Philosophy of Visual Art

periphery looks at you with hate. This phrase in red neon struck the visitors of Landscapes, an exhibition by Domenico Antonio Mancini in the Lia Rumma Gallery in Naples, in 2019. It was not addressed to the public but to the nineteenth-century pictorial views relocated in the last room of the exhibition, as if repainted by the immaterial vandalism of the colored light. The exhibition’s theme was the visibility of contemporary suburban environments, now accessible through Google street view visualizations. Mancini’s (...) non-representational Landscapes are Google addresses, not aesthetically appreciable but pragmatically challenging: the visitor must type on a touch screen to access to the outskirts of Naples, Palermo, Catania, Rome and Milan. The words at the end of the exhibition almost literally replicated a black graffiti drawn on Palazzo Missori in Milan. Are these relocation and remediation just about artification? What happens when, browsing Google street view, I take a close look at that graffiti recalling the political protests during the streets the 1960s? The deictic transitability in space and time of the hypermediated image can activate a fortuitous narrative and an open interpretation by looking back on the present as if it were past. Even a digital landscape is a moral landscape like that of public art for Danto, with a «internal beauty» whose meaning is not already embodied in architectural and artistic media but accessible and shareable through our portable devices. (shrink)

How to participate proactively in a process of change and transformation, to shape our path within an uncertain future? With this publication, the State Of The Art Network marks a waypost on a journey which started in 2018, when like-minded Nordic and Baltic art organisations and professionals initiated this network as a multidisciplinary collaboration facing the Anthropocene. Over five years, ten organisations and around 80 practitioners from different disciplines, like the arts, natural sciences and humanities came together, online and in (...) person, for workshops, seminars and discussions. The aim was to find ways to create resilience and concrete actions on how to live through the change in culture, economy and the environment and to find concrete, hands-on methods to deal with the Anthropocene and the environmental crisis. As an outcome of this process, this publication takes a closer look at how we as practising artists, researchers and cultural actors can create elements for critical thinking and doing which can assist us in navigating the complexities of the present. -/- Edited for the State Of The Art Network by Erich Berger, Mari Keski-Korsu, Marietta Radomska and Line Thastum. -/- Produced and published by Bioart Society 2023. (shrink)

This article explores the work and thought of French pedagogue Fernand Deligny (1913-1996), focusing on his last project commonly referred to as the Tentative des Cévennes, developed between 1967-1996. From this experience that Deligny forged together with his collaborators, the article exposes the generation of a particular form of knowledge, a philosophy subordinated to a gestural solidarity network formed by human and non-human bodies, environments and situations, minimal gestures, everyday actions, and contingent events, visible only through a series of aesthetic (...) devices that were developed during this period: writings, traces, maps, films, interviews, and wanderings. This gestural philosophy would be linked to a series of actions that would constitute an organic system in its apparent material dispersion. The article is organized through a biographical and historical contextualization, to later deploy the theoretical framework of the research and a conclusion. (shrink)

القراءة أكبر نعمة أنعم الله بها على عباده؛ إذ تمثل أول كلمة نزلت على حبيبنا المصطفى صلى الله عليه وسلم، وهي جملةٌ وجيزةٌ في لفظها، فسيحةٌ في مفهومها، قوله تعالى: ﴿ اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ ﴾ [العلق:1].بالإضافة إلى أن القراءة قناة مهمة للتواصل بين الأفراد والمجتمعات؛ فهي من العمليات الميتودولوجيا (المنهجية والمهارية)، التي تمكِّن الفرد من الحصول على المعرفة، كما تُسهِم في بناء شخصيته، وتدعيمِ الثقة فيه، وتنميته. كما أن القراءة أداة ووسيلة علاجية فعَّالة، يستخدمها الطبيب والاختصاصي النفسي والاجتماعي (...) فيما يعرف بالبيبليوتيرابيا (العلاج بالقراءة). القراءة عملية نفسية عقلية تتضمن القدرةَ على تحويل الرموز المكتوبة إلى رموز منطوقة، وتُعَد القراءة واحدة من العمليات النفسية الأساسية التي تتطلب عددًا من العمليات العقلية اللازمة لظهورها لدى الأطفال العاديين، كما تُعَد القراءة إحدى المهارات الأساسية المكوِّنة للبُعد المعرفي بالنسبة للفرد، وهدفًا رئيسًا من أهداف المدرسة الابتدائية، وطريقة رئيسة من طرق الوصول إلى المعرفة ولعل هذا ما يؤكده أحد الباحثين بقوله: "القراءة ممارَسة ثقافية واجتماعية، وهي ظاهرةٌ صحية في تاريخ الشعوب والأمم، إنها عادةٌ فردية لا تقبَل الوراثة، فليس حتمًا أن تنجب العائلةُ القارئة بكثرة أطفالاً قارئين بكثرة، والعكس صحيح؛ ذلك أن الدراساتِ والواقع يضعان الباحث أمام مفارقةٍ، هي أن العديدَ من الفقراء ينجبون أولادًا لديهم لذَّة القراءة، ويظلون مشدودين للكتاب والمجلة والجريدة والوسائل السمعية - البصرية، متجاوزين عدم توفر الإمكانيات المادية، وتكون النتيجة هي أنهم يحققون أهدافَهم، ويتسلَّقون السلالمَ الاجتماعية. (shrink)

