Revealing ArtWhy does art matter to us, and what makes it good? Why is the role of imagination so important in art? Illustrated with carefully chosen colour and black-and-white plates of examples from Michaelangelo to Matisse and Poussin to Pollock, Revealing Art takes us on a compelling and provocative journey. Kieran explores some of the most important questions we can ask ourselves about art: how can art inspire us or disgust us? Is artistic judgement simply a matter of taste? Can art be immoral or obscene, and should it be censored? He brings such abstract issues to life with fascinating discussions of individual paintings, photographs and sculptures, such as Michelangelo's Pieta, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Francis Bacon's powerful paintings of the Pope. He also suggests some answers to problems that any one in an art gallery or museum is likely to ask themselves: what is a beautiful work of art? and can art really reveal something true about our own nature? Revealing Art is ideal for anyone interested in debates about art today, or who has simply stood in front of a painting and felt baffled. |
Contents
Originality and Artistic Expression | 6 |
Faking it | 7 |
Originality | 15 |
Artistic achievements | 21 |
The triumph of artistic imagination | 33 |
Beauty Resurrected | 47 |
The sensual the beautiful and the good | 50 |
The virtues of aestheticism | 58 |
Art and Morality | 148 |
The erotic and the pornographic | 151 |
Moral questions | 166 |
Moralising art | 175 |
Immoral art | 184 |
Forbidden knowledge | 191 |
Obscenity censoriousness and censorship | 195 |
The Truth in Humanism | 205 |
The cult of aesthetic appreciation | 64 |
Ugliness the grotesque and the disgusting | 75 |
Meaning matters | 86 |
Insight in Art | 99 |
Illuminating the familiar | 103 |
The triviality of art? | 112 |
Truth in art | 121 |
The challenge of the avantgarde and conceptual art | 127 |
The art of discrimination | 138 |
A standard of taste? | 210 |
Ideal art critics and actual motivation | 220 |
Blameless differences and relativity | 226 |
Counsels of despair | 230 |
The renewal of humanistic art | 237 |
Notes | 256 |
263 | |
273 | |
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abstract achievement aesthetic aesthetic appreciation aesthetic judgement artistic value artistry assumptions attention attitudes Bacon's beauty canvas Caravaggio characterisation Christ claim colour conceptual art concerns consider constitute contemporary art convey cubism culture Dadaism delight depicted discrimination disgusting distinct drawing emphasise erotic example exhibition experience afforded expression feel figures foreground Frank Auerbach Gillian Wearing Gogh grotesque Hence human Hume idea ideal art ideal art critic imaginative insight interest involved Jenny Saville Jerrold Levinson Joel-Peter Witkin Kant kind landscape London look Martin Parr Matisse matter Matthew Kieran means Michelangelo Michelangelo's Pietà morally problematic nature Noël Carroll notion Nude object obscene original Oxford painting particular perceptual Philosophy photographs Picasso pleasure pornographic Poussin R. G. Collingwood radically realise recognise relations relevant representation represented responses rewarding Rodin Roger Scruton Routledge scenes sculpture sense shape someone taste things thought traditional truth ugly understanding University Press viewer visual whilst work's