Now available in English for the first time, The Visibility of the Image explores the development of an influential aesthetic tradition through the work of six figures. Analysing their contribution to the progress of formal aesthetics, from its origins in Germany in the 1880s to semiotic interpretations in America a century later, the six chapters cover: Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898), the first to separate aesthetics and metaphysics and approach aesthetics along the lines of formal logic, providing a (...) purely syntactic way of using signs, regardless of objective content; Alois Riegl (1858-1905), who went on to further develop aesthetics on the model of formal logic, creating a theory of style in response to Zimmermann's call for an aesthetics oriented toward formal logic; Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who represents a step toward an understanding of consciousness by using pictures as cognitive tools; Konrad Fiedler (1841-1895), the Saxon philosopher who considered the possibility that some kinds of images are made and viewed not for what they show, but for their visibility's sake alone; Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), responsible for taking up the connections between the problems of reducing the range of potential meanings and contexts of a given image down to just the picture surface; Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who set out to establish whether a picture with no objective reference, such as an abstract painting, still counts as a sign, and if so, in what sense. Bringing these thinkers together and interlinking their ideas, Lambert Wiesing presents an engaging history of formal aesthetics, while reconstructing the philosophical foundations for the appearance of new image forms in the 20th century, including the video-clip, abstract collage, digital simulation and virtual reality. Using this original approach, The Visibility of the Image introduces the rise of modern image theory and provides a valuable account of our engagement with pictures in the 21st century. (shrink)

A leading philosopher presents a radical manifesto for the future of art andfilm.

If anything marks the image, it is a deep ambivalence. Denounced as superficial, illusory, and groundless, images are at the same time attributed with exorbitant power and assigned a privileged relation to truth. In this collection of writings on images and visual art, the author explores this through an extraordinary range of references.

Images in science are often beautiful but their beauty cannot be explained using traditional aesthetic theories. Available theories either rely upon concepts antithetical to science, e.g. regularity as an index of God’s design, or they omit concepts intrinsic to scientific imaging, e.g. the image is taken as a representation of “beautiful nature.” I argue that the scientific image is not a representation but a construction: a series of mutually defining intra-actions, where “intra-action” signifies that the object depicted cannot (...) be extricated from the technologies of picturing. But how can the beauty of intra-active, picturing-depicted constructions be explained, when philosophical aesthetics traditionally understands objects of appreciation to be distinct, discrete items? I argue that metaphor provides a model for the aesthetics of the scientific image, on the grounds that it is itself an intra-action that promotes salience in perception. (shrink)

