Art and Its Objects : With Six Supplementary Essays

by Richard Wollheim

• ISBN13: 9780521437783
• ISBN10: 0521437784
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-07-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

What defines a work of art and determines the way in which we respond to it? Richard Wollheim’s classic reflection on art and its objects was written in the belief that the nature of art has to be understood simultaneously from the artist’s and the spectator’s viewpoint. In pursuit of this enquiry, Wollheim considers central questions regarding expression, representation, style, the significance of the artist’s intention, and the essentially historical nature of art. Art and its Objects is printed here with six essays concerned with related theories of art, criticism, representation, perception and the nature of aesthetic value. This collection offers a stimulating and perceptive introduction to the questions and philosophical issues raised by works of art and the part they play in our culture and society.

Table of Contents

Preface to the second edition

Art and its objects

Supplementary essays

1. The Institutional theory of art

2. Are the criteria of identity for works of art aesthetically relevant?

3. A note on the physical object hypothesis

4. Criticism of retrieval

5. Seeing-as, seeing-in and pictorial representation

6. Art and evaluation.