What is the purpose of a work of art? What drives us to make art? Why do we value art and consume it? Nick Zangwill argues that we cannot understand the nature of art without first having answers to these fundamental questions. On his view, which he dubs 'the Aesthetic Creation Theory', a work of art is something created for a particular aesthetic purpose. More specifically, the function of art…
Interpreting Visual Culture brings together the writings of some of the leading experts in art history, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies to look at the role of perception and the 'visual' in our understanding of the contemporary human condition. Ranging from an analysis of the role of vision in current critical discourse to a discussion of specific examples taken from the visua…