The British Journal of Aesthetics articles from April 1997

The British Journal of Aesthetics archives from April 1997

The Marxist theory of art.
April 1, 1997... I One striking feature of contemporary theorizing about art is this: there are not merely competing theories, as is to be expected in any subject, but two quite different ideas about how theories should be formulated. Broadly speaking,...

The writer and society: an interpretation of 'Nausea.' (Jean-Paul Sartre)
April 1, 1997... Interpretations of Sartre's novel, Nausea,(1) have focused largely on its metaphysical themes: the contingency of existence, the contrast between contingent existence and the being of abstract and aesthetic objects, the nature of bad faith, and...

Authentic photographs.
April 1, 1997... Authenticity is usually only discussed in relation to photography when there is a question of deception. So, for example, when people question the authenticity of Robert Capa's Spanish Republican at the Very Instant of His Death they are...

Fetishism and the identity of art.
April 1, 1997... In a series of articles in this journal Eddy Zemach has articulated an account of the identity of artworks of which two central claims are: (i) the identity of any given artwork is `type-relative', i.e. the identity conditions of the work are...

Ancient Chinese aesthetics and its modernity.
April 1, 1997... Chinese aesthetics has the enviable advantage of being able to rely on explicit documents that go back to the beginnings of the modern era. The principles on which the arts are based remain `practically the same during more than fifteen hundred...

Wittgenstein's musical understanding.
April 1, 1997... Henry Lee, a friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein's, once reminisced that Wittgenstein had strong aesthetic and moral values. In particular he loved music, had himself played the clarinet, and had a wide knowledge and a merciless judgement on anything...

Is there a paradox of suspense? A reply to Yanal. (Robert J. Yanal, British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 36, p. 146, 1996)
April 1, 1997... Do people know when they are experiencing suspense? According to Robert Yanal, they do not. This conclusion is a critical component of Yanal's resolution of the so-called `paradox of suspense'.(1) According to Yanal, this paradox consists of...

Here I Stand: Perspective from Another Point of View.
April 1, 1997... By NORRIS KELLY SMITH. Columbia U.P. 19,95. pp. 195, 83 illus. 24.95 [pounds sterling] In the manuscript illumination of the Temptation of Christ on the Mountain painted by the Limbourg brothers in the `Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry',...

Nicolas Poussin: Friendship and the Love of Painting.
April 1, 1997... By ELIZABETH CROPPER and CHARLES DEMPSEY. Princeton U.P. 1996. pp. xix + 374, 12 colour + 165 black & white illus. 69.50 [pounds sterling] While a work of art history and not theory, this excellent book, finely and amply produced, is of a...

Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650.
April 1, 1997... Edited by CLAIRE FARAGO. Yale U.P. 1995, pp. 394. 35-00 [pounds sterling]. Reframing the Renaissance is a book of laudable ambition: to `deconstruct', from a variety of angles, the visual culture of the period that we have come to know as...

Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit.
April 1, 1997... By D. JUDOVITZ. University of California Press. 1995, pp. 308. 28.00 [pounds sterling]. These two works form part of a wave of Duchamp scholarship emanating from the USA in recent years, and attempt a partial revision of the canonical...

The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp: Desire, Liberation, and the Self in Modern Culture.
April 1, 1997... By J. SEIGEL. University of California Press. 1995, pp. 291. No price given. These two works form part of a wave of Duchamp scholarship emanating from the USA in recent years, and attempt a partial revision of the canonical interpretations...

Gombrich on Art and Psychology.
April 1, 1997... Edited by RICHARD WOODFIELD. Manchester U.P. 1996. 271 pp. 45.00 [pounds sterling] In 1933 Ernst Gombrich was number 168 on a list of students graduating from Vienna University. As an avowed member of the Vienna School of art history he was,...

Opera: Desire, Disease, Death.
April 1, 1997... By LINDA HUTCHEON and MICHAEL HUTCHEON. University of Nebraska Press. 1996, pp. 294. 38 [pounds sterling]. This is a very odd book. Its authors, a physician and a professor of comparative literature married to each other, realize this: their...

Music and Conceptualization.
April 1, 1997... By Mark DeBellis. Cambridge UP 1995, pp. 163. 30.00 [pounds sterling]. Mark DeBellis's Music and Conceptualization is an enormously intelligent piece of work. Its central claims are stated cleanly, defended crisply and argued for with...

Ethics and the Arts: An Anthology.
April 1, 1997... Edited by DAVID E.W. FENNER. Garland Publishing. 1995, pp.332. $49.00. This anthology collects 16 previously published essays. The essays are grouped into five sections, each devoted to a separate aspect of the relationship between art and...

The Quest for the Fine: A Philosophical Inquiry into Judgment, Worth and Existence.
April 1, 1997... By MICHAEL GELVEN. Rowman & Littlefield. 1996, pp. xvii + 166. $22.95 Gelven's book is an essay written within the tradition of humanistic existentialism in its North American version. It consists of a series of conceptual investigations...

Platonism and the English Imagination.
April 1, 1997... Edited by ANNA BALDWIN and SARAH HUTTON. Cambridge U.P. 1994, pp. 357. 45.00 [pounds sterling]. This collection of 30 essays specially commissioned by the editors Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton (whose own essays are included) is an...