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Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Postmodernists: A Critical Reader
Author(s): Christopher Kul-Want (Author)
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication Date: 1 Jun. 2010
- Language: English
- Print length: 376 pages
- ISBN-10: 0231140940
- ISBN-13: 9780231140942
Book Description
Here, for the first time, Christopher Kul-Want brings together twenty-five texts on art written by twenty philosophers. Covering the Enlightenment to postmodernism, these essays draw on Continental philosophy and aesthetics, the Marxist intellectual tradition, and psychoanalytic theory, and each is accompanied by an overview and interpretation. The volume features Martin Heidegger on Van Gogh’s shoes and the meaning of the Greek temple; Georges Bataille on Salvador Dali’s The Lugubrious Game; Theodor W. Adorno on capitalism and collage; Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes on the uncanny nature of photography; Sigmund Freud on Leonardo Da Vinci and his interpreters; Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva on the paintings of Holbein; Freud’s postmodern critic, Gilles Deleuze on the visceral paintings of Francis Bacon; and Giorgio Agamben on the twin traditions of the Duchampian ready-made and Pop Art. Kul-Want elucidates these texts with essays on aesthetics, from Hegel and Nietzsche to Badiou and Ranciere, demonstrating how philosophy adopted a new orientation toward aesthetic experience and subjectivity in the wake of Kant’s powerful legacy.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Christopher Kul-Want is director of the M.A. fine art course at the Byam Shaw School of Art, Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London. His books include Introducing Kant and Introducing Aesthetics.
