Aesthetic Investigations (E-Journal, Dutch Association of Aesthetics)
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Philosophy of Disturbatory Feminist Art
Get PDFIn this paper I will show how contemporary feminist artists whose works concern femicides address three senses of the term “to disappear”. These works can be particularly disturbing, along the lines of Danto’s notion of disturbatory art, since these kinds of works use artistic means to unveil the social and subjective implications of gender crimes
Book Review of Janneke Wesseling’s The Perfect Spectator: The Experience of the Art Work and Reception Aesthetics
No full textCopyright and Watch Duty. Rob Scholte’s Work. Part I.
Get PDFImage right is maintained by comparing the outward appearance of pictures, not their meaning. But images are made to make people watch them. Logos are a clear example: people must watch these images, and must answer to their persuasive force. With the right to protect an image from copying, the copyright, comes, therefore a duty to watch. But a duty to watch goes against our freedom of perception. It is unclear how the law protects that freedom. Rob Scholte\u27s works address such issues by making art of pre-existing images
Normativity and Thick Aesthetic Concepts
Get PDFThick aesthetic concepts such as ‘gracious’, ‘delicate’ and ‘virtuous’ are, according to the standard theory, characterised as both descriptive and evaluative. In the first part of this paper (I), I examine Sibley’s study of normativity with regard to his version of thick aesthetic concepts. In the second part (II), I concentrate on Zangwill’s recourse to Grice’s theory of implicature and the normative demands this move makes on the process. Finally (III), I develop a sketch that shows which contextual considerations precede the selection process of thick aesthetic concepts and how normative demands govern eventual selections
Making sense of darkness: art, sensation and a particular kind of thought process
Get PDFExperience can originate sensations that intensify awareness and thought, casting them to a place of oddness, far from what is common, encoded and comfortable; an intensity thus generated allows for sense to flow in various and different directions. Art deals with these sensations in particular ways. It deviates from the typical modes of sense making and materializes objects, however insubstantial or ephemeral, which encapsulate and conserve those sensations. Yet, for this to occur a process of transmutation must take place. In this article the artistic process is presented as a disembodiment strategy: a certain reality is disengaged from its original context to be reincorporated into another, new entity: the artwork
The Quest for Certainty in the Age of Aesthetics
Get PDFIn this paper I suggest conceiving the "Age of Aesthetics" and its theoretic attempts form Baumgarten to Hegel and from Lessing to Schiller as a quest for certainty within the utterly uncertain field of the sensuous. Though this quest may not be an exclusive trait of that age, I claim it is essential for understanding the driving forces of classical aesthetics. Drawing largely from Ernst Cassirer\u27s reconstructions, I also try to link my conseption of the Age of Aesthetics to the recently discussed problem of intuitve understanding as articulated by Eckart Förster. Finally, I am giving a speculative outlook on the notion of "aesthetic certainty"
Crossing Over: Rauschenberg, Kafka, and the Boundaries of Imagination
Get PDFHow do we make sense of something we don’t recognize? This topic raises an important background question: how do we recognize or come to imaginatively experience the subject that a work of art or fiction presents to us? When philosophers address this topic they often assume the act of experiencing or recognizing something through that work is directly under a reader or viewer’s control. The imaginative act, they tell us, is something that a viewer or reader does with the material presented by a given work. This limits the scope of what we might fail to recognize to cases of ambiguity or under-determination. I suggest that this approach ignores the way in which some works of art or fiction puzzle us not because their content is ambiguous but because they frustrate the imaginative act itself. They do this by making it difficult to navigate the imaginary space a fictional object might occupy. To develop this claim I closely examine several works by Robert Rauschenberg and Franz Kafka and suggest that they undermine the common assumption that the activity of imaginatively engaging a work of fiction is under our control. I conclude by suggesting some implications this lack of control might have for two prominent debates related to the activity of recognizing or experiencing something through an engagement with a work of fiction
Artists, Dabblers, Dilettantes The Modernity of Hegel\u27s concept of \u27work of art\u27
No full textThe essay argues for the modernity of Hegel\u27s concept of the ‘profane work of art’. (1) The first part rejects three standard objections to the modernity of Hegel\u27s concept of ‘work of art’. (2) The second part deals with the function of the physical form of the artwork. (3) The third part emphasizes (in discussion with prominent ‘Hegelian aesthetics’) that the profane art after the ‘end of art’ is absolutely free in its contents. (3) For Hegel the artists of all eras have to have the technical skills to embody an interesting content adequately in the different physical materials of the arts. This distinguishes the artist (in contemporary art as well as in the art of past epochs) from dabblers and dilettantes. So the fourth part briefly sketches out what an \u27adequate embodiment’ could be. (5) Without discussing details the essay at the end draws the following conclusion: Hegel’s aesthetics is not out of time because of his concept of the profane work of art. The profane work of art is created as an adequate physical embodiment of an interesting content. An adequate physical embodiment is (i) clear, but also (ii) complex and puzzling, and it is (iii) technically perfect. And the leading thesis is that all great works of art (and especially the great works of art of our time) are well described by this concept
The Cognitive Value of Blade Runner
Get PDFThe purpose of this essay is to argue that Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 2007) has cognitive value which is inseparable from its value as a work of cinema. I introduce the cinematic philosophy debate in §1. §2 sets out my position: that the Final Cut affirms the proposition there is no necessary relation between humanity and human beings. I outline the combination of cinematic depiction with distinctive features of the narrative’s peripeteia in §3. In §4, I explain the cognitive value of the peripeteia
Universal Development and the Aesthetic Dimensions of Marxism
No full textThe paper explores some of the underappreciated aesthetic dimensions of Marx\u27s writings by beginning with a brief criticism of the two interpretative positions which tend to dominate such discussions. The first is a form of crude determinism which reduces art and all other \u27superstructural\u27 forms to ideological expressions of the social relations with which they are bound-up. The second reading is based upon a romantically conceived emphasis upon Marx\u27s earlier works at the extense of later insights. What both of these views ignore to differing degrees is the developmental philosophy which lies behind Marx\u27s claims about aesthetics. Our interpretation regards Marxism as an emancipatory project predicated upon the creation of the conditions necessary for the free and full realization of each and every individual. The cultivation of one\u27s creative capacities and aesthetic sensibilities is an essential component of what Marx refers to as a \u27totally developed individual\u27. This is why he emphasized that the \u27general reduction of necessary labour\u27 to a minimum in a socialist society would, at the same time, correspond with the \u27artistic, scientific, etc., development of the individiuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them\u27. Hence, in a \u27communist society\u27, wrote Marx and Engels, \u27there are no painters, but only people who engage in painting among other activities\u27. Marx, Aesthetics, Artistic Development, Beaut