LibGuides: Philosophy: Aesthetics

Suggested Aesthetics Reading: New Philosopher Magazine

Suggested Articles: Issue 24: Balance
Suggested Articles: Issue 29: Purpose

Suggested articles to read in New Philosopher magazine, Issue 24: Balance.

Visit the NCC to borrow, or click here for links to the digital version. Click through the other tabs for more.

Re-writing history, Tiffany Jenkins (pp.63-64)

Suggested articles to read in New Philosopher magazine, Issue 29: Purpose.

Visit the NCC to borrow, or click here for links to the digital version. Click through the other tabs for more.

The purpose of art, by Nigel Warburton (p. 94)

Brain Pickings: An Occasion for Unselfing
This Brain Pickings article discusses 'unselfing', which was first defined by moral philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch.
Aeon: The Puzzle of Beauty
"Rather than a golden ratio or a moral judgment, beauty is more like a radical jolt that awakens us to the world."
New Philosopher: The Purpose of Art
This article by Nigel Warburton appears on p. 94 of New Philosopher "Purpose" (edition 29, 2020).
Click here for links and passwords for digital access to New Philosopher Magazine. You will need to log in with your usual Lowther Hall username and password in order to access the above document. Please email us if you need any assistance.
Brain Pickings: Art as Therapy
This article by Maria Popova discusses Art as Therapy, a book written by philosopher Alain de Botton and art historian John Armstrong.
Brain Pickings: Susan Sontag on the Trouble with Treating Art and Cultural Material as “Content”
Maria Popova looks at Susan Sontag's 1964 essay 'Against Interpretation', which "examines our culture’s generally well-intentioned but ultimately perilous habit of interpretation".

General Resources on Aesthetics

Can you express sounds with sights? An artist takes a crack at animating jazz piano

For his short film Liza, the French animator Bastien Dupriez aimed to create ‘a kind of visual transcription’ of the George Gershwin song Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away) (1929), as performed by the French musician Jean-Michel Pilc. Beyond serving as a mesmerising slice of audiovisual eye candy – and it certainly is that – the piece also provokes a bevy of intriguing questions about our multisensory experience of art.

Arts Funding and the Value of the Arts

Victorian Art Grants 2020
While theatres, galleries, arts and music venues are temporarily closed, the Victorian Government continues to invest in Victoria’s artists, enabling them to work and develop new creative projects.
Regional Victorian Public Art
Take your art appreciation into regional Victoria’s fascinating public spaces. Wonder at the walls and silos, laneways and bollards transformed into open-air galleries, illustrating local histories, interacting with the environment and creating a deep sense of place.
Australian Federal Government - Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications
We support inclusiveness and growth in Australia's creative sector, and we protect and promote Australian content and culture.
The Role of the Arts in Australia
The arts play a central part in the way we live, the way we think and how we feel about ourselves. Almost everybody in Australia listens to music, reads books, goes to the theatre, concerts or dances, goes to galleries and art museums or is interested in fashion and design.

Ethics in Art

The Ethics Centre: The Morals, Aesthetics and Ethics of Art
"People love a good story. As Aristotle said, we are story-telling animals. By engaging with stories we can consider different points of view and empathise with others – including fictional characters."
Aeon: Is It OK To Make Art?
"If you express your creativity while other people go hungry, you’re probably not making the world a better place."
Elephant: Uneasy Looking
"From goldfish and horses to dogs and bees, the use of animals in art regularly sparks controversy. Are the justifications offered by artists mere ethical alibis or can the inclusion of animals help us to imagine what it might mean to exist beyond the human?"
Art & Electronic Media: “Helena” by Marco Evaristti
“Ten white Moulinex Optiblend 2000 mixers were placed on a simple table. Each of these was filled with water and contained a live goldfish. The mixers were visibly plugged in and thus ready to use. Anyone pressing the yellow button would thereby kill the fish. The visitors thus became the judges of life or death."
BBC News: Liquidising Goldfish 'Not a Crime'
An art display which invited the public to put live goldfish through a food blender did not constitute cruelty to animals, a Danish court has ruled.
MoMA Learning: Der Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will)
"In May 1934, five months before Hitler and his accomplices held their second Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, Germany, Leni Riefenstahl traveled to the city to prepare for the film she would make about this spectacle."

Forgery

Nigel Warburton: Art as Original
This blog post contains an interesting discussion of forgery and how it affects our appreciation of art.
Denis Dutton: Forgery and Plagiarism
"Forgery and plagiarism are both forms of fraud. In committing art forgery I claim my work is by another person. As a plagiarist, I claim another person’s work is my own. In forgery, someone’s name is stolen in order to add value to the wrong work; in plagiarism someone’s work is stolen in order to give credit to the wrong author."

Quick links to other Philosophy topics

Resources available in the NCC

The Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch
ISBN: 9780415253994
Iris Murdoch once observed: 'philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious'. What was obvious to Murdoch, and to all those who read her work, is that Good transcends everything - even God. Throughout her distinguished and prolific writing career, she explored questions of Good and Bad, myth and morality. The framework for Murdoch's questions - and her own conclusions - can be found here.
Aesthetics: The Key Thinkers (eBook) by Alessandro Giovannelli (Editor)
ISBN: 9781441180278
Aesthetics: The Key Thinkers offers a comprehensive historical overview of the field of aesthetics. Eighteen specially commissioned essays introduce and explore the contributions of those philosophers who have shaped the subject, from its origins in the work of the ancient Greeks to contemporary developments in the 21st Century.
Art's Emotions (eBook) by Damien Freeman
ISBN: 9780773540057
How is that artistic works have the power to move the human heart? Why does Manet's Woman with a Parrot evoke reverie, and an Edward Elgar cello concerto, nostalgia? What is the value of such experiences? Art's Emotions is a reflective, thought-provoking exploration of the significance that experiencing emotion through art has upon our lives.

Online and Virtual Art Galleries

MONA (Hobart)
The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located in Hobart, Tasmania. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses ancient, modern and contemporary art from the David Walsh collection
NGV (Melbourne)
The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is Australia's oldest, largest and most visited art museum. Experience NGV exhibitions from home with a range of interactive virtual self-guided tours.
The Guardian: 10 of the World’s Best Virtual Museum and Art Gallery Tours
The originals are out of reach for now, but you can still see world-class art – without the queues or ticket prices – with an online tour of these famous museums.
Philosophy @ the Virtual Art Museum
This website is designed to foster philosophical discussions using works of art. It consists of six units – from portraits and landscapes to conceptual art and photography – featuring three or four works of art in each, and a series of questions that assist you in articulating your response to each work of art. There are then a series of philosophical questions that are based on issues raised by the works in each unit. These questions concern issues in a variety of different philosophical areas, such as the philosophy of mind and ethics as well as the philosophy of art.