We humans are a curious species. Of all the life forms that inhabit the earth, we alone strive to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves. For thousands of years we understood the world through stories. Our ancestors told stories of how the world began, how our people originated and came to be at this place, and how those people across the river or beyond the mountains came to be where they are. Some stories were of (...) animals and plants in our neighborhood, and their powers to help us, feed us, or cure our ailments. But in the last few centuries, starting in Europe and spreading throughout the world, a new way of understanding began competing with storytelling as a means of comprehending our world. Science supplanted storytelling largely because it empowered us to transform the world in ways that were unimaginable to our ancestors. We understand the world scientifically by describing the world instead of by telling stories about it. The stories our ancestors told no longer explain the world, but are data within the world, part of the world that science describes. Our stories have become myths, cultural artifacts that may be interesting and a subject of study, but cannot possibly be true. Yet even in societies that have thoroughly embraced science as a means of understanding the world, myths remain a powerful force. Myth and science exist side by side, often creating confusion and conflict. (shrink)

Systematic aesthetics, as initiated by Hegel, begins by determining the universal features of the actuality of beauty in the work of art, artistic creation, and the reception of art. As such, these features are ingredient in all further forms of art and every individual art. Yet, as merely universal determinations of art, they themselves do not differentiate whatever particular artforms and individual arts there may be. Indeed, if any candidate for a universal constituent of art were peculiar to a (...) particular form or individual branch of art, it would disqualify itself as an element in the account of art in general. Conversely, a particular mode of artistic creation may necessarily incorporate those general desiderata that make something an object of art, but an artform's particularity must reside in something more, just as what distinguishes one individual art from another must lie beyond the constitutive elements common to every work of art, every artistic creation, and every aesthetic awareness. (shrink)

In his new book, eminent psychologist - Daniel Stern, explores the hitherto neglected topic of 'vitality'. Truly a tour de force from a brilliant clinician and scientist, Forms of Vitality is a profound and absorbing book - one that will be essential reading for psychologists, psychotherapists, and those in the creative arts.

This chapter contains section titled: Theatrical Performance as Radically Independent of Literature Theatrical Performance as a Form of Art.

The aim of this paper is to articulate and analyse the complexity of the concept of work in Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. Work is usually interpreted as antithetical to political action. This claim merits specification: only the instrumental, utilitarian strand of homo faber poses real danger to authentic politics. By contrast, the artistic or cultural mode of homo faber is not only compatible with Arendt’s understanding of politics, but in fact indispensable for any form of political longevity. Enduring political existence is (...) impossible without the constant support of artists, poets, historiographers and monument-builders who reify and memorialize the key meanings of political communities. This claim is substantiated by applying the phenomenological concept of sedimentation and drawing the political implications of this application. However, similarly to Edmund Husserl, Arendt identified a dual, problematic nature of sedimentation that underscores the importance of natality and thinking in artistic practice. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary exploration of the forms, implications, and potentials of cinematic thinking.

This book offers an original approach to avant-garde art and its transformative force. Presenting an alternative to the approaches to art developed in postmodern theory or cultural studies, Ziarek sees art's significance in its critique of power and the increasing technologization of social relations. Re-examining avant-garde art and literature, from Italian and Russian Futurism and Dadaism, to Language poetry, video and projection art, as well as transgenic and Internet art, this book argues that art's importance today cannot be explained simply (...) in aesthetic or cultural terms but has to take into consideration how artworks question the technological character of modern power. To emphasize the transformative character of art, the book redefines art as a force field, in which forces drawn from historical and social reality come be to formed into an alternative relationality. Through discussions of such key avant-garde figures as Marinetti, Duchamp, Khlebnikov, and Vertov, and innovative contemporary artists like Viola, Wodiczko and Kac, The Force of Art counters the pessimism about art's social function by recovering and redefining art's transformative role in modernity. (shrink)

Mimesis and the portrayal of reflective life in action : Aristotle's Poetics and Sophocles' Oedipus the King -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in poetry : Shakespeare's dramatization of the poet in Sonnets 1-126 -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in music : Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1) and Beethoven's String Quartet in A minor, opus 132 -- The portrayal of reflective life in action in painting : discovery (...) of the inner life of sensory perception in watercolours by Turner and oil paintings by Cézanne. (shrink)

