tailieunhanh - RE-DISCOVERING AESTHETICS

Before analysing the aesthetic principles of contemporary lifestyle advertise- ments, it is worth examining a historical period during which similar patterns emerged in audiovisual forms that relied heavily or exclusively on the use of connotations. | Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics Vol. 1 No. 3 December 2004 Re-Discovering Aesthetics Francis Halsall Art History limerick institute of Technology University college cork Julia Jansen Philosophy University college cork Tony O Connor Philosophy University College Cork I The beginning of the 21st century has seen the renewed use of aesthetics as a critical and interpretive method within various discursive spheres. Particularly and unsurprisingly this move has been most pronounced in the discursive systems of philosophy and the artworld. It is to this more specific re-discovery that the authors in this journal address their arguments. The theme of this collection of articles then is the perceived Aesthetic Turn in philosophical and critical encounters with works of art and their relative histories. It seems that after a time in which theories and histories of art focused on logical and ontological questioning or political social and empirical interpretations aesthetics is making a return At the same time that aesthetics is proving to be interesting again for philosophers the artworld too is re-discovering its 1 The impetus for this issue was the Re-Discovering Aesthetics conference organised by the authors at University College Cork July 2004. The rationale behind the conference was to instigate a discussion that questioned the uses and meaning of aesthetics amongst philosophers art-historians and those connected with 77 Francis Halsall Julia Jansen and Tony O Connor Yet despite the present interest in aesthetics we have found that our attempts to curate document and think through its manifestations have not revealed a clear and univocal understanding of aesthetics. However we find it important to observe the diversity of shapes that aesthetics has taken on. it is our contention that the failure to find a comprehensive definition is a function of the different means by which aesthetics is understood and applied. As Dominic Paterson observes in his .