Art Theory Research Articles

Book studies in Poland between 1945 and 2015: The sources of theoretical inspiration

The aim of the paper is to picture a retrospective panorama of the theoretical legacy of post-war Polish book studies. Of key importance to the author is the question of the object of the discipline and, consequently, its scope. The author discusses directions in book studies and the bibliological process making up — starting in the 1930s and with Jan Muszkowski’s concept — the core tradition and foundation of book-studies theories: the theories built around the paradigm of ‘life of the book,’ looking at it as an integrally defined process of production, dissemination and consumption; Karol Glombiowski’s functional theory, thanks to which ‘systemic’ and ‘functional’ approaches became a commonly accepted methodological premise in book studies; the concepts formulated by Janusz Dunin, who linked the bibliological tradition of historical source studies of editorial forms of books to the functional theory and to ‘communication’ perspective; the theory formulated by Radoslaw Cybulski, who, in combining the established morphology of the book with a semiotic and communication perspective, adopted ‘book consumption,’ that is, an ‘integrated system of satisfying the needs of book users,’ as a functional category to describe the behaviour of participants in the book market; the concepts focused on the ‘social communication situation’ as a research concept and perspective stemming from the sociological and semiotic reorientation of humanistic thinking. At the end, the author discusses the trends which have considerably expanded research perspectives in recent years: books in the media space; the ‘culture of the book’ paradigm, which is conducive to an ‘anthropologisation’ of the bibliological process, perceived no longer only institutionally, from the perspective of social communication, but also through relations, interactions and value judgements of people participating in it, which shifts research priorities towards the questions of reading and often also towards ‘regional’ approaches; and the theory of book art and research into book aesthetics. At the various stages of the development of bibliology and in relation to respective research approaches, the focus shifted from the book as a cultural artefact and its ‘life,’ that is, the bibliological process with its institutions, to the functions of the book with regard to the public in the process of social and cultural transmission, and, finally, to the public as the creator and user of the culture of the book, whose actions are ‘recorded’ in bibliological documentation.

Too Close to Nature: On the Representational Problems of Death Masks and Life Casts

Abstract While historians of art have found death masks and life casts conceptually problematic, it is also noteworthy that these objects have received scant attention from philosophers of art. In this paper, I begin to redress this omission by offering examples of how the philosophy of art can help us understand these images. Two problems stand out: the problem of representation, for example, what type of representation a death mask is; and the problem of style and historicity, for example, whether images imprinted from nature can indicate styles, and whether these images can evolve and transform along art-historical lines. After considering these problems, I conclude that these images are constrained in what they can and cannot represent. While there is a long tradition of imprinting from nature, this practice shows little discernible change over time. An unchanging tradition cannot claim to exhibit a history, a least in a narrative sense familiar to art history. The following investigation opens a dialog between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and practitioners of theoretical art history, including Ernst Gombrich and Georges Didi-Huberman, both of whom offer differing views on how these images can be treated.

The Interconnection of Substance, Structure and Function in High Systemicity Texts

The purpose of the study is to establish the texts substance properties, to identify the features of its relationship with text structure and function and also to prove that the exclusion of substance as the most important, but not obvious for the current state of science, aspect of the system leading to semiotic distortion which cannot be improved. The study was carried out on the material of texts of different etiologies - religious and artistic, united by a functionally determined ultra-high degree of their levels consistency. The relevance of the work is determined by its significance in the development of a systematic method, the formation of the methodological foundations of systemic philology and the semiotics of culture. The systemic linguistics ideas developed in the works of W. von Humboldt, A.A. Potebnya, I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, I.I. Sreznevsky, G.P. Melnikov, and the systemology developed by philosophers (K.F. Samokhvalov, G.P. Shchedrovitsky) and representatives of the natural and exact sciences (P.K. Anokhin, V.A. Engelgardt, L.V. Krushinsky, R.O. Bartini) did not have a direct impact on the systematic research of texts. Awareness of the significance of substance in the understanding of highly systemic texts begins to take shape in the exegesis and philosophy of art. Philology, focusing its interest mainly on fiction texts, contributes to the development of a systematic method with the emergence and development of ideas about the text dominant (yu.N. Tynyanov, R.O. yakobson), the diversity of its units (y. Mukarzhovsky), the discovery of the author’s image supercategory (V.V. Vinogradov), the identification of the method of estrangement (V.B. Shklovsky) and the universalization of it as a principle of assimilation of reality (V.B. Shklovsky, L.A. Novikov, M.L. Novikova). The comparison of different nature texts substance properties - against the background of the properties of the substance of language - allows us significantly refines the text substance understanding as the extreemly important system aspect.

