Showing papers in "The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in 1996"

Schopenhauer, philosophy, and the arts

Abstract: List of contributors Editor's acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1. Schopenhauer's metaphysics of appearance and Will in the philosophy of art Dale Jacquette Part I. The Work of Art: Schopenhauer on the Nature of Artistic Creation: 2. Knowledge and tranquility: Schopenhauer on the value of art Christopher Janaway 3. Schopenhauer and the aesthetics of creativity Lucian Krukowski 4. Art as liberation: a central theme of Schopenhauer's philosophy John E. Atwell Part II. The Experience of Beauty:Schopenhauer's Theory of Aesthetic Encounter: 5. Pleasure and knowledge in Schopenhauer's aesthetics Paul Guyer 6. Schopenhauer and aesthetic recognition Cheryl Foster 7. Schopenhauer on beauty and ontology Nathan Rotenstreich 8. Schopenhauer, Heidegger, art and the will Julian Young Part III. Schopenhauer's Enduring Influence on the Arts: Idealism and Romanticism: 9. Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of Will Lawrence Ferrara 10. Schopenhauer and the musicians: an inquiry into the sounds of silence and the limits of philosophizing about music Lydia Goehr 11. Metaphysics and aesthetics: a case study of Schopenhauer and Thomas Hardy T. J. Diffey 12. Schopenhauer according to the Symbolists: the philosophical roots of late nineteenth-century French aesthetic theory Shehira Doss-Davezac 13. Schopenhauer's philosophy of architecture Mitchell Schwarzer Bibliography of selected sources on Schopenhauer's aesthetics Index.

The absence of myth : writings on surrealism

Abstract: For Bataille, 'the absence of myth' had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had 'lost the secret of its cohesion', Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and the beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of profound reflection in the wake of World War Two. The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andre Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be. Introduced and translated by Michael Richardson.

Color Codes: Modern Theories of Color in Philosophy, Painting and Architecture, Literature, Music, and Psychology

Abstract: Color is an endlessly fascinating and controversial topic. "The first thing to realize about the study of color in our time is its uncanny ability to evade all attempts to systematically codify it, " writes Charles A. Riley in this series of interconnected essays on the uses and meanings of color. Color Codes draws heavily on interviews with many of today's leading artists - Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Peter Halley, Lukas Foss, A. S. Byatt, and others - as well as seminal texts by a wide range of thinkers including Wittgenstein, Derrida, Barthes, Schoenberg, Kandinsky, Albers, Joyce, Pynchon, and Jung. Although Riley finds remarkable parallels among the theories and techniques of various disciplines, his emphasis is on the individual nature of the color sense. This resistance to a unified color theory gives the current aesthetic debate tremendous energy. "Because it is largely an unknown force, color remains one of the most vital sources of new styles and ideas, ready to be tapped by creative minds in the coming decades." In the studios of artists and composers, and in the recent writings of philosophers, psychologists, poets, and novelists, evidence of this emerging power is abundant. Creators, critics, and lay readers will find Color Codes accessible and stimulating.

