Aesthetics into the Twenty-first Century

The new concerns facing aestheticians in the twenty-first century require serious attention if the discipline is to maintain continued viability as an intellectual discipline. Just as art changes as cultures develop, so must aesthetics. In support of this view is a personal account of evolving engagement with aesthetics and the factors that led to embracing change and a plurality of practices as essential to the health of aesthetic today. A brief examination of the state of aesthetics as it has evolved in the American Society for Aesthetics since its inception in the 1940s will follow. These two lines of development, one idiosyncratic and personal, and the other focusing on the aims and outcomes of one prominent national society, will perhaps offer some useful background for understanding the current state of aesthetics and the problems confronting the discipline today. Following these considerations will be a look at some of the main concerns reflected in the social and political aesthetics and the expansion of aesthetics to include the popular arts which again challenges aesthetics to move beyond its historic boundaries

A small intruder. A Medieval marble winged lion from Ravello

An image of a 12th century marble winged lion was provocatively included among the slides accompanying a lecture by the author at a recent conference at the American Academy in Rome to illustrate Umberto Scerrato’s work on Islamic archaeology and art history in Italy. The lion, in fact, was never published by Scerrato, but it and a winged bull, both once featuring as ornaments on the “Moresque Fountain” in Ravello (originally from a medieval building most likely from Ravello itself), are the subject of this brief article. They are of undeniable Islamic taste

Faculty

Latin American Studie

Sculpture, chains and the Armstrong gun : John Bell’s American slave

Discussion of The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers (1805–73) has routinely cited John Tenniel’s famous caricature The Virginian Slave (fig. 1), published in Punch in 1851 as the “fitting companion” to Powers’s statue.[1] Tenniel’s image made explicit the scandal of American slavery and accused Powers, and by extension the United States, of disavowing the reality of contemporary slavery in its imagined pairing with The Greek Slave. What has rarely been acknowledged is that a version of this fitting companion was, in fact, produced: The American Slave (fig. 2) by John Bell (1811–95). Bell’s statue, first shown as A Daughter of Eve—A Scene on the Shore of the Atlantic in plaster at the Royal Academy in 1853, represents a young woman on the shore of Africa, chained and awaiting transportation to the Americas. The title was changed for the London International Exhibition in 1862, in response to the American Civil War. The statue shares the critical politics of Punch, which regularly and forcefully attacked the institution of slavery in the United States, and was intended, like the cartoon, to remind viewers of what The Greek Slave hid from view

Artificial earth sculpture

William Newsham Blair (1841-91) was born in Scotland, and trained there as an engineer and surveyor. He emigrated to Dunedin at the end of 1863 and took employment with the Otago Provincial Survey Department at the beginning of the new year. In 1871, he became District Engineer of Public Works, and in 1878, the year after election as a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, was appointed Engineer-in-Charge of Public Works in the South Island. In 1884, Blair moved to Wellington as Assistant Engineer-in-Chief. In 1890, he became Engineer-in-Chief and Under Secretary for Public Works (Furkert 1953: 117). During his career as engineer, Blair had many opportunities to travel throughout New Zealand. For example, in the 1870s he travelled widely throughout Otago and Canterbury (including traversing the Southern Alps five times) while on reconnaissance surveys for possible railway routes, and in the 1880s he visited the King Country to report on the proposed North Island Main Trunk. It was no doubt on these and similar journeys that Blair became very much aware of the changes which man was making to the landscape. A few earlier writers had expressed concern about the wholesale clearing of the natural vegetation, but none had noted the scale of man-induced erosion and change. Similarly Blair refused to accept a commonly held theory that rainfall increased if forests were planted, and decreased if the land was denuded. In some ways, Blair may be compared with George Perkins Marsh in the United States. Over two decades earlier Marsh had already recognised that man was a potent force in changing his environment. It is interesting to speculate if indeed Blair had found his inspiration in the writings of this American naturalist. Introduction by R.P. Hargreave

\u27Yet in a Primitive Condition\u27: Edward S. Curtis\u27s The North American Indian

From 1907 to 1930, Edward S. Curtis created The North American Indian, a forty-volume edition of photographs and writings that he hoped would cover “every phase of Indian life of all tribes yet in a primitive condition.” All evidence indicates that he set out to make a singular and unified work of art. However, a comparative analysis of photographs made at different moments in this ambitious project reveals that The North American Indian ultimately is characterized not by stylistic and thematic unity but by significant shifts in aesthetic and political orientation. [excerpt

