Nature of art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The nature of art has been described by Richard Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture" (Art and its objects, 1980).
It has been defined as a vehicle for the expression or communication of emotions and ideas, a means for exploring and appreciating formal elements for their own sake, and as mimesis or representation. Leo Tolstoy identified art as a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another. Benedetto Croce and R.G. Collingwood advanced the idealist view that art expresses emotions, and that the work of art therefore essentially exists in the mind of the creator. The theory of art as form has its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and was developed in the early twentieth century by Roger Fry and Clive Bell. Art as mimesis or representation has deep roots in the philosophy of Aristotle. More recently, thinkers influenced by Martin Heidegger have interpreted art as the means by which a community develops for itself a medium for self-expression and interpretation. ("The Origin of the Work of Art", in Poetry, Language, Thought.
See also
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Cézanne's Doubt" in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader
- Galen Johnson and Michael Smith (eds), (Northwestern University Press, 1994)
- John Russon, Bearing Witness to Epiphany, (State University of New York Press, 2009).
