are often relegated to the realms of mere decoration or mere necessity. However, like the term taste, which begins as one of the five senses but comes to be understood as the most sweeping term for human sensibility, eating and drinking can also be fundamental aesthetic experiences. In this book, author Leonard Barkan covers millennia of Western aesthetic and cultural activity, tracing the history of eating and drinking across literature, art, philosophy, (...) statecraft, religion, and historiography. Drawing on a myriad of historical and analytic perspectives, Barkan demonstrates how the materials of the dining table, the flavor and pleasure of food, and hunger and satiety are central to life and culture. He explores what it means to "read for the food" in works of art, literature, and philosophy, and demonstrates the central role that food played in Roman civilization. He examines the deeply culinary qualities of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the relationship between food and drink and the culture of the Renaissance, and the literal acts of consumption that are endowed with sacred significance. By uncovering the gastronomic underplot in cultural and artistic works, Barkan proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the relation between sense experience and aesthetic experience, and considers what it means to move from the margins to the center in a study of culture. (shrink)

Everyday Aesthetics was born in the 21 st Century as a sub-discipline of Anglo-American Aesthetics and it has spread in the international debate. However, the contribute of historical perspective has not properly explored yet. Is it possible to trace the history of everyday aesthetics before the official birth of this discipline? I will try and give an affirmative answer by focusing on an exemplary category: that of the decorum. Using the history of ideas, I will analyse the Greek concept of (...) prepon and the similar Latin concepts of decorum which express the idea of ‘convenience’ or ‘fitness to purpose’ in the ethical and rhetorical sphere. Later I will analyse the evolution of the concept of decorum in the theory of Ancient and Renaissance architecture. My goal is to demonstrate that in Ancient and Renaissance culture decorum is a category that refers to the objects and practices of everyday life but also a principle that regulates appropriate behaviour in the sphere of good manners. Consequently, given its pervasiveness in the different areas of everyday life, the concept of decorum can be a paradigmatic example to trace the history of everyday aesthetics. (shrink)