Environmental Aesthetics

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
The Status ◽  
Value Of Nature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
In Virtue Of

The rapid growth of concern for the natural environment over the last third of the twentieth century has brought the welcome reintroduction of nature as a significant topic in aesthetics. In virtue of transforming previous attitudes towards nature, environmentalist thinking has posed questions about how we conceptualize our aesthetic interactions with nature, the aesthetic value of nature, and the status of art about nature. Although environmental concerns have undoubtedly motivated the new aesthetic interest in nature, the term ‘environmental aesthetics’ connotes two overlapping but distinct themes, one emphasizing the aesthetics of nature as understood by environmentalism, the second focusing on the notion of environments of all sorts as objects of appreciation.

Environmental Art and the Interaction of Ethical and Aesthetic Value

2020 ◽  
pp. 127-150
Author(s):  
Ted Nannicelli
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Environmental Art ◽  
Ethical Criticism ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Oriented Approach

This chapter argues that (1) in contrast to the art forms already discussed, the ethical criticism of which sometimes invites the perspectivist approach and sometimes demands the production-oriented approach, the proper ethical criticism of environmental art requires the production-oriented approach; (2) the production-oriented approach to the ethical criticism of environmental artworks lends support to the moderate moralist’s claim about the interaction of ethical and aesthetic value: the presences of ethical defects in environmental artworks sometimes diminishes their aesthetic value; (3) because environmental artworks appropriate part of the natural environment as an aspect of their identity, an aesthetic flaw in an environmental artwork necessarily also creates aesthetic disvalue in the natural environment—disvalue that exists in virtue of the creation of the artwork. Insofar as the diminishment of the aesthetic value of the natural environment is ethically wrong, the aesthetic flaws of an environmental artwork necessarily constitute ethical flaws.

The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Ladyga
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
Gertrude Stein ◽  
Value System ◽  
John Barth ◽  
The Status ◽  
Twentieth Century American Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Historical Moment

The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature focuses on the issue of productivity, using the figure of laziness to negotiate the relation between the ethical and the aesthetic. This book argues that major twentieth-century American writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Barth, Donald Barthelme and David Foster Wallace provocatively challenge the ethos of productivity by filtering their ethical interventions through culturally stigmatised imagery of laziness. Ladyga argues that when the motif of laziness appears, it invariably reveals the underpinnings of an emerging value system at a given historical moment, while at the same time offering a glimpse into the strategies of rebelling against the status quo

scholarly journals Flower and plant variants as abstraction in Javanese batik motifs from classical to contemporary era

2021 ◽  
Vol 905 (1) ◽  
pp. 012145
Author(s):  
S Budi ◽  
T Widiastuti ◽  
D T Ardianto ◽  
S Mataram
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
The Public ◽  
Basic Substance ◽  
The Aesthetic

Abstract Batik is one of the artworks of old Javanese society which has continued to exist and develop until the present day. In the 18th century, batik was a special type of clothing worn by the nobility, and there were even prohibitions for using batik clothing with certain types of motifs. Its basic substance is the ornamental images made on the fabric. A piece of cloth can change its position and value only because of a difference in decoration. As a visual aesthetic, batik is the work of Javanese artists, created by abstracting the surrounding natural environment, especially various flora, and fauna. Up to 1912, there were more than 100 names of flowers, leaves, and plants that were abstracted to become classical motifs. In the contemporary era, where batik has become more acceptable as clothing for the public, flora-based motifs are no longer the result of abstraction of particular flowers or plants but are considered more for their ornamental aesthetic. The aesthetic value of contemporary batik motifs is no longer determined by the type of flowers or plants abstracted, but by how they are represented for the beauty of clothing.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. Its development has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art, and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both helped to set the central philosophical issue of the field, which is due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, two of which are the engagement and the cognitive approaches. The first holds that appreciators must transcend traditional dichotomies, such as subject/object, and diminish the distance between themselves and objects of appreciation, aiming at multi-sensory immersion of the former within the latter. By contrast, the second contends that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, shows just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

scholarly journals Celebrity capital, field-specific aesthetic criteria and the status of cultural objects: The case of Masked and Anonymous

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Simon Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Work ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Individual Voice ◽  
Insight Into