A ideia de beleza - e sua consequente fruição estética - variou conforme as transformações das sociedades humanas, no tempo. Durante a Idade Média, coexistiram diversas concepções de qual era o papel do corpo na hierarquia dos valores estéticos, tanto na Filosofia quanto na Arte. Nossa proposta é apresentar a estética do corpo medieval que alguns filósofos desenvolveram em seus tratados (particularmente Isidoro de Sevilha, Hildegarda de Bingen, João de Salisbury, Bernardo de Claraval e Tomás de Aquino), além de algumas (...) representações corporais nas imagens medievais (iluminuras e esculturas), e assim analisar o tema em três vertentes: a) o corpo como cárcere da alma, b) o corpo como instrumento, e c) o corpo como desregramento. The concept of beauty, and its consequent aesthetic enjoyment, has varied according the transformations of human societies over time. During the Middle Ages there were different conceptions, in both philosophy and art, of what the role of the body is in the hierarchy of aesthetic values. Our purpose is to present the aesthetic of the body that some medieval philosophers developed in their treatises (especially Isidore of Seville, Hildegard of Bingen, John of Salisbury, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas), as well as some bodily representations of medieval images (illuminations and sculptures). We thus examine the issue in three ways: a) the body as a prison of the soul, b) the body as an instrument, and c) the body as degradation. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that protest images have a certain aesthetics and a degree of transformative power. Crucial to this aesthetics is the images’ narrative struc- ture, like the representation of goal-directed actions. On this basis, I show that there are more aspects that contribute to the storytelling capacity, like narrative characteristics and an aesthetics of dramatization. Using the example of climate change protests as a case study, I establish that these aspects can contribute to the (...) transformative ability of protest images, if used effectively. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the consideration of modern trends in the study of fine art, in particular Russian portrait and narrative painting of the beginning of the XXI century. The object is scientific works related to various fields of the humanities, namely: art history, aesthetics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, etc. Using their material, it is possible to show not only the difference in approaches to understanding the essence and role of the image of a modern person (...) in the art process, but also to demonstrate the specifics of the artistic interpretation of this figurative system in the context of art criticism, cultural and philosophical issues. Such a study allows us to systematize existing ideas about the peculiarities of the development of anthropological subjects in the mainstream of contemporary fine art in modern Russia, to identify the main directions. The main methodological basis of the study was a systematic approach that allowed us to consider contemporary Russian art as a single system. This helped to compare the approaches of modern researchers analyzing the place and role of the human image in it. Through the postmodern paradigm of perception and interpretation of anthropological topics, to identify the essential features of the ideas of Russian scientists. Methods of art historical analysis were also used. The starting point of the research is that at the moment in Russian science there is a body of art history and cultural studies devoted to the development of contemporary art in the country. However, there are no works summarizing the existing experience of scientists and defining the main directions of scientific thought. In light of this, the scientific novelty of the article lies in expanding the understanding of the methodological apparatus necessary for the analysis of the anthropological trend in the visual arts of our time, which is a promising path for future research in this area. The most demanded conceptual philosophical and historical-cultural foundations for the analysis and solution of practical problems in the field of contemporary art in relation to the representation of the human image are identified. Empirical research material has been collected and analyzed. (shrink)

pt. 1. The image in abundance -- pt. 2. The wonder of the earth.

Theory of the Image offers a new and systematic philosophy of art and aesthetics from the perspective of movement.

Offering an alternative mode of visual cultural analysis to the prevalent discursive model, this book proposes to situate analysis of Image within 'formal' analyses of culture experience. Specifically, the discussion draws on theories of affective aesthetics with the view of addressing the sensual form of culture (i.e. 'cultural form'). Therefore, the volume puts forward a mode of formalist analysis in visual cultural research which takes purchase on the idea of 'cultural form.' A continuum of formalist attention between (...) class='Hi'>Image analysis (visual media, industrial design) and probing of 'cultural forms' establishes the theoretical underpinning of the book. These concepts are expounded through a case study which looks at formal experimentations and debates arising from 1960s avant-garde artistic practices in London. (shrink)

In this book, Alison Ross engages in a detailed study of Walter Benjamin’s concept of the image, exploring the significant shifts in Benjamin’s approach to the topic over the course of his career. Using Kant’s treatment of the topic of sensuous form in his aesthetics as a comparative reference, Ross argues that Benjamin’s thinking on the image undergoes a major shift between his 1924 essay on ‘Goethe’s Elective Affinities ,’ and his work on The Arcades Project from (...) 1927 up until his death in 1940 . The two periods of Benjamin’s writing share a conception of the image as a potent sensuous force able to provide a frame of existential meaning. In the earlier period this function attracts Benjamin’s critical attention, whereas in the later he mobilises it for revolutionary outcomes. The book gives a critical treatment of the shifting assumptions in Benjamin’s writing about the image that warrant this altered view. It draws on hermeneutic studies of meaning, scholarship in the history of religions and key texts from the modern history of aesthetics to track the reversals and contradictions in the meaning functions that Benjamin attaches to the image in the different periods of his thinking. Above all, it shows the relevance of a critical consideration of Benjamin’s writing on the image for scholarship in visual culture, critical theory, aesthetics and philosophy more broadly. (shrink)

