The Philosophy of the Visual Arts [Paperback]

Most instructors who teach introductory courses in aesthetics or the philosophy of arts use the visual arts as their implicit reference for art in general, yet until now there has been no aesthetics anthology specifically orientated to the visual arts. This text stresses conceptual and theoretical issues, first examining the very notion of the visual arts and then investigating philosophical questions raised by various forms, from painting, the paradigmatic form, to sculpture, photography, film, dance, kitsch, and other forms on the borders of the visual arts. The selections represent both classical and contemporary views and include sections by artists, art historians, and critics as well as philosophers. A singularly important text for courses in the philosophy of arts or aesthetics, this anthology is designed to enrich the philosophical and critical examination of our beliefs about the visual arts.

I. The Idea of the Visual Arts
1. The Aesthetic Attitude,Jerome Stolnitz
2. On the Nature of the Visual Arts,Thomas Munro
3. The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude,George Dickie
4. Intuition, Technique and the Classification of the Arts,Benedetto Croce
5. On the Limits of Painting and Poetry,Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
II. Painting and the Pictorial Arts: Form and the Representation of the Visible World
6. A Copy Theory of Representation,Plato
7. Truth and the Stereotype: An Illusion Theory of Representation,E.H. Gombrich
8. Reality Remade: A Denotation Theory of Representation,Nelson Goodman
9. Looking at Pictures and Looking at Things,Kendall L. Walton
10. Caricature,Stephanie Ross
11. The Aesthetic Hypothesis: Significant Form and Aesthetic: Emotion,Clive Bell
III. Painting and the Pictorial Arts: Wider Contexts
12. Concerning the Spiritual in Art,Wassily Kandinskyl3+