Art, imagination, and the cultivation of morals

Abstract: In aesthetics and the philosophy of art, two pictures of art's relation to morality predominate. On one picture, let us call it ethicism, there is the notion that art proper, however indirectly, prescribes and guides us toward a sound moral understanding of the world. The historical precedent for this kind of picture is strong: the classical Greeks looked to the Homeric poems to render their moral cosmos intelligible, and the Victorians fueled a dramatic expansion of art galleries in order to enlighten and ennoble the masses. However, at least within the dominant strand of philosophical aesthetics, this picture has traditionally been given short shrift. On the alternative picture, let us call it aestheticism, the spheres of morality and art are thought of as autonomous rather than complementary. The aestheticist's historical precedent is similarly strong: Plato's disparagement of art rests upon the presumption that art bears no necessary relation to morality, and Oscar Wilde's "art for art's sake" concerns the perfections of beauty severed from the burden of moral intimation. Typically, it is presumed that the arguments in favor of aestheticism are far stronger than the crude, wishful thinking constitutive of ethicism. The aestheticist need not even deny that an artwork may contingently cultivate ethical insight. Rather, she need only point out that we value, as art, works like the Marquis de Sade's Juliette which promote apparently immoral understandings of the world and others. That is, we may properly enjoy the pleasures an artwork affords whilst recognizing that, morally speaking, the view represented in the work is itself flawed. For example, a work which gets us to imagine torturing another with pleasure may be, as art, equally as valuable as, or more valuable than, one which gets us to imagine the same event with disgust. Contrastingly, what is taken to constitute morally or politically correct art may possess little of artistic value; hence, the aestheticist can explain the evaluative fallacy committed by those who would evaluate art on moral grounds. The fact that artistic and moral value may come apart like this, the aestheticist claims, proves that artistic value must be morally neutral. The truth is that the pleasures afforded by art are of value in and of themselves independently of any relation to the appropriate moral understanding of the events portrayed. I Yet, I will argue, the arguments against the role of moral evaluation in art, which strengthen the presumption in favor of aestheticism, can only undermine a crudely instrumentalist conception of art's relation to morality; that is, where an artwork is conceived of as morally significant to the extent it evokes morally sound responses and understandings. Contrastingly, contra aestheticism, an account of art which recognizes an inherent link between what is represented artistically and moral understanding may yet prove more adequate to our judgment and evaluation of art. Any account of art which recognizes the pleasures inherent in the peculiar and vivid imaginings prescribed by artworks must allow for a distinctive relation to moral understanding. It is through what we imagine and the promotion of imaginative understanding in engaging with artworks that art may justifiably lay claim to the cultivation of our moral sensibilities.

Deconstruction and the visual arts : art, media, architecture

Abstract: Introduction 1 The Spatial arts: an interview with Jacques Derrida 2 Color has not yet been named: objectivity in deconstruction 3 Light in painting: dis-seminating art history 4 The dissumulation of painting 5 The heuretics of deconstruction 6 Impure mimesis, or the ends of the aesthetic 7 Starting out from the frame (vignettes) 8 Modernity again: the museum as trompe l'oeil 9 Brushed path, slate line, stone circle: on Martin Heidegger, Richard Long, and Jacques Derrida 10 Frank Stella and Jacques Derrida: toward a postmodern ethics of singularity 11 Sketch: counterpoints of the eye: hand-eye coordination: translation and 12 The Domestication of the house: deconstruction after architecture 13 Tabbles of bower 14 Cinema-Graphia: Eisenstein, Derrida and the sign of cinema 15 Hermes goes Hollywood: disarticulating the cops 'n' robbers genre 16 The Signature experiment finds Andy Hardy 17 Sending postcards in TV land

Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective

Abstract: Introduction: setting the scene. Part 1 Fiction and truth: the practice of storytelling truth-value and pretence content and characters reference and \"about\" aspects, points of view and objectivity relating internal/external and subjective/objective. Part 2 The limits of fictionality: metaphysics and fictions truth-making and world-making narrative and imagination. Part 3 Literature and truth: literary practice literature and fiction the theory of novelistic truth the propositional theory of literary truth metaphorical truth literature as philosophy the mimetic aspect of literature fiction, literature and value.

The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays by Siegfried Kracauer, Thomas Y. Levin; Critical Realism: History, Photography, and the Work of Siegfried Kracauer by Dagmar Barnouw

Abstract: Translator's Note Introduction by Thomas Y. Levin Lead-In: Natural Geometry Lad and Bull Two Planes Analysis of a City Map External and Internal Objects Photography Travel and Dance The Mass Ornament On Bestsellers and Their Audience The Biography as an Art Form of the New Bourgeoisie Revolt of the Middle Classes Those Who Wait Constructions The Group as Bearer of Ideas The Hotel Lobby Perspectives The Bible in German Catholicism and Relativism The Crisis of Science Georg Simmel On the Writings of Walter Benjamin Franz Kafka The Movies Calico-World The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies Film 1928 Cult of Distraction Fadeaway: Toward the Vanishing Point Boredom Farewell to the Linden Arcade Notes Bibliographic Information Credits Index

