From ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy to the Modern period, the classical ideal, with its elusive goal of perfecting nature, has held a tenacious grip on Western culture. Nowhere has its hold on the artistic imagination been more pervasive than in France between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The art and life of Raphael formed the bedrock of the classical tradition in French art, yet no comprehensive study of Raphael's impact on the art theory, criticism, and practice of classicism (...) exists. This book fills that gap. Transcending limited notions of artistic influence, the book demonstrates that Raphael had as much impact as a symbol as he did as a paradigm of the classical tradition. Focusing on French art and theory from the classical to the Romantic era, _Raphael and France_ is part of the ongoing revision of views of that period which has been taking place for the last twenty years. The book demonstrates that the shifts from classical to Rococo to neoclassical aesthetics were not as abrupt or as all-encompassing as has been assumed. By tracing the continuity and transformation of the classical ideal, with Raphael's art and image as central paradigms, Rosenberg achieves a broader, more accurate, and comprehensive view of French artistic developments during this period. Rosenberg draws on careful readings of primary sources, including the correspondence and lectures of the French Academy, some of which are unpublished; most of the major theoretical treatises by French and foreign authors; and contemporary criticism and works of art. In the process, he strikes a methodological balance between traditional art-historical approaches and insights provided by more contemporary approaches, such as semiotics and post-structuralism. As the notion of isolated genius as the prime force in art has given way to a broader, more contextual view of art and history, interest in past traditions once regarded as outmoded or dead has grown tremendously. This book makes a timely contribution to this widening area of inquiry. (shrink)

Music is an artistic cultural innovation, and therefore it may be considered as intuitive thought expressed in symbols, which can efficiently convey multiple meanings in learning, thinking, and transmission, selected for and passed on through cultural evolution. The symbolic system has personal adaptive benefits besides social ones, which should not be overlooked even if music may tend more to the latter.

Nombreux sont les artistes qui préfèrent aujourd’hui « faire le mur », c’est-à-dire sortir des lieux traditionnels de création et de monstration de l’œuvre d’art pour s’exposer à ciel ouvert. Parmi eux, certains choisissent précisément d’explorer le mur, de le travailler comme un support, de lui faire raconter des histoires, mais aussi de l’ébranler, de le percer pour tenter d’abattre – au moins symboliquement – les frontières qu’il représente.Many artists today prefer to break out of the traditional confines of creating (...) and showing works of art , to bring what they do out in the open. Some of them have even chosen to explore the idea of walls, working on walls as a medium, telling stories through them, but also attacking or piercing them as a way of breaking down – at least symbolically – the barriers they represent. (shrink)

Drawing on both anthropology and philosophy, this paper argues that the profiled form of the human hand is a universally recognizable image; one whose significance transcends temporally and geographically defined cultural divisions, and represents the earliest known artistic symbol of the human form. The unique co-occurrence of five properties in the image of the human hand and the way it is recognized support this argument, including that it is: (1) unmistakably a hand, (2) unmistakably human, (3) a universal (...) point of interface, (4) a universal referent of scale, and (5) an easy way of making a complex shape. This underappreciated aspect of hand art makes these images among the most important forms of early artistic expression encountered in the prehistoric record. (shrink)

Biennials – periodic, independent and international exhibitions surveying trends in visual art – have with startling speed become key nodes in linking production, distribution and consumption of contemporary art. Cultural production and consumption have been typically separated in research, neglecting phenomena, like biennials, sitting in between. Biennials have become, however, key sites of both the production of art’s discourse and where that discourse translates into practices of display and contexts of appreciation. They are, this article argues, key sites of art’s (...) symbolic production. Symbolic production is what makes a work, an artist, or even a genre visible and relevant, providing its sense in a system of classifications and, in an exhibition like a biennial, literally giving it a place in the scene. This article proposes a cultural analysis of biennials, focusing on the Venice Biennale, founded in 1895 and the first of the genre, through which we can trace biennials’ rise and transformations. (shrink)

Drawing upon Bernard Stiegler’s and Jacques Rancière’s conceptions of medium as a milieu this article seeks to address the question of the political aspects of the aesthetic in relation to the notion of medium. Based on the analysis of this theoretical question the article interprets and discusses artistic endeavors to re-appropriate and reconfigure conservative symbolic orders and media milieus that have become dissociated in relation to works of art by Alfredo Jaar and Thomas Hirschhorn.

Symbol formation is a term used to unify the view on the interdependencies in the research of the Hamburg University before 1933: the Philosophical Institute (William Stern, Ernst Cassirer), the Psychological Institute (Stern) with its laboratory (Heinz Werner) in cooperation with the later joining Umwelt Institut (Jakob von Uexküll). The term, definitely used by Cassirer and Werner, is associated with the personalistic approach: “Keine Gestalt ohne Gestalter” (Stern), but also covers related terms like “melody of motion” (Uexküll), and “relational (...) content” (Cassirer), discussing the term “empirical scheme” (Kant). All this scientific interest addressed personal forces to structure thresholds in equivalent stimuli. This view on intermodal formation allowed research in common aspects in the environments of animals, of children and adults to meet there the symbol formation of artists (Weimar Bauhaus) and poets like R. M. Rilke, a friend of Uexküll. (shrink)

