The Fear of Aesthetics in Art and Literary Theory

Is aesthetics, as has recently been claimed, now able to meet the accusations often levelled against it? This essay examines counters to three of the most common: that aesthetics is based around overly narrow conceptions of "art" and "the aesthetic"; that aesthetics is politically disengaged; and that aesthetics fails to engage with actual art objects and their histories

The significance of form

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Close Looking and Conviction

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12259 This journal's conditions do not allow us to make the file of the article available via the repository. It is therefore under an indefinite embargo.This essay offers theoretical and practical reflections on the operations involved in description and interpretation based on close looking. Explanations are given of the necessary appeal to contexts of origin or reception in order to disambiguate works of art, the widespread though rarely acknowledged reliance on an attenuated form of intention, and the way in practice that contexts are mobilized in the description or ‘redescription’ of works of art. Wider points made concern scepticism about the idea that works of art might determine their own interpretation (including problems with claims made as part of the phenomenological turn in image studies for the priority of direct or unmediated responses to works of art), the quasi-allegorical nature of even ostensibly object-centred interpretation, and consequences of the fact that modernism can function as a kind of context.Research for this article was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; The Courtauld Institute of Art; and Peterhouse, Cambridge

Interpreting art

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Post-impressionism : universal, British, global

Starting from the possibility of a ‘global’ account of a style, this essay examines the consequences of the idea of post-impressionism. Around 1910, Roger Fry drew on histories of world art and international art historiography to cast post-impressionism as putatively universal, a style that was not just a new development, but was a rediscovery of a natural form of artistic creation. Seen this way, post-impressionism also had the potential to go global: to have a causal role in the development of multiple international modernisms following its spatial circulation across the globe. The essay goes on to explore first how even within Britain local variations and divisions quickly came to undercut this specifically British articulation of a universal style. It then turns to aspects of post-impressionism's subsequent circulations in India, Nigeria, Japan, and China to examine further how its putative universalism was transformed in a variety of locally specific ways.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Peer review in Art History

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Listening : Song Fox Trot

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Interpreting Art

How do people make sense of works of art? And how do they write to make others see the same way? There are many guides to looking at art, histories of art history and art criticism, and accounts of various ‘theories’ and ‘methods’, but this book offers something very unlike the normal search for difference and division: it examines the general and largely unspoken norms shared by interpreters of many kinds. Interpreting Art reveals subtle features of art writing central to the often unnoticed interpretative practices through which we understand works of art. In doing so, the book also sheds light on possible alternatives, pointing to how writers on art might choose to operate differently in the future

A GNSS-based method to define athlete manoeuvrability in field-based team sports

This study presented a method of quantifying the manoeuvrability of two field-based team sport athletes and investigated its relationship with running velocity during competition. Across a season, 10 Hz Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) devices were worn during matches by 62 athletes (Australian Football League [AFL]; n = 36, 17 matches, National Rugby League [NRL]; n = 26, 21 matches). To quantify manoeuvrability, tortuosity was calculated from the X and Y coordinates from match GNSS files (converted from latitude and longitude). Tortuosity was calculated as 100 x natural logarithm of the chord distance (distance travelled between X and Y coordinates), divided by the straight-line distance. The maximal tortuosity was then quantified for each 0.5 m∙s-1 speed increment, ranging from 0 to the highest value for each game file. A quadratic model was fitted for each match file, controlling for the curvilinear relationship between tortuosity and velocity. A comparison of the quadratic coefficients between sports, and within sport between positions was investigated using linear mixed models. Resulting standard deviations (SDs) and mean differences were then assessed to establish standardized effect sizes (ES) and 90% confidence intervals (CI). A curvilinear relationship exists between maximal tortuosity and running speed, reflecting that as speed increases, athletes’ ability to deviate from a linear path is compromised (i.e., run in a more linear path). Compared to AFL, NRL had a greater negative quadratic coefficient (a) (ES = 0.70; 0.47 to 0.93) for the 5 second analysis, meaning that as speed increased, NRL athletes’ manoeuvrability reduced at a faster rate than when compared to AFL. There were no positional differences within each sport. GNSS derived information can be used to provide a measure of manoeuvrability tortuosity during NRL and AFL matches. The curvilinear relationship between tortuosity and speed demonstrated that as speed increased, manoeuvrability was compromised

I\u27m In Heaven When I\u27m In Your Arms

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