Reception of the “Dostoevsky myth” in the philosophical works of N.A. Berdyaev and V.I. Ivanova

INTRODUCTION. The work is devoted to the consideration of the characteristics of the artistic anthropology reception by F.M. Dostoevsky in the philosophical works of thinkers of the “Russian religious renaissance”. The relevance of this issue formulation lies in the broad research interest in the interdisciplinary study of Dostoevsky’s work at the intersection of literary studies, philosophy, and culturology; in the active appeal of modern literary scholars and philosophers to the issues of Dostoevsky’s “presence” in the culture of the 20th century; as well as the significance of the philosophical discoveries of N.A/ Berdyaev and V.I. Ivanov for the study of Dostoevsky’s artistic philosophy. The scientific problem lies in the very depth of the influence of Dostoevsky’s philosophical worldview on the literature and philosophy of the subsequent century, which has not yet been fully clarified. The purpose of the study is to identify and characterize the main features of the reception of Dostoevsky’s artistic anthropology in the philosophical works of N.A. Berdyaev and V.I. Ivanov.MATERIALS AND METHODS. We turn to the object of study – the philosophical work of N. Berdyaev and V. Ivanov, inscribed in the context of the reception of the “Dostoevsky myth”, relying on intertextual and historical-genetic methods in the context of a general hermeneutic approach.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. F.M. Dostoevsky with all his artistic and journalistic creativity made a shift in the understanding of human, in his works a new approach to artistic anthropology was implemented, which assigned a very special place to human. As we can see, in his anthropocentric worldview, Dostoevsky provides a philosophical synthesis of the absoluteness of the individual personality and the prin-ciple of the spiritual unity of all people. The era of the Russian religious renaissance played a unique role in the history of the reception of Dostoevsky’s artistic discoveries and philosophical intuitions.CONCLUSION. F.M. Dostoevsky was, as N.A. Berdyaev, A.F. Losev, D.S. Merezhkovsky believed, the spiritual primary source of thought of the entire Silver Age, which rose “under the sign” of Dostoevsky, since it was he who forcefully actualized the world of apocalyptic self-division of human. Anthropodicy of N.A. Berdyaev is immersed in a special eschatological atmosphere, in which the philosopher turns to the writer’s work. In the interpretation of V.I. Ivanov Dostoevsky’s mystical realism reveals the eternal “tragedy of the spirit” playing out between the divine and created principles in human.

BENEATH MEANING, ORIENTATIONAL NARRATIVES, AND DANTO'S ESSENTIALIST THEORY OF ART: ON NOËL CARROLL'S ELUCIDATIONS AND CONTESTATIONS

ABSTRACTIn this review of Noël Carroll's Arthur Danto's Philosophy of Art: Essays, I focus on the issue of Danto's philosophy of art history and Carroll's position that, unlike Danto, we ought to understand Danto's “end of art (history)” thesis as an orientational narrative (that is, a pragmatic‐instrumental narrative with cognitive purchase) rather than as a historical‐scientific narrative. In making this case, I show how Carroll's argument demonstrates that Danto's “end of art (history)” thesis is in tension with Danto's philosophy of history. Furthermore, I engage and respond to the most substantive critiques that Carroll proffers in this text, especially as they concern Danto's philosophy of art history and the related issue of Danto's (art) historically anchored search for a definition of art. In giving special attention to the socio‐historical background conditions (namely, “the artworld” conditions) for an object to be conferred art status, I also show how Carroll's incisive reading offers a critical rejoinder to claims made by recent critics such as Robert B. Pippin and Ivan Gaskell, who have dehistoricized Danto's definition of art, claiming that it allows for any artist to enfranchise any object as an artwork, proper.