Let me attempt a drastic summary, or symbolic reduction, of Mr. Foss's adeptly metaphorical exposition. The use of the copula is, implicit in the appositive series, will do some violence to the complexity of the argument, but since causes and parts are frowned on by the same argument, the simpler arrangement cannot be altogether out of keeping. In logical and grammatical terms, we have on two sides of a profound ledger: "symbolic reduction," the divisive subject and predicate,--and "metaphoric process," the (...) underlying and unifying energy of the proposition, the subjectum. The negations of dialectic operate to show the insufficiency of symbolic concepts and are the "door to philosophic truth." And in ontological terms, we have on the one hand number, time, space, cause and effect, coincidence and contingency; and on the other the different, the naught, the apeiron, the potential, the tension of process, freedom and necessity in metaphoric lawful unity. There are two closely similar extremes of reduction between which one locates the transcendent philosophy of metaphor: that of sensationalism, the philosophy of the brute and atomic, and that of rationalism, the philosophy of expedient action. And in more or less theological terms, we have on the one hand the environment and its complement the ego, purposive and possessive; on the other, World, the I and the Thou, prayer, sin and grace in the metaphorical unity of consciousness, the widening power of personality in intercession or metaphorical representation. On the one hand, birth and death, past and future, and a present extending ad libitum into either; on the other, the eternal present of the integrated process stretching over past and future, expressed in its purest form in art. And so in aesthetic terms: on the one hand catharsis, a rationalized mixture of the ego's pleasure and pain, asceticism and hedonism, play; on the other, drama--especially tragedy, which par excellence action--Eudaimonia, purification, artistic distance, stylization, imagination, conscience, love. On the one hand, comedy in the sense of farce, environment symbolically reduced, actions and persons according to type, the mechanism of means and ends, rules, rituals, tricks, chance, the caricature of symbolic fixation--producing laughter: on the other hand, true and great comedy, the attempt to understand life in all its contradictions, producing the smile. (shrink)

This collection brings together a selection of writings on art by the internationally acclaimed novelist, historian and critic Marina Warner. For 30 years Warner has published widely on a range of art-world subjects and objects, from contemporary installation and film works to paintings by Flemish and Italian Renaissance masters, through Victorian photography and twentieth-century political drawings and prints. Warner's extraordinary curiosity in art and culture is conveyed in writing that is at once poetic and playful, elegant and rigorous, training our (...) eyes on the smallest of details while painting a broad-brushstroke landscape of art past and present. Themes familiar to Warner's readers--myth and fantasy, psychic and sexual experience, the vast and marvelous expanse of the human imagination--are treated in the lectures and articles, stories, interviews and essays contained here, some of which are published for the first time or republished from out-of-print sources. For the first of two volumes, editor Vivian Sky Rehberg has assembled themed sections titled "Playing in the Dark," "Telling Tales" and "Phantom Technologies." Texts include interviews with Tacita Dean and Paula Rego; catalogue essays on Leonora Carrington, Henry Fuseli, Zarina Bhimji, Tony Oursler and Fischli/Weiss; articles on Tracy Emin, Marlene Dumas, Louise Bourgeois; stories for artist's books by Kiki Smith and Helen Douglas; and lectures on Francis Bacon, Hieronymous Bosch and William Kentridge. "The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought" invites us to explore new ways of seeing and engaging with the traces of our artistic heritage. Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history. Holder of 12 honorary degrees and two honorary fellowships, Warner is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. She has judged the The Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Turner Prize; she is a regular broadcaster on the BBC, and has taught and given lectures worldwide, including the National Gallery and ICA, London and the Prado in Madrid; she has delivered the Presidential Lecture at Stanford University and the Carpenter Lecture at Harvard. She has been awarded a CBE, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France and Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella di Solidareità, Italy. Warner is a winner of the Aby Warburg Prize and a Getty Scholar. Vivian Sky Rehberg is an art historian and critic based in Paris and Rotterdam. A founding editor of "Journal of Visual Culture," she is a contributing editor of "Frieze," and has written for numerous contemporary art publications. Previously Chair of the department of Critical Studies at Parsons Paris School of Art + Design, where she taught modern and contemporary art, Rehberg is currently Course Director for the Masters in Fine Art at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.. (shrink)

Criticizing Lacan and Levinas, and starting from Freud and Lacan’s denial of the womb and from the Genius-Male-Hero, who is self-creating and holds the power of creation and thus depends on the elimination of the birth-giving begetting mother, I continue my research to formulate a feminine difference that is neither dependency/disguise nor revolt and struggle in the phallic texture. Unlike other ideas concerning the difference of the feminine, the originary difference that I call matrixial supplies a measure of difference that (...) functions between a woman and a woman, and not only between a man and a woman. With the concepts of the Matrixial, metramorphosis, border-swerving, borderlinking, I outline how both male and female subjects have access to the matrixial sphere and might, as artists, become a ‘woman-artist’; how the Matrixial dissolves the concept of the unitary, separate phallic subject; and how female bodily specificity allows the conceptualization of a field of co-affectivity, shareability and transmissibility. I develop the aesthetic and psychic value of the matrixial voice and its resonance as trans-subjective, based upon a psychic Encounter-Event. Even though the matrixial difference refers both primarily and on the levels of the Imaginary and the Symbolic to the female body – womb, fetus, gestation, pregnancy provide its corpo-real basis – the Matrixial is formulated in terms of a transgressive stratum of subjectivation, where unconscious trans-subjectivity occurs due to particular links and transmission between partial-subjects and partial-objects in co-emergence and co-fading. (shrink)

