Kant and Recent Philosophies of Art

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-582
Author(s):  
João Lemos
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
The Third

AbstractThis article is to be a bridge between Kant’s aesthetics and contemporary art – not by being a paper on Kant and contemporary art, but rather by being on Kant and contemporary philosophy of art. I claim that Kant’s views on the appreciation of art can accommodate contextualism as well as ethicism. I argue that not only does contextualism fit Kant’s views on the appreciation of art; in §§51–3 of the third Critique, Kant’s appreciation of art is in accordance with contextualism. I go on to argue that not only does ethicism fit Kant’s views on the appreciation of art; in §§51–3, Kant’s appreciation of art is in accordance with ethicism.

Clive Bell’s "Metaphysical Hypothesis" and Everyday Aesthetics

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Thomas Leddy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Deep Meaning ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Formal Properties

Clive Bell’s Art, published in 1913, is widely seen as a founding document in contemporary aesthetics. Yet his formalism and his attendant definition of art as “significant form” is widely rejected in contemporary art discourse and in the philosophy of art. In this paper I argue for a reconsideration of his thought in connection with current discussions of “the aesthetics of everyday life.” Although some, notably Allen Carlson, have argued against application of Bell’s formalism to the aesthetics of everyday life, I claim that this is based on an interpretation of the concept that is overly narrow. First, Li Zehou offers an interpretation of “significant form” that allows in sedimented social meaning. Second, Bell himself offers a more complex theory of significant form by way of his “metaphysical hypothesis,” one that stresses perception of significant form outside the realm of art (for example in nature or in everyday life). Bell’s idea that the artist can perceive significant form in nature allows for significant form to not just be the surface-level formal properties of things. It stresses depth, although a different kind than the cognitive scientific depth Carlson wants. This is a depth that is consistent with the anti-dualism of Spinoza, Marx and Dewey. Reinterpreting Bell in this direction, we can say we are moved by certain relations of lines and colors because they direct our minds to the hidden aspect of things, the spiritual side of the material world referred to by Spinoza and developed by Dewey in his concept of experience. Bell hardly “reduces the everyday to a shadow of itself,” as Carlson puts it, since the everyday, as experienced by the artist or the aesthetically astute observer, has, or potentially has, deep meaning. If we reject Bell’s dualism and his downgrading of sensuous experience, we can rework his idea of pure form to refer to an aspect of things detached, yes, from practical use, but not from particularity or sedimented meaning, not purified of all associations.

scholarly journals The Temporality of Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art: Kant, Kentridge and Cave Art as Elective Contemporaries

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-602
Author(s):  
Fiona Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Philosophy Of Time ◽  
The Third ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Late Palaeolithic ◽  
Cave Art

AbstractThis article contributes to understanding of Contemporary Art and of the temporality of contemporaneity, along with the philosophy of time more generally. I propose a diachronic contemporaneity over time gaps – elective contemporaneity – through examination of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic, the Third Analogy and the concept of ‘following’ among artistic geniuses; diachronic recognition and disjunctive synchronicity discoverable in William Kentridge’s multimedia artworks; as well as non-chronological temporal implications of superimpositions in late Palaeolithic cave art suggesting ‘graphic respect’. Elective contemporaneity shows up complexity in relations to past and present, putting in question definitions of ‘Contemporary Art’ restricted to either chronology or supposedly definitive paradigms.

Contemporary approach to the understanding of the notion of “beautiful” as an aesthetic category

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Irina P. Nikitina
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
The Third ◽  
Social Standards ◽  
Definite Kind ◽  
Standards Of Beauty ◽  
Contemporary Approach

