Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Postmodernists: A Critical Reader - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231140959 ISBN 13: 9780231140959

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Here, for the first time, Christopher Kul-Want brings together twenty-five texts on art written by twenty philosophers. Covering the Enlightenment to postmodernism, these essays draw on Continental philosophy and aesthetics, the Marxist intellectual tradition, and psychoanalytic theory, and each is accompanied by an overview and interpretation.

The volume features Martin Heidegger on Van Gogh's shoes and the meaning of the Greek temple; Georges Bataille on Salvador Dalķ's The Lugubrious Game; Theodor W. Adorno on capitalism and collage; Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes on the uncanny nature of photography; Sigmund Freud on Leonardo Da Vinci and his interpreters; Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva on the paintings of Holbein; Freud's postmodern critic, Gilles Deleuze on the visceral paintings of Francis Bacon; and Giorgio Agamben on the twin traditions of the Duchampian ready-made and Pop Art. Kul-Want elucidates these texts with essays on aesthetics, from Hegel and Nietzsche to Badiou and Rancičre, demonstrating how philosophy adopted a new orientation toward aesthetic experience and subjectivity in the wake of Kant's powerful legacy.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Kul-Want is director of the M.A. fine art course at the Byam Shaw School of Art, Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London. His books include Introducing Kant and Introducing Aesthetics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231140959
• ISBN 13: 9780231140959
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376
• Editor: Kul-Want Christopher