Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art After 9/11 (Radical Aesthetics-Radical Art) - Softcover

Jill Bennett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780761457 ISBN 13: 9781780761459

Publisher: I.B. Tauris, 2012

Synopsis

Practical Aesthetics brings a pursuit, long seen as rarefied and indulgent, out of the ivory tower and down to Ground Zero. Theoretically ambitious, fiercely original, it is a radical new account of art s foundation in the social world and of the value of aesthetics to contemporary society. Beginning with the cultural watershed of 9/11, internationally-renowned scholar Jill Bennett explores artistic developments in relation to current events to argue that understanding aesthetics is as vital to social and political theory as it is to the arts. Taking as its starting-point a definition of art as the critical, self-conscious manipulation of media, Bennett examines a wide range of events from the War on Terror to the football World Cup to elucidate how aesthetic perception works in a social field, a process that begins with the rich emotional content of the visual imagery with which we are constantly bombarded. Now more than ever, Bennett argues, understanding how what we see informs what we do is not merely an artistic endeavour but one which is fundamental to our very being. Part of the Radical Aesthetics, Radical Art series, this book challenges the notion that art and real life are somehow opposed. Practical Aesthetics proposes a new way of reading contemporary artworks and a new understanding of how fundamental art is to our social survival.

About this title

Review:

'Bennett... is not out simply to resuscitate aesthetics and formalism, but rather expand how we might engage with them... Moments like her analysis of Havoc find the compelling balance between attention to form and the cultural baggage it carries.'
Los Angeles Review of Books

'A highly significant intervention in contemporary efforts to think through relationships between art and politics... [Practical Aesthetics] is a major contribution to contemporary art theory.'
Nicholas Chare, The Year s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

'Jill Bennett is one of the strongest as well as most subtle voices in contemporary art criticism and theory. Her work on affect has been widely recognized. Starting from the position of art as contemporary - defined as orientation to real-world experience - Bennett here develops a range of perspectives and concepts to understand how art can address world-shattering disasters as well as mundane but incisive developments in visual culture. Her approach vigorously refutes any attempt to lock art up in disciplines - be they art history of visual culture. Instead, she proposes whole-field analysis and, taking her cue from the art itself, she demonstrates the value of such an approach beyond disciplinary boundaries.'
Mieke Bal Cultural Theorist, Critic, Video Artist and Professor Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam

'[] itself is a kind of encounter, inspiring further creative thinking... and will play a key role in re-attaching art to the social.'
Amelia Jones, Professor and Grierson Chair in Visual Culture at McGill University, author of Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts

'In her remarkable new book Jill Bennett proposes a radical rethinking of aesthetics... indispensible and richly suggestive for cultural studies, critical theory and contemporary art.' --Abigail Solomon-Godeau, critic, curator and Professor Emerita of History of Art at the University of California

'Bennett... is not out simply to resuscitate aesthetics and formalism, but rather expand how we might engage with them... Moments like her analysis of Havoc find the compelling balance between attention to form and the cultural baggage it carries.' --(Los Angeles Review of Books)

In her remarkable new book Jill Bennett proposes a radical rethinking of aesthetics...indispensible and richly suggestive for cultural studies, critical theory and contemporary art. --Abigail Solomon-Godeau, critic, curator and Professor Emerita of History of Art at the University of California

About the Author:

Jill Bennett is Professor and Director of the National Institute for Environmental Arts, and Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Empathic Vision (2005), a study of art and traumatic events.

About this edition

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1780761457
• ISBN 13: 9781780761459
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272