The necessity of artspeak : the language of the arts in the western tradition / Roy Harris.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harris, Roy, 1931-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Semiotics and the arts.

Physical Description:

xvii, 222 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Continuum, 2003.

Summary:

This book breaks new ground in its linguistic approach to the key issues. It situates them within the long-running debate about the arts and their place in society which goes back to the Classical period in ancient Greece. Contributors to the debate included same of the most celebrated artists and philosophers of their day [Plato, Aristotle, Leonarde, Kant. Hegel, Wagner, Baudelaire, Zola, Delacroix ...]. But none of these eminent figures or their supporters provided a reasoned overview examining the multilingual development of Western artspeak as a whole. Nor did they develop any explicit account of the relationship between the arts and language. The Necessity of Artspeak shows for the first time that what have usually been considered problems of aesthetics and artistic justification often have their source in the linguistic assumptions underlying the terms and arguments presented. It also shows how artspeak has been -- and continues to be -- manipulated to serve the interests of particular social groups and agendas. Until the semantics of artspeak is more widely understood, the public will continue to be taken in by the latest fads and fashions that propagandists of the art world promote.

Contents:

The artspeak aphorism through the ages xv

1 Artspeak and necessity 3

Part I Traditional Artspeak

2 Artspeak in antiquity 15

3 With glory not their own 29

4 The rise and fall of beauty 44

Part II Artspeak Modern

5 Artspeak and the machine 67

6 The flight from meaning 88

7 Cultivating the primitive 104

8 Finding the words 121

Part III Artspeak and Communication

Linguistic preliminaries to Part III 137

9 Surrogational artspeak 143

10 The artspeak contract 162

11 The Devil's question 184.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [209]-214) and index.

ISBN:

0826460682

0826460798

OCLC:

49936115