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Neuroaesthetics is an interdisciplinary science linking together research in the areas of philosophy, psychology, the history of art, and neuroscience. It is an element within the tendency towards embracing an experimental approach to aesthetics that emerged in the 19th century, and as such constitutes one of the oldest branches of experimental psychology. Those who work in this field are primarily concerned with the following: (a) the influence of neurological damage on changes in artistic creativity, (b) conducting quantitative research and experimentation in the realm of aesthetics, (c) making parallel observations about any relations of dependency that might hold between neuronal states and aesthetic experience. In the article below we mainly consider the last of these. The basic assumptions of classical experimental aesthetics, together with its connections with neuroscience, are first of all briefly presented. Then we outline the general characteristics of the theories of Semir Zeki and Vilayanur Ramachandran, the pioneers of neuroaesthetic research. Following on from this, we undertake a critical analysis of the theories presented, with respect to the adequacy of their way of construing aesthetic experience. We focus on methodological issues essential to the pursuit of neuroaesthetic research.
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This paper is a reconstruction of Stefan Morawski’s understanding of what a work of art is. Three fundamental aspects are taken into account, namely: the ontological status, axiological status, and hermeneutical status of a work of art. This reconstruction includes as its sources diverse papers published by Morawski in various places – a diversity which attests to the constant modifications of his conclusions.
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The text attempts to find a way for Heidegger’s aesthetics, especially the concept of the truth of a work of art, to be applied to the analysis of the phenomenon of mass art. It takes as its point of departure Benjamin’s notion of mass art seen as art deprived of aura, i.e., art that is not situated in space and time. Merging Benjamin’s conceptual apparatus with Heidegger’s indicates that the notion of mass art needs major deepening. Above all, if we define high art in terms of existential truth and, in consequence, the way the work of art transcends the world in which it is rooted, then the non-auratic art will be defined by the notions of existential untruth, i.e., what will be pointed to is the way it is rooted in the world of Dasein. While the works of elite art always transcend this world, the works of mass art never do – they are worldly entities; they belong to the world (within-the-world entities). It means that the works of mass art have to be analysed primarily in terms of the ideological structures of the world in which they are rooted. This bears a number of ramifications for works of mass art, such as that they are not independent beings, but rather structural units, and also that their non-temporality is not just a result of the way they are produced and distributed, but also an effect of their origins in Dasein. Bearing in mind the structural character of the works of mass art, it seems necessary to outline a division into popular art, alternative art, and experimental art.
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This article is an attempt to compare the ways of understanding and interpreting art during the late 19th and early 20th century with the art criticism of the interwar years. To this end, the author presents an array of critical texts devoted to a single artist-sculptor, Xavier Dunikowski, who was active at the junction of the two eras. The focus of attention, however, is not only on the critics' views and opinions of the artist's work, but also on the nature of their language of expression, their discourse, and their criteria of evaluation. A look at the styles of reception predominant in each era will allow the author to pinpoint the transformation of art criticism that took place after World War I, as well as the prevailing patterns in the language of interpretation. This will make it possible to paint a fuller, more complex image of the art criticism of that time.
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The article concentrates on the understanding of "parergon" proposed by Jacques Derrida. Derrida discusses the definition of "parergon" proposed by Immanuel Kant as a decorative element. For Derrida "parergon" is an element which is "in between" the artwork and its surroundings, and therefore contributes to the onthology of an artwork. In the article the problem of "parergon", the margins and spaces "in between" is analyzed referring to different types of artworks - the works of Jan van Eyck, Rembrandt Hamenszoon van Rijn, Jan Gossaert and contemporary Polish artists - Maciej Kurak, Jan Berdyszak and Kamil Kuskowski.
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The main question of this article is: how should we think about new media in the age of excess, timelessness and non-places? Is it possible to live without the prefix "smart" and to exist on the sidelines of new media? Undoubtedly the new ways of communication (for example mobile applications, social media, social gaming, the phenomenon of "selfie") and increasing consumption of technology and data has changed the way we consider about our work and leisure time, face-to-face communication, friends and even everyday need. In the light of these circumstances it will be necessary to reassess our picture of mobile media - to think over the change of habits, to appreciate the role of communication.
