Beholding : situated art and the aesthetics of reception / Ken Wilder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilder, Ken, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art--Philosophy.

Art.

Art appreciation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (395 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Distribution:

[London, England] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020

Place of Publication:

London [England] : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2020.

Summary:

Beholding considers the spatially situated encounter between artwork and spectator. It argues that artworks created for specific places or conditions structure a reciprocal encounter, which is completed by the presence of a beholder. These are works which demand the 'beholder's share', but not, as Ernst Gombrich famously claimed, to sustain an illusion. Rather, Beholding reconfigures Gombrich's notion of the beholder's share as a set of 'licensed' imaginative and cognitive projections. Each chapter frames a particular work of art from the remit of a complementary theoretical text. The book establishes a transhistorical notion of the spatially situated encounter, and considers the role of the architectural host in bringing the beholder's orientation into play. The book engages a diverse range of practices: from Renaissance painting and group portraiture to intermedia practices of installation and performance art. Written within the broad remit of reception aesthetics, the book proposes a phenomenological theory of beholding, argued through an in-depth examination of artworks and their spatial contexts, selected for their explanatory potential. These various encounters allocate different constitutive roles to the beholder, bringing not only spatial and temporal orientation into play, but also a repertoire of anticipated ideas and beliefs.

Contents:

List of Plates List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments

Introduction Part I: Sacred Imagery Chapter 1: The Beholder As Witness Chapter 2: Of Clouds and Terrestrial Beholders Chapter 3: The Melancholic Beholder

Part II: Group Portraiture Chapter 4: The Artist as Beholder Chapter 5: Two Modes of Beholding Chapter 6: Theatricality and the Beholder

PART III: Abstraction Chapter Seven: Beholding a 'Reversible' Space Chapter Eight: Virtual Space and the 'Literal' Beholder Chapter Nine: On Repetition and Beholding PART IV: Intermedia Chapter Ten: The Complicit Beholder Chapter Eleven: The Beholder in the Expanded Field Chapter Twelve: The Dislocated Beholder

Bibliography Notes

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781350088436

1350088439

9781350088429

1350088420

9781350088412

1350088412

OCLC:

1159017967