Images abound of women throughout the ages engaging in various activities. But why are there so few representations of childbirth in visual art? Feminist artist Judy Chicago once suggested that depictions of women giving birth do not commonly occur in Western culture but can be found in other contexts such as pre-Columbian art or societies previously considered "primitive." Chicago's own exploration of the theme resulted in the creation of The Birth Project (1980-85): an unprecedented series of eighty handcrafted works of (...) art created in a variety of needlework techniques by more than 130 artisans that celebrate the experience of birth and a woman's transformation into motherhood. But why is The Birth Project an aberration from today's norm? What are the reasons that childbirth remains a taboo subject in our visual culture? Why is the birthing experience--so pervasive for women--so infrequently celebrated, even by female artists? (shrink)

From the comparative framework of writing on the meaning of ritual in the field of the history of religions, this essay argues that one of the major problems in Benjamin’s thinking is how to make certain forms of materiality stand out against other forms. In his early work, the way that Benjamin deals with this problem is to call degraded forms “symbolic”, and those forms of materiality with positive value, “allegorical”. The article shows how there is more than an incidental (...) connection with the recent approach to ritual in the field of history of religions, seeing that Benjamin too wants to set out the significance of certain material forms against those that are “ritualistic” and hence false. It is argued that he treats the latter in his essay on Elective Affinities and the former in his Trauerspiel. The key claim is that the way material forms stand out as meaningful is akin to the Kantian description of the aesthetic attitude, which identifies how certain formations warrant and attract reflective attention and underpin moral orientation. The point is significant since Kantian aesthetics is an object of polemical attention across Benjamin’s heterogeneous corpus. Moreover, the approach shows the main difficulty in Benjamin’s treatment of sensible forms: what are the criteria he uses to distinguish the “bad” way a sensible form has of being meaningful from the “good”? (shrink)

Although there is ample interrogation of advertising/commercial/media culture in critical pedagogy, there is little attention paid to the fine arts and to aesthetic experience. This lacuna is all the more perplexing given Paulo Freire’s use of artist Francisco Brenand’s illustrations for his culture circles. In this essay I will return to Freire’s original description of the relationship between fine art images and conscientizacao in order to map out the future of the image in critical pedagogy. This return to the (...) origin of the use of images in literacy programs will highlight the interdependent nature of word and image but also will demonstrate some of the long standing misconceptions of the way fine art images function in relation to education and politics. In conclusion I will suggest that if images have a future in critical pedagogy, then this future must ultimately move beyond Freire. As an alternative genealogical anchoring point for the development of the aesthetics of critical literacy, I suggest a turn to the work of Jacques Rancière. Through his conceptualization of the “pensive image” as well as the “emancipated spectator” we can begin to understand how the fine art image can work to realize Freire’s democratic ideals without relying on Freire’s problematic formulation of the image-pedagogy relationship. In conclusion, I suggest that the philosophical model necessary to support critical literacy is not Freire’s culture circle so much as Kant’s aesthetic community now revitalized via Rancière’s own aesthetics of dissensus. (shrink)

The concept of ‘the image’ can be given historical, conceptual, aesthetic and moral specifications. This essay sets out some of the scholarly issues in the dense semantic field of ‘the image’. In particular, the essay considers how the meaning of the image is often determined in relation to the opposition between sensible form and intelligible idea. Specific attention is given to Kantian aesthetics, which inaugurates a specific way of understanding the sensible form as a mode of (...) processing moral ideas. (shrink)