Ship carvers in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain

Vessel ornamentation has been practised for thousands of years and over a vast geographical area. Unsurprisingly, the type of carvings and their purpose vary considerably from place to place and their style, form and subject matter have changed significantly over time. This article focuses on the ship carvings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, and more specifically it investigates those who produced them. Classified as neither sculptors nor shipbuilders, ship carvers in Britain, both in the past and in more recent times, have been denied the appreciation that their unique and specialized art deserves. This article addresses the apparent difficulty that exists in classifying ship carvers and the carvings they produced. By examining how the carvers were trained and how work was commissioned and executed, the article investigates how these carvers were perceived by their contemporaries and how they fit into the broader historical context of the period

"Prices for Paintings by African American Artists and Their Contemporaries: Does Race Matter? (Revision of Working Paper No. 2006-06)"

This paper investigates the extent that economic markets have incorporated mainstream artistic acceptance of African American art. Price levels and movements for paintings by African American artists versus their white contemporaries are compared using auction data from 1972 to 2004. Means in the aggregate as well as individually are found to be significantly lower for African American artists in almost every case. Hedonic regressions are used to refine the statistical analysis by controlling for factors characterizing the painting and auction environment. In the regressions significant differences persist between the two groups with African American artists experiencing lower price levels but higher price appreciation throughout the period. The price gap thus appears to be narrowing indicating a possible convergence of economic reality and artistic appreciation. In addition, the higher investment returns for paintings by African American artists made them a relatively profitable art niche in recent years and possibly for the future since economic values have not completely converged for the two groups.Economics of Art, Painting Prices, African American Painters, Hedonic Regression

Nineteenth Century American Landscapes

Introduction: In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,-no disgrace, no calamity (leaving my eyes) , which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,-my head bathed by the blithe air, and up-lifted into infinite space,-all mean egotism vanishes. . .. I am nothing, I see all; the currents of the universal Being circulate through me. I am part or parcel of God. These words of Ralph \Valdo Emerson from his essay On Nature express the sentiments of the early nineteenth century American landscapists, known as the Hudson River School. The term, originally intended as an insult, was meant to characterize this group of painters as presumptuous provincials. The painters were not presumptuous provincials, apeing European models; they were genuinely affected by the American landscape. Never need an American, said Washington Irving, look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. The Hudson River Valley, the Catskill Mountains, and the White Mountains were beautiful. A boat trip up the Hudson River was considered by European travelers, such as Fanny Kemble, equal to, if not better than, a trip down the Rhine. The landscapes were wild, uncultivated, untouched by human civilization. The Hudson reminded the sentimental traveler of Jean Jacques Rousseau\u27s noble savages, and the theory that life in nature was pure and simple. The traveler became, for a time, Paul or Virginia, Atala or Rene. The special distinction of the American painters, unlike their European counterparts, was that they were able to paint from nature that was truly wild. The United States was still largely the land of the forest, primitive and unspoiled by civilization. The first Hudson River School painters worked primarily in New York State. Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) , the oldest, was by trade a leather tanner and merchant who in 1820 quit his profession in favor of painting. He was self-taught, but by no means naive. His compositions are conventional; a repoussoir of trees on either side of the canvas which, like wings on a stage, focus the viewer\u27s attention on the middle ground. However, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) was the first American to bring a personal vision and style to the art of landscape painting. Born in England, he immigrated with his family to Ohio, where he worked with his father as a wall-paper designer and manufacturer. When that business failed, Cole set out on his own as an unsuccessful painter of portraits who could not please his clients. He then turned to landscape, painting scenes along the Hudson and in the \u27White Mountains, painting scenes known for their minute profusion of detail, filled with light and dark contrast which emphasized the mysterious wonders of nature

Honor and Destruction: The Conflicted Object in Moral Rights Law

In 1990, the Copyright Act was amended to name visual artists, alone among protected authors, possessors of moral rights, a set of non-economic intellectual property rights originating in nineteenth-century Europe. Although enhancing authors\u27 rights in a user-oriented system was a novel undertaking, it was rendered further anomalous by the statute\u27s designated class, given copyright\u27s longstanding alliance with text. And although moral rights epitomize the legacy of the Romantic author as a cultural trope embedded in the law, American culture offered little to support or explain the apparent privileging of visual artists over other authors. What, if not a legal or cultural disposition toward visual artists, precipitated the enactment of a moral rights statute like the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (\u27\u27VARA )? This Article demonstrates that the answer is less related to authorship concerns than would reasonably be surmised from a doctrine premised on the theory that a creative work embodies the author\u27s honor, personhood, and even soul