In 1955, Ellen Auerbach, a Weimarian advertising photographer of the Bauhaus circles, chose to document her trip to Mexico with her colleague Eliot Porter, using color photography for the first time in her career. This article seeks to contextualize, for the first time, Auerbach’s decision to use color in her work – and within the history of modernism in general. In a discourse where exile studies interweave closely with art theory, I intend to trace the paths of a modernism that (...) might have been, but that was erased by history and migration, demonstrating how the use of color in a non-Western exile context became a starting point for rethinking the aims and epistemic possibilities of the photographic medium within and beyond the modernist perspective. (shrink)

This monographic section of “Itinera” develops some of the questions which were raised at the summer school “Aesthetics, Technique and Emotion”, held in June 2020 at the Lake Como School of Advanced Studies (https://aeat.lakecomoschool.org/). The summer school was organized by the University of Milan in collaboration with the European Seminar of Aesthetics (https://sites.unimi.it/eu_aesthetics/). The aim of the school was to investigate the meaning of aesthetics today, in light of the different changes that are occurring in our aesthetic perception of the (...) world. How is technology transforming the way we view the world and art, and what role do emotions still play in this context? What is the value of the performing arts in facing these new challenges, and how is aesthetic experience related to the current issues of morality and politics? These are some of the problems that were raised at the school and this issue seeks to develop them further. (shrink)

Colour reflects the “fluid” nature of the image: both can be considered as a factual, objective evidence of the external world as well as a subjective and sometimes deceptive re-representation of it. The section entitled “Colour. Photography, Image, Reality” collects essays that widely investigate the power of colour to unfold new sensibilities and practices linked the fruition, the creation and the use of images, across very different media: from literature to social media. The authors develop some core themes, such as (...) the aesthetics of colors, the relevance of intermediality to comprehend specific experiences, and the epistemological and political implications of color technology. The reflections on images encounter the philosophical debate on colour, offering the opportunity to examine every pattern of recognition (that can be ours or of others, human or non-human) and contributing to the discussion on the contingent and questioning relationship between image and reality. (shrink)

Some objects and some things that happen are difficult to understand because they escape what one is used to find. When something cannot be explained by custom or the habitual rules of a society, a charitable reaction assumes things nevertheless make sense, but they demand that one finds explanations that may apply to them and therefore explain of the objects under observation. Changes in contexts and places where things are found modify how phenomena are expected to happen; associations, metaphors, and (...) interpretation are some mechanisms of change that displace habits in place. Art ultimately is the suspect when phenomena in our everyday life manifest these changes. (shrink)

This paper discusses the empirical findings concerning the visual aesthetic experience in a neurological context. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the common ground across neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy to pave new roads for empirical research. Cognitive models posit that the brain employs neural networks mediating bottom-up and top- down processes, and in effect, engenders emotion and reward throughout the visual aesthetic experience. Likewise, empathy and its corresponding recruitment of bodily processes may facilitate the understanding (...) of a visual artwork’s depicted emotion, which may allow the viewer to engage with the visual artwork from a psychological distance and, consequently, to experience pleasure regardless of the visual artwork’s emotional content. In conclusion, empathetic processes may be central to the visual aesthetic experience and should be considered by future empirical research investigating the visual aesthetic experience. (shrink)