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The article is devoted to an important aspect of modern aesthetics – intertextuality, which is discussed on the example of film adaptations of Russian classics. Adaptation is considered in the framework of literary-scientific reflection on “translating” verbal text for the audiovisual channel. Procedures connected with intertextuality and game-based technologies are subjected to interpretation in the context of contemporary cinema’s avant-garde artistic searches.
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The purpose of this article is an attempt to characterize the category of corporeality in the poetry by Vera Pavlova and to identify its sources. The analysis shows that this category is realized in different images and motifs, becoming the dominant poetics. In her works, the carnality is not limited to describing the man but it turns out to be an important, universal code that allows you to see the world in terms of unity and organicity. In this respect, Pavlova’s aesthetic exploration resembles the acmeist and – more distant – an ancient tradition.
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Artists worldwide use various means and materials to realize their visual expressions. In the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Benin, different types of materials can be seen used by students and lecturers alike. Some of these materials are fiberglass, bronze, metals, stone, clay and wood. Of all these materials, wood have come up as one of the most outstanding, dependable and striking. Three very evocative wood sculptures attracting attention and critical review are Life in Phases, Shame and Life is a Scuffle. These three ever powering and fascinating sculptures continue to speak volumes of the shamelessness among our greedy political office holders, the struggle to break even in our ever demanding and corrupt society. Is there any solution in sight for mankind’s daunting problems? This and more questions are what this paper seeks to answer and critically establish.
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While writing this article, the author was inspired by “Między chwilą a pięknem. O sztuce w rozpędzonym świecie” by Zygmunt Bauman. Following Baumanian diagnosis of the contemporary art we are faced with the condition of our contemporary world. The main feature we can observe in both areas seems to be their ‘liquidity’. In this liquid context the author of the article focuses on contemporary architecture, which was omitted by Zygmunt Bauman. It appears that the most fixed, palpable and sturdy type of art also may assume a kind of liquid form – as in the case of so called ‘folding’, ‘downy’, or ‘pleated’ architecture proposed by Bernard Tschumi or Peter Eisenman who are strongly inspired by philosophical thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, or Jacques Derrida.
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Central to understanding St. Thomas’s definition of beautiful things as those which, when seen, give pleasure (pulchra enim dicuntur quae visa placent) is a grasp of the dynamic interaction between intellect, on the one hand, and affectivity (the will and the emotions), on the other hand. This article focuses on the nature of the interaction between intellect and will, since this consideration is sufficient to secure its argument, namely that a necessary – albeit not sufficient – condition for the optimal experience of beauty possible in this life is that the will be duly fixed on God as its final end. This point is established with reference to natural beauty in particular since this kind of beauty relates directly to God as its creative cause.
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Giacomo Leopardi’s poetics is intertwined with a number elements from romanticism and classicism, with the classical influence being a lot less familiar to the public, and also neglected by the literary critics. This influence, especially present during poet’s early years, appears within the thematic, technical and philosophical aspect of his poetry. Leopardi’s poetry is permeated with the contrast between the “old ones” and the “new ones“, i.e. the antique period whose great names served as inspiration to the poet in many of his poems, and his contemporaries. This paper will show that acceptance of Romanticism, as the dominant choice that his poetry refers to, is a product of a long journey of self-reflecting and development of a complex thought, whose base, from the poet’s early beginnings until the very end, relies on the deep conviction of a personal philosophy that never completely rejects classicism, and which he develops through his biographical element, which is dominant in his rich literal opus.
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This study derives from the genealogy of phenomenological and cubistic aims and their thematic interests at the beginning of the 20th century in the Central-European milieu. In the first part, we observe common and close questions of Husserl’s philosophy on the one side and the new artistic initiative of cubists on the other. This level of observation and comparison is in the second part recognized and deepened thanks to the analyses of Czech philosophers (Bayerová, Patočka, Mathauser), theoreticians(Vlček, Kramář, Lamač and others) and works of cubists themselves (Kubišta, Filla, Hofman and others). The philosophical scope of the consideration also opens the principal question — which is the topic of the third part of the study — of the intertwining of phenomenological and cubistic methods (epoché, reduction and pictorial elaboration). Because it is not one unitary style, Cubism brings with it a complicated interpretative task: in relation to this, we present the polemic concerning the use of polyperspectivity and geometrisation; thanks to phenomenology, their deeper meaning can be revealed.We identify as phenomenological tendencies in cubistic works of art, their claim to liberate perception,to create pure forms and to refuse the symbolic, representative and imitative function of art. We analyse these questions with respect to the creative possibilities of the subject/artist as well as the pictorial/perceptive character of the world.