The author elaborates the idea of modern aesthetics that the notion of beautiful is not a fundamental category of modern art and modern philosophy of art. Under the direct influence of science and arts modern philosophy has added to the categories such notions as probability, absurdity, the mundane, the understanding etc. On the other hand a new understanding of society and man prompted the introduction of such categories as lifeworld, fear, solitariness, care, doubt, language games etc. It has become evident that many categories are not only blurred but rather heterogeneous, thus the system of categories is something to be referred to with considerable reservations. The article proposes a preliminary definition and interpretation of the beautiful and the main principles of the analysis of the beautiful. In the most general and tentative terms the beautiful can be defined as something that complies with the idea of beauty accepted in a given society or civilization. Ideas of beauty can vary from culture to culture and from civilization to civilization. This is no to say that certain, albeit few, objects cannot be considered beautiful throughout many historical epochs. Standards of beauty as well as social standards in general, do not refer to any object but only to certain types of objects. Consequently beautiful is always beautiful of a kind. Beauty in general does not exist, there are only beautiful objects of a definite kind. The article maintains that there are at least three reasons why the beautiful cannot be verbally defined. The first is methodological, the second is social and the third is related to the peculiarities of the beautiful itself, primarily it sensual nature. In the first place the degree of clarity of scientific notions depends on the level of the development of science. The scientific study of arts is a never-ending venture. And while it continues, its categories and in particular the category of the beautiful will require clarification.

scholarly journals Art of Being an Art Critic. Review of: Busev, M. A. (2020). Iskusstvo postigat’ iskusstvo: sbornik statei k 100-letiiu N. A. Dmitrievoi [Art of Comprehending Art: Collected Articles for N. A. Dmitrieva’s 100th Birthday]. Moscow: BooksMArt. 408 p.: Il.

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-296
Author(s):  
Evgeny P. Alekseev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
100Th Birthday ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
State Institute ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Theoretical Issues

This review examines Art of Comprehending Art, a collection of scholarly articles based on the materials of the conference Historical and Theoretical Issues of Art Studies: For N. A. Dmitrieva’s 100th Birthday (held on April 24–25, 2017 at the State Institute of Art Studies of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation). The first part of the collection presents colleagues’ memories about N. A. Dmitrieva’s work revealing various facets of her talent. In the second part of the book, scholarly articles by contemporary art historians are devoted to the issues that N. A. Dmitrieva examined, i.e. the history of art criticism and art education in Russia, theoretical and methodological issues (image and word, issues of interpretation, kitsch), the creative work of P. Picasso, M. Vrubel, and A. Chekhov. The third section contains fragments of N. A. Dmitrieva’s diary, as well as two previously unpublished articles.

Artistic Creativity and Human Evolution – Art Theory and the Work of André Leroi-Gourhan

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Vassiliou
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Fourth Part ◽  
Artistic Theory ◽  
Analytical Tools

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht das Werk André Leroi-Gourhans und insbesondere seine zweibändige Monographie Le geste et la parole auf ihre kunsttheoretische Relevanz; so werden zentrale Debatten über künstlerische Kreativität behandelt und untersucht, inwiefern Leroi-Gourhan zu ihnen beitragen kann. Nach einer einführenden Darstellung einiger allgemeiner Prämissen von Leroi-Gourhan (I) wird in einem zweiten Teil (II) gezeigt, dass seine Theorie der »Rhythmen« wertvolle Einsichten in die Debatte um »Kunstwollen« und Materialismus bereithält. Der dritte Abschnitt (III) diskutiert Leroi-Gourhans Werk im Kontext der Debatte um Industrialisierung und audiovisuelle Kultur in ihrem Gegensatz zu handwerklicher Kreativität. Schließlich (IV) werden Leroi-Gourhans Schlussfolgerungen bezüglich Wahrnehung und Digitalität mit einigen Aspekten zeitgenössischer Kunsttheorie verbunden. Im Ganzen soll gezeigt werden, dass Leroi-Gourhans Werk ein flexibles analytisches Instrumentarium bereithält, um menschliche Evolution und Kunstgeschichte zusammenzudenken und Kreativität im Kontext der allgemeinen kulturellen und technologischen Verschiebungen nach der Moderne zu untersuchen.<br><br>This article relates the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and mostly his two-volume ok Le geste et la parole to art theory. More specifically, it is concerned with central debates on artistic creativity and examines how Leroi-Gourhan can contribute to them. After presenting some general premises of Leroi-Gourhan’s work (I), its second part (II) argues that his theory on ›rhythms‹ supplies valuable insights to the debate of Kunstwollen and materialism. The third part (III) discusses his work within the debate of industrialization and audiovisual culture as opposed to manual and artisanal creativity. The fourth part (IV) links Leroi-Gourhan’s conclusions on perception and digitality with some aspects of contemporary art theory. On the whole, this article argues that Leroi-Gourhans’s work provides flexible analytical tools in order to think art history and human evolution in conjunction, as well as a specifi c framework for examining creativity within the general cultural and technological shifts after the modern age. The conclusions of this essay shed some light on Leroi-Gourhan’s theories on art and offer some methodological perspectives to contemporary artistic theory.

