The History of Vision

One of the most influential ideas of twentieth-century art history and aesthetics is that vision has a history and it is the task of art history to trace how vision has changed. This claim has recently been attacked for both empirical and conceptual reasons. My aim is to argue for a new version of the history of vision claim: if visual attention has a history, then vision also has a history. And we have some reason to think that at least in certain contexts, visual attention does have a histor

Lifestyle, aesthetics and narrative in luxury domain advertising

This study investigates a pattern observed in recent lifestyle advertisements. In the domain of luxury goods a certain type of advertisement has emerged that relies almost exclusively on the evocation of pure sensation. Only in part do the depicted scenes, characters or objects trigger these sensations. Rather, aesthetic features of style – such as depth of field, diffusion, colour or light – enhance the spectator's sensorial response. In the context of the avant-garde of the 1920s, similar strategies were employed. While these avant-garde films combined a modernist hope for utopia with a democratisation of aesthetics and taste for the masses, contemporary lifestyle advertisements tend to be suffused with nostalgia. However, this nostalgia is ahistoric, offering only the most pleasurable aspects of an imaginary experience

Appreciating Nature and Art: Recent Western and Chinese Perspectives

Landscape painting has played a significant role in shaping practices of nature appreciation in Western and Chinese cultures. Both cultures have also seen the recent emergence of philosophical views of nature appreciation that stress the importance of ecological understanding. However, these philosophical views differ in their response to the influence of the landscape painting tradition: whereas Western approaches have largely been critical, Chinese ecoaestheticians have embraced it. In this paper, we explore this difference and argue that it is not explained by differences between Western and Chinese art but by differences in Western and Chinese philosophers’ conceptions of ecology. We further argue that, even granting these differing conceptions of ecology, consideration of the problematic aspects of the landscape painting tradition remains a pressing concern for ecoaesthetics

"Che tempo, che tempo": geology and environment in Max Frisch´s Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän

Critical readings of Frisch’s Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän [Man in the Holo-cene] have tended to read its heterogeneous and inter-medial form as a code for the mental disintegration of its protagonist. This paper argues instead that this feature can be seen as a poetological engagement with geological and climatic timescales. Due to its hybrid form, the incorporation of a multiplicity of textual fragments and pictorial representations, the text undermines both conventional definitions of narra-tive and representations of nature. Holozän’s non-linear structure establishes an aes-thetic of slowness that ushers in an awareness of the utterly different time schemes of geological and climatic processes. Furthermore, the importance of the material features, such as an interplay between text and image and the disconnected, paratac-tical arrangement of sentences mirrors the novel’s focus on natural phenomena. Frisch’s narrative establishes a poetics that tries to reach beyond the confinements of an anthropocentric perspective and thereby subverts the borders between culture and environment

Edward Mitchell Bannister and the Aesthetics of Idealism

Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901)—a Canadian-born, black painter who enjoyed a thirty-year career in Providence, Rhode Island—experienced racial discrimination throughout his life and historical marginalization following his death. His identity as an African American during the era of Emancipation and Reconstruction has framed the present understanding of his contribution to the American landscape tradition. This one-dimensional approach neglects his varied intellectual and professional endeavors, as well as his unique position as a freeborn, black artist. Bannister’s manuscript, The Artist and His Critics (1886), indicates that he developed an artistic theory around the philosophies of German Idealism and American Transcendentalism, inspired by nineteenth-century American authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Washington Allston. Considering past interpretations of his work alongside these overlooked ideological connections situates Bannister’s landscapes within a broader cultural context, yielding a more intricate understanding of the motivation and meaning behind his artwork

Heinrich Wölfflin's ideas and historiographical discourse

This thesis on Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) is a problematisation and, essentially, a revision of the interpretation of his personal discourse: the theories, themes and implications of three of his texts. This re-evaluation is a historiographical analysis in connection with the unpublished material in the Wölfflin archives, which establishes Wölfflin's concern for the subject in terms of an anthropological Kulturgeschichte. The subjectdriven terminology of the texts indicates an aesthetics of perception and reception. Wölfflin's thinking is analysed with regards to his methodological practices (formal analysis and comparison of two images) and academic scholarship (focusing mostly on Renaissance and Baroque studies). His texts are an exemplification and evidence for the theoretical conception of the historical categories (in a philosophical and epistemological sense) of bodiliness (Karperlichkeit, Karperhaftigkeit) and visuality (Sichtbarkeit, Anschauung) within the cultural transition between the fields of historicism and modernity/modernism. Through the impact of photographic reproductions he demarcated an analytical typology of architectural form and spatial effects, and of modes of depiction (of artists, sculptors or arqhitects) and categories of beholding (of the viewer), with emphasis on the underlying and ontological connection between each of the two domains, that is, bodiliness in the Prolegomena and Renaissance and Baroque, and visuality in the Principles of Art History. The fundamental and problematic interweaving of issues of theory and history characterises Wölfflin's theories throughout his life and in this his discourse is symptomatic for the emergent discipline of art history. The construction of the Wolfflinian field is set up in relation to the conditions of the intellectual context of the discipline, as extrapolation of aesthetics, philosophy, psychology, epistemology, systemisation, Wissenschaftlichkeit and history-writing. The identification and unfolding of multiple intentions, ambiguities and problems are crucial aspects of this interpretation of Wölfflin's theory of art history in theoretical and practical terms

East Meets West: A Comparative Study On the Origin of Landscape Depiction

This project examines the origin and evolution of landscape depictions from both Eastern and Western traditions, covering from Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) to Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) in China, and from Roman antiquity to early Renaissance in Europe. Landscape depiction from each time period is examined. With the help of detailed visual analysis and overviews of religious ideology, the study reaches the conclusion that in both traditions, landscape depiction reaches its maturity both in terms of pictorial techniques and the ability to convey spirituality by the early Renaissance (11th century in China and 15th century in Italy). The project also provides some observations concerning the similarities and differences between the two pictorial traditions, which are outlined at the end to compare and contrast

Common ground, diverging paths: eighteenth-century English and French landscape painting.

In the early eighteenth century, both English and French artists traveled to Rome to study the great seventeenth-century landscape artists --Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin in particular—at the source. The English were motivated by a combination of reverence for the ancient, classical world, an associative imagination and a burgeoning competitive art market. The French, by an equal regard for antiquity and the pragmatic desire to complete the requirements of the monopolistic French Academy. While English landscape painting evolved away from the idealism of Claude to a modern naturalism imbued with the artist’s subjective response to a visual experience, French landscape painting for the most part continued with the intellectual, idealistic compositions of the century before. This thesis suggests some of the reasons why landscape painting thrived in England during the eighteenth century while it stagnated in France, when both concurrently shared the same origins