Anti-pittorialismo sublime e ragione etica: la dialettica del gusto nella Inquiry di Edmund Burke

In A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) il gusto ha un campo di pertinenza ampio. La definizione del bello e del sublime e le loro manifestazione nella letteratura e nelle arti figurative costituiscono il nucleo delle riflessioni estetiche intorno alle quali Edmund Burke articola la sua teoria del linguaggio incentrata su un gusto anti-pittorialista. Nel saggio introduttivo che aggiunse alla seconda edizione, pubblicata nel 1759, egli sviluppa un discorso intorno all’etica del gusto per mostrare come l’apprezzamento dell’arte abbia profonde diramazioni nella sfera sociale. Rielaborando le concezioni empiriste riguardo alle facoltà cognitive e critiche, Burke si prefigge non solo di identificare le passioni suscitate dalla fruizione artistica e di indagare le specifiche modalità espressive attribuibili al codice verbale e visivo, ma anche di comprendere quali siano i tratti comuni o individuali, innati o acquisibili, essenziali o variabili nei criteri di giudizio e di apprezzamento. La riflessione burkeana sul gusto mostra la coesistenza di speculazioni estetiche e obiettivi etici, che genera una dialettica irresolubile e al contempo vitalizzante. Appropriandosi delle teorie empiriste, rivisitando il topos dell’ut pictura poësis, Burke si muove con decisione verso l’anti-pittorialismo e approda al sublime, misterioso e finanche sconvolgente. Tuttavia, le riflessioni sul gusto espresse nel saggio incluso nella seconda edizione del 1759 rivestono le questioni estetiche di valenze etiche, tentando di riportare l’asse del discorso entro la sfera razionale. L’oscurità trasporta, sommuove e può celare aspetti meravigliosi e terribili; l’intelletto discerne, chiarifica e fissa le idee. Desiderio e disciplina: l’Inquiry porta con sé, dialetticamente, l’esercizio della ragione e lo slancio della visione

Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Their Verbal/Visual Personae

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Dante Alighieri. The New Life (La Vita Nuova), published in The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo D’Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300) (1847-48, published 1861) and the innumerable sketches, drawings, and paintings he dedicated to Dante generate connections between two different epochs and cultural areas. Puzzling and enlightening, they are verbal and visual transpositions as well as original works of art that invite an enquiry into Rossetti’s interart, transcultural, and self-reflexive appropriation and re-shaping of Dante’s poetics and aesthetics.Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Dante Alighieri. The New Life (La Vita Nuova), published in The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo D’Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300) (1847-48, published 1861) and the innumerable sketches, drawings, and paintings he dedicated to Dante generate connections between two different epochs and cultural areas. Puzzling and enlightening, they are verbal and visual transpositions as well as original works of art that invite an enquiry into Rossetti’s interart, transcultural, and self-reflexive appropriation and re-shaping of Dante’s poetics and aesthetics

Greening the Genre. Fairy Tale, the Apocalypse, and Ecology Documentaries

New perspectives are required to investigate forms of creative and critical writing that produce ecological knowledge and representation, to identify stylistic and structural features that strengthen or undermine environmental communication, and to appreciate narrative modes that may inspire a change in cultural mindsets and behaviours. The relationships between modes of communication and intergenerational dynamics are essential to understanding the power of environmental news and stories. Fairy tales and fables, in which the joy of the happy ending still resonates with doubts and fears, and dystopian and apocalyptic stories, in which destruction can raise palingenetic hope, are essential to environmental communication. David Attenborough’s ecology documentaries form a new green genre that blends the fairy tale and apocalyptic dystopia and uses entertainment to produce public understanding of the ecological crisis. Who is the narrator and how is the narrative built and delivered to develop environmental advocacy? Can nature documentary TV series contribute to changing consumers’ habits? Is the role played by celebrity conservationists and conservationist celebrities essential to promoting a cultural shift? These are intriguing questions raised by ecological narratives

Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Their Verbal/Visual Personae

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Dante Alighieri. The New Life (La Vita Nuova), published in The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo D’Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300) (1847-48, published 1861) and the innumerable sketches, drawings, and paintings he dedicated to Dante generate connections between two different epochs and cultural areas. Puzzling and enlightening, they are verbal and visual transpositions as well as original works of art that invite an enquiry into Rossetti’s interart, transcultural, and self-reflexive appropriation and re-shaping of Dante’s poetics and aesthetics

Parallel Lineage-Tracing Studies Establish Fibroblasts as the Prevailing In Vivo Adipocyte Progenitor.

Summary: Despite decades of studies suggesting that the in vivo adipocyte progenitor resides within the vascular niche, the exact nature of this progenitor remains controversial because distinct studies have attributed adipogenic properties to multiple vascular cell types. Using Cre recombinases labeling distinct vascular lineages, we conduct parallel lineage tracing experiments to assess their degree of contribution to de novo adipogenesis. Although we detect occasional adipocytes that were lineage traced by endothelial or mural recombinases, these are rare events. On the other hand, platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRα)-expressing adventitial or capsular fibroblasts make a significant contribution to adipocytes in all depots and experimental settings tested. Our data also suggest that fibroblasts transition to an intermediate beige adipocyte phenotype prior to differentiating to a mature white adipocyte. These observations, together with histological analyses revealing that adipose tissue fibroblasts express the mural cell marker PDGFRβ, harmonize a highly controversial field with implications for multiple human diseases, including the pandemic of obesity. : Cattaneo et al. used genetic fate mapping in murine models to test the adipogenic potential of distinct cell types of the vascular wall. These parallel lineage-tracing experiments reveal that fibroblasts are the sole vascular cell type with significant adipocyte progenitor activity, giving rise to brown, beige, and white adipocytes. Keywords: adipogenesis, obesity, vascular wall, lineage tracing, endothelium, mural cells, fibroblast

Does Presentation Format Influence Visual Size Discrimination in Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus spp.)?

Most experimental paradigms to study visual cognition in humans and non-human species are based on discrimination tasks involving the choice between two or more visual stimuli. To this end, different types of stimuli and procedures for stimuli presentation are used, which highlights the necessity to compare data obtained with different methods. The present study assessed whether, and to what extent, capuchin monkeys\u27 ability to solve a size discrimination problem is influenced by the type of procedure used to present the problem. Capuchins\u27 ability to generalise knowledge across different tasks was also evaluated. We trained eight adult tufted capuchin monkeys to select the larger of two stimuli of the same shape and different sizes by using pairs of food items (Experiment 1), computer images (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2). Our results indicated that monkeys achieved the learning criterion faster with food stimuli compared to both images and objects. They also required consistently fewer trials with objects than with images. Moreover, female capuchins had higher levels of acquisition accuracy with food stimuli than with images. Finally, capuchins did not immediately transfer the solution of the problem acquired in one task condition to the other conditions. Overall, these findings suggest that - even in relatively simple visual discrimination problems where a single perceptual dimension (i.e., size) has to be judged - learning speed strongly depends on the mode of presentation