In my paper, I establish an Ingardenian phenomenological ontology of virtualized ficta, i.e., fictional entities introduced to virtual gaming. The first Section of my paper provides an ontology of virtualized ficta, focusing primarily on their ‘‘existential moments’’. But in order to have a firm grasp of the ontological aspects grounding the virtual work, it’s important to engage its strata. This is what I attempt to do in Section 1.2. Virtualized ficta’s intentional dependencies are strongly manifest in what I call the (...) ‘‘strata of the virtual work’’. That is, I repurpose Ingarden’s strata of the literary work, the picture, and the film to showcase that virtualized ficta, from the bottom up (i.e., from their pure ontology to aesthetics) are purely intentional entities. In short, I argue for a purely intentional account of virtualized ficta as ficta-made-virtualia, whose ontological status is determined by the creative acts of game developers and gamers. (shrink)

Departing from the intention to explore Frank Gehry’s drawings serving to their own designer to grasp ideas during the process of their genesis, the article examines Frank Gehry’s concern about the revelation of the first gestural drawings and all the sketches and working models concerning the evolution of his projects, and his intention to capture the successive transformation and progressive concretisation of architectural concepts. The article also compares Gehry’s design process with that of Enric Miralles, Alvar Aalto, Bernard Tschumi, and (...) Le Corbusier. It sheds light on Miralles, Aalto, Le Corbusier and Gehry’s interest in a holistic understanding of all the parts of an architectural project, which is expressed through their tendency to draw the different sketches concerning the same project on the same sheet of paper. At the core of Gehry’s design approach is the osmosis of function and morphology. This aspect of his design vision could be compared to Alvar Aalto’s design process. At the core of the article are the distinction between communication drawings and conceptual drawings, and Gehry’s concern about achieving an osmosis between function and morphology. The article also investigates Gehry’s use of uninterrupted self-twisting line in his sketches, exploring his intention to enhance a straightforward relationship between the gesture and the decision-making regarding the form of the building. (shrink)

The article investigates how the use of extended reality technologies and interactive digital interfaces have affected the design of exhibition spaces. Its main objective is to shed light on how these technologies have influenced the ways in which immersive art installations are conceived and experienced. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of interactive technologies on how visitors experience exhibition spaces. The article examines an ensemble of immersive art cases, paying special attention to the distinction between immersion and interactivity. Two (...) concepts that are pivotal for understanding the transformations concerning the subjectivity of the exhibition visitor those of the “imagineer” and the “ultra-technologist”, which are analysed in the article. The intention is to render explicit how extended reality technologies have contributed to the design of immersive experiences, significantly influencing the interrelations between the technical, aesthetic and institutional aspects concerning exhibition design and the methods of dissemination of art. (shrink)

Illuminated Mirrors and “No Rights” concerns the peregrinations of El Greco, from Crete to Spain, and various influences acquired along the way. The primary argument is that El Greco suffered a double exile: 1/ voluntary exile from Crete; and 2/ involuntary exile from Renaissance art and its humanist biases. As such, much of the art-historical record is a confused and often-doctored record of El Greco’s manufactured persona—i.e., he is not assimilable to the usual categories of art and art history.

The employment of digital technology in recent instances of artwork replication raises important questions about the perceptual and ontological distinction between original and copy, for the latter is purported to be even more authentic than an original that has undergone alterations. Such instances challenge not only Benjamin’s claim about the loss of aura but also Goodman’s distinction between autographic and allographic arts. The article proposes to rethink the original/copy dualism from the perspective of the cult image. In the devotional traditions (...) of Graeco-Roman polytheism as well as Christianity and Buddhism, cult images are approached not as representations, but as animated entities endowed with thaumaturgic powers that can be ritually transferred onto copies. From this perspective, replication is not about reproducing more or less faithfully the original, but engendering a double as effective as the original. Finally, the bearing of this perspective on contemporary works of art is considered. (shrink)

