Art Matters

A clear and comprehensive overview of art criticism as it relates to both the value of art and the aesthetics of art. The author offers a new perspective on how science, philosophy and art overlap each other, the author argues that art can give us knowledge of our world and our place in it the same way that science or philosophy do (per se Deleuze or Kristeva). Koenig extents his discussion to incorporate both fiction and music into the notional forms of classical visual art in a dramatic and unexpected way. Professor Koenig has provided a study of aesthetics for which both theorists and practitioners have been waiting. For several decades there has been growing disenchantment with the dominant emotive understanding of the experience of art---that such experiences release certain uniquely satisfying feelings within us. But Koenig argues with considerable erudition and insight that to what we always knew---that art was a unique , and deeply significant way of knowing the natural and the human world. His introductions to the different dimensions of this perspective offer penetrating analyses of the foundational issues and his selections from classical and contemporary sources are remarkably apt ones.