"Adrian Stokes (1902-1972) was at once the last of the great British amateur art writers in the tradition of Ruskin and Pater, and - as the first art theorist to substantially synthesize aesthetics and psychoanalysis - among the first of the moderns. Since the publication of his groundbreaking Faber books The Quattro Cento and Stones of Rimini in the 1930s, Stokes's writing has enjoyed an incredibly diverse readership across disciplines ranging from psychoanalysis to literature and art, from Ernst Gombrich to Dore Ashton, Ben Nicholson to Philip Guston, Ezra Pound to John Ashbery. " -- Publisher's description.
Though underexplored in contemporary scholarship, the Victorian attempts to turn aesthetics into a science remain one of the most fascinating aspects of that era. In The Outward Mind, Benjamin Morgan approaches this period of innovation as an important origin point for current attempts to understand art or beauty using the tools of the sciences. Moving chronologically from natural theology in the early nineteenth century to laboratory psychology in the early twentieth, Morgan draws on little-known archives of Victorian intellectuals such as William Morris, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and others to argue that scientific studies of mind and emotion transformed the way writers and artists understood the experience of beauty and effectively redescribed aesthetic judgment as a biological adaptation. Looking beyond the Victorian period to humanistic critical theory today, he also shows how the historical relationship between science and aesthetics could be a vital resource for rethinking key concepts in contemporary literary and cultural criticism, such as materialism, empathy, practice, and form. At a moment when the tumultuous relationship between the sciences and the humanities is the subject of ongoing debate, Morgan argues for the importance of understanding the arts and sciences as incontrovertibly intertwined.
The work of mid-twentieth century art theorist Anton Ehrenzweig is explored in this original and timely study. An analysis of the dynamic and invigorating intellectual influences, institutional framework and legacy of his work, Between Art Practice and Psychoanalysis reveals the context within which Ehrenzweig worked, how that influenced him and those artists with whom he worked closely. Beth Williamson looks to the writing of Melanie Klein, Marion Milner, Adrian Stokes and others to elaborate Ehrenzweig?s theory of art, a theory that extends beyond the visual arts to music. In this first full-length study on his work, including an inventory of his library, previously unexamined archival material and unseen artworks sit at the heart of a book that examines Ehrenzweig?s working relationships with important British artists such as Bridget Riley, Eduardo Paolozzi and other members of the Independent Group in London in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ehrenzweig?s second book The Hidden Order of Art (1967) his thinking on Jackson Pollock is important too. It was this book that inspired American artists Robert Smithson and Robert Morris when they deployed his concept of ?dedifferentiation?. Here Williamson offers new readings of process art c. 1970 showing how Ehrenzweig?s aesthetic retains relevance beyond the immediate post-war era.
"This anthology proves that it is the human norm for all people to participate in meaningful and purposeful art, craft, and work because this is part of human nature itself."--BOOK JACKET.
The Death of Art evaluates the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno's ideas on music, visual arts, and literature and their relevance to today's mass culture. Adorno drew concepts and inspiration from fields such as history, historiography, sociology, musicology, anthropology, philosophy, and psychology, which he used in his assessments of art. His varied perspectives resulted in writings that offer shocking glimpses into larger cultural issues. By insisting on opposition and employing an expressionistic writing style, Adorno invited readers to question his authority and formulate their own views. In this work, author B.R. Sharma uses similar tactics to isolate, revisit, and criticize some of Adorno's key philosophies. The result is a comprehensive and clear overview of Adorno's cultural theories that unearths trends pointing to the eventual death of art.
This edition is an introductory selection from the writings of Adrian Stokes (1902-1972), the Kleinian aesthete who created a unique vision of the relation between psychoanalysis, art, and aesthetic experience in general. His approach was founded initially on his travels in Italy which then acquired a more formal theoretical foundation during his analysis with Melanie Klein. Stokes was a close friend of leading figures in both psychoanalytic and artistic-literary circles, including Richard Wollheim who organised a previous edition of extracts, The Image in Form. The present edition concentrates specifically on the writing that demonstrates the parallels between art and psychoanalysis.
Artist, poet, educationalist and autobiographer, Marion Milner is considered one of the most original of psychoanalytic thinkers whose life (1900-1998) spans a century of radical change. Marion Milner: The Life, is the first biography of this extraordinary woman. It introduces Milner and her works to the reader through her family, colleagues and, above all through her books, charting their evolution and development as well as their critical reception and contribution to current twenty-first century debates and discourses. In this book Emma Letley draws on primary sources, including the newly-opened Marion Milner Collection at the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society in London, as well as interviews and the re-contextualised series of Milner texts. She traces the process of Milner's writing of her books, her discovery of psychoanalysis, her training and her place in that world from the 1940's onwards. Marion Milner: The Life includes discussion of Milner's connection with D.W. Winnicott and her emergence as a most individual member of the Independent Group. Letley also shows how Milner's Personal Notebooks offer fascinating insights into her relationships, both personal and professional, and into many of her important ideas on creativity, the body-mind relationship, her revolutionary ideas on education and her particular personality as clinician working with both children and adults. Further, Letley explores Milner's literary character from her very early diaries and narratives to her last book written in her 90's published in 2012. Marion Milner: The Life places Marion Milner firmly in her Edwardian family setting and contains new material from primary sources, including a new view of her collegial connections. It provides a wealth of material on her life and works that will be invaluable to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, art psychotherapists, students, those involved with life writing and autobiography, and the general reader.
A new 2023 Translation with Afterword of Hegel's Monumental work Lectures on Aesthetics/ Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik (1818 -1829) Over a decade, G.W.F. Hegel delivered a series of "Lectures on Aesthetics," which delved deep into the nature and significance of art in human experience. Hegel contends that art, like religion and philosophy, is a means through which the human spirit expresses its understanding of itself and its place in the world. Analyzing various art forms – from architecture and sculpture to painting and music – Hegel traces the historical evolution of artistic expression, culminating in the idea that in modern times, art, while still valuable, has been superseded by philosophy as the highest form of spiritual expression.
"Adrian Stokes (1902-72) - aesthete, critic, painter and poet - is among the most original and creative writers on art of the twentieth century. He was the author of over twenty critical books and numerous papers: for example, the remarkable series of books published in the 1930s; The Quattro Cento (1932), Stones of Rimini (1934), and Colour and Form (1937) that embraced Mediterranean culture and modernity. His criticism extends the evocative English aesthetic tradition of Walter Pater and John Ruskin into the present, endowed by a stern sensibility to the consolations offered by art and architecture, and the insights that psychoanalysis affords. Indeed, for Stokes architecture provides the entree into art, and this book is the first study to comprehensively examine Stokess theory of art from a specifically architectonic perspective. The volume explores the crucial experiences through which this architectonic awareness evolved; traces the influence upon Stokes of places, texts and personalities, and examines how his theory of art developed and matured. The argument is supported by appropriate illustrations to confirm the evidence that Stokess claim for architecture as mother of the arts carries the deepest experiential and psychological import."