Proposes a theory of fine art which will account both for the artist's ability to "originate" novel individuals and for the intelligibility of the work of fine art. The theory recommended for this purpose in the second and systematic portion of the book seeks to establish the possibility of interpreting the work of art as "a structure in which what is made, what is symbolized, and what is expressed are complementary aspects of the same object or event." The author's historic (...) insights in the book's first part make it well worth reading, but it is not clear that he offers much by way of illuminating the problem of freedom beyond saying that "if...fine art produces unique but intelligible symbols, it does so because for the individual there is a class. "An extensive bibliography is appended. --C. M. (shrink)

Part one. Brahms and Bruckner : a radical historical, art-theoretical, and artistic contrast. Aspects and issues ; Art and personality ; The conflict ; Art-theoretical controversies ; On historical classification ; Parallelisms and antitheses ; The relation to historicism ; "Heirs" of Beethoven ; Parallelisms and antitheses once more ; Richard Wagner -- Part two. The unknown Brahms. Brahms : an autonomous composer? ; "Young Kreisler" ; Schumann's essay "Neue Bahnen" : a new interpretation ; Schumann and Brahms : (...) Brahms' Schumann variations (op. 9) and Schumann's Davidsbèundlertèanze ; The piano variations op. 23 : a monument to Robert Schumann ; "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini" : on the "Mass quotation" in the Adagio of the Piano concerto op. 15 ; A special kind of father-son relationship -- Part three. The unknown Bruckner. Bruckner : "the most absolute of absolute musicians"? ; Bruckner and the program symphony ; On Bruckner exegesis : the "tone symbol of the cross" (Liszt) ; The program of the "Romantic" symphony ; The program of the Eighth symphony : musical semantics and historical contexts. (shrink)

Contrary to the general belief that modernist art and architecture reflect the technological society, Jacques Ellul maintains in his L’empire du non-sens that they are justifications for the integration of humankind into what he called the technicist complex. Modernism in art and architecture meant that every product must be qualified by a technological character. This unassailable belief exerted some far-reaching influences on symbolic thought, on artistic expression, on architectural character. If imitation and invention were the two inseparable concepts through (...) which art and architecture were produced and symbolized, it is because they operate on a certain transparency between an exemplar and a work of art. By contrast, in the mentality of technique, artistic production operates based on a certain opacity to meanings outside of itself. Imitation and invention were separated. Thus, one of the principal beliefs in modernism, that art and architecture symbolize the technological society is actually one of its weakest. In considering technology as both the symbol and the product, the artistic idea and its representation collapsed into each other. (shrink)

Proposes a theory of fine art which will account both for the artist's ability to "originate" novel individuals and for the intelligibility of the work of fine art. The theory recommended for this purpose in the second and systematic portion of the book seeks to establish the possibility of interpreting the work of art as "a structure in which what is made, what is symbolized, and what is expressed are complementary aspects of the same object or event." The author's historic (...) insights in the book's first part make it well worth reading, but it is not clear that he offers much by way of illuminating the problem of freedom beyond saying that "if...fine art produces unique but intelligible symbols, it does so because for the individual there is a class. "An extensive bibliography is appended. --C. M. (shrink)

The essay investigates the possibility of a closer connection of Husserlian phenomenology and that tradition in semiotics of art which originates mainly withSchelling and Goethe. The affinity between semiotically approached tropology and phenomenology is supported if a symbol is conceived not only as an analogy of the designated, but also as its direct grasping. This grasping shows some features of rational contemplation as understood by phenomenology. Modelling symbol as a synthetic trope enables us to proceed to the model (...) of an "artistic situation" as a square generated by a decomposition of the triangle of reference. The complexity of the processes within the "square" results from a fusion of the effects of the linear, natural circuit and the feedback, culturally historical circuit. (shrink)

Modern Thai art and its historical development are not a symbol of modernism restricted to preconceived Western notion. But modern Thai art has its own genealogy whose complexity and system of meaning signify an expression of an ethical need to embody the denseness, structure and complexity of moral experience. Believing in this conviction causes Modern Thai artists to dig deep into materiality of their medium to find forms combining of matter or signs of solid substance. Accordingly, it becomes a (...) yearning process of heroic aspiration to secure Thai artists’ identity, and, somehow, the identity and ethical structure of the nation. Therefore works of art in Thailand have been produced not for the sake of aesthetic pleasure, but for moralistic contemplation within very established institutional domains. In turn, Thai contemporary artistic movement after 1990s has been inclined to suggest some emerging alternative of creative competency quite differently from artistic progress in the prior periods. This creates a political dialogue that can be critically understood in terms of the process of cultural hybridity that gives rise to something different, something new, transitional and unrecognizable – a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation taking place - in a third space. This kind of space is politically practical because it is a productive space of the construction of culture as different, in the spirit of alteration or otherness embedded in everyday idioms of artistic practices in various fashions. From this perspective, artistic practices in this period become a new terrain of practice as a site of contestation. Furthermore, in my study, the research methodology will encourage epistemological overlapping terrains for interrogating that of foundational dualism, which implicitly underpins the study of the social constitution of reality rigidly bounded on cultural identities of Thai nation state. (shrink)