:The theme of sacrifice appears in Jean-François Lyotard's writings on cinema not in terms of any representational content but in terms of the economy of the images from which a film is formally constructed. Sacrifice is here understood in a sense derived from Bataille, and related to his notions of general economy, and of sovereignty. Lyotard's writings on cinema have received some attention in English-language scholarship, but so far this attention has been focused almost exclusively on two essays which have (...) appeared in English translation: “Acinema” and “The Unconscious as Mise-en-Scène.” I offer an analysis which also incorporates his two other important essays on cinema, “Deux métamorphoses du séduisant au cinéma” [Two Metamorphoses of the Seductive in Cinema] and “Idée d'un film souverain” [The Idea of a Sovereign Film]. The interest of the former is that it makes most explicit the aesthetic politics – evident in many of Lyotard's writings on art – specific to cinema. In the latter, Lyotard gives his most extensive treatment of cinema, and frames it in terms of Bataille's notion of sovereignty. I offer an interpretation of Lyotard's philosophy of cinema which links these quite disparate essays, foregrounding the political dimension of the sacrificial economy of images he proposes: films of any variety, even commercial cinema, may include some sequences and images which are “sacrificial” in that they are “other” to the chronological narrative of the whole. These images liberate us from the seductive effects of the narrative, and the invitation to fantasise, which act as means of imposing and reproducing dominant social and cultural norms. (shrink)

What follows is but the attempt to draw the lessons from the mystical and visionary text of Teresa of Ávila in order to consider today issues that concern us, questions that are asked of Aesthetics, and not only as theoretical discipline that theorises on the arts and considers the beautiful, but as a reflection on aísthesis, of sensitivity, of the sensitive edge exposed by a constituent relationship which installs the human in a world. Consideration, then, of the happening, of (...) entering the world, creative experience. This essay seeks to consider the relationship between the image and the body via the visionary discourse of the mystics, because their writings question and lend shape to a large number of formulae of thought that can help us better understand the questions facing us today. Let us imagine that the mystics made of their body a frontier or a support where what by definition has no place could take place. Place: part of space occupied by a body, the boundary of a containing object. This then is what is addressed here, a question of boundaries. (shrink)

Resumen: Las imágenes de tipos populares se erigieron como repertorios angulares en la conformación de los imaginarios de nación en América Latina, de ahí la importancia de su estudio para comprender la cultura visual decimonónica de territorios como Chile y Perú. Estas representaciones se desarrollaron fundamentalmente a partir de medios manuales, y en ellas se debaten cuestiones de gusto, asociadas a una estética de lo pintoresco, y se evidencian las tensiones y convergencias de varias funciones y demandas de la imagen (...) modélica. Sin embargo, durante la segunda parte del siglo XIX, esta tradición se enfrentará al advenimiento del medio fotográfico. Las repercusiones y transformaciones que esto implicó serán discutidas en el presente artículo, considerando el componente documental e informativo que la fotografía habría potenciado en un repertorio constituido particularmente, aunque no exclusivamente, en una estética de lo pintoresco. De esta manera, el ensayo propone una lectura historiográfica que analiza la constitución de esta tradición mediante casos particulares referidos al contexto chileno y peruano, para luego pensar su reformulación tras la incursión del aparato fotográfico.: Images of popular types and customs were set up as fundamental repertoires in the structure of nation imaginaries in Latin America, hence the importance of its study in order to understand nineteenth-century visual culture in territories such as Chile and Peru. These representations were mainly developed from manual media, in which are discussed matters of taste, associated to an aesthetic of the picturesque; this shows the tensions and convergences of various functions and demands of the model image. However, during the second half of the nineteenth century, this tradition will confront the emergence of the photographic medium. The repercussions and transformations which this implied will be discuss in the present article, considering both the documentary and the informative component that photography would have boost into a repertoire which was mostly constituted, though not exclusively, by an aesthetic of the picturesque. In this way, this paper proposes a historiographic reading that analyses the setting-up of this tradition through particular cases refer to the Chilean and Peruvian context, to think afterwards its reformulation following the incursion of the technical device. (shrink)

