Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction

by Korsmeyer,Carolyn

• ISBN13: 9780415266581
• ISBN10: 0415266580
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Feminist approaches to art are extremely influential and widely studied across a variety of disciplines, including art theory, cultural and visual studies, and philosophy. Gender and Aesthetics is an introduction to the major theories and thinkers within art and aesthetics from a philosophical perspective, carefully introducing and examining the role that gender plays in forming ideas about art. It is ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time.Organized thematically, the book introduces in clear language the most important topics within feminist aesthetics:- Why were there so few women painters?- Art, pleasure and beauty- Music, literature and painting- The role of gender in taste and food- What is art and who is an artist?- Disgust and the sublime.Each chapter discusses important topics and thinkers within art and examines the role gender plays in our understanding of them. These topics include creativity, genius and the appreciation of art, and thinkers from Plato, Kant, and Hume to Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Also included in the book are illustrations from Gaugin and Hogarth to Cindy Sherman and Nancy Spero to clarify and help introduce often difficult concepts. Each chapter concludes with a summary and further reading and there is an extensive annotated bibliography.Carolyn Korsmeyer's style is refreshing and accessible, making the book suitable for students of philosophy, gender studies, visual studies and art theory, as well as anyone interested in the impact of gender on theories of art.

Author Biography

Carolyn Korsmeyer is Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(9)
Artists and art: a brief history of concepts	10	(27)
Conceptual foundations	11	(4)
The idea of the artist: ancient predecessors	15	(8)
Art-making: individuals and groups	23	(2)
Fine art and the modern concept of the artist	25	(4)
Genius	29	(2)
Expression theories of art	31	(3)
Summary	34	(3)
Aesthetic pleasures	37	(22)
The aesthetic	37	(3)
Taste and beauty	40	(2)
Burke on beauty	42	(2)
Kant on judgments of taste	44	(2)
Whose taste?	46	(2)
Aesthetic attitude theories	48	(3)
Feminist critiques of aesthetic perception	51	(6)
Summary	57	(2)
Amateurs and professionals	59	(25)
Education and training: who learns?	59	(2)
Music	61	(8)
Literature	69	(5)
Painting	74	(7)
Reassessing the past	81	(1)
Summary	82	(2)
Deep gender: taste and food	84	(20)
The five senses	85	(4)
Pleasure sensuous and aesthetic	89	(3)
Subjectivity and objectivity	92	(3)
A defense of taste	95	(3)
Food and/in/as art	98	(4)
Summary	102	(2)
What is art? (Art is what?)	104	(26)
Definitions and their contexts	109	(4)
Art and anti-art	113	(1)
Institutional theory	114	(2)
Art as a mirror: Arthur Danto	116	(1)
Feminist work and changing concepts of art	117	(11)
Summary	128	(2)
Difficult pleasures: sublimity and disgust	130	(25)
Mind and body revisited	131	(2)
Sublimity again	133	(7)
Luce Irigaray: sexuate subjectivity	140	(4)
Disgust as an aesthetic response	144	(3)
Disgust and abjection: Julia Kristeva	147	(3)
Disgust: context and ambiguity	150	(2)
Summary	152	(3)
Notes	155	(20)
Bibliography	175	(14)
Index	189