L’article examine les « compositions » de Tchernikhov en liant sa recherche constante de nouvelles formes à la capacité de convertir les « fantaisies » en représentations. Contrairement à Aristote, qui conçoit la mimèsis comme l’équivalent de l’entreprise artistique, Tchernikhov perçoit ses « compositions » comme des actes de dépassement de la mimèsis par la phantasia. Les illustrations visionnaires de ses Fantaisies architecturales expriment son intention de remplacer les mots par des images graphiques. Son approche est fondée sur la croyance (...) que la puissance de l’imagination permet à la langue graphique, qui est par ailleurs internationale, de fonctionner comme un précurseur du progrès. L’objectif de l’article est d’élucider comment Tchernikhov traite la tension entre imagination et réalité et d’examiner dans quelle mesure sa production graphique parvient à surmonter la mimèsis à travers la phantasia. La réponse à ces questions pourrait nous aider à expliquer pourquoi Tchernikhov a souvent été jugé comme inclassable et à évaluer à quel point sa démarche reflète les polarités entre les rationalistes et les constructivistes. L’opposition entre « composition » et « construction » permet de mieux comprendre le positionnement à la fois singulier et fondamental de Tchernikov par rapport au constructivisme. L’article met en évidence le fait que le rôle essentiel de la phantasia pour Tchernikhov découle de la valorisation de la « composition » plutôt que la « construction ». (shrink)

We write this review not having been able to visit the exhibition. At first, we thought that would preclude us from being reviewers, but it turns out that there.

There is broad agreement in aesthetics that some artworks are greater than others despite bearing equivalent (or lesser) aesthetic value. One explanation of this difference in artistic value is that creation of the greater artwork represents a greater achievement. The aim of this article is to refine this explanation and to defend it against recent criticisms. First, I present a prima facie case in favor of the achievement explanation. Second, I draw on the history of photography to motivate three objections (...) to it: namely, that it wrongly excludes (1) lucky, (2) easy, and (3) failed creations from being artistically great. Third, I present my refined version of the achievement explanation and show how it avoids these objections. On my view, an artistic achievement consists in creating a work it would have been especially hard for comparable artists to create. Finally, I raise and address several additional objections. In responding to these objections, I argue, among other things, that my explanation of artistic value enhances our understanding of good-bad art: specifically, it allows us to see how good-bad art is artistically great despite being aesthetically flawed. (shrink)

Why is painting unique among the visual arts? And why in the late sixteenth century did Cesare Ripa in his landmark Iconologia choose to create a distinctly female template for the act of painting? Moreover, why would a woman--Artemisia Gentileschi, among others--ever choose to paint herself as La Pittura (The Allegory of Painting)? This essay offers the thoughts of a painter-philosopher on the historic significance of the choice of topic, iconography, and gender of the most recognized allegory of Painting, namely (...) the original textual description of the Italian writer Cesare Ripa on Pittura (1593) (The Allegory of Painting) which was later illustrated by various artists (1603 and following). (shrink)

This chapter presents the formalist account of the moral status of an artwork as an aesthetically significant and autonomous form, with due emphasis on the Anglo-American art-for-art’s-sake aesthetic, as it developed between 1870 and 1960. The author shows that the formalist art-is-above-morals approach is a substantive moral stance in itself. Formalist aesthetics is usually presented in the literature as evincing a purist indifference to ethics, construing moral properties as external to art, in opposition to the internal pure properties of art’s (...) composition. The chapter demonstrates that this is a misrepresentation of the complex formalist prescriptive idea of the relations between art and ethics. Through its autonomy and imperviousness to external co-opting—which is accomplished by due focus on aesthetic form—art on the formalist account is held to be a paradigm of the liberalist principles of individual freedom and self-fulfillment, thus an inherent means to the good. (shrink)

The recent wave of generative AI (GAI) systems like Stable Diffusion that can produce images from human prompts raises controversial issues about creatorship, originality, creativity and copyright. This paper focuses on creatorship: who creates and should be credited with the outputs made with the help of GAI? Existing views on creatorship are mixed: some insist that GAI systems are mere tools, and human prompters are creators proper; others are more open to acknowledging more significant roles for GAI, but most conceive (...) of creatorship in an all-or-nothing fashion. We develop a novel view, called CCC (collective-centered creation), that improves on these existing positions. On CCC, GAI outputs are created by collectives in the first instance. Claims to creatorship come in degrees and depend on the nature and significance of individual contributions made by the various agents and entities involved, including users, GAI systems, developers, producers of training data and others. Importantly, CCC maintains that GAI systems can sometimes be part of a co-creating collective. We detail how CCC can advance existing debates and resolve controversies around creatorship involving GAI. (shrink)

In the current American iconoclash, certain monuments are subject to vandalism and municipal removal from their pedestals. Phrases such as “the erasure of history” and “damnatio memoriae” point to concerns that iconoclasm is an attempt to censor history or even remove certain individuals from public memory altogether. Because these phrases beckon the past, this wave of iconoclasm calls for a close examination of previous image-breaking to establish motives. Drawing first from art history, we analyze Byzantine iconoclasm and anxieties over the (...) nature of icons’ power, before contextualizing these findings within image destruction from the Paleolithic to the present day. Each comparison is suggestive of an enduring aesthetic principle: that what appears inanimate is not always inert. Next, drawing from cultural anthropology, we argue that principles of sympathetic magic are at the heart of contemporary iconoclasms, but not in the way media outlets often suggest. Instead, the fear of history’s erasure betrays a deeply rooted equivalence between the representation and the represented. In perceiving their fates as shared, sympathetic magic is seen to persist in the way humans create, interpret, and desecrate images. We conclude with the speculative realist proposition that iconoclasm can produce new, original artworks, which carries implications for the autonomy of art and its distribution between artist and artwork. (shrink)

