Ziel und Anliegen der Arbeit ist es, einen neuen Blick auf die Kunsttheorie der "Weimarer Klassik" zu werfen, um hinter dem Klischee einer in "edler Einfalt und stiller Größe" versteinerten Kunstlehre eine flexible und dynamische ...

Bd. 1. Absenz-Darstellung -- Bd. 2. Dekadent-Grotesk -- Bd. 3. Harmonie-Material -- Bd. 4. Medien-Popular -- Bd. 5. Postmoderne-Synästhesie -- Bd. 6. Tanz-Zeitalter/Epoche -- Bd. 7. Register und Supplemente.

A wide-ranging and accessible study of cinema as an art form, discussing traditional photographic films, digital cinema, and videogames.

The role of substrate nonlinearity in the stability of wrinkling of thin films bonded to compliant substrates is investigated within the initial post-bifurcation range when wrinkling first emerges. A fully nonlinear neo-Hookean bilayer composed of a thin film on a deep substrate is analysed for a wide range of the film–substrate stiffness ratio, from films that are very stiff compared with the substrate to those only slightly stiffer. Substrate pre-stretch prior to film attachment is shown to have a significant effect (...) on the nonlinearity relevant to wrinkling. Two dimensionless parameters are identified that control the stability and mode shape evolution of the bilayer: one specifying arbitrary uniform substrate pre-stretch and the other a stretch-modified modulus ratio. For systems with film stiffness greater than about five times that of the substrate the wrinkling bifurcation is stable, whereas for systems with smaller relative film stiffness bifurcation can be unstable, especially if substrate pre-stretch is not tensile. (shrink)

Joint interview, with Kendall Walton, by Richard West.

This piece is intended to explicate - by providing a precising definition of - the common cinematic figure which I term “the failure of the cinematic imagination,“ while presenting a logical puzzle and its solution within a simple Gricean framework.

Moderate formalism is the view that all artworks which have aesthetic properties have formal aesthetic properties, and some but not all of those works also have non-formal aesthetic properties. Nick Zangwill develops this view in his Metaphysics of Beauty after having argued against its alternatives – extreme formalism and anti-formalism. This article reviews his arguments against the rivals of moderate formalism, and argues that the rejection of anti-formalism is unjustified. Zangwill does not succeed in proving that the broadly determined (context-determined) (...) properties of artworks are in some cases irrelevant to their aesthetic properties – and following that, interpretation and assessment. A historical argument presented here shows how aesthetic properties of every work must partly supervene on this work’s contextual properties. In particular, this disproves Zangwill’s claim that epistemological matters are unessential in determining the artwork’s properties, and exposes some problems his account has with explaining relations between nonaesthetic and aesthetic properties. (shrink)

Anosmia is a sensory disability that consists of the inability to perceive odours. The sense of smell can be lost at any time during life, but people suffering from congenital anosmia, as I do, have never had any experience of smelling. My question is whether such an impairment of olfaction impoverishes aesthetic appreciation or makes it different in any way. I hypothesize that congenital anosmia entails two different kinds of loss in aesthetic appreciation. In order to test my hypothesis, I (...) address modern and contemporary aesthetic theory. Finally, I claim that congenital anosmia constitutes an impoverishment, but also ask whether it can be compensated for by dialogue and imagination. I further inquire as to whether it can foster a more self-critical aesthetic appreciation, more conscious of the powers and limits of our senses. (shrink)

This article addresses two controversial open questions in philosophical aesthetics: the nature and value of the aesthetic and of aesthetic experience when approached from the standpoint of ‘aesthetics of everyday life’ (AEL). Contrasting ‘strong’ AEL accounts that consider them radically different from those in the sphere of art, I claim that extending the realm and scope of aesthetics towards everyday life does not necessarily dispense with the concepts of the aesthetic and aesthetic experience as shaped in relation to the arts. (...) Drawing on ‘weak’ formulations of AEL and on theories that call attention to concepts of art different from modern ones, I defend a normative but open model of the aesthetic and aesthetic experience pertaining to both art and everyday life. This more integrative theoretical framework needs to include clear and consistent views of the aesthetic as well as of the self, intersubjectivity, and everyday life. (shrink)

'Doing an Aristotle' on Form: a highly compressed attempt to explain what we mean by the ambiguous term "form" in visual arts.

Concerns photography and time as duration, sequence, equability, past and present (illus.).

encyclopedia article focused on drawing, stressing facture, the physicality of three media.

Combining ideas of perceptual psychologists J.J. Gibson and J.E. Cutting, moving on to answer the arguments of the "Naysayers" against autonomous and artistic meaning in photographs.

First and still only philosophy treatise on drawing, explaining the bases of meaning in all kinds of drawings, including technical and informational, design, child, and art drawings--depictive and nondepictive, East and West--engaging cognitive and developmental psychology, philosophy, art history and criticism. Ca 290 double-columned pp., 92 illus. Reviews include: Philosophy--David Hills, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 235-237. Aesthetics--Michael Podro, British Journal of Aesthetics 48, no. 3 (July 2008): 346-347. Art history--Svetlana Alpers, Phi Bet Kappa (...) Society Key Reporter (Summer 2006): 14 http://www.pbk.org/documents/tkrpdf/TKRSummer2006.pdf. General--Amy Ione, Leonardo On-line Reviews: http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/jan2007/draw_ione.html . (shrink)

From a perceptual psychology and philosophy conference on linear perspective: points out standard fallacies about perspective, then challenges psychology's and philosophy's widespread assumption that a satisfactory understanding of depiction in any medium can be reached via theories of spatial--or any other kind of--visual perception.

First ever philosophy treatise on photography, analytic in approach but sensitive to photo-history, not confined to aesthetics or art (illus.), Walker Evans photo on cover. Papercover printing, Dec. 2000.

Editor's errata: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52.2 (Spring 1994): 167.

Review of literature and independent essay on the 1989 sesquicentennial of photography, winner of Canadian Association for American Studies 1991 award for paper that "best exemplifies the discipline of American Studies".

Most artworks—or at least most among those standardly subject to philosophical scrutiny—appear to be singular, stand-alone works. However, some artworks (indeed, perhaps a good many) are by contrast best viewed in terms of some larger grouping or ordering of artworks. i.e., as a series. The operative art-theoretic notion of series in which I am interested here is that of an individual and distinct artwork that is itself non-trivially composed of a non-trivial sequence of artworks (e.g., Walter de Maria’s Statement Series, (...) Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors)—as opposed to an art-historically informative or art critically productive thematically, stylistically, or formally unified ordering or grouping of individual and distinct artworks within an artist’s larger body of work (e.g., Kiki Smith’s Blue Print series, Dan Flavin’s Monuments to V. Tatlin series, Jeff Koons’ Made in Heaven series, Robert Rauschenberg’s Tribute 21 series). Given this, my aim is simply to sketch a minimal descriptive and classificatory framework for serial art within which certain informative distinctions may be made and further philosophical enquiry may productively take place. (shrink)