Art perception offers action affordances for the self-generated movement of the eyes, the mind, and the emotions; thus some scenes are ’easy to look at', and evoke different kinds of moods depending on what kind of affordances they present for the eyes, the brain, and the action schemas that further the dynamical self-organizing patterns of activity toward which the organism tends, as reflected in its ongoing emotional life. Art can do this only because perception is active rather than passive, and (...) begins with efferent activity in emotional brain areas (e.g. hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus and anterior cingulate) which then motivates afferent processing (parietal imaging activity which finally, after a 1/3-second motivational/selective process is complete, resonates with occipital patterns, resulting in perceptual consciousness). The limbic system ’categories’ that motivate the ’looking-for’ of selective attention are categories of utility, to be understood in terms of emotional affordances and whole-organism affective meanings. Art plays with this looking-for, using it to make us engage in different afforded actions that relate to different limbic (emotional) categories. The drawings of children and of the artistically untutored reveal this structure when we fail to ’draw what we see’, drawing instead what we conceptualize that we ought to be seeing. Art teaches us to get beyond this almost complete dominance of habitual categories, and to see things more freshly -- both in the perceptual and in the emotive sphere. Rather than reinforcing our preconceptions, it forces us to see how they affect our view of reality. -/- Because neither perceptions nor emotional responses are really passive ’responses’ at all, art does not cause us to feel a certain way. Instead, we ’use’ art for the purpose of symbolizing our emotions. Our most important feelings are not directly ’about’ the perceptual objects that trigger them. The object in conscious attention during the feeling of an emotion is normally not the intentional object of the emotion, i.e., it is not the object in relation to which our actions could serve the purpose of the emotion. Emotions are not even triggered by simple ’stimuli’, but rather by the meaning for us of a stimulus in a total context determined by ongoing and dynamical organismic purposes. Emotions arise from the total life process, which is a dynamical system -- not as an isolated chemical event or a causal result of a simple stimulus. For this reason, emotions call not just for satiation or pleasure, but for explication; this is why art is different from entertainment or pretty decoration. Visual art affords not only a meaningful, self-directed dance of the eyes, but also a meaningful dance of this emotional explicating process. (shrink)

In view of the current progress of what has been named the ‘visual turn’ or the ‘pictorial turn’,1 it is exciting to witness Sam Rose’s return to early aesthetic formalist-modernism, which was so passionate about the medium, its appearance, and visuality. Rose’s project shares a recent inclination to think anew the advent of aesthetic modernism.2 It is founded on the presumption that visual art ought to be – and actually has always been – theoretically subsumed under one meta-project. This meta-project (...) does not necessarily have a clear telos, but it does have a history. In support of this view, Rose appeals to Stanley Cavell’s claim that ‘only masters of a game, perfect slaves to that project, are in a position to establish conventions which better serve its essence. This is why deep revolutionary changes can result from attempts to conserve a project, to take it back to its idea, keep it in touch with its history’ (p. 155). According to Rose’s post-formalist view, the idea of art’s meta-project is the idea of form. (shrink)