Activist artists often face a difficult question: is striving to change the world undermined when pursued through difficult and experimental artistic means? Looking closely at Adrian Piper's 'Four Intruders plus Alarm Systems' (1980), I will consider why this is an important concern for activist art, and assess three different responses in relation to Piper’s work. What I call the conciliatory stance recommends that when activist artists encounter misunderstanding, they should downplay their experimental artistry in favor of fitting their work to (...) their audience's appreciative capacities. What I call the steadfast stance recommends that activist artists have reason to use their privilege of artistic exceptionalism to challenge their audience's expectations, even if this leads to misunderstanding. I claim that a middle position that I call liberal conciliation best balances the demands for actual change placed on activism and the experimental means that artists bring to activism. (shrink)

This first-ever article of cultural criticism on the black female body was to prove germinal and continues to be widely referenced in scholarly and other works. Occasionally, controversial, it has been frequently anthologized, most recently in Amelia Jones, ed., The Feminism and Visual Cultural Reader, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2010). The first part of this article--delivered in a panel of the College Art Association early in 1992--was published in Afterimage 20:1 (Summer 1992). The revised version, including "Postscript," originally appeared in the (...) work cited here: Freueh, Langer and Raven, eds., New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (1994). (shrink)

This revelatory study investigates how changing modes of representing the black female figure were foundational to the development of modern art. Posing Modernity examines the legacy of Edouard Manet's Olympia (1863), arguing that this radical painting marked a fitfully evolving shift toward modernist portrayals of the black figure as an active participant in everyday life rather than as an exotic "other." Denise Murrell explores the little-known interfaces between the avant-gardists of nineteenth-century Paris and the post-abolition community of free black Parisians. (...) She traces the impact of Manet's reconsideration of the black model into the twentieth century and across the Atlantic, where Henri Matisse visited Harlem jazz clubs and later produced transformative portraits of black dancers as icons of modern beauty. These and other works by the artist are set in dialogue with the urbane "New Negro" portraiture style with which Harlem Renaissance artists including Charles Alston and Laura Wheeler Waring defied racial stereotypes. The book concludes with a look at how Manet's and Matisse's depictions influenced Romare Bearden and continue to reverberate in the work of such global contemporary artists as Faith Ringgold, Aime Mpane, Maud Sulter, and Mickalene thomas, who draw on art history to explore its multiple voices. Featuring over 175 illustrations and profiles of several models, Posing Modernity illuminates long-obscured figures and proposes that a history of modernism cannot be complete until it examines the vital role of the black female muse within it. Published in association with the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York. Exhibition schedule: Wallach Art Gallery (10/24/2018-02/1019); Musee d'Orsay (3/26/2019-07/14/2019). (shrink)

"Presence" is a word that can function both as a descriptor of the uniqueness, identity, and strength of an(y) identifiable, individual work of art (as used in the phrase, its "artistic presence") and, more specifically, and with a capital P, the name of a year-long exhibit consisting of a series of artworks in a uniquely created architectural environment with the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. In addition, as well-known art theorist Donald Preziosi points out in his 2004 essay ["Art (...) and the Contemplation off Presence"] included in this publication, the term "presence" may also refer to the character of the artist that is embodied _in_ a physical work of art, whereby the _form_ of the work is "in some way a _figure_ of its truth--the truth or essence or being of the artist..." Indeed I would suggest an even stronger defense of the artist, what I call the Intentionality Thesis, which states: _The most important spokesperson capable of elucidating the meaning of a work of art is the artist_. The Intentionality Thesis is a substantive component of my recommendation for art viewers to practice what I call "contemplative contextual criticism" (CCC, for short). Such an emphasis on intentionality is often fraught with controversy, but the Intentionality Thesis can function (within the broader framework of one's CCC) as a fruitful interpretive tool that optimizes our actual experiences of art. -/- CCC is the deliberate cognitive analysis--the act of contemplation--of a work of art that enhances the potential of artistic presence; both of the work itself and the artist who created it. It is the process of studying a work of art in its full context... (shrink)

The idea of beauty in the West has often been connected with the idea of woman, whose beauty has been celebrated in sculptures of the nude since classical Greece and in paintings since the sixteenth century. the nude is not a genre in either traditional or contemporary Chinese art, however, and although there has been nakedness in the representations of the body in the contemporary art of China, its presence is marked by two characteristics that distance the Chinese naked body (...) from the Western nude. (shrink)