The essay investigates the possibility of a closer connection of Husserlian phenomenology and that tradition in semiotics of art which originates mainly withSchelling and Goethe. The affinity between semiotically approached tropology and phenomenology is supported if a symbol is conceived not only as an analogy of the designated, but also as its direct grasping. This grasping shows some features of rational contemplation as understood by phenomenology. Modelling symbol as a synthetic trope enables us to proceed to the model (...) of an "artistic situation" as a square generated by a decomposition of the triangle of reference. The complexity of the processes within the "square" results from a fusion of the effects of the linear, natural circuit and the feedback, culturally historical circuit. (shrink)

Ideas about heredity and evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. New findings in molecular biology challenge the gene-centered version of Darwinian theory according to which adaptation occurs only through natural selection of chance DNA variations. In Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb argue that there is more to heredity than genes. They trace four "dimensions" in evolution -- four inheritance systems that play a role in evolution: genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic. These systems, they argue, can all (...) provide variations on which natural selection can act. Evolution in Four Dimensions offers a richer, more complex view of evolution than the gene-based, one-dimensional view held by many today. The new synthesis advanced by Jablonka and Lamb makes clear that induced and acquired changes also play a role in evolution.After discussing each of the four inheritance systems in detail, Jablonka and Lamb "put Humpty Dumpty together again" by showing how all of these systems interact. They consider how each may have originated and guided evolutionary history and they discuss the social and philosophical implications of the four-dimensional view of evolution. Each chapter ends with a dialogue in which the authors engage the contrarieties of the fictional "I.M.," or Ifcha Mistabra -- Aramaic for "the opposite conjecture" -- refining their arguments against I.M.'s vigorous counterarguments. The lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's lively drawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. (shrink)

Hegel and the Symbolic Mediation of Spirit examines the role of the symbol and the sign in Hegel's philosophy. Of the relatively few commentators who have concerned themselves at all with the role of the symbol or the sign in Hegel's philosophy, most have restricted themselves to either his discussion of theoretical spirit, in which he presents symbol-making as an act of the imagination that must be surpassed by abstract thought, or to his consideration of the symbolic (...) form of art, which he describes as the mere precursor to art's ideal form. As a result, these commentators have tended to assume that Hegel's philosophy asserts a simple preference for the sign over the symbol. Hegel and the Symbolic Mediation of Spirit contests this assumption by considering these passages in light of Hegel's entire philosophy of spirit and logical method. Through close analyses of the various ways in which the symbol and the sign serve the development of theoretical and absolute spirit, this dissertation demonstrates how the symbol is of "absolute" importance to Hegel's notion of spirit as wholly self-determining. Although spirit's necessary recourse to the symbolic--to that which is ambiguous and displacing--appears to compromise its act of self-determination, this work shows how spirit's symbolic experience actually conditions and completes its self-determining activity. At the same time, besides leading to a new understanding of spirit, this comprehensive consideration of Hegel's discussions of the symbol and the symbolic leads to a unique position on some of the most widely-debated issues of Hegelian scholarship. It serves, for example, to delineate the relationship between language and thought, to illuminate the paradox of art's simultaneous absolute and derivative status, and to display philosophy's ultimate dependence upon artistic and religious conceptions of reality. (shrink)

'A mere metaphor', 'only symbolic', 'just a myth' - these tell tale phrases reveal how figurative language has been cheapened and devalued in our modern and postmodern culture. In God and the Creative Imagination, Paul Avis argues the contrary: we see that actually, metaphor, symbol and myth, are the key to a real knowledge of God and the sacred. Avis examines what he calls an alternative tradition, stemming from the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth and Keats and drawing on the (...) thought of Cleridge and Newman, and experience in both modern philosophy and science. God and the Creative Imagination intriguingly draws on a number of non-theological disciplines, from literature to philosophy of science, to show us that God is appropriately likened to an artist or poet and that the greatest truths are expressed in an imaginative form. Anyone wishing to further their understanding of God, belief and the imagination will find this an inspiring work. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the symbolics of doves on epigraphic embroidered towels (mainly known as rushnyks with inscriptions), which were massively produced by Ukrainian girls and women from the end of the nineteenth till the middle of the twentieth century. Embroidering lines from folk songs or proverbs on textile was a very popular kind of so-called written (or fixed) folklore. By combining these verbal texts with different images of pigeons, fundamentally new works were created. For some time, this phenomenon (...) was almost forgotten. However, in the course of recent years Ukrainian collectors and artists have been actively using old embroidered samples for souvenir products or stage decorations. Being popularized and updated in our time, the meaning of these embroidered birds has undergone significant changes. On specific examples, the author shows how one and the same image of pigeons acquires different, often even opposite senses depending on the context. (shrink)