Fair Use and the Judicial Search for Meaning

Are courts capable of deciphering the true meanings of artworks? Is it reasonable for them to try? Recent litigation between the Warhol Foundation and the photographer Lynn Goldsmith brought these questions into sharp focus. Fair use, the limited exception to the otherwise exclusive property rights granted to copyright owners, requires courts to assess the meaning of a secondary work so that they can determine whether the secondary use is sufficiently “transformative” to qualify for the fair use defense. Warhol used Goldsmith’s photo of Prince as the basis for his silkscreen, which he called the Orange Prince. Was it infringing, or was it fair use? What did Warhol’s work mean? Despite the centrality of this doctrinal question in all fair use disputes, neither courts nor scholars have ever devised a methodology for assessing new meaning. The theoretical vacuum has led to unpredictable and inconsistent case law. Warhol provided the Supreme Court with a rare opportunity to sharpen methodology, but the Court declined, leaving a pernicious theoretical gap at the heart of the fair use doctrine. This Article provides a much-needed judicial basis for assessing new meaning. By weaving together doctrinal analysis—with insights drawn from existing case law—and art theory, the Article provides a framework that courts can utilize to determine whether new meaning exists. First, the Article proposes a methodology that allows courts to determine whether there is new meaning without forcing judges to try to find—in vain—what a work of art “really” means, a doctrinal and theoretical dead end that, to date, has yielded painfully inconsistent case law. Second, the proposed methodology not only relieves judges from the impossible task of figuring out what a work of art means, but also provides a clearer standard for when new meaning is transformative. Third, the suggested standard for transformativeness provides a useful method for finding a healthy balance between free speech and economic rights, which are inevitably at odds with each other in fair use disputes. By recognizing that creative works have unique interpretive demands and that the judge’s role should be to inquire into meaning rather than to legislate it, the Article provides our courts—as well as fair use practitioners—with a clearer path forward than our current jurisprudence allows.

Il sublime delle stenelle. Riflessioni sull’estetica del whalewatching

ABSTRACT The present article applies some classical categories developed by the early modern tradition of philosophical aesthetics to an area of inquiry that has only recently been studied extensively by contemporary aesthetics. Here I propose to consider the practice of whalewatching as an aesthetic practice, having its specific aesthetic features and peculiarities. To do so, I will cross three very different traditions: the early modern tradition represented by the theorists of the Sublime as an aesthetic category of relevance, developed by many authors in the XVIII century and here presented via the reconstruction of Remo Bodei, the pragmatist, experience-centered aesthetics of John Dewey and the more contemporary, mostly Anglo-American, studies on animal aesthetics as a distinct topic. The discussion of the traditions mentioned is aimed at providing a theoretical framework not only valuable for an analysis of the aesthetic nature of the practice of whalewatching, but also to propose a new category of aesthetic experience, that I call here animal sublime.

The Generation and Transfer of the “Sweet” Category in Calligraphy Appreciation

Ancient Chinese calligraphy theories often “discuss calligraphy by taste”. “Taste” is an essential category of classical Chinese aesthetics, and is a concrete expression of the spirit of Chinese art. In contemporary calligraphic critical discourse, outside of the audiovisual norms, the Chinese calligraphic tradition of “discussing calligraphy by taste” is undoubtedly an ideological resource that cannot be ignored. “Gan”. In English is called “pleasant” and was originally one of the five flavors, and in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it slowly developed the meaning of “Tian” (sweet) to describe the taste. “Sweet”, as an aesthetic category, appeared in a large number of poetry, calligraphy, and painting theories in the Ming and Qing dynasties and beyond. Since the Tang Dynasty, “Sweet” has been combined with “Vulgar”. The word “Sweet” was formally introduced into the realm of painting and calligraphy appreciation. This article utilizes the theory of aesthetics and combines it with physiology, psychology, and other disciplines to explain discussing calligraphy by “Sweet”. An analysis of the generation and transfer of the category of “Sweet” in the appreciation of calligraphy reveals the mutual borrowing and influence of art theories. After sorting and analyzing, it can be seen that “Sweet” refers to works that are overly modified, not chewable, and have no flavor outside the taste. Or works with too much “craftsmanship”, too much skill, too much ink, and works that are opposite to the beauty of “clumsiness” and “lightness” appreciated by ancient calligraphers.