Considers the problem of stylistic change in art, arguing that art is not reducible to external political, social, or economic determinants.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 73-84 [Access article in PDF] Music-Picture:One Form of Synthetic Art Education"Music-picture (a picture drawn through musical perception)" has been widely accepted by art educators in Japan. The purpose of this essay is to propose the making of music-pictures as art education and to put it on afirm theoretical base. I first investigate three gestalt rules: adjacency, continuance, and resemblance, all of which (...) are applicable to the senses of both seeing and hearing. Next I present research on color hearing as one version ofsynaesthesia, which is the comprehensive faculty that binds the five senses in various ways. The well-organized music-picture program by Kaoru Sasaki 1 is introduced as an example. 2 The synthetic art-educational value of music-picture will become clearer through these examinations. The Interrelations between Visual Arts and Music It is exciting that the visual arts meet music in an art class, even if these subjects are entirely different in regard to media, expressive form, the category of perception, and mastery of techniques. Put simply, Picasso's works are visible, whereas Stravinsky's pieces are invisible. Nevertheless, both powerfully convey imaginative and often narrative messages. Relying on intuition alone, I firmly believe both are interchangeable.My research on common methods of organizing both recorded music and painting was my first observation of the mutual relationship between music and visual arts. 3 But what I considered then would not be applied to art class directly because the research was based on my practical experience. It did not have any educational goals. Now I recognize that instructive approaches are necessary to lay the foundation for art classes dealing with interaction between two distinct modalities.In Japan, the Ministry of Education and Science provides the government curriculum guidelines nearly every ten years. It contains descriptions on two subjects: The visual arts and music taught in these classes are at an elementary school level and a junior high school level, both located within a compulsory education system. The new version has been in force since April 2002 (the new school term starts in April in Japan). Objectives in the two educational fields are similar and ideas of what art and music education ought to be are almost the same. The aim common to both in the government curriculum guidelines: "Through expression and appreciation, we [End Page 73] cultivate students' sentiments" invites the linking of music and the visual arts across the curriculum.Many art educators in Japan are interested in this sort of idea and have actually put it into practice. 4 They are engaged in interrelating or even unifying music and the visual arts. Additionally I know other teachers who have designed and proposed many ideas toward this crossover. Listed below are general ideas that seek to combine visual arts with music in an art class.1) Music-picture: to make a pictorial description of impressions received from music.2) Sound map: to make a map of sounds heard at a given location. Each sound is visualized by simple marks like - - -, <<<, ~~~, ooo, and xxx.3) Graphic notation: to write a score which directs the details, whole form, and progression of music by graphics instead of staff notation. Using onomatopoeias or instructions by words are common. It can be improvised, based on intuitively translating visual impacts into sounds.4) Sound toy: to make an original musical instrument of familiar easil obtained materials. For instance, a corrugated cardboard ukulele whose strings are rubber bands, a pair of maracas made of empty cans and soybeans, and so forth.5) Sound sculpture: to make sculpture producing interesting sounds (sometimes noises like creak or clatter). Extensive genres: wood sculpture, metal construction, assemblage (junk arts), kinetic arts, and so on.6) Sound installation: to make a place where participants experience sounds generated by objects or equipment.7) Multimedia: in the broad sense, to mix visuals with music; noises like jingle, tap, and bang! in daily life, or natural environmental sounds like a pit-a-pat of falling rain, a whisper of leaves, or... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 73-84 [Access article in PDF] Music-Picture:One Form of Synthetic Art Education"Music-picture (a picture drawn through musical perception)" has been widely accepted by art educators in Japan. The purpose of this essay is to propose the making of music-pictures as art education and to put it on afirm theoretical base. I first investigate three gestalt rules: adjacency, continuance, and resemblance, all of which (...) are applicable to the senses of both seeing and hearing. Next I present research on color hearing as one version ofsynaesthesia, which is the comprehensive faculty that binds the five senses in various ways. The well-organized music-picture program by Kaoru Sasaki 1 is introduced as an example. 2 The synthetic art-educational value of music-picture will become clearer through these examinations. The Interrelations between Visual Arts and Music It is exciting that the visual arts meet music in an art class, even if these subjects are entirely different in regard to media, expressive form, the category of perception, and mastery of techniques. Put simply, Picasso's works are visible, whereas Stravinsky's pieces are invisible. Nevertheless, both powerfully convey imaginative and often narrative messages. Relying on intuition alone, I firmly believe both are interchangeable.My research on common methods of organizing both recorded music and painting was my first observation of the mutual relationship between music and visual arts. 3 But what I considered then would not be applied to art class directly because the research was based on my practical experience. It did not have any educational goals. Now I recognize that instructive approaches are necessary to lay the foundation for art classes dealing with interaction between two distinct modalities.In Japan, the Ministry of Education and Science provides the government curriculum guidelines nearly every ten years. It contains descriptions on two subjects: The visual arts and music taught in these classes are at an elementary school level and a junior high school level, both located within a compulsory education system. The new version has been in force since April 2002 (the new school term starts in April in Japan). Objectives in the two educational fields are similar and ideas of what art and music education ought to be are almost the same. The aim common to both in the government curriculum guidelines: "Through expression and appreciation, we [End Page 73] cultivate students' sentiments" invites the linking of music and the visual arts across the curriculum.Many art educators in Japan are interested in this sort of idea and have actually put it into practice. 4 They are engaged in interrelating or even unifying music and the visual arts. Additionally I know other teachers who have designed and proposed many ideas toward this crossover. Listed below are general ideas that seek to combine visual arts with music in an art class.1) Music-picture: to make a pictorial description of impressions received from music.2) Sound map: to make a map of sounds heard at a given location. Each sound is visualized by simple marks like - - -, <<<, ~~~, ooo, and xxx.3) Graphic notation: to write a score which directs the details, whole form, and progression of music by graphics instead of staff notation. Using onomatopoeias or instructions by words are common. It can be improvised, based on intuitively translating visual impacts into sounds.4) Sound toy: to make an original musical instrument of familiar easil obtained materials. For instance, a corrugated cardboard ukulele whose strings are rubber bands, a pair of maracas made of empty cans and soybeans, and so forth.5) Sound sculpture: to make sculpture producing interesting sounds (sometimes noises like creak or clatter). Extensive genres: wood sculpture, metal construction, assemblage (junk arts), kinetic arts, and so on.6) Sound installation: to make a place where participants experience sounds generated by objects or equipment.7) Multimedia: in the broad sense, to mix visuals with music; noises like jingle, tap, and bang! in daily life, or natural environmental sounds like a pit-a-pat of falling rain, a whisper of leaves, or... (shrink)