This article develops a sociological analysis of the price mechanism on the market for contemporary art. On the basis of in-depth interviews with art dealers in New York and Amsterdam, I address two pricing norms: one norm inhibits art dealers from decreasing prices; the other induces them to set prices according to size. To account for these pricing norms, I argue that price setting is not just an economic but also a signifying act: despite their impersonal, businesslike connotations, actors on (...) markets manage to express a range of cognitive and cultural meanings through prices. Previously, meanings of prices have been recognized in signaling theories within economics. However, these meanings are restricted to profit opportunities. Within the humanities, by contrast, meanings of prices are restricted to contaminating or corrosive meanings. The sociological perspective I develop claims that prices, price differences, and price changes convey multiple meanings related to the reputation of artists, the social status of dealers, and the quality of the artworks that are traded. (shrink)

Milan Kundera is one of the most influential writers in contemporary world literature. In his novels, there are many symbolic metaphors related to numbers, dreams, and animals. Combing through the plots of Kundera’s novels, we can discover that among all the numbers, seven and twenty are used most frequently. These two numbers have rich metaphorical meanings. Besides, there are many other digital metaphors in Kundera’s novels, including 6, 4, etc. Apart from number symbols, Kundera has also inserted various kinds of (...) dream symbols in his artistic creation. For Kundera, dreams are not just an individual’s physical and psychological activities, but also a continuation and supplement of real life. It can be concluded that dream narration is a perfect medium for the author to express his philosophical ideology. In addition, dream symbols also serve as an important medium for Kundera to demonstrate narrative skills and present important themes. In Kundera’s novels, animal symbols are integrated with the plots, revealing the personal traits of the relevant characters, and mirroring their spiritual world at the same time. Besides, Kundera also expressed his ecological ethics through the narration of animals’ death. In conclusion, the metaphorical meanings of different symbols in Kundera’s novels play an active role in highlighting the themes, revealing the inner thoughts of the characters, showing the special features of the characters, and expressing the author’s philosophical thoughts. These symbols help Kundera to break the limitations of time and space, which has become an important part of his polyphonic art. What’s more, Kundera has also tried to expand the original metaphorical meanings of these symbols to create some new poetic meanings. (shrink)

This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move (...) towards a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move (...) towards a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

This article explores recent developments in the sociology of the arts, namely the new theoretical framework set up by the French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger in order to approach the artistic activity. It aims to show how he has shaped new tools of understanding and modelling for exploring the arts, as a particular world of action. Laying down the foundation of a conception of action related to symbolic interactionism and drawing on the economic analysis of risk and uncertainty, Menger move (...) towards a model where uncertainty, not determinism, is the default category. Uncertainty is thus the principle unifying the analysis and understanding of the particularities of the arts, and the main argument in integrating sociological and economic studies on artistic activities. Correlatively, artistic creation is qualified as an act of work, the creative work being defined as a system of action in uncertain horizon. Within this model, the artists are seen less like “rational fools” and more like Bayesian actors, adopting strategies for managing risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

In his Lectures on Fine Art (1835), Hegel emphasizes the grotesque character of Indian art. Grotesqueness results, in his view, from a contradiction between meaning and shape due to the incongruous combination of spiritual and material elements. Since Hegel's history of art is teeming with examples of inadequacy between meaning and shape, this paper aims to distinguish the grotesque from other types of artistic dissonance and to problematize Hegel's ascriptions of grotesqueness to ancient Indian art. In the first part (...) of the paper, I characterize the grotesque by the unnatural distortion of natural shapes with the purpose of achieving a direct sensuous manifestation of an indeterminate and impersonal divinity, Brahman. Such an attempt is, in Hegel's view, self-contradictory and self-defeating, leading to an exaggeration of the conflict between nature and spirit instead of the intended reconciliation between the two parts. In the second part of the paper, I compare Hegel's account of Indian art to the ‘monstrous myths’ of early modern Europe. Unlike his predecessors, Hegel legitimizes the grotesque representations of Hindu gods as endowed with profound meaning and the result of a universal human need, yet he describes them as ultimately irrational and repulsive based on a prejudiced view of the Indian people(s). In this sense, Hegel's assessment of Indian art functions as a reflection of modern European culture, its fascination and horror in the face of what Enlightenment could not entirely purge, rather than as a truthful and objective account of Indian art and culture. By questioning Hegel's characterization of Hindu iconography and mythology, this paper contributes to underexplored areas of Hegelian aesthetics, namely Hegel's account of symbolic art, especially Indian art, as well as his views on negative aesthetic experiences and values. (shrink)

This paper provides an explanation for Gadamer’s inconsistent ideas of the symbol in his works, arguing that his concept of the symbol has evolved from a less-authentic experience to an authentic experience. In Truth and Method, the symbol is defined as having an instituted meaning and substitution function, and is devalued as a pure appearance of the real, which is less authentic than the artistic presentation that occasions the coming-into-existence events of the real. Later, in “The (...) Relevance of the Beautiful”, Gadamer elevates the symbol to the same status as the work of art, and uses it to defend the work of art’s inexhaustibility and irreplaceability in communicating meanings and revealing truth. Gadamer’s changed concept of the symbol also serves to justify the universality of philosophical hermeneutics in addressing modern art-related issues, particularly those involving the speechlessness, definition, and technological reproductions of art. (shrink)