DARON HAGEN (b. 1961)Muldoon Songs (1989 and 1992)

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-114
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Song ◽  
The Third ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Voice

This chapter explores the Muldoon Songs by Daron Hagen. This succinct, appealing cycle comes from a generous, attractively presented volume, replete with notes by both the composer and Paul Sperry, who has done so much for contemporary art song. This cycle consists of seven contrasting songs; the third and fourth mere fragments. The sixth was added last, at the request of Paul Sperry, who commissioned the piece. Much of the intriguingly acerbic text is set straightforwardly. Through this cycle, Hagen shows a masterly grasp of the voice–piano idiom, along with a love of words, and a refined instinct for setting them. His writing seems unfettered and entirely natural, encompassing an exceptionally wide range of styles with unerring craftsmanship and sometimes deceptive simplicity. Indeed, as this chapter shows, the music breathes freely, maintaining elasticity and rhythmic verve.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 302-306
Author(s):  
Lydia L. Moland
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
The World

Hegel’s wide-ranging philosophy of art allows us both to assess the expression of different worldviews in art and the ways in which individual arts—architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry—allow us to sense ourselves and become aware of the world around us. His aesthetic theory elucidates crucial components of philosophical idealism generally, and his description of how art gives us joy illuminates modern aesthetic experience as well. This chapter connects Hegel’s “aesthetics of truth,” and so his idealism, to a description of aesthetic pleasure, then briefly speculates on how Hegel’s theory of art can be applied and extended to our experiences of contemporary art today.

Art and Indiscernibility: Arthur C. Danto and the Dynamics of Analytic Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
John Erik Hmiel
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
History And Criticism ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Metaphysical Grounding ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
English Speaking World

Arthur C. Danto was one of the most influential and prolific philosophers of art of the second half of the twentieth century. More particularly, his encounter with the art of Andy Warhol in 1964 became a crucial moment that would catapult his lifelong attempt to spell out the theoretical conditions of contemporary art, and the implications those conditions held for art history and criticism. In this article, however, I show that Danto was in fact primed for his encounter with Warhol by the newly emerging identity of Anglo-American analytic philosophy at mid-century. Using unpublished archival material, I show that Danto's fundamental insights in his first two major essays in the philosophy of art, “The Artworld” (1964) and “Artworks and Real Things” (1973), were in place at least two years before his chance meeting with Warhol's artwork. In making this more modest historical claim, however, I argue that Danto was part of a broader generation of philosophers who were attempting to work through some of the fundamental problems raised by the naturalist tradition of American thought since the late nineteenth century, problems that became central to the emerging identity of analytic philosophy in its early stages. Among the most pressing of these problems was how values functioned in a naturalistic universe absent theological or metaphysical grounding. Drawing from this philosophical space, Danto's account of art deeply influenced the direction of Anglo-American philosophy of art during the second half of the twentieth century. In the process, he became one of the most significant theorists of contemporary art in the English-speaking world.

Science

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 157-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Roberts ◽  
Adrian Mackenzie
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Forms Of Life

How could social scientists and cultural theorists take responsibility in engaging with science? How might they develop an experimental sensibility to the links between the production of knowledge and the production of existence or forms of life? Critically outlining key fields in the social and cultural studies of science, we interrogate a number of approaches to these questions. The first approach tries to make sense of how science operates in relation to economic, political and cultural forces. The second analyses science as a form of embodied work or practice. The third engages with science as collaborative-collective elaboration of events, ranging across cultural theory, contemporary art and participant ethnographies. This outline sketches a vector of responsibility across this diverse range of engagements, suggesting that contemporary movements between science and other knowledges constitute ethical and political imperatives.

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