The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801446988 ISBN 13: 9780801446986

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2008

Synopsis

During the 1970s and 1980s the discourse surrounding aesthetics largely disappeared from the study of art history, theory, and cultural studies. Claims for the aesthetic value of artworks were thought elitist and politically regressive. The 1990s witnessed a return to aesthetics, but one that stressed the independent claims of beauty in reaction to its perceived suppression by ethical and political imperatives. Beauty, however, is just one aspect of the aesthetic. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the ways in which aesthetics and ethics are intertwined.

In The Life and Death of Images some of the world's leading cultural thinkers engage in dialogue with one another concerning this "new" aesthetics. In provocative and accessible fashion, they demonstrate its relevance to a range of disciplines including analytic and continental philosophy, art history, theory and practice, cultural history and visual culture, rhetoric and comparative literature. While the focus is primarily on artworks, contributors also consider other forms of imagery that raise questions about the boundaries between art and non-art, about beauty, and about the ethics of aesthetics.

About this title

About the Author

Diarmuid Costello is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Codirector of the AHRC research project "Aesthetics after Photography" at the University of Warwick. Dominic Willsdon is the Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801446988
• ISBN 13: 9780801446986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 277
• Editor: Costello Diarmuid, Willsdon Dominic