In this book, international experts from Europe and the United States address Lullism as a remarkable and distinctive method of thinking and experimenting. The origins and impact of Ramon Llull's oeuvre as a modern thinker are presented, and their interdisciplinary and intercultural implications, which continue to this day, are explored. Ars combinatoria, generative and permutative generation of texts, the epistemic and poetic power of algorithmic systems, plus the principle of unconditional dialogue between cultural groups and their individual members, are the (...) most important coordinates of this combinatorial-dialogical media and communication theory, which appeared very early in the history of science, technology, and art. It was developed in the work of Ramon Llull during the transition from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century when Arab-Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures intersected. The legacy of Lullism lives on in poetry and in the visual and electronic-based arts, as well as in research on the history of informatics, formal logic, and media archaeology. The primary idea of Llull's teachings--to enable rational and therefore trustworthy dialogue between cultures and religions through a universally valid system of symbols--is today still topical and of great relevance, especially in the tensions prevailing in globalized spaces of possibility. (shrink)

In most cultures, the Future is something we would not be expected to see we would either guess or imagine it. In the pre-Columbian cosmogony, as we move into multidimensional space, Future is behind and not ahead of our path, as it would be in almost all symbolic depictions, all over the world. No concept about or for the Future can be drafted without a rich understanding of the idea of an Origin.

The author brings a musical competence to bear upon an original treatment of music as a natural phenomenon. This attempt to treat music, not primarily as a product of artistic genius, but as a part of experience in general, involves a study of motion, time and space. The analysis of musical time and motions develops those concepts after the manner of the philosophers of process. Most interesting is the consideration of musical space in which Zuckerkandl elaborates what he alleges (...) is Heidegger's suggestion of space as "force" from "out there."--J. E. B. (shrink)

The doctrine that there are “languages of art”, that works of fine art are to be construed somehow as utterances in a language, is an attractive doctrine, judging from the steady inclination of interested theorists to revive it in one way or another. For instance, in a fairly early publication of contemporary aesthetics, T. M. Greene argued that a work of art, in expressing something about the world, could be taken as a proposition, whether or not linguistically paraphrasable. Interestingly enough, (...) Greene did not linger to articulate sufficiently clearly the sense in which works of art could be said to be propositions; though in ascribing truth to them, in a respect proper to explicit statements, it is clear that he meant what he said to be taken quite literally. Again, Susanne Langer has sustained a notably unsuccessful effort to explicate the defensible sense of her muchdebated thesis that “Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling”. In a relatively late adjustment, she concedes that “artistic import is expressed, somewhat as meaning is expressed in a genuine symbol, yet not exactly so. The analogy is strong enough to make it legitimate, even though easily misleading, to call the work of art the art symbol”. What Langer’s thesis comes to, then, is the denial that works of art may be construed literally as linguistic utterances or as symbolic utterances that behave in ways formally similar to the uses of language. The analogy between art symbols and “genuine” symbols may, of course, be conceded benignly enough, once the ulterior philosophical claim is dismissed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Setting the Stage for a Dialogue:Aesthetics in Drama and Theatre EducationAlistair Martin-Smith (bio)For us, education signifies an initiation into new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, moving. It signifies the nurture of a special kind of reflectiveness and expressiveness, a reaching out for meanings, a learning to learn.—Maxine Greene, Variations on a Blue Guitar1Examining the aesthetics of the complementary fields of educational drama and theatre is like looking through a (...) kaleidoscope. If you turn it one way, you see one colorful pattern; if you turn it the other way, you see yet another. The multiplicity of approaches to drama and theatre education, each with its own aesthetic pattern, often obscures the common ground they all share. As a result, in its unique emphasis on art, pedagogy, and society, each may have its own aesthetic pattern; yet only by looking closely at each distinct pattern can we understand more of the power of drama and theatre to develop human consciousness.In Western education, aesthetic learning seems incidental to the assessment of learning. How did this happen? For Descartes, whose Cartesian philosophy dissociated mind from body, aesthetic feelings are irrational, since they originate in the body's senses rather than in the mind. Theories of education focused on the primacy of cognition, denying feelings in the erroneous belief that learning is independent of its context. Conversely, aesthetic education is concerned with the quality of experience, how it is felt. Dewey believed that "learning by doing" was a "consummatory" experience for the learner; it was dramatic, dialogic, and felt. The confusion between subjective and objective aspects of the aesthetic experience makes aesthetic evaluation difficult, and this may be why cognitively dominated education has steered clear of aesthetics. Richard Courtney recognized that there is an important distinction to be made between aesthetic symbols and [End Page 3] artistic symbols: "Aesthetic symbols emphasize feeling; artistic symbols are context-dependent—they only have meaning in the context of art."2David Best argues that "the failure to recognise the distinction between the aesthetic and the artistic contributes largely to the trivialisation of the potential of the arts in education."3 He points out that "... it may often be necessary to take into account, at least implicitly, wider factors... in order to judge whether [an] appraisal was aesthetic or artistic."4 What are these wider factors, and how can audiences attend to them? As Christopher Havell reminds us,There is increasing pressure on drama teachers to use their teaching expertise purely for the development of social and life-skills training. This instrumental work may, at times, closely resemble the drama process, but the intentions will be confined to an experience that simulates or resembles those "real-life situations" that it is expected students will encounter. The aesthetic search for the "universal" at the centre of the particular will not be a relevant aim in any vocational training! One can only hope that the emerging interest in the aesthetic nature of drama and its place in a coherent arts education will encourage teachers and students to reflect on the final inadequacy of any instrumental view.5I believe that it is through the power of aesthetic education that audiences for drama and theatre will come to appreciate the artistic.In Caravaggio's painting David with the Head of Goliath (1606-10), the viewer is confronted with three time periods simultaneously. In his depiction of David, Caravaggio paints the shepherd-king of the Old Testament who prefigures Christ, but he is also modeled on Caravaggio's lover. David holds the severed head of Goliath down low in such a way as to engage the private viewer rather than to evoke the public spectacle.6 As I understood that the head of Goliath was actually a self-portrait of the painter not long before his death, I experienced a moment of instantaneity that shocked me into a new awareness of my own mortality, my relation to life and death. As it is Caravaggio's last journey, so is it our own. While Caravaggio's penultimate painting is recognized in terms of its artistic achievement, the moment of self-recognition on the part of the... (shrink)