This issue of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (TA) encompasses eight articles by artists and scholars from around the globe who engage with methodologies of art practice within research that reflects on technological and ecological change, contributing to the discourse on the inclusion of subjective experience in research. The articles by authors Dulmini Perera, Kate Doyle, Nora S. Vaage, Merete Lie, Nikita Peresin Meden, Kristina Pranjić, Peter Purg, Nicolaas H. Jacobs, Marth Munro, Chris Broodryk, Semi Ryu, Rahul Mahata, (...) Doreswamy, Sana Altaf and Aqib Javid Parry form a collection that crosses disciplines and genres to engage in fundamental critique of existing modes of enquiry and conclusion. The texts situate art and design methodologies in particular cultural contexts and in relation to frameworks defined by research methodologies of the sciences and humanities to gain agency for critique and to counter a sense of inevitability that has come to mark the most recent crises. (shrink)

The notion of naivety is a form of classification and explanation of the social world. By applying Erving Goffman’s expression games model, it is observed that the notion of naivety corresponds to a situation in which an observer assumes that the observed subject does not accommodate his behavior to the presence of the observer, in the assumption that the latter might take advantage from what he learns from it. This article explores this model’s explanatory power in reference to the diverse (...) forms in which the notion of naivety is used in contexts where transinteractive structures of the art world have to be taken into account. La noción de ingenuidad es una forma cotidiana de clasificación y explicación del mundo social. Usando el modelo de juegos de expresión de Erving Goffman, se observa que ella corresponde a la situación en que un actor asume que otro no modifica su comportamiento teniendo en cuenta lo que el primero aprende de él para alcanzar sus propios objetivos. En este artículo se explora la utilidad de este modelo para explicar el uso de la noción de ingenuidad en referencia a estructuras transinteractivas de mundos del arte. (shrink)

Adorno’s dialectical approach to aesthetics is perhaps understood better in terms of his monumental work, 'Aesthetic Theory,' which attempts to relate the speculative tradition in philosophical aesthetics to the situation of art in twentieth-century society, than in terms of purely theoretical claims. This paper demonstrates that Adorno embraces the Kantian thesis concerning art’s autonomy and that he criticizes transcendental philosophy. It also discusses how Adorno provides the outlines for a dialectical conception of artistic truth in relation to his argument with (...) Hegel. Adorno’s assessment of the Enlightenment is linked to his interpretation of twentieth-century literature. The conclusion of this paper emphasizes the political implications of Adorno’s position when the philosopher approaches art as a sign of historical truth. (shrink)

In this beautiful meditation on the history of art and the problem of style, Henri Focillon describes how art forms change over time. Although he argues that the development of art is reducible to external political, social, or economic determinants, one of his great achievements was to lodge a concept of autonomous and organic artistic creation within the shifting domain of materials and techniques. Focillon emphasizes the universal presence of contradictory tendencies that give all styles manifold, stratified character.The Life (...) of Forms remains one of the most brilliant and important applications of biological metaphors to the study of art. It has been superbly translated by Yale art historian George Kubler, whose book The Shape of Time was strongly influenced by Focillon. (shrink)

Freedom is generated in at least two distinct ways: as the ability to avoid perceived dangers and pursue perceived goods, and even to pursue complicated plans in those directions, freedom evolves. But as a social and political matter, freedom seems more subject to human will. The best social institutions -- the kind that serve to encourage or constrain freedom of choice -- also appear to be evolutionary products in some sense. Can there be too much freedom? Of course there can. (...) No constraint at all would guarantee personal and social disaster. Individual activity can pose serious dangers to nature and to culture. But how may we ensure that the constraints we may chose to impose our ones that are good for us? What we need to do is to find, as consistently as possible with the necessity that human individuals be able to use their local perception of local opportunity in pursuit of their own interests, a framework that emerges out of human practice; we should take advantage of lessons learned about evolution: those strategies work that are in tune with the forces at work within the niche. In our attempts to solve social problems, we can't afford to take our eyes off the characteristics of the individuals that make up the social world we hope to change. And in my view, here as elsewhere, the smallest intervention is likely to be the best. (shrink)

