Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte - Volume 105, Issue 3, 2013

A philosophical analysis of the future of art must explicate art’s nature, as well as discuss the historical nature of art practice. Only so can one explain those contemporary developments in art which have led many people to doubt whether art even has a future. Arguably, art practice as we know it started with the installing of the modern system of the fine arts. I explain the pragmatics of art so understood, and suggest that Read More

According to common sense cultural history is propelled by grand ideas. Contrary to this view a material history will be defended. Artists have always taken the lead in the exploration of new technologies that mediate human perception. The modern worldview has been instigated by the artistic domestication of the camera obscura and its successors: the photocamera and tv. These technologies produced the spectator w Read More

The metaphor of base and superstructure has been one of the most controversial elements in Marxist aesthetics. In this text I discuss some of the many questions it raises. Today, many theorists believe that its problems are so extensive that it has lost all plausibility. I believe, however, that in rejecting the Marxist framework, aesthetics and cultural theory risks throwing out the baby with the bath water and jeopardizes its critic Read More

Although many have identified similarities between the arts, the question as to what principle they would share has proved difficult to answer. This article unfolds three crucial moments in the search for an answer to the question of the singularity and plurality of art: Batteux’s attempt to reduce the arts to one principle in The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle (1746), the early idealist-romantic attempt to synthesize the arts i Read More

Has art still something to do with aesthetics? Traditional aesthetic theories were abandoned under influence of the arguments of Morris Weitz. It seems that there is no longer a place for aesthetics in the philosophy of art. Furthermore, a lot of contemporary art seems to be radically anti-aesthetic. It is argued that there is nonetheless a central role to be played for aesthetic experience in art.