scholarly journals L.S. Vygotsky’s Critique: Between Aesthetics, Publitsistika and Psychology

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-34
Author(s):  
P.N. Marques

This paper discusses L.S. Vygotsky’s early activity as a critic through an analysis of texts in which the author himself reflects on the task of the critic. Fragments from the essay on Hamlet, Psychology of art and theatrical reviews of the Gomel period (1922—23) are analyzed to provide an overview of how his understanding of the role of the critic has evolved and changed in time. By moving from the reader’s critique to the objective analytic method, Vygotsky has placed the critic in a position of social and educational engagement, a public figure committed to raise the level of the arts and the audience’s capacity optimize the aesthetic experience. His stance to the critical work is also analyzed within the context of Russian critical traditions, particularly some ideas of Boris Eikhenbaum and the Formal School of literary studies. Finally, the critical activity is seen alongside an extensive list of attributes that has been linked to Vygotsky (scientist, methodologist, philosopher etc.) as an equally important and complementary facet of a person fully committed to social transformation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 146-169
Author(s):  
Roberta Dreon

This article explores the significance of Hegel’s aesthetic lectures for Dewey’s approach to the arts. Although over the last two decades some brilliant studies have been published on the “permanent deposit” of Hegel in Dewey’s mature thought, the aesthetic dimension of Dewey’s engagement with Hegel’s heritage has not yet been investigated. This inquiry will be developed on a theoretical level as well as on the basis of a recent discovery: in Dewey’s Correspondence traces have been found of a lecture on Hegel’s Aesthetics delivered in 1891 within a summer school run by a scholar close to the so-called St. Louis Hegelians. Dewey’s deep and long-standing acquaintance with Hegel’s Aesthetics supports the claim that in his mature book, Art as Experience, he originally appropriated some Hegelian insights. First, Dewey shared Hegel’s strong anti-dualistic and anti-autonomistic conception of the arts, resisting post-Kantian sirens that favored instead an interpretation of art as a separate realm from ordinary reality. Second, they basically converged on an idea of the arts as inherently social activities as well as crucial contributions to the shaping of cultures and civilizations, based on the proximity of the arts to the sensitive nature of man. Third, this article argues that an original re-consideration of Hegel’s thesis of the so-called “end of art” played a crucial role in the formulation of Dewey’s criticism of the arts and of the role of aesthetic experience in contemporary society. The author suggests that we read Dewey’s criticism of the removal of fine art “from the scope of the common or community life” (lw 10, 12) in light of Hegel’s insight that the experience of the arts as something with which believers or citizens can immediately identify belongs to an irretrievable past.


Author(s):  
Bart Vandenabeele

Schopenhauer explores the paradoxical nature of the aesthetic experience of the sublime in a richer way than his predecessors did by rightfully emphasizing the prominent role of the aesthetic object and the ultimately affirmative character of the pleasurable experience it offers. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the sublime does not appeal to the superiority of human reason over nature but affirms the ultimately “superhuman” unity of the world, of which the human being is merely a puny fragment. The author focuses on Schopenhauer’s treatment of the experience of the sublime in nature and argues that Schopenhauer makes two distinct attempts to resolve the paradox of the sublime and that Schopenhauer’s second attempt, which has been neglected in the literature, establishes the sublime as a viable aesthetic concept with profound significance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110021
Author(s):  
Sizhe Liu ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Xianyou He ◽  
Xiaoxiang Tang ◽  
Shuxian Lai ◽  
...  