In her new book, Mrs. Langer has boldly chosen to orient aesthetics toward a reconsideration of artistic creation and the "making of the artistic symbol." Philosophy of art is impossible, she contends, until we return to the source of art, the artist at work in his studio; and deal patiently and realistically with his problems and achievements. Only then will we be able to understand, through clarifications of the concepts involved in art creation--"expression," "creation," "import," "vitality," "organic (...) form," "symbol"--the nature of a work of art and its relation to the beholder. (shrink)

In nine essays the author explores the meaning of artistic symbols from prehistory to the present day.

This essay explores how Schelling’s Philosophy of Art promotes a theory of the imagination (Einbildungskraft) correlative to that reason informing his Philosophy of Identity. Against the background of Kant’s and Fichte’s transcendental-philosophical notion of the imagination, it shows how Schelling conceives the absolute identity of the ideal and the real in terms of its expression in and asthe imagination. As a name for the self-constitution of absolute identity, the term “Einbildungskraft” denotes for Schelling not merely the formative activity of picturing, (...) but instead the generative dynamic of imprinting, and this as the singular operation of unification in the sense of genuinely making the disparate—the finite and the infinite—into one. How this theory involves a view of artistic symbols as instantiating pure unity is discussed with reference to Schelling’s theory of tragedy as well as Hegel’s criticism of this conception. (shrink)

This work is devoted to the terracotta army of Qin Shihuang and its reflection in the works of modern Chinese masters of watercolor. The article consists of three parts. The first part analyzes the genesis and history of Qin Shihuang's clay army. In the second, the terracotta army is regarded as a cultural and artistic symbol of China, which stimulated humanitarian contacts between Russia and China and contributed to mutual understanding between the two peoples. In the third part, (...) through the prism of the artistic experience and creative process of three watercolor artists, the current state of research of watercolor creativity on the theme of the terracotta army is analyzed. The author's special contribution to the development of the problem is to determine the connection between the ancient cultural heritage of China and the nature of its interpretation in the works of modern watercolor artists. The novelty of the study can be recognized as the introduction into the scientific circulation of Russian art history of the names of Chinese artists and their paintings dedicated to the terracotta army of Emperor Qin Shihuang. Within the framework of the work, an appeal is made to the issue of Chinese-Russian cultural cooperation, the development of which is realized through touching this most representative monument of antiquity. Through the art criticism analysis of watercolor paintings by Chinese masters — Huang Zhongyang, Lin Shaolin, Zuo Xinmin — approaches to the reflection of this historical monument in the works of modern masters are determined, the connection between ancient and modern, traditional and innovative in their paintings is established. (shrink)

RESUMENEl artículo propone una definición esencial del arte como símbolo. Plantea que la filosofía del arte no puede renunciar a preguntarse qué es lo que hace que algo sea arte, ni contentarse con una respuesta de tipo externalista. Discute en esa línea la definición histórica de N. Carroll. Formula unas condiciones básicas del simbolismo y busca caracterizar lo que hay de específico en el símbolo artístico, lo que lo diferencia de los otros símbolos. Se enfrenta a las críticas al simbolismo (...) que actualmente se dan en ciertas teorías y prácticas artísticas.PALABRAS CLAVEDEFINICIÓN ESENCIALISTA. DEFINICIÓN HISTÓRICA. SIMBOLISMO. REPRESENTACIÓN.ABSTRACTThis article proposes an essential definition of art as symbol. The autor holds that the philosophy of art cannot give up the question about what is it that determines that something is to be considered as art and neither can be satisfied with an answer of an externalist type. This is why the historic definition of N.Caroll is discussed. The author establishes the basic conditions of symbolism and seeks to characterize the specific traits of the artistic symbol, which differentiates it from the other symbols. He faces the critics to symbolism which nowadays can be found in certain theories and artistic practices.KEY WORDSESSENTIALIST DEFINITION, HISTORIC DEFINITION, SYMBOLISM, REPRESENTATION. (shrink)