Musical Works, Improvisation, and The Principle of Continuity

Abstract: This paper examines some central features of improvisational music.' I shall explain why it is impossible to find a place for such music within systems of aesthetics that treat artworks as obedient to what I shall call the principle of continuity. According to this principle, all artworks are continuants, and therefore subject to criteria of reidentification.2 A paradigm example of such a system is that of Nelson Goodman.3 Even if it is obvious that improvisational music is likely to be marginalized by this kind of system, it is still worth considering exactly why. Anyway, for some philosophers, the statement may not be so obvious.4 Either way, the main aim of this paper is not to attack Goodman's view-although I shall express an opinion on that matter at the proper time. Rather, it is to use the features of his nicely articulated system to profile what is special about musical improvisations. I shall address improvisational performances as such and not-except incidentally-transcriptions or arrangements of them for later performance, or musical works that have an improvisational origin. Jazz improvisations are our local paradigm, so I shall often key my discussion to them. While improvisational performance will be my topic, the essay should have implications for improvised material of all kinds-dramatic pieces, "performance" art, or even improvised poetry, a form of which Vasari tells us Leonardo was master. Nowadays, it is generally recognized that Goodman did not appreciate the relevance of contextual considerations to our understanding of artistic phenomena. It seems clear that two identical texts will still not represent the same poem if one was set down first in the sixteenth century, the other in the twentieth. Analogous examples can be framed for musical works and paintings.5 Among these considerations are those I shall term modal. "Modal" here has nothing to do with modal logic, but with artistic processes, as contrasted with products. It pertains to the manner in which these processes take place, e.g., in accordance with a score, spontaneously, etc. The relevance of such considerations to our topic seems natural, given the distinctive manner in which improvisational music is generated. Philosophers have suggested, quite independently of any concern with improvisation, that Goodman's categorization of the "standard" arts needs to be amplified in order to take account of modal factors.6 However, we shall see that even if we were to augment Goodman's system along these lines, it will still be hard to find a place for improvisational art in it. This essay will be developed in the following stages:

The Confluence of Aesthetics and Hermeneutics in Baumgarten, Meier, and Kant

Abstract: Etude des relations entre l'appreciation esthetique et le probleme de l'interpretation chez Baumgarten, Meier et Kant. Etablissant un rapport entre la sensibilite et la raison a travers un processus de contextualisation, l'esthetique moderne definie par Baumgarten et Kant rencontre l'hermeneutique de Meier fondee sur l'idee d'une interpretation authentique

Beyond Representation: Philosophy And Poetic Imagination

Abstract: 1. Introduction: from representation to poiesis Richard Eldridge 2. Confession and forgiveness: Hegel's poetics of action J. M. Bernstein 3. The values of articulation: aesthetics after the aesthetic ideology Charles Altieri 4. In their own voice: philosophical writing and actual experience Arthur C. Danto 5. Poetry and truth-conditions Samuel Fleischaker 6. Fractal contours: chaos and system in the Romantic fragment Azade Seyhan 7. The mind's horizon Stanley Bates 8. Kant, Hoelderlin, and the experience of longing Richard Eldridge 9. Wordsworth and the reception of poetry Michael Fischer 10. Self-consciousness, social guilt, and Romantic poetry: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Wordsworth's Old Pedlar Kenneth R. Johnston 11. Her blood and his mirror: Mary Coleridge, Luce Irigaray and the female self Christine Battersby 12. Scene: an exchange of letters Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy.

The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and Influence of Charles LeBrun's "Conference sur l'expression generale et particuliere"

Abstract: Part 1: Le Brun's Complete Theory of Expression Charles Le Brun, Painter of Expression The Tradition of Expression in the Other Arts The Tradition of Expression in the Visual Arts The Academy Acceptance and Rejection. Part 2: Le Brun's Lecture on Expression Le Brun's Lecture on Expression - Translation. Appendices: The Date and Reception of the Lecture The Drawings The Sources Testelin's Text of Expression Claude Nivelon's Account of the "Ouvrage sur la Physionomie" editions, versions and derivations.

