Aesthetics category: 1179 books

There are many ways to approach the subject of public space: the threats posed to it by surveillance and visual pollution; the joys it offers of stimulation and excitement, of anonymity and transformation; its importance to urban variety or democratic politics. But public space remains an evanescent...

Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God—to which a large part of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously...

Our lives are saturated by color. We live in a world of vivid colors, and color marks our psychological and social existence. But for all color’s inescapability, we don’t know much about it. Now authors David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing offer a fresh and imaginative exploration of one of...

Nel 1863 Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, architetto noto per i suoi restauri di edifici medievali francesi, viene nominato professore di Storia dell’Arte ed Estetica all’École des Beaux-Arts di Parigi. Fervente antiaccademico, è osteggiato a tal punto da alcuni colleghi che già a marzo del 1864 si...

Exploring a chapter in the cultural history of the West not yet probed, The Strait Gate demonstrates how doors, gates, and related technologies such as the key and the lock have shaped the way we perceive and navigate the domestic and urban spaces that surround us in our everyday lives. Jütte reveals...

The Art of Comics is the first-ever collection of essays published in English devoted to the philosophical topics raised by comics and graphic novels. In an area of growing philosophical interest, this volume constitutes a great leap forward in the development of this fast expanding field, and makes...

Now available in a fully revised and updated second edition, this accessible and insightful introduction outlines the central theories and ongoing debates in the philosophy of art. Covers a wide range of topics, including the definition and interpretation of art, the connections between artistic...

A compelling argument for the necessity for art in life, Nietzsche's first book is fuelled by his enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, for the philosophy of Schopenhauer and for the music of Wagner, to whom this work was dedicated. Nietzsche outlined a distinction between its two central forces: the Apolline,...

Commiserating with Devastated Things seeks to understand the place Milan Kundera calls “the universe of the novel.” Working through Kundera’s oeuvre as well as the continental philosophical tradition, Wirth argues that Kundera transforms—not applies—philosophical reflection within literature. Reading...

Dominic McIver Lopes articulates and defends a 'buck passing theory of art', namely that a work of art is nothing but a work in one of the arts. Having traced philosophical interest in theories of art to a reaction to certain puzzle cases of avant-garde art, he argues that none of the theories that...

Today's artworld experts accept virtually anything as "art"—from all-black paintings and facsimiles of supermarket cartons to dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. Many art lovers reject such things, arguing that they are not art. This book explains why those ordinary people are right and...

In the face of unparalleled growth and a truly global audience, the popularity of contemporary art has clearly become a double-edged affair. Today, an unprecedented number of museums, galleries, biennial-style exhibitions, and art fairs display new work in all its variety, while art schools continue...

Originally written for an exhibition Jean-Luc Nancy curated at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon in 2007, this book addresses the medium of drawing in light of the question of form—of form in its formation, as a formative force, as a birth to form. In this sense, drawing opens less toward its achievement,...

Musical understanding has evolved dramatically in recent years, principally through a heightened appreciation of musical meaning in its social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions. This collection of essays by leading scholars addresses an aspect of meaning that has not yet received its due: the...