Art and the Form of Life takes a classic theme—philosophy as the art of living—and gives it a contemporary twist. The book examines a series of watershed moments in artistic practice alongside philosophers’ most enduring questions about the way we live. Coupling Tino Sehgal with Wittgenstein, cave art with Foucault, Stanley Kubrick with Nietzsche, and the Bauhaus with Walter Benjamin, the book animates the idea that life is literally ours to make. It reflects on universal themes that connect the long (...) histories of art and philosophy, and it does so using a contemporary approach. Drawing on great philosophical works, it argues that life practiced as an art form affords an experience of meaning, in the sense that it is engaging, creative, and participatory. It thus effects a fundamental renewal of experience. (shrink)

As the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Joshua Reynolds played a pivotal role in shaping the course of British art in the 18th century. In these discourses, Reynolds reflects on the nature of art, the role of the artist, and the importance of aesthetic education. With insightful commentary on the works of the Old Masters and a wealth of practical advice for aspiring artists, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of art or (...) art theory. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

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

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guibert of Tournai's Letter to Lady Isabelle:An Introduction and English TranslationLarry F. Field, Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Guibert of TournaiIntroductionGuibert, from the noble family of As-Piès, was born near Tournai around 1200. From his hometown he traveled to Paris for his art degree, and completed the curriculum in theology there before entering the Franciscan Order around 1240. He may have participated in Louis IX's crusade of 1248, (...) but, if so, was surely back in Paris by 1254 at the latest, since he preached a cycle of sermons de dominicis et de sanctis to the university community before summer 1255.1 His regency as Franciscan master of theology at Paris was probably around 1259–1261,2 about the time he [End Page 31] completed his Eruditio regum et principum for Louis IX,3 and began his most substantial work, the Erudimentum doctrinae.4 Other significant treatises include his De pace et animi tranquillitate (ca. 1275)5 written for Marie de Dampierre, and the Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae, prepared for the Second Council of Lyon.6 Guibert died in Tournai on 7 October 1284.7Sometime around 1254, Guibert wrote a long letter of spiritual advice to Isabelle (1225–70), the sister of King Louis IX.8 Isabelle was herself a remarkable figure. She had rejected several proposals of marriage, including that with Conrad, the heir to Emperor Frederick II, in 1243, in spite of pressure from her family and Pope Innocent IV. But following a bout of serious illness at about that time,9 her family accepted her [End Page 32] decision to remain unwed. There is no evidence, however, that Isabelle ever pronounced a formal vow of virginity. Through the 1250s she simply remained at the Capetian court as a virgin princess with an increasing reputation for piety and indeed holiness, praised in lavish terms by Innocent IV in 1253 and Alexander IV in 1256.10 This piety took a distinctly Franciscan turn by 1254, when Pope Innocent IV granted her request for Franciscan confessors,11 which would ultimately result in her foundation of Longchamp, a house of Sorores minores just west of Paris, by 1260.12 Guibert's letter shows no awareness of such a project, indicating that it must have been written before spring 1255, by which time the land for Longchamp was being purchased on Isabelle's behalf.13 Guibert thus wrote at the moment when Isabelle was forming her first ties to the Franciscans, but well before her move to Longchamp, where she lived out the 1260s as resident lay patron (but never a nun).Guibert's Letter is really a short treatise of spiritual and moral advice, tailored to a celibate princess. It is organized around Psalm 44:14–15, All the glory of the king's daughter is within in golden fringes, clothed around with varieties. In a five-part structure, the king's daughter stands for a heavenly inheritance; glory within represents internal purity; gold indicates virginity; the fringes are a sign of humility; and clothed around with varieties points to honest comportment. The resulting "royal garment," however, is rather unequally woven together, with section one on the "heavenly inheritance" and the intertwined sections three and four on virginity and humility receiving by far the most space. In fact, section one forms a sort of treatise-within-a-treatise, organized as a ten-step ascent to the heavenly inheritance awaiting the daughter of the king. [End Page 33]The Letter to Lady Isabelle was first edited by Alphonse de Poorter in 1931, from a manuscript which contained only part of the text.14 The full text was brought into print by Sean Field in 2003,15 and translated into French by Jacques Dalarun in 2014.16 Yet in spite of these advances, the Letter has remained little noticed by scholars. Anne-Hélène Allirot offered several perceptive pages in 2010, stressing the way Guibert's treatment of hereditas implies that female members of the royal family might be particularly able to embody Capetian claims to holiness.17 That same year, in the only recent article dedicated specifically to this Letter, Rina Lahav... (shrink)

