Synopses & Reviews
This book is about aesthetic processes and play from the perspectives of psychologists, philosophers, and semiologists. They explore the underlying processes from many viewpoints, including the prehistoric roots of language and art; the historical evolution of artistic, literary, and musical styles; the structure of artworks from both gestalt and semiotic perspectives; the biological and psychological processes underlying production and appreciation; the appeal of sentimental art; emotional responses to art and other aesthetic forms; personality in relation to artistic style; the testing and measurement of art-related skills; the relations between social life and literary understanding; literature in relation to media; as well as neurobiological, developmental and individual growth perspectives on play activity.
Review
"...this volume is both intelligible and compelling for almost everyone with an interest in aesthetics....Superb contributions on artist psychology and knowledge in relation to interpretation provide bulletproof protection for category approaches to art, and breathtakingly original essays on sentimental art and the complementarity of art and design deserve to be read alongside the canonical works of philosophical aesthetics." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Table of Contents
1. Daniel Berlyne and disinterested criticism: inter- and intra-disciplinary discourse John Furedy; Part I. Visual Aesthetics: 2. But is it science? Rudolf Arnheim; 3. The âframeâas a key to visual perception Nycole Paquin; 4. Aesthetics and visual semiotics Fernande Saint-Martin; 5. The complementarity of art and design Tsion Avital; 6. From perception to production: a multileveled analysis of the aesthetic process Gerald C. Cupchik; 7. A science of vision for visual art Francois Molnar; 8. Sweetness and light: psychological aesthetics and sentimental art Andrew Winston; 9. Psychobiography and visual creativity: four pattern Pavel Machotka; 10. Cognitive profiles of artists Ellen Winner and M. Beth Casey; 11. Assessing knowledge in the visual arts George W. Hardiman, Feng J. Liu and Ted Zernich; Part II. Literary and Other Aesthetic Processes: 12. The beginning of a new psychology: Vygotskyâs psychology of art Vladimir S. Sobkin and Dmitry A. Leontiev; 13. Empirical aesthetics in the USSR: selected topics Dmitry A. Leontiev, Vladimir M. Petrov and Vladimir S. Sobkin; 14. The psychology of literature: a social-cognitive approach Janos Laszlo; 15. Why literature is not enough, or: literary studies as media studies Siegfried J. Schmidt; 16. Uncovering the laws of literary history Colin Martindale; 17. Evolution of art and brain asymmetry: a review of empirical investigations Vladimir M. Petrov; Part III. Play: 18. A neurophysiological theory of play Istvan Bende and Endre Grastyan; 19. Paradoxes of childrenâs play in Vygotskyâs theory Elena A. Bugrimenko and Elena O. Smirnova; 20. The personal component in playing interfaces Moshe D. Caspi.