The A To Z Of Aesthetics

Aesthetics is not a "factual" discipline; there are no aesthetic facts. The word itself is derived from the Greek word for "feeling" and the discipline arises because of the need to find a place for the passions within epistemology—the branch of philosophy that investigates our beliefs. Aesthetics is more than just the study of beauty; it is a study of that which appeals to our senses, most often in connection with the classification, analysis, appreciation, and understanding of art. The A to Z of Aesthetics covers its history from Classical Greece to the present, including entries on non-western aesthetics. The book contains a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the main concepts, terminology, important persons (philosophers, critics, and artists), and the rules and criteria we apply in making judgments on art. By providing concise information on aesthetics, this dictionary is not only accessible to students, but it provides details and facts to specialists in the field.

An ideal guide to aesthetics

The second edition of the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics is an unparalleled reference resource that surveys the full breadth of critical thought on art, culture, and nature, from classical philosophy to contemporary critical theory. The four-volume first edition, published in 1998, effected a revival of aesthetics that created a receptive context for the contemporary importance of the field. Spanning six volumes and 815 articles, the new edition of the Encyclopedia has been updated and expanded to reflect the rapidly evolving character of the discipline. Renowned contributors from diverse fields provide analyses of the major artists, movements, and theories that continue to inform scholarly research on aesthetics. The updated Encyclopedia of Aesthetics contains 250 new entries that incorporate innovative fields of inquiry, such as animal aesthetics and diaspora criticism, as well as significant new developments in art, including digital media and street art. Additionally, the second edition offers enhanced coverage of non-Western cultural areas and related issues, such as post-colonialism, globalization, and primitivism. In so doing, it extends the scope of critical aesthetics, seeking to create a more open environment for aesthetics in academia, culture, and art. With bibliographic references and images, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics is an essential work that is of use to artists, scholars, students, and all others interested in art-from painting and sculpture to literature, music, theater, film, and more.

This major reference work surveys how philosophers, art historians, and others reflect critically on art and culture. It presents articles on the history of Western and non-Western aesthetics along with accounts of the contemporary debates.

Christine Buci-Glucksmann’s The Madness of Vision is one of the most influential studies in phenomenological aesthetics of the baroque. Integrating the work of Merleau-Ponty with Lacanian psychoanalysis, Renaissance studies in optics, and twentieth-century mathematics, the author asserts the materiality of the body and world in her aesthetic theory. All vision is embodied vision, with the body and the emotions continually at play on the visual field. Thus vision, once considered a clear, uniform, and totalizing way of understanding the material world, actually dazzles and distorts the perception of reality. In each of the nine essays that form The Madness of Vision Buci-Glucksmann develops her theoretical argument via a study of a major painting, sculpture, or influential visual image—Arabic script, Bettini’s “The Eye of Cardinal Colonna,” Bernini’s Saint Teresa and his 1661 fireworks display to celebrate the birth of the French dauphin, Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, the Paris arcades, and Arnulf Rainer’s self-portrait, among others—and deftly crosses historical, national, and artistic boundaries to address Gracián’s El Criticón; Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo; the poetry of Hafiz, John Donne, and Baudelaire; as well as baroque architecture and Anselm Kiefer’s Holocaust paintings. In doing so, Buci-Glucksmann makes the case for the pervasive influence of the baroque throughout history and the continuing importance of the baroque in contemporary arts.

This volume investigates our dissonant and exuberant existences online. As social media users we know we’re under surveillance, yet we continue to click, like, love and share ourselves online as if nothing was. So, how do we overcome the current online identity regime? Can we overthrow the rule of Narcissus and destroy the planetary middle class subject? In this catalogue of strategies, the reader will find stories on hacker groups, gaming platforms in the occupied territories, art objects, selfies, augmented reality, Gen Z autoethnographies, love and life. The authors of this anthology believe we cannot simply put vanity aside and a rational analysis of platform capitalism is not going to convince the youngs on TikTok nor liberate us from Zuckerbergian indentured servitude. Do we really need to wade through the subjective mud and ‘learn more’ about online aesthetics? The answer is yes. Writing by Wendy Chun, Franco Berardi “BIFO”, Julia Preisker, Katherine Behar, Rebecca Stein, Fabio Cristiano, Emilio Distretti, Natalie Bookchin, Ana Peraica, Mitra Azar, Donatella Della Ratta, Gabriella Coleman, Marco Deseriis, Alberto Micali, Daniel de Zeeuw, Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Jodi Dean.

Over the course of the past forty years, Gärard Genette?s work has profoundly influenced scholars of narratology, poetics, aesthetics, and literary and cultural criticism, and he continues to be one of France?s most influential theorists. The eighteen pieces in Essays in Aesthetics are of international interest because they are concerned either with universal aesthetic problems (the receiver?s relationship to an aesthetic object, abstract art, the role of repetition in aesthetics, genre theory, and the rapport between literature and music) or with specific moments in the work of a well-known writer or artist (such as Stendhal, Proust, Manet, Pissarro, and Canaletto).øEssays in Aesthetics contains a wealth of material related to the appreciation of beauty by one of the subtlest and most original minds working in aesthetics today. Genette knows the fine arts as well as he knows literature and as a result has innovative things to say to readers in that field as well as to philosophers and literary scholars.