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This article analyzes the spectator practices as they relate to the strategies of auteur cinema.Traditionally, the viewer experiences in the film are discussed in the context of engagement and clinging. The author tries to actualize a different perspective, associated with the specifics of the contemporary art Cinema – a situation of emptiness, lack of events, in which the audience is bored in the cinema hall. Therefore, the article attempts to justify usage of the phenomenological and ontological philosophical language for film analysis through thematizing the cinematic experience.The specific method is phenomenological reduction, embodied in the act of contemplating the cinematic experience as a phenomenon. Heideggerian analytics of boredom sentiment and the direct experience of contemporary cinema are fundamental for this article. The analysis of Bela Tarr’sfilm “The Turin Horse” demonstrates that the film can cause boredom by means of its unique time technique, as it requests the viewer to remain in its not-clear-how-much-lasting time for excessively long. The viewer finds oneself put in the position of extreme aesthetic, where one is to contact with the film in a blank way, by no means. The viewer is passivated, experiencing the movie through every moment of the present, embracing the film “as a whole”. Due to the long time, through lack of sharpness of thought the bored is both detached and involved. By means of non-public, personal passivity, the viewer is immersed into the cinematic and, therefore, focused on the film “as a whole”,but still dispersed towards putting together the grains of the film: its details, repetitions of everyday situations. Therefore, it is not through reflection, but through the location in the event and affect,through questioning, that the viewer gets closer to the meaning of the film.
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This article abstracts essential positions in the early debates on Marxist Aesthetics at the first half of the 20th century, which has been shaped by prominent Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. It claims that these early debates are at large related with the competence of the audience. It also focuses the relation between these debates and film.
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Architectural environment of Early Republic Period (1923-1950) has an effective language explicitly revealing political and cultural aspects of the Republic. Under such conditions, architects coming from German-speaking countries contributed quite significantly in the establishment of International Architectural Style of 30’s in Turkey. Throughout 1930s when the Building of School Political Sciences constituting the subject of the study was constructed, International Architectural Style brought to Turkey by the means of architects coming from Germany-speaking countries became effective. Enrst Egli, one of those architects, is one of the pioneers of this “modern” style with his numerous designs, and his educator and manager identity. Egli, carried out significant works in the field of educational buildings which he dealt with cautiously and fastidiously and explicitly regarded them as a symbol of prestige. Primarily educational buildings together with National Education Ministry Construction Office management, Istanbul Fine Arts Academy Architecture Branch management and teaching, design and application of important public buildings in Ankara are among the said studies. In our article, Ernst Egli’s architectural understanding which became clear with his works in Turkey and the Building of School Political Sciences of which design and construction was carried out by him in 1936 was introduced and evaluated especially by means of the original documents acquired from the archive of Eidgenössichen Technischen Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ). International Architectural Style’s way of meeting of Republic’s expectation from “modernity”, it way of use of such formal language in the building of the School of Political Sciences, and this building’s contribution to the architectural aesthetics of capital was the main discussion of this article. In the article, 1920s and 1930s of architectural environment of Early Republic Period was initially dealt with in brief. Later Ernst Egli’s works in Turkey and architectural understanding were introduced. Afterwards, the building of School of Political Sciences that is one of the important applications of Egli in Ankara was dealt with, in the last section Ernst Egli architecture and Early Republic Period Architecture was evaluated.
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Na jednom mjestu u svom kapitalnom djelu Arkade Walter Benjamin pod slovom K, u odjeljku koji je posvećen snovima, govori o kopernikanskom obratu historijske percepcije koji se sastoji u slijedećem: u prostor-vremenu vremena sna (Zeitraum) individualna svijest sve se dublje okreće introspekciji i refleksiji, dok kolektivna svijest sve više tone u duboki san, napominjući da se svaka historijska epoha okreće snovima na svoj način. Prije je točka interesa bilo "ono što je prošlo" i na to se fokusirao kognitivni aparat, dok danas dolazi do dijalektičkog obrata: "bljesak probuđene svijesti" doveo je do toga da je politika preuzela primat nad historijom; informacije koje primamo iz svijeta tek trebamo pretočiti u sjećanje.
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