The various lenses—ethical, political, sexual, religious, andso forth—through which we may view art are often instrumental ingiving us an appreciation of the work. In Art in Context: UnderstandingAesthetic Value, philosopher David Fenner presents a straightforward,accessible overview of the arguments about the importance of considering therelevant context in determining the true merit of a work of art.
Art in Context is a systematic, historically situated, and historically evidenced attempt to demonstrate the importance of considering contexts that will, in the vast majority of cases, increase the aesthetic experience. While focusing on distance, detachment, aestheticism, art for art’s sake, and formalism can at times be instructive and interesting, such approaches risk missing the larger and often central issue of the piece.
Based on the findings of philosophers and critics, and on artwork throughouthistory, Art in Context provides a solid foundation for understanding and valuing a work of art in perspective as well as within the particular world in whichit exists.
David E. W. Fenner is dean of the Graduate School at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida. He is the author of The Aesthetic Attitude and Introducing Aesthetics and the editor of Ethics and the Arts and Ethics in Education. More info →
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978-0-8040-1105-1
Retail price: $29.95,
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Release date: February 2008
368 pages
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5½ × 8½ in.
Rights: World
Hardcover
978-0-8040-1104-4
Retail price: $59.95,
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Release date: February 2008
368 pages
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5½ × 8½ in.
Rights: World
Art and the Reformation in Germany
By Carl C. Christensen
The Reformation had considerable impact upon the world of art in sixteenth-century Germany, but that impact was not everywhere a uniform one. Some early Protestant leaders reacted to what they viewed as the idolatrous misuse of visual imagery in late medieval Catholicism with a demand for total abolition of paintings and figurative sculpture from the churches.
Themes in West Africa’s History
Edited by Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong
Themes in West Africa’s History draws on different disciplines and expertise to bring together key themes in West Africa’s history, from prehistory to the present.
Ontology of the Work of Art
The Musical Work, The Picture, The Architectural Work, The Film
By Roman Ingarden
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Translation by Raymond Meyer and John T. Goldthwait
In these studies Roman Ingarden investigates the nature and mode of being of four kinds of art works: the musical work, the picture, the architectural work, and the film. He establishes that the work of art is a purely intentional object but considers also its connections to the real world. By analyzing a work of art in its “constitutive heterogeneous strata,” Ingarden demonstrates that a work of art will reveal, when examined in the appropriate way, its own inherent structure.
Philosophy · Art Criticism and Theory · Music, History and Criticism
The Madness of Vision
On Baroque Aesthetics
By Christine Buci-Glucksmann
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Translation by Dorothy Z. Baker
In The Madness of Vision, Buci-Glucksmann asserts the important of embodied vision in nine studies of paintings, sculptures, and images. She integrates the work of Merleau-Ponty with Lacanian psychoanalysis, Renaissance studies in optics, and twentieth-century mathematics to make the case for the pervasive influence of the baroque.
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