What follows is but the attempt to draw the lessons from the mystical and visionary text of Teresa of?vila in order to consider today issues that concern us, questions that are asked of Aesthetics, and not only as theoretical discipline that theorises on the arts and considers the beautiful, but as a reflection on a?sthesis, of sensitivity, of the sensitive edge exposed by a constituent relationship which installs the human in a world. Consideration, then, of the happening, of entering (...) the world, creative experience. This essay seeks to consider the relationship between the image and the body via the visionary discourse of the mystics, because their writings question and lend shape to a large number of formulae of thought that can help us better understand the questions facing us today. Let us imagine that the mystics made of their body a frontier or a support where what by definition has no place could take place. Place: part of space occupied by a body, the boundary of a containing object. This then is what is addressed here, a question of boundaries. nema. (shrink)

In this article I wish to elucidate a form of receptivity in our relation to televisual images that cannot be reduced to the postmodern formula of a closed circuit of desire through which the self infinitely reproduces itself. Through analysis of the peculiar experience of viewing Gore Verbinski’s 2003 film The Ring, I argue for the possibility of an experience of alterity in and through the televisual. I pair this event with the religious experience of viewing the icon that Jean-Luc (...) Marion opposes to the televisual in his recent works collected in The Crossing of the Visible. The purpose of the comparison is not to conflate the two experiences but rather to suggest that the possibility for reclaiming a space for difference in a postmodern world lies within the televisual itself, the very medium that Marion credits with the bankruptcy of the aesthetic. In The Ring, the process through which the viewer expects to see her own desire reproduced is violently interrupted by a vengeful image that shatters the mirror of reflection between viewer and viewed and threatens to cross over that threshold — to cross the visible, in Marion’s terms. (shrink)

This essay theorizes the fashion photographic image as a privileged site for queer sensory experience. It takes the stance that the aesthetic engagement with the fashion image occurs through sensation, and more precisely, through a haptic and periperformative experience that activates desires, meanings, and fantasies. Through the circulation of feelings sparked via the sensorial experiencing of the photo, queer subjects can sense belongings and form affiliations that bind them in an egalitarian community of sense exceeding sexual and social (...) differences. A queer theory of fashion photography does not posit that the photographic image may foster propositional knowledge in the viewers, but rather that it moves them to engage corporeally with the image and triggers their imagination to configure new affective modes of being in the world. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl has famously declared that “Without an image, there is no fine art.” The aim of the article is to find out whether conceptual art can be experienced as image as well. It will be shown that Joseph Kosuth’s conceptual artwork One and Three Chairs (1965) perfectly illustrates Husserl’s theory of image consciousness and the concept of “image.” Thus, Husserl’s theory makes a valuable contribution in understanding conceptual (and contemporary) art.

The article is devoted to the transformation of traditional folk culture archetypes of wood, stone, thread in modern decorative and applied art, as well as ways of using threads, wood and stone as materials for the manufacture of objects of modern art. The research does not aim to repeat classical ethnographic studies or to refer monographs on the history of culture. The article is an attempt at a comprehensive analysis of the modern practice of decorative and applied art from the (...) point of view of the philosophy of culture and practical aesthetics. This approach is a unique experience in the analysis of jewelry and decorative practices of processing heterogeneous materials of natural origin. The cluster of masters of decorative and applied art in Russia is expanding, there are more and more opportunities and materials for creativity, but the authors of the products themselves are not engaged in stylistic, art criticism or philosophical understanding of their activities. Nevertheless, their works, according to researchers, reflect the oldest mythological images that are the cornerstones of Russian culture and represent the heritage of world culture, transformed by post-culture and man-made trends that have penetrated, among other things, into art. Archetypes of wood, stone, thread, preserved since ancient times, acquire new meanings and new forms of embodiment in the works of modern authors. (shrink)

The author seeks here to link Havel’s well-known dramatic output with his visual poetry, which is far less known. The notion of the double bind, the author argues, is a predominant trope of Havel’s oeuvre. By applying Grelling’s paradox to Havel’s visual texts, the author illustrates the techniques Havel uses to produce logograms whose visual representation contradicts the verbal message conveyed by them.