Actual intentionalism vs. hypothetical intentionalism

Abstract: In 'An Intentional Demonstration?" I defended an argument, suggested by if not directly due to E. D. Hirsch, for the conclusion that one of the truth-conditions of at least some kinds of interpretive statements about poems is that they be underwritten by meanings intended by the author. ' The argument proceeded via a particular example of two evidently contradictory interpretive claims about a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The first premise of the argument claimed that:

Kant's Sublime: A Form of Pure Aesthetic Reflective Judgment

Abstract: Qu'est-ce que le sublime chez Kant ? Une forme de jugement reflexif esthetique pur ? L'A. repond a ces questions en fondant sa reflexion sur la Critique de la faculte de juger. L'A. donne une definition de chacun de ces termes et montre comment Kant articule jugement esthetique, analytique du beau et sublime dans sa pensee philosophique. Il souleve le probleme de l'apparente assimilation entre sentiment du sublime et sentiment moral dans le kantisme. L'A. conclut en montrant dans quel mesure Kant assimile sublime et jugement reflexif esthetique

Perspective's Places

Abstract: Etude des differentes conceptions de la perspective picturale a travers l'analyse des trois lieux de la perspective: 1) la surface picturale designee par la fenetre, 2) le point de vue de celui qui regarde, 3) le lieu proportionne de l'objet represente dans le cadre de l'espace pictural (rationalisation). L'A. montre qu'aucun de ces lieux ne fournit la condition necessaire a la definition de la perspective lineaire, mais qu'ils participent de la signification meme de l'oeuvre picturale

The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism by Roger Scruton

Abstract: In this book, Roger Scruton looks at the work of 19th- and 20th-century architects and appraises their achievement and the values that inform it in relation to those of us who live in, or alongside, their structures.

Realism, Supervenience, and Irresolvable Aesthetic Disputes

Abstract: Three familiar and widely endorsed aesthetic theses get us into trouble, I will argue here; trouble, at least if we desire to avoid subjectivism regarding the ascription of aesthetic properties. Some of us have been trying to have our cake and eat it too, and the only plausible resolution of the problem puts us on a notably different diet whose palatability needs testing. The three theses are: (1) the relational analysis of aesthetic properties, (2) the supervenience of aesthetic properties upon purely descriptive, nonaesthetic properties, and (3) the existence of irresolvable disputes, even among experts, concerning the aesthetic features of artworks. The relational analysis of aesthetic properties claims that a work's having an aesthetic property, F, such as grace, power, or starkness, is for it to have some set of (other) features and relations which makes the work evoke in some relevant class of perceivers or critics certain responses and judgments, including the judgment that it is appropriate to call the work F. Difficult details aside, the plausibility of viewing at least many aesthetic properties as higher order relational properties connecting the evaluative responses of a class of standard or ideal perceivers to lower level properties and relations of the work has long been acknowledged, especially in the empiricist tradition of aesthetics. Supervenience has a shorter (though hardly less BritishI) history. It is usually construed as a metaphysical dependency relation between two sets of properties, but it also has obvious epistemological implications for the rational ascription of the properties that supervene on the "base" set. The idea can be informally stated as, "No difference in supervenient properties without a difference in base properties." More clearly, and specifically about aesthetic properties, we can say that if the aesthetic properties of a work supervene on sets of base properties, then it is impossible that the work should have been different in its aesthetic properties without having been different in some of its base properties.2 It could also be said, following Simon Blackburn,3 that supervenience amounts to a ban on "mixed" aesthetic worlds, worlds in which some objects with identical base properties have F while others do not. Supervenience has been thought by many writers to be importantly related to the logic of aesthetic justification, since it both explains why certain properties of works are cited in defense of one's aesthetic ascriptions and also seems to lend metaphysical respectability to aesthetic properties, much in the way that mental or moral properties seem less occult if tied by supervenience to physical properties of various sorts. The third thesis is one that experience indicates is difficult to deny. Among the many and variously caused types of aesthetic disagreements, there are some at least which cannot be explained by citing a lack of attention, care, knowledge, sensitivity, openness, or taste on the part of at least one of the disputants. Some disagreements are fully informed but just as fully irresolvable, as when two expert critics disagree whether a given painting is playful or merely trite, daring in its color treatments or just gaudy, serious or only self-absorbed, and so forth. Often such disputes arise because there is not complete agreement between the disputants over values, or more subtly, because they "weight" mutually recognized values somewhat differently. In short, their tastes, even if reasonably congruent, are not identical. I am confident that I am not alone in finding these claims plausible, and I also confess to rea-

