The British Journal of Aesthetics articles from October 1996

The British Journal of Aesthetics archives from October 1996

Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe.
October 1, 1996... By Arthur C. Danto. University of California Press. 1996. 29 illus. pp. xii + 194. US $24.95. This is a fatally effusive tribute by a celebrated aesthetician to an artistic celebrity. Professor Danto's decency responds to Mapplethorpe's...

Art and Philosophy: Seven Aestheticians.
October 1, 1996... By Sushil Kumar Saxena. Indian Council of Philosophical Research. 1994. pp. 362. No price given. This book is intended, in the author's words, to be `a clear, comprehensive and fairly critical account of some select aestheticians' theories...

Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Symposium on Aesthetics, vol. 73, no. 2, June, 1995.
October 1, 1996... Edited by Stephen Davies. This special issue of the Autralasian Journal of Philosophy is remarkable in several respects. That it exists at all is a mark of how far analytic aesthetics has come. As Stephen Davies remarks, the journal...

The Independent Group: Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain, 1945-59.
October 1, 1996... By Anne Massey. Manchester U.P. 1995. pp. 160. 50 b&w plates, biblio. 35.00 [pounds sterling] clothbound; 15.99 [pounds sterling] paperbound. Attempting serious academic study of the Independent Group is problematic. Comprising artists,...

Aristotle's Poetics.
October 1, 1996... Edited and translated by S. HALLIWELL. This re-edition cum revision of the three most seminal ancient Greek treatises in the aesthetics of literature is much to be welcomed. Together with a new translation of Aristotle's Poetics by Stephen...

Longinus's On the Sublime.
October 1, 1996... Trans. by W. H. FYFE, revised by D. Russell. This re-edition cum revision of the three most seminal ancient Greek treatises in the aesthetics of literature is much to be welcomed. Together with a new translation of Aristotle's Poetics by...

On Style.
October 1, 1996... Edited and translated by D. C. INNES, based on W. RHYS ROBERTS, Loeb Classical library. Harvard U.P. 1995. 11.50 [pounds sterling]. This re-edition cum revision of the three most seminal ancient Greek treatises in the aesthetics of literature...

Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics.
October 1, 1996... Edited by PEGGY ZEGLIN BRAND and CAROLYN KORSMEYER. Pennsylvania State U.P. 1995. pp. 486. 17.95 [pounds sterling] paperbound. To state the obvious: feminism has a political as well as an intellectual aspect and each of these aspects has its...

Prosthesis.
October 1, 1996... By DAVID WILLS. Stanford U.P. 1995. pp. 350255. 12.95 [pounds sterling]. On the occasion of a lecture in Geneva, the author's leg is in plaster. As he takes up his position behind the lectern, there is an awkward moment--he is not sure what...

Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning and Aesthetic Theory.
October 1, 1996... Theory. By G. L. HAGBERG. Cornell U.P. 1995. PP. xii + 196. No price given. Hagberg's book is an attempt to relate Wittgenstein's work in philosophy of language and mind to some influential aesthetic theories--notably those of Langer,...

Irish Art: 1830-1990.
October 1, 1996... By BRIAN FALLON. Appletree Press. 1994. pp. 208 + 35 b&w and 37 colour illustrations. No price given. This book is a useful survey of the development of Irish art over the last century and a half It is well illustrated, attractive to the eye,...

Universal Grammar and Narrative Form.
October 1, 1996... By DAVID HERMAN. Duke U.P. 1995. pp. x + 281. 18.95 [pounds sterling] paperbound. This is a book about, among other things, narrative theory. Narrative is often taken to be a structure superimposed upon language, a kind of second-order...

Semiotics in the Postmodern Age.
October 1, 1996... By FLOYD MERRELL. Purdue U.P. 1995. pp. 374. No price given. One of the defining trends of postmodernity has been its search for its own prophets and, completing as it does a trilogy, Floyd Merrell's Semiotics in the Postmodern Age suggests...

Masks of Difference: Cultural Representation in Literature, Anthropology and Art.
October 1, 1996... By DAVID RICHARDS. Cambridge U.P. 1994. pp. 348. 13.95 [pounds sterling]. The new Cambridge Cultural Margins series seeks to `investigate the complex cultural zone within and through which dominant and minority societies interact and...

Frank Sibley: in memoriam.
October 1, 1996... I I first saw Frank Sibley in September 1963, when the six new postgraduate admissions to the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell were greeted by him as chairman of that illustrious department. I vividly recall his uncompromising...

Fact, fiction and feeling.
October 1, 1996... One of the many puzzles about art is the power of fictions to provoke in us emotions of the same kinds as those we experience when confronted with facts. The problem is logical and not merely psychological. Someone who says he is angry, afraid,...

On scores and works of music: interpretation and identity.
October 1, 1996... I According to a predominant view in contemporary aesthetics, a musical work is regarded as something like the class of performances that conform to a certain score.(1) This notion, it seems, complies with at least three requirements of...

Artistry.
October 1, 1996... I Painters have always been praised for their ability to render likenesses and for their technical accomplishments. But it is clear that, on its own, the ability to render a likeness or to have superb control over the medium and...

Individual style in photographic art.
October 1, 1996... Roger Scruton's controversial paper `Photography and Representation'(1) stirred a number of writers from their dogmatic slumber. They responded with horror to Scruton's claims that photography was never representational in any aesthetically...

Goodman's rejection of resemblance. (Nelson Goodman)
October 1, 1996... I. INTRODUCTION In Languages of Art Nelson Goodman swiftly dismisses the resemblance theory of representation.(1) One of the `obvious faults' Goodman finds with the resemblance theory is the symmetric nature of resemblance: if A...

The philosophy of medium-grade art.
October 1, 1996... I want to make two claims here, both indirectly: first, that certain philosophical questions are better asked in the context of medium-grade works of art than of stunning masterpieces; and second, that this distinction, when put to work, is...

A comprehensivist theory of art.
October 1, 1996... Matthew Lipman once remarked that many theories of art focus too narrowly on one or another aspect of the aesthetic process and, as a result, inhibit the understanding of that process as a whole.(1) On the basis of this complaint I shall call...

Symbols, icons and stupas.
October 1, 1996... In a recent article Jane Duran has argued that the usual Western historian's description of the Buddhist reliquary stupa in Indian art as a psycho-cosmic symbol is problematic.(1) This is because our notion of a symbol suggests that symbols are...