Practical aesthetics : events, affects and art after 9/11 / Jill Bennett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bennett, Jill, 1963-

Series:

Radical aesthetics, radical art

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aesthetics.

Art and society.

Art, Modern--21st century--Aesthetics.

Art, Modern.

Physical Description:

xix, 234 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; New York : Distributed in the U.S. and Canada exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Summary:

"Practical Aesthetics brings a pursuit, long seen as rarefied and indulgent, out of the ivory tower and down to Ground Zero. Theoretically ambitious, fiercely original, it is a radical new account of art's rootedness in the social world and of the value of aesthetics to contemporary society. Beginning with the cultural watershed of 9/11, internationally-renowned scholar Jill Bennett explores artistic developments in relation to current events to argue that understanding aesthetics is as vital to social and political theory as it is to the arts. Taking as its starting-point a definition of art as the critical, self-conscious manipulation of media, Bennett examines a wide range of events from the 'War on Terror' to the football World Cup to elucidate how aesthetic perception works in a social field, a process that begins with the rich emotional content of the visual imagery with which we are constantly bombarded"--P. [4] of cover.

Contents:

1 Practical Aesthetics: Beyond Disciplines 1

2 One Event After Another 33

3 Atmospheric Affects: Past Events and Present Feeling 54

4 Intermedia: Field and Detail 77

5 The Presence of Politicians 109

6 Unimaginable Events and Distant Disasters 138

7 Compassion, Resentment and the Emotional Life of Images 160.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-222) and index.

ISBN:

9781780761442

1780761449

9781780761459

1780761457

OCLC:

768569585