This essay asks whether there is a relation between action-serving and meaning-serving intentions. The idea that the intentions involved in meaning and action are nominally designated alike as intentionalities does not guarantee any special logical or conceptual connections between the intentionality of referential thoughts and thought-expressive speech acts with the intentionality of doing. The latter category is typified by overt physical actions in order to communicate by engaging in speech acts, but also includes at the origin of all artistic (...) and symbolic expression such cerebral and linguistic doings as thinking propositional thoughts. There are exactly four possibilities by which meaning and action intentionalities might be related to be systematically investigated. Meaning-serving and action-serving intentionalities, topologically speaking, might exclude one another, partially overlap with one another, or subsume one in the other or the other in the one. The theoretical separation of the two ostensible categories of intendings is criticized, as is their partial overlap, in light of the proposal that thinking and artistic and symbolic expression are activities that favor the inclusion of paradigm meaning-serving intentions as among a larger domain of action-serving intentions. The only remaining alternative is then developed, of including action-serving intentions reductively in meaning-serving intentions, and is defended as offering in an unexpected way the most cogent universal reductive ontology in which the intentionality of doing generally relates to the specific intentionality of referring in thought to the objects of predications, and of its artistic and symbolic expression. (shrink)

This book seeks to fill a void in contemporary aesthetics scholarship by considering the cognitive features that make the aesthetic and artistic worthy of philosophical study. Aesthetic cognition has been largely abandoned by analytical philosophy, which instead tends to focus its attention on the ‘non-exhibited’ properties of artwork or issues concerning semantic and syntactic structure. The Cognitive Basis of Aesthetics innovatively seeks to correct the marginalization of aesthetics in analytical philosophy by reinterpreting aesthetic cognition through an integration of Ernst (...) Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms with Paul Crowther’s theory of imagination and philosophy of art. This integration has three important outcomes: 1) it explains why the aesthetic and artistic constitute a unique form of knowledge; 2) it shows the role this plays in the formation of aesthetics as a discipline; and 3) it describes why aesthetic cognition is so deeply engaging. This book’s unique theoretical approach engages with important works of visual, conceptual, and digital art, as well as literature, music, and theatre. (shrink)

Artistic and scientific activities pertain to the world of ‘vocation’, which demonstrates a close relationship with recognition issues. Referring to recent trends in French, German and American sociology and political philosophy, this article addresses both the status of recognition in present-day sociology and the necessity of prizes in vocational activities. Grounded on two empirical surveys about literary and scientific prizes, it displays the various axiological problems raised by such a mode of recognition, as the ‘felicity conditions’ of this mode (...) of recognition have to ensure a feeling of justice and avoid envious reactions. On a more theoretical ground, the article aims to demonstrate the necessity for sociology to shift, first, from material to ‘symbolic’ or, rather, ‘intangible’ outcomes; second, from a concern with power and domination to a concern with interdependency; and third, from recognition conceived as egalitarian respect to recognition conceived as un-egalitarian esteem. (shrink)

The philosophical inheritance of Mykola Shlemkevich remains small worked out for today. In part because his works have been scattered, published in various publications under pseudonyms, in part, because of the fact that he has long been is attached the label "nationalist" and sometimes "nationalist fascist. Mykola`s Shlemkevich works fold the philosophical system and it is an obvious fact. They are incorporated by structural and methodological community. It is important to consider the Shlemkevych`s philosophical system it in its fullness and (...) integrity, as in his writings thinker pointed not only to the problems faced by Ukrainian, but also on ways to overcome them. Mykola Shlemkevich always marked practical character of philosophy, he considered that philosophy must be added to practice. He also mentioned this in his work "The essence of philosophy", for which in 1926 got in the Viennese university rank of Ph.D. Slemkevich defines philosophy as the inner essence symbolic systems of science, religion, art, culture. He calls philosophy "the queen of sciences." "Lost Ukrainian man" published in New York in 1954 is a perfect example of deep understanding of the social, political, cultural and philosophical problems faced man of modern times. Thinker notes that everyone naturally seeks happiness, but Ukrainians believe that happiness is oblivion. Shlemkevich emphasizes that it is not true.He notes that there is no oblivion for Ukrainians. He sees solution in leadingout of all complexes on a surface. Solving these problems is the responsibility of the elite, because that philosophers, politicians and artists should be support for people. Also a philosopher investigates the question of the political system that would answer the necessities of Ukrainians most. In his "Ukrainian synthesis or Ukrainian civil war" published in 1946 philosopher considers the title of "creative forces". They are: Ukrainian autocracy - the monarchy, Ukrainian democracy - democracy and the Ukrainian leadership. Contrary to the creative forces are the forces of anarchy. Creative forces can not overcome force of anarchy because operate separately. Also creative forces argue among themselves. One`s of creative forces victory is undesirable because will result in totalitarianism, and it unusual to Ukrainians. Thus a thinker talks about a necessity to find a consensus, because only together they will be able to bringUkraineover to prosperity. (shrink)