The aim of this course is to provide students with the basic notions of aesthetics (from beauty to kitsch, from ugly to sublime, from interesting to horror and terror), following their conceptual evolution and transformations from antiquity to the modern age up to the present day. One of the essential educational objectives of this course is for students to acquire solid knowledge of the aesthetics and philosophy of art and to be able to orient themselves between the various philosophical and artistic positions of the last few decades. The student will be stimulated to critically question the proposed topics in order to develop an independent capacity for analysis and sensitivity to aesthetic issues. At the end of the course, the student will be able to use with awareness the philosophical-aesthetic vocabulary and bibliographic tools useful to deepen the themes of modern and contemporary aesthetics.
teacher profile teaching materials
F. Iannelli: Dissonanze contemporanee. Arte e vita in un tempo inconciliato. Quodlibet 2010 (till p. 206).
D. Richie: A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, Stone Bridge Press 2007.
Y. Kawabata, Esistenza e scoperta della bellezza, pp. 57-76 in "La danzatrice di Izu", Adelphi, Milano 2017
By choice:
H. Bredekamp: Immagini che ci guardano. Teoria dell'atto iconico. Raffaello Cortina 2015
or
La furia delle immagini. Note sulla postfotografia, Einaudi, 2018.
Programme
The course aims to offer an overview of the main aesthetic categories - from the beauty to the ugliness, from the interesting to the kitsch, from the sublime to Horror and Terror- to evaluate their relevance in contemporary art practices. In addition to this it will analyzed the western and eastern conception of beauty (with particular attention to Japanese aesthetics) and it will reflect on the status of images in our hyper-connected society based on the texts "Immagini che ci guardano " by Bredekamp and "La furia delle immagini" by Fontcuberta.Core Documentation
The following texts are essential:F. Iannelli: Dissonanze contemporanee. Arte e vita in un tempo inconciliato. Quodlibet 2010 (till p. 206).
D. Richie: A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, Stone Bridge Press 2007.
Y. Kawabata, Esistenza e scoperta della bellezza, pp. 57-76 in "La danzatrice di Izu", Adelphi, Milano 2017
By choice:
H. Bredekamp: Immagini che ci guardano. Teoria dell'atto iconico. Raffaello Cortina 2015
or
La furia delle immagini. Note sulla postfotografia, Einaudi, 2018.
Type of delivery of the course
The course includes frontal lessons accompanied by a didactic visit in April 2020Type of evaluation
The written test consists of 15 questions of different types, both "closed" (e.g. multiple-choice questions, cloze text, etc.) and "open" (e.g. questions requiring the insertion of a definition or the genesis of a concept, the fundamental stages of the evolution of an aesthetic category, etc.). It will be evaluated: - the ability to summarise complex content in a few lines (in the case of open questions) - the level of knowledge of the conceptual contents of the texts examined (through open-ended questions and through questions with a hole in the text) - the mastery in managing more specific information (recognising the author of individual works of art or the production of specific artists, etc.). (in the case of multiple choice questions) Exam time: 90 minutes