Essay as Novel and Fiction as Art: The Evolution of Two Genres in the Oeuvre of Cynthia Ozick

Abstract Embarking on her first novel in 1950 as an ardent admirer of Henry James, Cynthia Ozick developed a demanding theory of literary high art. When she emerged from her self-seclusion in 1964 with her novel Trust and began to publish short stories, her new work was sharply critical, from a Jewish point of view, of the arrogance, vanity, and maddening ambition that drives the creation of art. In the mid-1980s, Ozick managed to resolve the conflict she had perceived between Jewish moral imperatives and literary art. At the same time, as her career was taking off and editors began to request nonfiction contributions to high-profile magazines, she split her writing into two distinct but complementary genres, fiction and essay. They serve two distinct purposes and differ in their poetics and mode of composition. Essays comment on the world, the present and the fleetingness of time; fictions are mind games; they show timeless ideas in action. This article traces the evolution of the split into two genres and delineates Ozick’s theory of art.

Touched by beauty: a qualitative inquiry into phenomenology of beauty

Philosophy of aesthetics and beauty has traditionally prioritized the sense of vision while deprioritizing the more basic-bodily and thus less “noble” sense of touch. This paper examines bodily aspects of how beauty appears in the experience of visual art and motivates the view that touch is fundamental to such experiences. We appeal to Merleau-Ponty to show the relevance given to touch in his phenomenology of aesthetics, to unfold the meaning of touch as “reversible,” and to understand how vision can be conceptualized as a form of touch. Further, we present four cases of feeling touched by beauty in experiences of visual art collected through interviews with art museum visitors. The descriptions of these experiences show that when people open themselves to an artwork they also open themselves to themselves. Based on the qualitative descriptions, we discuss how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of touch is revelatory of the meaning of feeling “touched” in experiences of beauty.

Aesthetic Verdicts

This article examines the landmark 1878 defamation case of Whistler v Ruskin, a pivotal legal battle that underscored the complexities of adjudicating art criticism under defamation law. The trial arose from John Ruskin’s scathing critique of James McNeill Whistler’s work, which led Whistler to sue for libel, seeking validation not just of his art but of his artistic philosophy. Despite the public fascination and Whistler’s tactical use of the trial as a platform for self-promotion, the jury’s award—a derisory farthing—hinted at their view of the lawsuit as frivolous. This case emphasizes the intrinsic challenge of legal systems grappling with subjective art valuation and critiques, the evolving norms of defamation, and the implications for the freedom of speech. While Whistler nominally won, the repercussions for both men were significant, affecting their finances, reputations and positions within the art world, and the trial’s legacy continues to inform the discourse around art, law and cultural value. Keywords: James McNeill Whistler; John Ruskin; Victorian libel law; defamation; art criticism; aesthetics; 19th-century British art; fair comment.

МОДА, ИСКУССТВО И ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННАЯ ПРАКТИКА: ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ ВЗАИМООТНОШЕНИЙ

The central theme of this research is a reflection on the evolution of philosophical ideas about the relationship between fashion and art, from its origins in the Age of Enlightenment to the present. The order of appearance of the first theories of fashion, linking fashion and art, their orientation traced. We investigated the evolution of these theories and the conditioning of the evolution by various social causes and intellectual trends. And we also followed up the transformation of fashion theories as an art form under the influence of contemporary artistic practices. The conclusion of the research: the relationship between art and fashion in the modern world is becoming stronger and stronger. The circle of issues that connect art and fashion in the modern world is quite wide, and it is constantly changing. One of the reasons for these changes is the alteration of the essential boundaries of contemporary art.

Analysis of Innovation in the Development of Chinese Language Education in Universities

In language teaching in colleges and universities, the teaching materials selected are both literary and artistic, and many of them are exemplary masterpieces recognized in China and abroad, which contain beautiful intentions, beautiful language, vivid images and noble ideals. Some articles move us, some verses shock us, some allusions make us feel, and some characters make us admire. Language teaching workers in colleges and universities should require themselves to be able to appreciate the beauty contained in these teaching materials, and then guide students to learn and feel. Therefore, teachers should not only aim at completing the teaching task, but also make students feel the charm of literature and art through language teaching, and gradually improve students' own literary literacy through the inculcation and cultivation of language teaching, so as to enhance the quality of humanities. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development and innovation of language education in colleges and universities at this stage based on the background of humanistic quality cultivation. By analyzing the current situation of language education in colleges and universities, it focuses on how to achieve innovation and development in the field of language education in colleges and universities under the premise of guaranteeing the quality of education, so as to improve the students' humanistic literacy and the quality of talent cultivation.

