Queer Beauty: Sexuality and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Freud and Beyond (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.66 (788 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0231146906 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-06-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A difficult but thrilling book to read. (Kevin Ohi, Boston College Victorian Studies)
Wayne Dynes said Flawed account. In principle Davis' book addresses an important theme: the emergence of a gay sensibility as a distinct, though often muted category of aesthetic response. To clarify that matter would be a significant achievement.Yet this task has not been accomplished in this turgid and disjointed book, wh
In turn, sexual desire and aesthetic pleasure had to be profoundly rethought by later writers. Addressing texts by Arthur Schopenhauer, Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee, and Sigmund Freud, among many others, Davis criticizes modern approaches, such as Kantian idealism, Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and analytic aesthetics, for either reducing aesthetics to a question of sexuality or for removing sexuality from the aesthetic field altogether. Several theorists, notably the philosopher Immanuel Kant, broke sexual attraction and aesthetic appreciation into separate or dueling domains. Yet after Winckelmann, the value (even the possibility) of art's queer beauty was often denied.
Whitney Davis is professor of history and theory of ancient and modern art at the University of California at Berkeley. Educated at Harvard University, he is the author of A General Theory of Visual Culture, along with five other books on prehistoric, ancient, and modern arts and art theory, as