Alois Riegl’s essay “Die Stimmung als Inhalt der modernen Kunst” has been one of art historiography’s early attempts to bridge art and science. In this text, Riegl not only presents the background of some of his theoretical and methodological premises but he also provides an overarching argument for the way natural sciences af- fect modern spectatorship. In this way, he establishes the basis of a Kunstwollen for the ‘age of the natural sciences’ and describes its appropriate artistic traits. Addressing the (...) intellectual and historical context of the Stimmung Essay, this article shows how Riegl’s ideas work in a subtle and intricate manner, involving the combination of sensual and phenomenological observations to modes of knowl- edge. In this respect, the relation of art and science does not seem to be settled on a fixed contemplative basis but on the combination of the art with cognition and affects. (shrink)

In the following text I provide my response to the three reviewers of my book titled “Reviewing the Past. The Presence of Ruins”. First I list a few elements that all the reviewers highlighted. Then, I answer the insightful comments and detailed observations brought forward by them, organised in thematic structures. In this part I start with the three main criteria and the agency of Nature in ruination. Then I investigate the issues regarding the so-called “contemporary ruins”. Ruins’ environmental character, (...) context and sitedness are put into focus in the next section, to finally arrive to the equally inspiring questions of picturesque, sublime and to the issues of representation. (shrink)

In the following text I provide my response to the three reviewers of my book titled “Reviewing the Past. The Presence of Ruins”. First I list a few elements that all the reviewers highlighted. Then, I answer the insightful comments and detailed observations brought forward by them, organised in thematic structures. In this part I start with the three main criteria and the agency of Nature in ruination. Then I investigate the issues regarding the so-called “contemporary ruins”. Ruins’ environmental character, (...) context and sitedness are put into focus in the next section, to finally arrive to the equally inspiring questions of picturesque, sublime and to the issues of representation. (shrink)

Erwin Panofsky explicitly states that the first half of the opening chapter of Studies in Iconology—his landmark American publication of 1939—contains ‘the revised content of a methodological article published by the writer in 1932’, which is now translated for the first time in this issue of Critical Inquiry.1 That article, published in the philosophical journal Logos, is among his most important works. First, it marks the apogee of his series of philosophically reflective essays on how to do art history,2 that (...) reach back, via a couple of major pieces on Alois Riegl, to the 1915 essay on Heinrich Wölfflin.3 Under the influence of his colleague at Hamburg Ernst Cassirer, the principal interpreter of Kant in the 1920s, Panofsky from 1915 on exhibits in his work ever more Kantian thinking and language.4 But Logos was not an art-historical review or one dedicated to aesthetics but a principal mainstream journal of the philosophy of culture. So ‘On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts’ has a good claim to be the culmination of Panofsky's philosophical thinking in his German period under the Weimar Republic. · 1. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance , p. xv; hereafter abbreviated SI. See Panofsky, ‘Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst’, Logos 21 : 103–19; trans. Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz under the title ‘On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts’, Critical Inquiry 38 : 467–82; hereafter abbreviated ‘P’.· 2. See the discussion in Carlo Ginzburg, ‘From Aby Warburg to E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method’, Myths, Emblems, Clues, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi , pp. 17–59, esp. pp. 36–41.· 3. See Panofsky, ‘Das Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst’, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, ed. Karen Michels and Martin Warnke, 2 vols. , 2:1009–18; ‘Der Begriff des Kunstwollens’,Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, 2:1019–34, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott and Joel Snyder under the title ‘The Concept of Artistic Volition’, Critical Inquiry 8 : 17–33; and ‘Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie: Ein Beitrag zu der Erörterung über die Möglichkeit kunstwissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe’, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, 2: 1035–63, trans. Lorenz and Elsner under the title ‘On the Relationship of Art History and Art Theory: Towards the Possibility of a Fundamental System of Concepts for a Science of Art’, Critical Inquiry 35 : 43–71.· 4. On neo-Kantianism in pre-Nazi Germany, see Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger , pp. 25–37; Éric Dufour and T. Z. R. Créteil, ‘Le Statue du singulier: Kant et le néokantisme de l’École de Marbourg', Kantstudien 93 : 324–50; Edward Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture , pp. 22–51; and Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos , pp. 52–86. Specifically on the Cassirerian Kantianism of Panofsky, see Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art , pp. 181–82; Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History , pp. 91–92, 147–52; Silvia Ferretti, Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg: Symbol, Art, and History, trans. Richard Pierce , pp. 174–77, 182–84; David Summers, ‘Meaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanistic Discipline’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside, ed. Irving Lavin , pp. 9–24; Mark A. Cheetham, Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline , pp. 68–77; Paul Crowther, The Transhistorical Image: Philosophizing Art and Its History , pp. 70–73; Allister Neher, ‘“The Concept of Kunstwollen”, Neo-Kantianism, and Erwin Panofsky's Early Art Theoretical Essays', Word and Image 20 : 41–51; Georges Didi-Huberman,Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, trans. John Goodman , pp. 4–6, 90–138; and Lorenz and Elsner, ‘Translators’ Introduction', Critical Inquiry35 : 33–42, esp. pp. 38, 40–42. (shrink)

This paper responds to recent developments in the field of sensory augmentation by analysing several technological devices that augment the sensory apparatus using the tactile sense. First, I will define the term sensory augmentation, as the use of technological modification to enhance the sensory apparatus, and elaborate on the preconditions for successful tactile sensory augmentation. These are the adaptability of the brain to unfamiliar sensory input and the specific qualities of the skin lending themselves to be used for the perception (...) of additional sensory information. Two devices, Moon Ribas’ Seismic Sense and David Eagleman’s vest, will then be discussed as potential facilitators of aesthetic experiences in virtue of the tactile sensory augmentation that these devices allow. I will connect the experiences afforded by these devices to the Kantian categories of the mathematical and the dynamical sublime, and to existing accounts of tactile sublimity. Essentially, the objects these devices make sensible, earthquakes for the Seismic Sense and digital information for the vest, produce pleasurable feelings of potential danger, awe, and respect. The subsequent acclimation to this new way of sensing and the aim to comprehend its sensed object are then discussed as possible objections to the interpretation of these experiences as sublime, and as aesthetic in general. To exemplify these issues and concretise my thesis of tactile sensory augmentation as a trigger of the sublime, I will outline an experiment to use the vest as an aid for faster decision making on the stock market. (shrink)

Since the mid-Sixties, philosophers have debated over the aesthetic relevance of authentic art-objects, perfect replicas, and restoration. In particular, a dispute has ensued concerning the cogency of our penchant for original artworks. Originalists argue that authenticity, the quality of an object being of undisputed origin or authorship, is a necessary condition for aesthetic experience, since the appreciation of an artwork presupposes its correct identification. Anti-originalists retort that we have no art-relevant reason to favour originals over visually-indistinguishable duplicates. To this extent, (...) they claim, ‘there is no identification without (prior) evaluation’. In this paper, I re-examine the underpinnings at the core of this discussion. I argue that aesthetic appreciation does not necessarily require judgement of authenticity. However, there are instances in which authenticity does intrude upon aesthetic evaluation, namely when style recognition is involved. In these cases, I propose that errors in historical attribution reduce the impact of the object and jeopardise aesthetic appreciation altogether. (shrink)