Synopses & Reviews
Explanation and Value in the Arts offers penetrating studies by art historians, literary theorists, and philosophers, of issues central to explaining works of literature and painting. The first chapters look at the sources of interest in the fine arts and point to the intimate relation between aesthetic and other values. The next contributions develop the interaction between value and explanation in the study of the arts, including considerations of the nature of creativity and the principles for the explanations of works. A final section takes up questions of the role of ideology and the determining role of power.
Synopsis
An interdisciplinary study of explanation and the construction of value regarding works of literature and painting.
Synopsis
Penetrating studies by a group of art historians, literary theorists, and philosophers consider âexplanationâand works of literature and painting.
Table of Contents
List of contributors; Acknowledgements; 1. Interests, values and explanations; 2. Fiction and reality in painting; 3. Franz Kafka: the necessity for a philosophical interpretation of his work; 4. On relocating ethical criticism; 5. Explanation and value: what makes the visual arts so different, so appealing?; 6. Is art history?; 7. Objectivity and valuation in contemporary art history; 8. Fullness and parsimony: notes on creativity in the arts; 9. Principles of a sociology of cultural works; 10. Althusser and ideological criticism of the arts; 11. Film, rhetoric and ideology; Index.