Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

Tag Archives: beauty

May 4, 2020
by Alex King
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AFB’s Terms of Art #26: Beauty

Now that increasing numbers of people are stuck at home and sheltering in place, I figured I’d do a little series. Every weekday for the duration of this intense period, I’ll post a short definition of some term in/related to aesthetics and philosophy of art. Let’s see how this goes! See them all here. Terms of Art #26: beauty

November 7, 2019
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Food of the People, by the People, for the People: Cooking as Public Art

What follows is a guest post by Andrea Baldini, Associate Professor of Aesthetics at Art Theory at Nanjing University, and Andrea Borghini, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Milan. In 2016, the American food magazine Bon Appétit named South Philly Barbacoa “One of the Best Restaurants in the Country.” First opened in 2014, this small and unassuming eatery quickly rose to national and international attention not only for the amazing quality of its barbacoa, consomé, marinated lamb tacos, and pancita, among others. For chef Cristina Martinez and her husband Benjamin Miller, who together run South Philly Barbacoa, cooking and dining are not only ways to delight one’s palate; they are also tools for speaking “to the larger immigrant experience whose labor is often exploited and forgotten.” Herself an undocumented immigrant who crossed the border from Mexico into the USA, Martinez turned a personal passion and talent for cooking into a political … Continue reading →

July 10, 2017
by Aesthetics for Birds
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A Brief History of Beauty

“Beauty has become a taboo topic among many practitioners of art and design,” writes Michael Spicher (Boston University) in an article for Architecture Boston. “Yet it’s clear we still need beauty in our lives. … People may disagree about which objects are beautiful (or their degree of beauty), but no one seems to disagree that beautiful, pleasurable things exist. We should strive for beauty, so that we may create or experience it.” Spicher traces the history of thinking about beauty in the West, from its more objective beginnings in Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, to its current status as subjective (at best). Pop on over for a primer! Image credit: Met Museum, detail from “Maria Louisa of Parma” by Laurent Pécheux (1765)

June 29, 2017
by C. Thi Nguyen
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Personal Aesthetic Categories, Therapist Edition

One of the things I collect is people’s odd little invented aesthetic categories. They’re usually personal, often work-related, and usually arise from a human soul being endlessly confronted with the same set of relationships and experiences, in the work-grind, and trying to cope. I, for example, have a very private list of the most tragicomically overreaching introductory sentences from student papers. (“Since the time of the dinosaurs, man has yearned to define the Quest for Truth.” Etc.) Here’s a particularly satisfying one I just collected, from a therapist friend who asked to remain anonymous. (Photo credit: Peter Barker) “Top ten facial tissue handling patterns by patients engaging in psychotherapy: 1. The relieved post-sobbing messy scrunch ball. 2. The careful triangle; unused. 3. The careful triangle, folded before crying; used for gentle dabbing at gentle tears. 4. The careful triangle, folded after crying to hide the snot. 5. Messy, self-conscious, post-sobbing squares. 6. The anxious … Continue reading →

May 16, 2017
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Psych Study Proves Kant Right (and Wrong) About Beauty

There’s a discussion over at Daily Nous about a psychology study in which the authors: confirm Kant’s claim that only the pleasure associated with feeling beauty requires thought and disprove his claim that sensuous pleasures cannot be beautiful. So, they try to prove Kant right about beauty involving cognitive functions, but prove him wrong about sensuous pleasures. They also found in general that beautiful things yielded higher pleasure than purely sensual stimuli. Pleasure amplitude increases linearly with the feeling of beauty. (Well, it still reads better than Kant.) So here’s the basic methodology. Neither wishing to encumber our participants with philosophical baggage nor wishing to spoil the test by revealing our hypothesis, we left “beauty” undefined and simply asked the participant at the end of each trial: “During this trial, did you get the feeling of beauty from the object?” We used various stimuli: seeing a plain or beautiful image, sucking a candy, … Continue reading →

December 1, 2016
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Artist Interview: Lauren Kalman

Artist Lauren Kalman interviewed by Alex King Lauren Kalman is a visual artist based in Detroit and an assistant professor at Wayne State University. Her practice is invested in contemporary craft, video, photography and performance. Kalman’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Cranbrook Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Mint Museum, and the World Art Museum in Beijing, among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and the Detroit Institute of Art. She currently has a solo show at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, running through March 15, 2017, as part of their MAD POV series; as well as an installation at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA, running through February 12, … Continue reading →

June 10, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Race & Aesthetics 2015: A Retrospective

What follows is a guest post by Daniel Abrahams and Shen-yi Liao. This blog post is primarily written by Daniel Abrahams, a PhD student specializing in aesthetics at University of Leeds, and supplemented by Shen-yi Liao (in brackets), a Marie Curie fellow at University of Leeds. Liao was a co-organizer of the conference and Abrahams was a conference assistant. However, we would like to stress that these are just our own perspectives rather than any “official” account. Photos are by Shen-yi Liao and Sara Protasi. Race & Aesthetics: A British Society of Aesthetics Connections Conference ran the 19th and 20th of May, at the Leeds Art Gallery. Fourteen speakers and several dozen more participants gathered to share thoughts on any of the points of intersection between the philosophies of race and aesthetics. Topics ranged from sexual attraction to humour to Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B. In what follows, I’ll try to present short but … Continue reading →

October 8, 2013
by Aesthetics for Birds
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For Evolution, Beauty Is as Beauty Does

What follows is a guest post by Mohan Matthen. Mohan is Professor of Philosophy and Senior Canada Research Chair at University of Toronto. He has published numerous articles on issues in philosophy of biology and sense perception and is the author of Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception (Oxford: Claredon Press, 2005). This post also appears at New APPS (here). What is it to find something beautiful? To take pleasure in looking at it, or in listening to it, or in otherwise contemplating it. One might find the proof of the Pythagorean theorem beautiful. If this is literally true, it is because intellectually contemplating it gives one pleasure. But let’s stick to the senses, and pleasure in gazing or listening. Why have we evolved to have a sense of beauty? That is, why do we take pleasure in contemplating certain things? (I’ll just assume that the … Continue reading →