The global economy has an impact on female beauty today, regardless of the multicultural and historical factors in its formation and construction, resulting in monolithic crazes in women's fashion and appearance. but female beauty in china has been greatly contested with China's turbulent modern history, and this contestation deserves serious consideration, together with the politics by which the Chinese state apparatus has promoted and regulated female beauty. I argue that certain factors have been constant in contemporary discourses of female beauty. (...) Ideal bodies, in all their specifics, are defined by physical standards very few women can attain. These standards are accompanied by demeaning characterizations of women who fail to achieve them, and who are therefore destined to be discontent. It is now necessary for feminist theorists to examine the social and cultural roles of the body in terms of gender, power, the established patriarchy, and its oppression of women. (shrink)

"Orientalism" is a term made prominent by critic Edward Said in his 1978 book of that title. . . . Said specifically used the term to designate a field of self-constituted experts who proposed to explain the Orient to the West. . . . This essay explores the visual artwork of Soody Sharifi who left Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but returns to photograph women and girls. After a trip back to Iran in 1999, she began a self-portrait (...) series exploring how she felt about being a Muslim woman in a hijab for the first time. (shrink)

Beauty, disability, and gender crossing: The first two, though provocative, are not an altogether unexpected pair. Disability can be an object of beauty, as Anita Silvers has shown, just as it can be fetishized. Yet one more often thinks of beauty and disability as opposites. But what is gender crossing doing in this mix? Sometimes, apparently, when beauty is conjugated with disability in an atmosphere of glamour and celebrity, games with gender result. this is certainly the case with the representation (...) of the Mexican female artist Frida Kahlo, especially as seen in a book of paper dolls for children. (shrink)

In a season rife with related events [i.e., 2007], the Brooklyn Museum's "Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art" is an eagerly anticipated component of a nationwide reevaluation of feminist art. It takes its place alongside the presentation of "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the installation of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (1974-79) and opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, for which (...) "Global Feminisms" acted as the opening salvo; there are also numerous panels, lectures, and other activities around the country. . . . Altogether there are almost ninety artists in the show, hailing from fifty countries and working in mediums that range from painting, sculpture, and installation to photography, video, and performance. This essay was originally published in Art in America 95, no. 6 (June-July, 2007): 154-165. (shrink)

The history of modern and contemporary art provides many examples of the "queering" of cultural and social norms. It has been tempting to consider this process of subversion and transgression, or "outlaw representation", as well as related performances of "camp" or other gay inflections of the dominant forms of representation, to be the most creative mode of queer cultural production. Whether or not this is true in the history of later nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, we can identify a historical process (...) in modern culture that has worked in the opposite direction--namely, the constitution of aesthetic ideals, cultural norms that claim validity within an entire society, which have been based on manifestly homoerotic prototypes and significances. There has been little subversion or camp in these configurations. Indeed, perhaps there has been a surfeit of idealizing configuration and normalizing representation. But as Johann Joachim Winckelmann's art history and Immanuel Kant's aesthetics might suggest, such idealization can be no less queer than camp inflections or outlaw representations. (shrink)

The modern conception of race is often thought by philosophers to have developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in response to a unique confluence of scientific, philosophical, and imperial forces; and in recent decades some impressive work has been done to excavate the details of its construction during this period. . . . I will argue, however, that an analysis of the visual images created by Europeans during the first half-century after 1492 reveals that the essential elements of the (...) late modern conception of race are put into place during that period. In brief, the tremendous social, economic, and political pressures that culminate in this comparatively brief moment yield the modern notion of "the savage." I will suggest that from its inception this notion is an inherently radicalized one, and that it is the nodal point for the more familiar eighteenth- and nineteenth-century understandings of non-European races. Moreover, I will argue that the modern notion of the savage is synthesized, not directly from the Noachic legends, but from images drawn, sometimes literally, on the margins of medieval understandings of humanity: powerful and deeply entrenched images of the Wild Man and the monstrous races. (shrink)

The "Actresses" series by Yasumasa Morimura brutally exposes the position, attitude, or stance we assume when we see this body of work. The viewer's one-sided gaze, inflicted upon the women Morimura has impersonated, is repelled and hurled back to the viewer as the point questions: "Who are you?" and "What is your position?" You yourself, not an abstract human being, are being interrogated here. It is easy to speak lofty ideas while casting ourselves as objective transparent beings: disappearing borders, the (...) self in flux, anti-essentialism. . . . However, it is not an abstract narrator who manipulates language but an actual you defined by your sex, gender, and sexuality who is being questioned in front of Morimura's "Actresses.". (shrink)