Hume and The Causal Theory of Taste

Abstract: This paper has two aims. The first is the purely philosophical aim of exposing as untenable the Causal Theory of Taste. The second is the interpretive aim of reading David Hume's famous essay "On the Standard of Taste" as defending a version of such a causal theory. The two aims are pursued in parallel, in that the main source of raw material for criticizing the causal theory of taste will be passages drawn from Hume's essay. Before we reach the text of the essay, however, some stage-setting is needed. Consider the following two lines of thought which might occur in philosophical reflection about aesthetic taste. First, in thinking about judgments of taste, one may be struck by the elusiveness of the properties which are the targets of judgments of taste, in comparison with the steadfastness of many other kinds of property and objects. This elusiveness is well expressed thus: "no sentiment of taste represents what is really in the object ... beauty is no quality in things in themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them."1 We might think that the impression we have of elegance-that slice of our mental life-reveals to us the property of an object. But, this first line of thought says, we would be wrong in so thinking. There is no such property; there is only our impression. Second, in thinking about judgments of taste, one may also be struck both by the fact that persons seem to differ in the degree to which they possess the capacity to make judgments of taste, and moreover that among those who seemingly are more experienced and skilled at judgments of taste there is some convergence at a fairly general level in such judgments. For instance, if at first I do not see the elegance my friend sees in a sculpture or a dance, my friend can say, "Look at this line; see how these lines complement each other; see how the piece would be different if this curve were more concave or more convex. Look at how this variation in the arm or leg movement would change the character of the dance altogether." And thus I come to see that the sculpture or the dance is indeed elegant. These thoughts are well summarized thus: "amidst all the variety and caprice of taste, there are certain general principles of approbation or blame.... Persons of taste may be distinguished by the soundness of their understanding" (p. 243). Much of philosophical interest in judgments of taste has to do with a tension between these two lines of thought and with possibilities for its resolution. Let us first investigate the tension. The first line of thought seems to locate the ground of judgments of taste, not in some object which is the target of the judgment, but in the maker of the judgment. If someone says that he finds a dance elegant and powerful, or a soloist's musical interpretation fractured, this first line of thought implies that ground for the judgment of elegance is to be found, not in the dance, but in the speaker. As Hume puts it, in describing this line of thought, "sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself ... no sentiment represents what is really in the object" (p. 230). This line of thought Hume associates with the maxim de gustibus non est disputandum, and is his first "species of common sense" thinking about taste. Let us call it the Internalist Theory. The second line of thought, Hume's second species of common sense about taste, is quite different. It affirms a genuine difference between "Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison. ... The principle of the natural equality of tastes is totally forgot" (pp. 230-231). Some judgments of taste are rejected out of hand as "absurd and ridiculous" (p. 231). Although in

Disputes About Art

Abstract: L'A. s'interroge sur la nature des disputes qui porte sur le probleme de la classification en matiere d'art : qu'est-ce qui est art ? Qu'est-ce qui ne l'est pas ? Il ne s'agit pas de se contenter d'une definition precise de l'art pour arriver a une classification satisfaisante, notamment dans le domaine du cinema. Il s'agit donc de comprendre pourquoi et comment nous classons des objets comme œuvre d'art. Il commence par examiner les jeux de role sur leur nature et sur leur appartenance au domaine artistique. Puis il compare jeux de role et litterature. De la, il parvient a une definition de l'art qui lui permette d'analyser et de classifier

Musical and Linguistic Speech Acts

Abstract: Proposant une analyse linguistique du quatuor a cordes en mi-bemol de Haydn (opus 33, n°2) fondee sur la notion d'acte de parole, l'A. etudie la structure linguistique de tout comportement communicatif intentionnel en general, et de la musique en particulier. Se referant aux oeuvres de G. Lakoff, M. Johnson et M. Turner, l'A. utilise la metaphore selon laquelle la musique est un langage pour mettre en evidence notre comprehension de la musique