There is evidence that greater aesthetic experience can be linked to artworks when their corresponding meanings can be successfully inferred and understood. Modern cultural-expo architecture can be considered a form of artistic creation and design, and the corresponding design philosophy may be derived from representational objects or abstract social meanings. The present study investigates whether cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design is perceived as more beautiful and how architectural photographs and different types of descriptions of architectural appearance designs interact and produce higher aesthetic evaluations. The results showed an obvious aesthetic preference for cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design (Experiment 1). Moreover, we found that the aesthetic rating score of architectural photographs accompanied by an abstract description was significantly higher than that of those accompanied by a representational description only under the difficult-to-understand design condition (Experiment 2). The results indicated that people preferred cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design due to a greater understanding of the design, providing further evidence that abstract descriptions can provide supplementary information and explanation to enhance the sense of beauty of abstract cultural-expo architecture.


Children with Asperger syndrome still need to be adjusted, in regulating their emotion, to their enjoyment in an activity that will be their emotional allocation. Art is able to improve their self-ability, to strengthen their self-confidence, and also to re-shape lack of knowledge about their own identity. This is because activity of art becomes a collection of inspiration, the aspect of imagination that is closely related to the aesthetic experience. This was a qualitative research as a study intended to understand the phenomenon of something that is experienced by the subject of research. For example: behaviour, perception, motivation, and action in holistic way and described in form of words and language, in a specific-natural context and by utilizing various methods. The research findings show that ability of emotional regulation is the ability of the subject in receiving and understanding a command, and then in minimizing tantrum, so that the subject is able to achieve a treatment therapy; including the subject's ability to identify and draw an object or other objects around them, to recognize some painting tools and to answer questions orally or in writing through the image media. The therapy can be packaged through art education based on painting activity which is the advantage of an area itself. Schools present learning programs that also support character education and the creative potential of the children, so that they can live independently later.


Author(s):  
A. W. Eaton

This chapter summarizes central issues and themes in feminist philosophical aesthetics in the analytic tradition, although some continental figures are discussed. After introducing the interdisciplinary, intersectional and trans* inclusive approach that feminist aesthetics is starting to take, this essay discusses situatedness, artistic canon formation, humanism vs. gynocentrism, rewriting the philosophical canon, overcoming artworld biases, and the role of the aesthetic in systemic oppression. Specific topics to be discussed include the male gaze, the female nude, the concept of artistic genius, women’s artistic production, the purported universality of correct aesthetic judgment, the sex/gender distinction as it pertains to aesthetics and the arts, and body aesthetics.


Author(s):  
Bárbara Dos Santos Coutinho ◽  
Ana Cristina Dos Santos Tostões

While recognising the part that digital media play in bringing about greater accessibility to artworks display and ensuring that they are more visible, this paper argues that the physical exhibition continues to be the primary place for the public to encounter the arts, as it can offer an engaging and meaningful aesthetic experience through which people can transcend their own existence. As such, it is essential to rethink now, in the scope of an increasing digital world, the exhibition in conceptual and methodological terms. For this purpose, the exhibition space must be considered as content rather than container and the exhibition as a work, often with the intentionality of a “total work of art”, rather than just a vehicle for exhibiting artworks and objects. Having the former purpose in mind, this paper proposes a re-reading of the exhibition designs of Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965), Franco Albini (1905–1977) and Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992) in order to evaluate how their theory and practice can provide useful lessons for our contemporary thinking. The three architects, assuming the role of curators, use only the specific language of an exhibition and remix conventional modes of communication and architectural vocabulary, exploring the natural and artificial light, materials, layouts, surfaces and geometries in innovative ways. They considered the exhibition to be a work of art, overcoming the container/content dichotomy and trigging an intersubjective and self-reflective participation. Kiesler, Albini and Bo Bardi may all be considered visionaries of our time, as they offer a landscape that stimulates our curiosity through a multiplicity of information arranged in a multisensory way, allowing each visitor to discover associations between himself and his surroundings. None of them simply created an opportunity for distraction or entertainment. This perspective is all the more pertinent nowadays, as the processes of digitalising information and virtualising the real may well lead to the dematerialization of the physical experience of art. By drawing upon these historical examples, this paper seeks to contribute to current study on how an exhibition can stimulate the cognitive, emotional and spiritual intelligence of each visitor and clarify the importance of this effect in 21st century museums and society at large.