In this essay, I am concerned with the representation of groups in popular culture. My interest has to do with the politics of representing people. The couplet beauty/nonbeauty (or, more specifically, beauty/ugliness) frequently figures importantly in the representation of groups, including most notably, for my purposes, ethnic and racial minorities. This couplet can be politically significant because beauty is often associated in our culture with moral goodness. . . . Thus, beauty and non beauty can serve as a basis for (...) political rhetoric. . . . If one concept of human beauty (which is connected to ideas of goodness) sees beauty as the instantiation or near approximation of the concept human being, then the related idea of human ugliness (which is connected with ideas of moral degradation) is rooted in problematic exemplifications of the concept of the human. These "problematic exemplifications" can take many forms. The two that will preoccupy me in this essay are the imperfect exemplifications of the human found in the popular genres of horror and humor. (shrink)

Possibly the most celebrated artist of all time, Leonardo da vinci has been examined from every conceivable perspective except a feminist one. A feminist perspective seeks, of course, not only to include women in history but also to expose gender-based conceptual biases that have distorted scholarship. Such a bias has led scholars to ignore an important dimension of Leonardo's art and thought: his unusual valorization of the feminine in a period when the female sex was disparaged, both socially and philosophically. (...) . . . I speak of the metaphysical "female," understood as a creative and powerful force in the universe. In this essay, I shall show that Leonardo presented through art a view of the female sex that was culturally abnormal in the patriarchy of his day: woman understood individually as an intelligent being, biologically as an equal half of the human species, and philosophically as the ascendent principle in the cosmos. His position deserves our attention, for it was distinctive in a period when women were neither politically nor socially empowered to make such a case for themselves. This essay is adapted from a longer article that appeared in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, edited by Norma Broad and Mary D. Garrard (HarperCollins, 1992), Chapter 3. (shrink)

Artemisia Gentileschi (c. 1593-1652) was well paid and highly thought of as a painter by some of the leading art patrons of the Europe of her time. In other words, in her own time she was a socially acceptable, successful artist. Yet, subsequently, the shadow of obscurity fell over her. Only about thirty paintings, from what must have been a much greater body of work, have been identified and attributed to her. Moreover, relatively little has been written about her, and (...) only very recently has she been the subject of an extensive art-historical monograph. In Contrast, Agostino Tassi, the painter tried for raping Artemisia she was nineteen years old, has been the subject of at least two monographs in this [20th] century. Does Artemisia now lack esteem because the lines along which the story of European art has been permitted to unfold serve non aesthetic ends, objectives prescribed by dominating male interests? Was Artemisia's art eclipsed because the narrative structure of the story of art admits heroes but erects heroines? Such questions are typically raised in feminist or gym-criticism. What remains to be seen is whether feminists can supply answers which draw upon considerations sufficiently compelling to radically revise--indeed, to reform--the history of art. (shrink)

When interpreting works of art, there are many available le theoretical perspectives to which one can appeal. One factor that may influence the choice is what issues are present in the work on wishes to address. In discussing the artwork of Nancy Spiro, I shall illustrate how all three frameworks of sexual difference--experiential difference, positional difference in discourse, and difference as psychoanalysis--can be employed in critiquing works of art. After discussing Spero's work, I shall show how the perspectives can be (...) theoretically compatible. (shrink)

What kind of entities are works of art from an ontological point of view? This question has become canonical in the framework of analytic philosophy. One way of answering the puzzle seemed to be conclusive. It is the hypothesis that all, or the majority of artworks can be identified with types embedded into tokens. To begin with, I will survey how the type-token distinction transitioned from semiotics to ontology. Secondly, I will consider how some contemporary art forms contributed to questioning (...) this approach to the ontology of artworks. Lastly, I will suggest how the nature of types and tokens should be reassessed in order to properly describe artworks in their historical and socially construed nature. (shrink)

Bodies in China uses Chinese philosophy to reframe Western scholarship on gender, body, and aesthetics. Does Confucianism rule out the capacity of women as moral subjects and hence as aesthetic subjects? Do forms of Chinese philosophy contribute or correspond to patriarchal Confucian culture? Can Chinese philosophy provide alternative perspectives for Western feminist scholars? The first section considers theoretical and philosophical discussions of Western traditions and how the ideas offered by Confucians and Daoists can provide alternative body ontologies for critical feminist (...) practices. The second section reviews female aesthetical representations ranging from The Book of Songs to the work of the controversial body artist He Chengyao. The third section traces changing perceptions of femininity from imperial to its current cosmopolitan era using a range of case studies including Ming dynasty literature, Hong Kong women's fashion in the 1960s, and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Overall, this book discusses new conceptual models that feminist scholars are using to displace dualism and emancipate notions of the body from Cartesian models and metaphors. (shrink)