“The longer you work, the more the mystery deepens of what appearance is, or how what is called appearance can be made in another medium."—Francis Bacon, painter This, in a nutshell, is the central problem in the theory of art. It has fascinated philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein. And it fascinates artists and art historians, who have always drawn extensively on philosophical ideas about language and representation, and on ideas about vision and the visible world that have deep philosophical roots. (...) John Hyman’s _The Objective Eye_ is a radical treatment of this problem, deeply informed by the history of philosophy and science, but entirely fresh. The questions tackled here are fundamental ones: Is our experience of color an illusion? How does the metaphysical status of colors differ from that of shapes? What is the difference between a picture and a written text? Why are some pictures said to be more realistic than others? Is it because they are especially truthful or, on the contrary, because they deceive the eye? _The Objective Eye_ explores the fundamental concepts we use constantly in our most innocent thoughts and conversations about art, as well as in the most sophisticated art theory. The book progresses from pure philosophy to applied philosophy and ranges from the metaphysics of color to Renaissance perspective, from anatomy in ancient Greece to impressionism in nineteenth-century France. Philosophers, art historians, and students of the arts will find _The Objective Eye_ challenging and absorbing. (shrink)

이 글의 목적은 분석미학사에서 이뤄졌던 ‘예술의 열린 개념’ 논쟁을 검토하고, 비트겐 슈타인의 ‘가족유사성’ 개념에 제기되는 상대주의 문제를 ‘자연사’에 대한 이해와 ‘미학적 인간의 공공성’의 관점에서 완화하는 데 있다. 먼저 예술의 열린 개념 논제는 ｢미학에서 이론의 역할｣(1956)이라는 와이츠의 논문으로부터 출발한다. 와이츠는 이 논문에서 예술 을 필요충분조건으로 정의할 수 없는 열린 개념이라고 규정하고, 가족유사성에 근거한 예 술 정의의 가능성을 제시했기 때문이다. 그러나 후기 분석미학자인 캐럴은 예술의 열린 개 념 논제를 ‘정의불가론’이라는 회의주의자의 논변으로 분석한다. 그 주된 근거는 가족유사 성이 ‘전시적인’ 유사성에 토대를 둔다는 데 (...) 있다. 캐럴은 이 유사성에 제약이 없다면 1) 모든 것이 예술이 된다는 상대주의적인 결론을 함축하게 되거나, 2) 그러한 함축을 피하기 위해 필요 또는 충분조건을 제시하는 순간 더 이상 유사성에 기반한 정의를 실현할 수 없 는 조건적 정의가 된다고 비판한다. 이 문제에 필자는 와이츠의 문제의식과 비트겐슈타인 의 가족유사성 개념을 다시 옹호함으로써, 예술은 열린 개념이라고 주장한다. 대신 가족유 사성의 제약적 구조는 후기 비트겐슈타인 언어에 대한 자연사적 이해와 문화인류학자로서 디사나야케가 제공하는 ‘예술화’ 개념의 공공성을 통해, 예술의 기원에 관한 발생론적 해 명을 필요로 한다고 밝힌다. 그 결과 이 글은 예술 정의 문제에서 비트겐슈타인적인 탐구 의 방향은 여전히 유효하다고 제안한다. (shrink)

