Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

Category Archives: What is Art

November 20, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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AFB Artworld Roundtable: Animal Rights and Art

The Headlines Will Italy Back Down on Hermann Nitsch Show? Italian animal rights activists have launched an online petition to stop a Nitsch performance, slated to kick off in Palermo on July 10, and continue throughout the summer until September 20… The full story can be found here. Animal Rights Activists Protest Untitled (12 Horses) Animal activists turned up at Gavin Brown’s West Greenwich Village gallery space in New York to protest the showstopping final exhibit there before the gallery moves uptown to Harlem. The work in question is Jannis Kounellis’s Arte Povera masterpiece, 12 Horses, which debuted in Rome in 1969. The installation features 12 horses tethered to the wall, eating hay, on a rubberized floor… The full story can be found here. The Roundtable Cynthia Freeland, Anthony Cross, Ross Cameron, John Rapko

October 22, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Multi-Origin Art

What follows is a guest post by Joshua Spencer and Chris Tillman . Joshua Spencer is an assistant professor of philosophy at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He studies, primarily, metaphysics and philosophy of language. But he likes most philosophical topics. Joshua is also a huge fan of cats.  Chris Tillman is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba. His main interest is in metaphysics, but he considers practically everything to be an issue in metaphysics. He is originally from Missouri, where his first major was in painting and he spent his free time in bands, including a country/rap band (hick-hop, if you will). These days his free time is more likely to be consumed by curing meats, genre fiction, and making Korean farmer hooch (makgeolli).  

June 23, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Artist Interview: Jeffrey Brown

Comic Artist Jeffrey Brown interviewed by Christy Mag Uidhir Jeffrey Brown was born in 1975 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While earning his studio MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brown abandoned painting and began drawing comics with his first autobiographical book Clumsy in 2001. Since then, he’s drawn nearly two dozen books for publishers including TopShelf, Chronicle Books, Simon & Schuster, and Scholastic. Brown has also directed an animated video for the band Death Cab For Cutie, had his work featured on NPR’s ‘This American Life,’ and co-wrote the screenplay of the film Save The Date. His book Darth Vader and Son was a NYTimes #1 bestseller, and its sequels Vader’s Little Princess, Goodnight Darth Vader, and Darth Vader and Friends, along with his middle grade series Jedi Academy, were also NYTimes bestsellers. His art has been shown at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, … Continue reading →

May 13, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Matter of Taste

What follows is a guest post by Iskra Fileva. She is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Colorado, Boulder. A pianist I know said once that she enjoys listening to various types of non-classical music but would not tell this to other classical musicians for fear of embarrassment. Gourmet chefs, similarly, sometimes confess to eating fast and other plain, non-gourmet food (Google “What do chefs really eat after work?”). According to my – admittedly cursory – investigation, pizza, ramen noodles, mashed avocado on toast, and Wendy’s fast food top many chefs’ after-work favorites. Again, many of the chefs in question appear to have opted to remain anonymous, and in any event, they would not put such confessions on the restaurant page. Finally, people with exquisite literary sensitivity have probably, at some point or other, gobbled up a crime story or a fantasy novel, or else taken pleasure in watching well-done … Continue reading →

April 14, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Artist Interview: Rachel Hecker

Visual Artist Rachel Hecker interviewed by Alex King Rachel Hecker is a visual artist and an Associate Professor of painting at the University of Houston School of Art. Her conceptually based projects, from contemporary portraits of Jesus to levitating bottles of Xanax, have been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions in museums, galleries, and alternative spaces throughout the US. She’s received many awards, among them Art League Houston’s 2013 Texas Artist of the Year.

April 7, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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AFB Artworld Championship 2015 Tourney Winners!!!

AFB Artworld Championship 2015 Tournament Winner   George Eliot, Middlemarch The complete tourney bracket can be found here   AFB Tourney Bracket Challenge Winners   Honorable Mention Anthony Cross (73pts)   3rd Place Ben Bramble (84pts)   2nd Place **Winner of a six-pack of AFB Stickers** James Young (100pts)     1st Place **Winner of The Sucklord All-Star Frankenstein Figure** Amy Kind (108pts)  

March 12, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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AFB Artworld Championship Tournament Challenge

**UPDATE: In Advance of the Broken Arm has replaced King Lear in the official bracket. Download updated bracket here** **UPDATE: Schedule for 1st-Round Match-Ups March 17th & March 18th** With March Madness quickly upon us, I thought I’d host a tourney bracket contest with artworks in place of basketball teams. Therefore, I give you… The Aesthetics for Birds Artworld Championship Tournament Challenge How to Play View & Download the official AFB Tourney Bracket HERE. Examine the official tournament selection of participating artworks (see below for complete list). Completely fill in the bracket with your predictions, making sure your name is clearly marked on the bracket itself. Send your completed bracket to cmaguidhir@gmail.com by midnight March 16th.  Check the tournament schedule (see below for full schedule). Vote for your favorites in the comments section as the match-ups appear. Artworks with the most votes when time’s up will move on (ties will be decided by coin flip). How … Continue reading →

November 18, 2014
by Alex King
22 Comments

High Art, Low Art, and the Status of Aesthetics

What follows is a guest post by Alex King (Buffalo). It’s a sad truth that aesthetics isn’t taken particularly seriously in the contemporary philosophical scene. And I think Bence Nanay is right to suggest that this is in part due to the perceived elitism of aesthetics. In this post, I’ll argue that we can make progress on this front by discussing an issue of independent philosophical interest: the distinction between high and low art and between so-called “highbrow” and “lowbrow” audiences. The moral, basically, will be this: Quit being so judgy.

October 23, 2014
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Keeping Our Place

What follows is a guest post by Jennifer Judkins. Jennifer is an Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where she teaches music bibliography for performers and guides graduate research. She spent many years standing in the back of orchestras counting rests, and her musings between timpani rolls have nursed many years of interest and writing in aesthetics, especially in regard to musical performance. Recently, she was a contributor to the Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music (2011).