This article probes the explanatory value of the concept of celebrity capital in helping us to grasp the fate of celebrities and the cultural objects they produce when they move across to other fields. However, the article seeks to do more than this: with reference to the example of the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan’s incursion into the cinematic field, where he co-wrote Masked and Anonymous (2003), it contributes to debates by examining the significance of field-specific aesthetic criteria in helping us to gain insight into the aesthetic value of cultural objects. While Dylan’s celebrity capital gave him access to a number of ‘A-List’ celebrity actors, the aesthetic dimension of the film did not have a meaningful relation to the state of play in the cinematic field and so the film was, in the main, critically panned. So, Masked and Anonymous made Dylan’s boundary-crossing journey in reverse: it retreated to the field of popular music where its aesthetic properties were warmly received when considered in relation to Dylan’s wider body of work. Meanwhile, it was difficult for the harshest critics to ignore the aesthetic value that Dylan’s wider body of work had accumulated over time. There is, then, a temporal dimension of aesthetic appraisal that needs to be considered, even when reviews are considered at a particular historical conjuncture. In this analysis of field-specific aesthetic criteria, we see that boundary work is effective in diminishing the status of a cultural object ( Masked and Anonymous), but we also see that each critic has only limited sway in the face of the totality of judgements which emerges as a supra-individual voice, heterogeneous and full of contradictions, deriving from all those who make evaluative judgements in the field of culture.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. The development of environmental aesthetics has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors have broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both have helped to set the central philosophical issues of the field, which are due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large, and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with most basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, which are typically classified as either noncognitive or cognitive approaches. Positions of the first type stress various kinds of emotional and feeling-related states and responses, which are taken to be the more noncognitive dimensions of aesthetic experience. By contrast, positions of the second type contend that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and thus that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each of these two kinds of approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, recent work in environmental aesthetics, especially in the aesthetics of human environments and everyday life, demonstrates that although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, demonstrates just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

What is Aesthetic Value?

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-40
Author(s):  
Robert Stecker
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
Aesthetic Properties ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
In Virtue Of

This chapter offers an answer to the question: what is aesthetic value? It defends aesthetic empiricism: the view that the primary bearer of aesthetic value are experiences and that other things have aesthetic value in virtue of their capacity to provide aesthetically valuable experiences. By way of answering criticisms of this conception of aesthetic value, it argues that it is coherent, that it is grounded in the history of thought about the aesthetic, and that it does not succumb to counterexamples. The chapter concludes by looking at the idea that aesthetic value should be defined instead in terms of aesthetic properties and argues that defensible versions of such an approach are consistent with a definition in terms of aesthetic experience.

Aesthetic Experience

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Iseminger
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Drug Induced ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Sensual Pleasure ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article surveys attempts by aestheticians writing in the Anglo-American analytic tradition during the last half of the twentieth century to clarify, defend, and use the idea of a distinctively aesthetic state of mind. Their ambitions typically include most or all of the following: giving an account of what distinguishes the aesthetic state of mind from other states of mind that are like it in some ways, such as sensual pleasure or drug-induced experience, or from those connected with other realms of human concern, such as the religious, the cognitive, the practical, and the moral; giving that account in a way that appeals neither to any prior idea of the aesthetic nor to the concept of art; explaining related ideas of the distinctively aesthetic, e.g. the ideas of aesthetic properties, qualities, aspects, or concepts, of the aesthetic object, of the aesthetic judgement, and of aesthetic value, in terms of the idea of the distinctively aesthetic state of mind; and defending some more or less close connection between the realm of the aesthetic thereby explained and the realm of art, while recognizing that the aesthetic state of mind may appropriately be directed towards or grounded in non-art (e.g. nature) as well.

Aesthetics of Popular Art

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Novitz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Popular Art ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Clement Greenberg ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Aesthetic

Questions about the aesthetic value and appreciation of popular art have only recently become an area of interest to Anglo-American aesthetics. This is curious, for the distinction between high and popular art — like that between high and popular culture, and between avant-garde art and mass art — is a familiar and longstanding one frequently drawn by critics, philosophers, and cultural theorists throughout the course of the twentieth century. It was extensively discussed by Marxist thinkers like Walter Benjamin, and was the stock-in-trade of the Critical Theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Not just those two, but high-modernist philosophers and critics like R. G. Collingwood, Clement Greenberg, and Dwight MacDonald also made much of the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ (or popular) art. Even so, it was a distinction that did not earn the serious attention of philosophical aesthetics until the penultimate decade of the twentieth century.

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