This paper investigates the cultural significance of black holes and suns as metaphors in continental European literature and art, drawing on theoretical insights from French continental authors such as Jean-François Lyotard and Ray Brassier. Lyotard suggests that black holes signify the ultimate form of the sublime, representing the displacement of humanity and our unease with our place in the cosmos. On the other hand, Brassier views black holes as a consequence of the entropic dissolution of matter, reflecting physical reality's indifference (...) to subjective or teleological significance. The study also presents a curated collection of literary works and artworks that employ black holes and suns as metaphors, examining the emergence of these metaphorical objects and identifying discursive and epistemological shifts in society. Furthermore, this collaborative research project, involving the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and the Federal Fluminense University in Brazil, and the Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic, aims to provide a valuable resource for further academic inquiry. (shrink)

This chapter presents the meeting points and conflicts between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and George Dickie’s avowedly succeeding theory. Its focus is on the internalist-externalist debate on the ontology of the artwork as created and perceived within the artworld. It shows that both Danto and Dickie developed anti-formalist theories, that contributed to the demise of aesthetic modernism. Inverting the formalist distinction between internal and external properties of the artwork, they classified the sensuous properties of the artwork as secondary in (...) its essence and identity. Accordingly, Danto and Dickie’s definitions of art emerged from the challenge “to be consistent with art appearing in every possible way.” Both negated the Neo-Wittgensteinians’s proposal to forgo the project of defining art and found the then-new pluralism to be revealing of the essence of art, directing philosophy to art’s nonexhibited infrastructure – beyond the reach of the eye. Across from this, the chapter presents their opposing ideas as revealed through different analyses of the concept of the “artworld”: as an intellectual sphere by Danto versus an institutional one by Dickie. Danto’s internalist/intentionalist ontology begins with the mental and stretches to its embodying material. Opposing it, Dickie’s externalist ontology points to social practices as constituting the artwork, which is attributed with the status of “arthood” by agents in its social sphere. Accordingly, I claim, Danto’s ontology is more versatile than Dickie’s. -/- . (shrink)

In _Beyond the Sovereign Self_ Grant H. Kester continues the critique of aesthetic autonomy begun in _The Sovereign Self_, showing how socially engaged art provides an alternative aesthetic with greater possibilities for critical practice. Instead of grounding art in its distance from the social, Kester shows how socially engaged art, developed in conjunction with forms of social or political resistance, encourages the creative capacity required for collective political transformation. Among others, Kester analyzes the work of conceptual artist Adrian Piper, experimental (...) practices associated with the escrache tradition in Argentina, and indigenous Canadian artists such as Nadia Myer and Michèle Taïna Audette, showing how socially engaged art catalyzes forms of resistance that operate beyond the institutional art world. From the Americas and Europe to Iran and South Africa, Kester presents a historical genealogy of recent engaged art practices rooted in a deep history of cultural production, beginning with nineteenth-century political struggles and continuing into contemporary anticolonial resistance and other social movements. (shrink)

Vivian Maier’s street photography shows us a sudden transfiguration of reality, by which persons, scenes and things become faerical (neologism that also receives one of the senses of the French féerie , a play where supernatural, or, in this case, also infranatural creatures appear). We propose that this transfiguration is an apparition – a faerical epiphany (always earthy and fleshy) that follows two ways, one sunny and luminous, the other obscure and subterranean. We will examine Maier’s body, reflected in her (...) self-portraits in order to propose that her sight (therefore her photography) is a daemonic one, an intermediary between our and other worlds. -/- La fotografía callejera de Vivian Maier nos hace ver una súbita transfiguración de la realidad por la cual las personas, las escenas y las cosas devienen féricas , neologismo que nos permitimos para recoger del inglés el universo de las faeries y traducir a la vez uno de los sentidos del francés féerie , pieza de teatro en la que aparecen seres sobrenaturales (o, en este caso, infranaturales). Esa transfiguración, proponemos, es en rigor una verdadera aparición: una epifanía feérica (siempre carnal) que se despliega en dos direcciones, solar y subterránea. Nos detendremos en el cuerpo de Maier, reflejado en sus autorretratos, para proponer, finalmente, que su mirada es un daimon, intermediaria entre éste y otros mundos. (shrink)

Aesthetics: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is a teaching-focused resource, which highlights the contributions that imaginative scenarios—paradoxes, puzzles, and thought experiments alike—have made to the development of contemporary analytic aesthetics. The book is divided into sections pertaining to art-making, ontology, aesthetic judgements, appreciation and interpretation, and ethics and value, and offers an accessible summary of ten debates falling under each section. -/- Each entry also features a detailed annotated bibliography, making it an ideal companion for courses surveying a broad (...) collection of topics and readings in aesthetics. (shrink)