Mute Painting: Deafness and Speechlessness in the Theory and Historiography of Dutch Art

The lives and careers of deaf and mute painters in the early modern Netherlands challenge the perception of disabled artists as self-taught outsiders and the assumption that a premodern experience of disability must have necessarily resulted in poverty and exclusion. Rather than approaching deafness and speechlessness as marginalizing “defects,” I propose to regard them as categories that allow us to reconsider how painting was understood in the seventeenth century. As part of that discourse, this article also examines the idea of sensory compensation, including its roots and impact on theory and historiography of art.

Feeling Is First

Within the fields of aesthetics and psychology, there is a long tradition of arguing that affect precedes cognition. A verbalized thought following upon a feeling and associated with it does not translate the feeling precisely or adequately. In fact, as C. S. Peirce would argue, the thought itself projects its own affect, which is independent of its logic. The essence of affect or feeling will always elude linguistic capture. This essay argues that experiences of belief and doubt are affective sensations, and both can be graphed on a scale of sensuous intuition or cognitive guessing (which, again, projects affect). The failure of language to grasp what we refer to as instances of emotion, feeling, sensation, affect, belief, doubt, and the like is more of an intractable problem for philosophical aesthetics than it is for the aesthetics of the art experience. Examples of the art of Cy Twombly, Barnett Newman, Donald Judd, Bridget Riley, and Katharina Grosse are invoked to argue through the gap between thought and feeling.

Film as Art: From Art Theory to Film Theory

This article uses the introduction of the book Film as Art, the definition and interpretation of the concept of “film,” the connotation and extension of “film art,” the necessity and possibility of “film art” research, etc. to analyze China’s important theoretical issues in the development of film theory are sorted out and reflected on. The article believes that in the context of globalization, the development of Chinese film theory faces many theoretical issues, such as the independent character of the theory itself, the relationship between theoretical research and creative practice, and the influence of socialist literary and artistic thought with Chinese characteristics on contemporary Chinese film creation and theoretical research. In this regard, the article puts forward some corresponding countermeasures. This article believes that only by adhering to the development path of socialist literature and art with Chinese characteristics and taking film as art as a basic principle can we promote the prosperity and development of Chinese film theory in the new era and can we better play the important role of Chinese films in the world cultural field.

Overwhelmed by beauty and faith: review on artistic and religious travelers' syndromes.

Traveling with the intention of encountering art or seeking purification of the spirit involves retribution of intangible nature and therefore can be expected to be a positive experience; nevertheless, among susceptible travelers, there is also a possibility of experiencing pathological conditions. Although it is colloquially known that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, it is necessary to mention that the appreciation of beauty, immensity, or mysticism contained in masterpieces is not perceived only through the eyes but through other sense organs as well. Additionally, this is understood within a cultural framework and through previous knowledge. The reaction triggers a series of somatosensory responses of diverse nature, with a wide range of responses that together constitute a pathological phenomenon that can be defined as syndromic by eliciting signs and symptoms of a physical, physiological, and psychotic nature. Both Stendhal and Jerusalem syndromes are travelers' syndromes that may occur in response to objectively aesthetic elements saturated with meaning linked to the cultural heritage of contemporary humanity. While Stendhal syndrome evokes physical and psychoemotional symptoms from the contemplation of art, Jerusalem syndrome goes beyond perception, adding delusions of being a religious or prophetic protagonist pursuing individual or collective salvation.

