More than life : Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin on art / Stéphane Symons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Symons, Stéphane (Philosopher), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Simmel, Georg, 1858-1918.

Simmel, Georg.

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940.

Benjamin, Walter.

Art--Philosophy.

Art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (238 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2017.

Summary:

More Than Life: Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin on Art is the first book to trace the philosophical relation between Georg Simmel and his one-time student Walter Benjamin, two of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century.Reading Simmel's work, particularly his essays on Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rodin, alongside Benjamin's concept of Unscheinbarkeit (inconspicuousness) and his writings on Charlie Chaplin,More Than Lifedemonstrates that both Simmel and Benjamin conceive of art as the creation of something entirely new rather than as a mimetic reproduction of a given. The two thinkers diverge in that Simmel emphasizes the presence of a continuous movement of life, whereas Benjamin highlights the priority of discontinuous, interruptive moments.With the aim of further elucidating Simmel and Benjamin's ideas on art, Stéphane Symons presents a number of in-depth analyses of specific artworks that were not discussed by these authors. Through an insightful examination of both the conceptual affinities and the philosophical differences between Simmel and Benjamin , Symons reconstructs a crucial episode in twentieth-century debates on art and aesthetics.

Contents:

Introduction. Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin: "The incapability of any actual pause"

Georg Simmel

Michelangelo: life and the fate of mankind

Rembrandt: re-producing the soulful life of the sitter as a portrait

Auguste Rodin: reexperiencing one's deepest life in the sphere of art

Walter Benjamin

Introduction. Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel: "A duel that is the creative process itself"

Unscheinbarkeit: "Depersonalization set in an incomparably productive context"

Charlie Chaplin: "Man would not be the noblest on earth if he were not too noble for it"

Concluding remarks: "Always lagging half a step behind".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8101-3579-5

OCLC:

1002070230