In this paper, we support a continuistic reading of Joseph Margolis' philosophy, defending the claim that in the 1970s, Margolis tackled the issues suggested by the analytic philosophy of art from an original theoretical perspective and through conceptual tools exceeding the analytical framework. Later that perspective turned out to be a radically pragmatist one, in which explicitly tolerant realistic claims and non-reductive naturalism converged with radical historicism and contextualism. We will endorse this thesis by focusing on two important concepts appearing (...) in Margolis' aesthetics essays from the late 1950s to the 1970s: the type-token pair and the notion of cultural emergence. On the one hand, we will emphasise Margolis' indebtedness to Peirce's first formulation of the type-token distinction, involving a strong interdependence between the two elements of the pair, as well as an anti-essentialistic, historicised, and contextualised notion of type. On the other hand, we will delve into Margolis' exploration of the concept of emergence and cultural emergence, involving a genuinely pluralistic view of ontology, as well as a non-reductive, continuistic form of naturalism. Finally, we will connect the criticism of the so-called closure of the physical world with Margolis' anti-autonomistic stance in defining artworks. (shrink)

The Value of Art Philosophical discourse concerning the value of art is a discourse concerning what makes an artwork valuable qua its being an artwork. Whereas the concern of the critic is what makes the artwork a good artwork, the question for the aesthetician is why it is a good artwork. When we refer to … Continue reading Value of Art →.

In this essay, I respond to Mary Beth Willard's commentary on Drawing the Line. I focus on responding to a number of questions and objections that Willard poses concerning the role of arts institutions in addressing the problem of immoral artists. Focusing on the case of museums in particular, I defend the idea that they can exercise their power to play a productive and important role in societal conversations about moral criticism of artists.

This essay discusses Mary Beth Willard's _Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists_ and puts it into dialogue with my book _Drawing the Line._ In particular, I focus on the role of aesthetic projects in thinking about artistic immorality, and develop further thoughts on the public/private and individual/social distinctions with respect to our engagement with the arts.

Alexis Alleyne-Caputo has a vision of what’s possible that we badly need in our white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalistic, colonial world. Brought together by years of lived experience and work as an interdisciplinary artist, anthropologist, educator, and researcher—it’s a vision of resistance, a vision of light, a vision of empowerment, a vision of collective consciousness. Hers is a way of focusing—an awareness—a recognition of possibilities for minds, bodies, and hearts to come together in new and uplifting ways that goes beyond the (...) visual through Caputo’s unique ability to use one sensory input to stimulate another cognitive pathway. (shrink)

The recent proliferation of deepfakes and other digitally produced deceptive representations has revived the debate on the epistemic robustness of photography and other mechanically produced images. Authors such as Rini (2020) and Fallis (2021) claim that the proliferation of deepfakes pose a serious threat to the reliability and the epistemic value of photographs and videos. In particular, Fallis adopts a Skyrmsian account of how signals carry information (Skyrms, 2010) to argue that the existence of deepfakes significantly reduces the information that (...) images carry about the world, which undermines their reliability as a source of evidence. In this paper, we focus on Fallis’ version of the challenge, but our results can be generalized to address similar pessimistic views such as Rini’s. More generally, we offer an account of the epistemic robustness of photography and videos that allows us to understand these systems of representation as continuous with other means of information transmission we find in nature. This account will then give us the necessary tools to put Fallis’ claims into perspective: using a richer approach to animal signaling based on the signaling model of communication (Maynard-Smith and Harper, 2003), we will claim that, while it might be true that deepfake technology increases the probability of obtaining false positives, the dimension of the epistemic threat involved might still be negligible. (shrink)

Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1952) was a point of reference for filmmakers searching new ways of filmmaking during the 1960s and 1970s because it anticipated the characteristic reflexivity of cinematic modernity because of the protagonist’s look at the camera. By unexpectedly bursting into the narrative, this gaze becomes a self-conscious strategy aimed at disarticulating not only the cinematic fiction, but also Monika’s fiction, which has symbolically appropriated the imaginary world projected by cinema.

This work investigates one of the most widespread yet elusive ideas about our experience of art: the idea that there is something cognitively valuable in engaging with great artworks, or, in other words, that we learn from them. This claim and the age-old controversy that surrounds it are reconsidered in light of the psychological and neuroscientific literature on learning, in one of the first systematic efforts to bridge the gap between philosophical and scientific inquiries on the topic. The work has (...) five chapters. Chapter 1 lays down its conceptual bases: it explains what learning is taken to be in the current philosophical debate and it points out how Bayesian cognitive science (particularly in its predictive processing formulations) might be well-suited to capture the kind of learning involved in our engagement with the arts. The following chapters test this latter hypothesis with respect to particular art forms, namely literature and literary language (Chapter 2), narrative (Chapter 3), and visual art, music and motor activities (Chapter 4). The fine-grained discussions conducted in each of these areas will enable us to see that the relationship between art and learning is indeed fundamental and pervasive. The final chapter (Chapter 5) examines the consequences of this fact for our understanding of the role of art in our epistemic practices, its ultimate usefulness and value, and its place in the interdisciplinary study of the human mind. The upshot is a novel and wide-ranging picture, both philosophically informed and empirically sound, that bypasses many of the problems and dead ends of the current philosophical debate on the topic and captures the deep sense in which art and learning are interrelated. (shrink)