Edward Winters - Böcker

One of the issues underlying current debates between practitioners of art history, visual culture and aesthetics is whether the visual is a unique, irreducible category, or whether it can be assimilated with the textual or verbal without any significant loss. Can paintings, buildings or installations be 'read' in the way texts are read or deciphered, or do works of visual art ask for their own kind of appreciation? This is not only a question of choosing the right method in dealing with visual works of art, but also an issue that touches on the roots of the disciplines involved: can a case be made for the visual as an irreducible category of art, and if so, how is it best studied and appreciated? In this anthology, this question is approached from the angles of three disciplines: aesthetics, visual culture and art history. Unlike many existing overviews of visual culture studies, it includes both painting and architecture, and investigates historical ways of defining and appreciating the visual in their own, contemporary terms. Dealing with the Visual will be of great use to advanced students because it offers an overview of current debates, and to graduate students and professionals in the field because the essays offer in-depth investigations of the methodological issues involved and various historical ways of defining visuality. The topics included range from early modern ways of viewing pictures and sixteenth-century views of Palladio's villas in their landscape settings to contemporary debate about whether there is life yet in painting.

"The Continuum Aesthetics Series" looks at the aesthetic questions and issues raised by all major art forms. Stimulating, engaging and highly readable, the series offers food for thought not only for students of aesthetics, but also for anyone with an interest in philosophy and the arts. "Aesthetics and Architecture" places analytical philosophical aesthetics at the heart of thinking about, and looking at, architecture. The book looks at classic and contemporary aesthetic and philosophical views of architecture. It considers, with stimulating insight and great clarity, how Classicism, Modernism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism and Situationism have influenced architectural aesthetics and shaped our view of the built environment. It also explores the challenges to the various intellectual and cultural movements that inform how people create and look at buildings. The book moves on to investigate the aesthetic qualities, demands and approaches specific to architecture and architectural thinking, concluding with 'a programme for contemporary architecture'.Anyone studying or interested in architecture or philosophical aesthetics will find this book a rich source of ideas, insight and information. Combining a clear and engaging style with a sophisticated treatment of a fascinating subject, "Aesthetics and Architecture" is a valuable contribution to contemporary aesthetics - one that revitalises the way we look at the form, purpose and meaning of our built environment.

One of the issues underlying current debates between practitioners of art history, visual culture and aesthetics is whether the visual is a unique, irreducible category, or whether it can be assimilated with the textual or verbal without any significant loss. Can paintings, buildings or installations be 'read' in the way texts are read or deciphered, or do works of visual art ask for their own kind of appreciation? This is not only a question of choosing the right method in dealing with visual works of art, but also an issue that touches on the roots of the disciplines involved: can a case be made for the visual as an irreducible category of art, and if so, how is it best studied and appreciated? In this anthology, this question is approached from the angles of three disciplines: aesthetics, visual culture and art history. Unlike many existing overviews of visual culture studies, it includes both painting and architecture, and investigates historical ways of defining and appreciating the visual in their own, contemporary terms. Dealing with the Visual will be of great use to advanced students because it offers an overview of current debates, and to graduate students and professionals in the field because the essays offer in-depth investigations of the methodological issues involved and various historical ways of defining visuality. The topics included range from early modern ways of viewing pictures and sixteenth-century views of Palladio's villas in their landscape settings to contemporary debate about whether there is life yet in painting.

The fine arts are traditionally seen to have intrinsic value: that is, they are valuable in themselves. But this poses a problem for architecture: its works are designed to serve our purposes, and therefore it is classed as functional. Carving out a new space, Edward Winters argues why architecture is a fine art and finds a place for the fine art of architecture in the cultural environment in which we structure our lives.Winters reconciles intrinsic value, as a fine art, with extrinsic value, as shelter, security and comfort, without collapsing into the modernist conception of Functionalism. He draws on the Apollonian and the Dionysian to resolve the apparent conflict between the two values: the former requiring contemplative, detached reflection, the latter an engaged, embodied entanglement with the festive mood inspired by the immediate situation. Architecture, Winters claims, is to be regarded as functional; but this functionality is subsumed under the intrinsic aesthetic value of living well. Introducing the main positions in the philosophy of architecture through the lens of the timeless argument about what constitutes art, Winters lays out a humanistic view of the medium and extends our understanding of aesthetics and the everyday.