This original new book argues for a reassessment of Plato's challenge to the arts. Plato was the first great figure in Western philosophy to assess the value of the arts; he argued in the Republic that traditionally accepted forms of poetry, drama, and music are unsound. While this view has been widely rejected, Janaway argues that Plato's hostile case is a more coherent and profound challenge to the arts than has sometimes been supposed. Denying that Plato advocates "good art" in (...) any modern sense, Janaway seeks both to understand Plato's critique in the context of his own philosophy and to locate him in today's philosophy of art, showing how issues in aesthetics arise from responses to his charges. (shrink)

Between 1918 and 1933, the masses became a decisive preoccupation of European culture, fueling modernist movements in art, literature, architecture, theater, and cinema, as well as the rise of communism and fascism and experiments in radical democracy. Spanning aesthetics, cultural studies, intellectual history, and political theory, this volume unpacks the significance of the shadow agent known as "the mass" during a critical period in European history. It follows its evolution into the preferred conceptual tool for social scientists, the ideal (...) slogan for politicians, and the chosen image for artists and writers trying to capture a society in flux and a people in upheaval. This volume is the second installment in Stefan Jonsson's epic study of the crowd and the mass in modern Europe, building on his work in _A Brief History of the Masses_, which focused on monumental artworks produced in 1789, 1889, and 1989. (shrink)

Construction of the Aesthetic intends to recuperate the sphere of the aesthetic from the dialectic of existence: 'not to forget in dreams the present world, but to change it by the strength of an image.'.

This article examines a changing global reality that manifests itself in new forms of social activism. The struggle of the multitude challenges political representation and contemporary art seems to corroborate this observation. Becoming a form of social intervention, it turns into an active force and leaves behind the need to double action with representation, representational practices being the hallmark of classical art. A new theory of the image would have to incorporate this dynamic: it would have to treat and (...) develop the basic categories of action and relation. There are few philosophies of the act, and the existing semiotic models mostly deal with dual structures (signifier/signified; sign/meaning; image/referent, and so on). It is necessary to sketch out a dynamic theory of the image that would: (1) reveal the limitations of the concept of representation; (2) conceive of the image as a set of multiple changing relations. The image would thus be seen as a necessary part of the relations governing the world in its entirety, that is, as part of the movement of matter itself. Which is another way of saying that those relations are actualized, or expressed, in the image. (shrink)

MAKKY, L. : Obraz, umenie a kultúra doby železnej na Slovensku: Umelecký a estetický pohľad. Prešov: Filozofická fakulta Prešovskej univerzity v Prešove. ISBN 978-80-555-1843-5.

MAKKY, L. : Obraz, umenie a kultúra doby železnej na Slovensku: Umelecký a estetický pohľad. Prešov: Filozofická fakulta Prešovskej univerzity v Prešove. ISBN 978-80-555-1843-5.

Nancy's writing on the image may be understood as a critical engagement with the traditions of modern aesthetics and classical theories of art. However, the starting point for his approach to the image indicates that his writing on this topic has much wider ambitions than the treatment of a regional aesthetic topic. Nancy defines the image as a mode of access to sense. Nancy attempts an ontological rehabilitation of the image, which reiterates the precepts of (...) his conception of being as ‘co-presence’. I will argue here that a careful study of the implications of this rehabilitation of the image can be used to clarify the significance of the tacit references that Nancy's ontology makes regarding politics. (shrink)

The present contribution is mainly intended to illustrate how some recent discoveries in the field of neurosciences have revolutionized our ideas about perception, action and cognition, and how these new neuro-scientific perspectives can shed light on the human relationship to art and aesthetics, in the frame of an approach known as "experimental aesthetics". Experimental aesthetics addresses the problem of artistic images by investigating the brain-body physiological correlates of the aesthetic experience and human creativity, providing a perspective that (...) is complementary, and not in opposition, to the humanistic one on the arts and the aesthetic. (shrink)