Author(s):  
S. A. Afonsky

The article advances the idea about a drop in people interest in buying similar goods and services, especially in conditions of uncertainty, in particular corona-virus epidemic, when people care less about external things, such as their clothes for visiting public places. Today we observe the necessity in meeting aesthetic needs through different tools and artistic objects. Therefore, we can say that it is a certain return to those times, when in public places and even in the Underground you can see real works of art that were not made in a hurry, according to the principle ‘the cheaper the better', but those of full value. In spring 2021 we conducted a survey of students of the Russian Plekhanov University of Economics and the Arts College RGGU to find the role of the aesthetic (emotional, sensual) element - the art-object (in this case - a poster) - in conditions of uncertainty, i. e. COVID-19 epidemic. The findings of this research showed that aesthetic value of graphics takes a foreground, it should be connected with specialization of the trade enterprise, its historic and other factors. The author demonstrates that availability of aesthetic values can form a motivating platform for repeated visits to the store and thus shape its competitive advantage.


Author(s):  
Stefano Mastandrea

Not only cognitive and affective processes determine an aesthetic experience; another important issue to consider has to do with the social context while experiencing the arts. Several studies have shown that the aesthetic impact of a work of art depends on, to an important extent, the different socio-demographic factors including age, class, social status, health, wealth, and so on. The concepts of cultural and social capital by Pierre Bourdieu and the production and consumption of artworks by Howard Becker are discussed. Another important aspect of the impact of the social context on aesthetic experience deals with early art experience in childhood within the family—considered as the first social group to which a person belongs.


Author(s):  
Malcolm Budd

The long period of stagnation into which the aesthetics of nature fell after Hegel's relegation of natural beauty to a status inferior to the beauty of art was ended by Ronald Hepburn's ground-breaking paper (1966). In this essay, which offers a diagnosis of the causes of philosophy's neglect of the aesthetics of nature, Hepburn describes a number of kinds of aesthetic experience of nature that exhibit a variety of features distinguishing the aesthetic experience of nature from that of art and endowing it with values different from those characteristic of the arts, thus making plain the harmful consequences of the neglect of natural beauty. The subtlety of Hepburn's thought precludes simple summary, and this article does no more than enumerate a few of his themes that have been taken up and developed in the now flourishing literature on the aesthetics of nature (although not always with the nuanced treatment accorded them by Hepburn).


2020 ◽  

The Cultural History of Memory in the Eighteenth Century places in sharp relief the contrast between inspiring ideas that heralded an auspicious future and immemorial traditions that cherished a vanishing past. Waxing large during that era was the European Enlightenment, with its projects for reform and optimistic forecasts about the prospect of making a better world. Heritage was reframed, as martyrs for the cause of religious liberty and heroes for the promotion of the arts and sciences were enshrined in a new pantheon. They served as icons marking a pathway toward a presumed destiny, amid high hopes that reason would triumph over superstition to guide the course of human affairs. Such sentiments gave reformers a new sense of collective identity as an imagined community acting in the name of progress. Against this backdrop, this volume addresses a variety of themes in memory’s multi-faceted domain, among them mnemonic schemes in the transition from theist to scientific cosmologies; memory remodeled in the making of print culture; memory’s newfound resources for introspection; politics reimagined for the modern age; the nature of tradition reconceived; the aesthetics of nostalgia for an aristocracy clinging to a tenuous identity; the lure of far-away places; trauma in an age of revolution; and the emerging divide between history and collective memory. Along the way, contributors address such topics as the idea of nation in early modern politics; the aesthetic vision of Hubert Robert in his garden landscapes; the transforming effects of the interaction between mind and its mnemonic satellites in print media; Shakespeare remembered and commemorated; the role of memory in the redesign of historiography; the mediation of high and popular culture through literature; soul-searching in female autobiography; and commemorative practices during the French Revolution.


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