Nigerian Radicalism: Towards a New Definition via a Historical Survey

Abstract Recent military coups in West Africa have put the continent’s democratisation itself into question. In some places, for the moment, these coups appear to have popular backing. Nigeria, where radicalism is firmly rooted in democratic values and a human-rights framework, the radical grassroots opposition to the Buhari government’s creeping authoritarianism lies drenched in blood. The roots of this development go back to the history of Nigeria’s radicalism in the twentieth century. Much has appeared on the global 1968 recently, including that of Africa. 1970s/1980s-style radicalism is reappearing today with Omoyele Sowore’s 2018 presidential candidacy, with the African Action Congress party, the #EndSARS protests and the tragic Lekki Toll Gate massacre (2020) in Nigeria. The shift towards radicalism is palpable with protest music such as Falz’s This is Nigeria, and Burna Boy’s Monsters you Made, both explicitly targeting neocolonialism and police brutality. Contrary to Achille Mbembe’s sweeping dismissal of African radicalism, the movement with very deep roots under study is meaningful once again, and is gathering momentum in West Africa’s giant polity. This article applies Walter Benjamin’s and also Nigerian radical thinkers’ conceptualisation of political, social and artistic radicalism, while it frames the Nigerian version via the movement’s history, in which marxisant theory and praxis, feminism, human rights and pro-democracy movements interact with emancipatory strands of Islam, Christianity, Igbo Judaism, and animism. In the context of Nigerian radicalism, even expressly pro-capitalist art theory performs a radical social function by stressing the African’s right to make universal statements (Olu Oguibe) in its de facto defiance of the neo-colony. As these different strands of protest meet, ethnic uprisings (amongst them IPOB) find ways to establish common cause with social radicalism, posing a composite threat to the prebendalist oligarchy that rules and oppresses the country via a militarised neoliberalism.

“Grand Narratives” and “Personal Dramas”: (Re)reading the Masterpieces by Artemisia Gentileschi

This article discusses the œuvre of Artemisia Gentileschi, a prominent Baroque painter who was rediscovered by art historian Roberto Longhi in the 1910s. Today, her art is interpreted through various lenses, including art theory, women’s studies, and psychoanalysis. Gentileschi’s paintings are often “read” in close reference to her painful biography, with a focus on the “chiaroscuro” of trauma and its overcoming. Significantly, such biography-oriented approaches seem to be predominant in scholarship on art created by women. The argument presented is that Gentileschi’s works require a thorough re-reading free of “compulsive biographism”, as postulated by Salomon. The focus should shift from an empathic Einfühlung (or empathic projection) towards an objective analysis based purely on art-historical or sociological criteria. This article also explores the presence of the socially mediated and mediatised figure of the artist in fine literature (novels by Banti, Lapierre and Vreeland), cinematic biographies (Artemisia, directed by Merlet, documentaries (Artemisia Gentileschi: Warrior Painter, directed by River), anime (a series titled Arte, directed by Takayuki Hamana), and graphic novels (Ferlut and Baudouin; Siciliano). In this artistic constellation Artemisia is labelled as an art/feminist “icon”, a female genius, and as in numerous scholarly texts dedicated to her, “a victim”. I propose that the discussed literary and visual texts related to Gentileschi be interpreted as symptomatic (in line with Panofsky’s concept of ‘iconology’) of the contemporary mentality, which is filtered through feminist and subaltern thought.

Interpretation of the Problem of Educational use of Aesthetic Views of Eastern Thinkers in Pedagogical Research

The article discusses the issue of learning from the moral, aesthetic, didactic and philosophical views of Eastern thinkers, their research from a mystical, pedagogical, didactic, axiological point of view. Thoughts are expressed about the fact that our spiritual heritage, which has been preserved and developed over the centuries, serves as a program in the education of a perfect human being. This paper delves into the interpretation of the problem concerning the educational utilization of aesthetic perspectives from Eastern thinkers in pedagogical research. It addresses the growing interest in integrating Eastern philosophical aesthetics into educational practices and examines the challenges and opportunities associated with this endeavor. Drawing on a comprehensive review of existing literature, this study explores various Eastern philosophical traditions, such as Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism, to elucidate their unique perspectives on aesthetics and education. Additionally, it critically analyzes the implications of incorporating these perspectives into pedagogical frameworks, considering factors such as cultural context, educational goals, and practical implementation strategies. By synthesizing insights from Eastern thought and contemporary educational theory, this paper offers valuable reflections on how educators can effectively leverage Eastern aesthetic views to enrich teaching and learning experiences in diverse educational settings. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the intersection between Eastern philosophy and pedagogy, paving the way for further research and practice in this burgeoning field.