Currently there's a big wave of #retro (1980s mostly) #aesthetics, #music, #movies & #tech, embraced by Gen Z/A. Some are baffled by that and try to understand why. To me, it's obvious why: that was the golden age of the modern world (1950s is too far removed at this point to be embraced by them).
So what we're seeing is a depressive #nostalgia of a promising & hopeful world that will never be witnessed by the young generations. They know it, and they're trying to get a bite of it.
it occurs to me that the most persistent prejudice among (contemporary) philosophers and people in general when it comes to philosophical #aesthetics, is NOT subjectivism (roughly: the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder). Rather, it is formalism, the eye that beauty is a matter purely of a thing's formal features (composition, structure, tone, feel) and nothing to do with its substantive features (what it signifies, what it is about, etc.)
@philosophy
a colleague recently mentioned that this idea, aesthetic formalism, is quite recent when it comes to thinking about the relevant way to interact with art/beautiful things.
the colleague in question mentioned Clive Bell as the main author who popularised the idea
@philosophy I might add that it is also, perhaps, a quite localised idea, deriving from a certain regime of perception prevalent in Western (European/American) societies and not necessarily helpful when it comes to understanding, for instance, Soviet art, African art, etc.
Just finished Outer Range (2002) and now I'm reading a few major-outlet reviews.
And it brings back my old amusement/skepticism about reviews -- the sense that there is no such thing as a qualified, well-informed POV that can give you a good aesthetic vantage point on art.
This feels like one of those forms of cynicism that's troubling, right up until you completely surrender to it, at which point perhaps it becomes... freeing?
The reason I feel this way is because these reviews will make authoritative statements... this actor gave a stand-out performance, this plot thread went nowhere, this bit of craft was impressive or undercooked or overdone...
And these statements just don't correlate across reviews! The opinions of these high-level reviewers, however well-informed they sound, have no consistency whatsoever. No better, in that sense, than opinions like "It's a good show because I like cowboy hats."
#CfP für die Studentische #Tagung "Alles fließt. Fluides in #Literatur und anderen #Medien", die am 10. und 11. Oktober 2024 an der Universität Paderborn stattfinden wird.