Descriptivism in the ontology of art is the thesis that the correct ontological proposal for a kind of artwork cannot show the nascent ontological conception of such things embedded in our critical and appreciative practices to be substantially mistaken. Descriptivists believe that the kinds of revisionary art ontological proposals propounded by Nelson Goodman, Gregory Currie, Mark Sagoff, and me are methodologically misconceived. In this paper I examine the case that has been made for a local form of descriptivism in the (...) ontology of art: a form that does not quarrel with the possibility of revisionism in matters of ‘fundamental metaphysics’, but which argues that special features of the arts make descriptivism in this particular sphere obligatory. David Davies, Andrew Kania and Stephen Davies are local descriptivists in this sense. I argue that the burden of proof lies with the local descriptivist, but that this burden is too heavy for him to carry. Specifically, it emerges that the only way in which the local descriptivist can motivate his position is by arguing that our artistic practices determine the art ontological facts: a thesis that local descriptivists typically appeal to, but have not been able to argue for successfully. My conclusion is that the methodological debate in the ontology of art should now proceed by focussing on the case for global descriptivism: i.e. that form of descriptivism that opposes the possibility of revisionism in ontological matters across the board. (shrink)

One cannot ignore the institutions that surround art if one wants to deliver a theory of art acknowledging that art lives through a community of social relationships and assumes meaning as such. I make the claim that the evolution of sports from mere play, survival, and diversion toward the global phenomenon of modern sports can likewise be understood as a function of social connectivity. In this article, I first outline the theory of art, then link that to sport as an (...) institution to then develop the thesis that art and sport institutionalize the body in a particular way and deduce that this creates culture. I conclude that both art and sport, a notion somewhat derived from Wittgenstein, are kinds of... (shrink)

With the aim of teaching and practicing art for the good or moreover the better, Josef Albers proves to be an idealist. At the same time, he confirms with this conviction that art can also arouse the opposite. This conviction is already evident in the grammatical form of the term, which proves that art is functional or a technique for socio-cultural applications, whether good or bad. In the presentation of the political and philosophical background of this idea as well as (...) in the analysis of Josef Albers´s ´artistic research´ on the artistic means as cultural techniques, this assumption is to be proved by the essay. (shrink)

Form of Thought and Presentational Gesture in Karl Popper and E. H. Gombrich The paper deals with common elements and differences in Popper and Gombrich, especially concerning their forms of thought and presentational gesture. Among others it considers the model of common sense which was basal for both of them as well as the similarities of searchlight theory (Popper) and some postulates of Gestalt psychology (Gombrich). At the end it analyses their approaches to historiography with special focusing on Gombrich's (...) comments on the concept of social history of art. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 2 Seiten: 135-143.

Connecting research and production, art research represents a breaking of the barrier between creation and academia. However, there is also a contradiction contained in this kind of research deriving from its methods, since the process of art-based practice must, by its very nature, involve the subjectivity of the artist. I use my own studies as the research object to discuss this issue, and this article presents the problems I encountered during my artistic practice and research of ambiguous roles. This paper (...) has two main points of focus. First, I explore how the fallacy of self-referentiality is presented in paintings and films, and, second, I draw on my short film practice during my master’s study period to explain how the shots present a continuum in relation to the “absent one” and produce interface effects. However, the second point is not necessarily the result of the first one. This kind of connection and contradiction between practice and cognition in the process of art research is that I will analyse and discuss here. (shrink)

That form shall correspond to the content of a work is a law of realist art. Marxist-Leninist esthetics, on the basis of discovery of this law, does not prescribe an invented norm for the artist, but generalizes from the experience of art itself. Methodologically, it takes as its point of departure the dialectics of content and form. In so doing, Marxist-Leninist esthetics does not dissolve in philosophical concepts the distinctive features of content in art and the nature of form. It (...) examines the unity of content and form, and their development, in the context in which they manifest themselves specifically in art. In other words, it investigates the esthetic features of the relationship between content and form in art. (shrink)

Cet article propose une relecture du traité du Pseudo-Longin, le Peri Hupsous (Du Sublime), pour mettre en évidence l’un de ses enjeux philosophiques dont l’intérêt apparaît particulièrement actuel. Au cours de sa conceptualisation du sublime, l’auteur antique produit certes une définition du grand-dire mais il questionne surtout la puissance des œuvres, et ce de façon immanente, avant toute réception subjective. Or cette pensée de la puissance esthétique est solidaire d’une conception de l’art qui récuse tout dualisme de la forme pour (...) saisir l’œuvre en tant qu’unité paradoxale et intimement cohérente. Notre hypothèse tient en l’idée qu’à travers cette adéquation de la puissance à la logique même de la poièsis, le Pseudo-Longin ne nous donne à lire rien de moins qu’une première formulation de ce que nous appellerions dans un vocabulaire contemporain la performativité de l’art. Ce sont les conditions d’une telle performativité, étendue du discours à l’esthétique en général, que cet article tente de repérer tout au long du traité. (shrink)