Developed out of the aesthetic philosophy of cha-no-yu (the tea ceremony) in fifteenth-century Japan, wabi sabi is an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi sabi refers to an awareness of the transient nature of earthly things and a corresponding pleasure in the things...

"In Merleau-Ponty and Nishida, Adam Loughnane initiates a dialogue between two of the twentieth century's most important phenomenologists from the Eastern and Western philosophical worlds. Loughnane guides the reader through the complexities and innovations of Nishida's and Merleau-Ponty's theories of artistic expression and their rarely explored concepts of faith. The intricacies of both philosophers' views are illuminated by analyses of artists,...

From the Publisher: What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual arts and drawing on works of literature from each...

"In Opening Gambits, cultural critic and philosopher Mark Kingwell puts forth an argument for the similarity between art and philosophy as forms of play, working at the margins of meaning and sense. Featuring essays previously published in Queen's Quarterly, Descant, Harvard Design Magazine, Canadian Art, and Harper's, the book begins with general assessments of the art world and the relationship between art and architecture. Including lively critical...

Barbara Bolt takes the most relevant of Heidegger's texts, including his most famous work, 'Being and Time', and sets out ways of thinking about art in a post-medium, digital, technocratic and post-human age.

"From a cuneiform tablet to a Chicago prison, from the depths of the cosmos to the text on our T-shirts, art historian and journalist Lawrence Weschler finds strange connections wherever he looks. The farther one travels (through geography, through art, through science, through time), the more everything seems to converge -- at least, it does through Weschler's giddy, brilliant eyes. Weschler combines his keen insights into art (both contemporary...

The first comprehensive publication on the work of Peter Stauss, this book vividly traces the content- and image-related developments of the last ten years, enabling a complex overall view of work which previously could only be seen in individual exhibitions. The artist's work is special in the way it combines essential philosophical themes with questions of the genesis of form in painting and sculpture. The numerous illustrations show clearly how...

"In Unconsolable Contemporary Paul Rabinow continues his explorations of "a philosophic anthropology of the contemporary." Defining the contemporary as a moving ratio in which the modern becomes historical, Rabinow shows how an anthropological ethos of the contemporary can be realized by drawing on the work of art historians, cultural critics, social theorists, and others, thereby inventing a methodology he calls anthropological assemblage. He focuses...

"'Slow Spatial Research: Chronicles of Radical Affection' is a collection of essays about 'Slow' approaches to spatial practice and pedagogy from around the world. The book's contributors are from twenty-two countries on five continents. Each one brings distinct philosophical and disciplinary approaches - from 'spatial' fields like architecture, sculpture, and installation, but also performative, somatic and/or dramaturgical practices - exploring...

"The Fold is a book of practical philosophy that takes a radical new approach to aesthetics. Laura U. Marks calls this philosophy "enfolding-unfolding aesthetics," based in ideas derived from Gilles Deleuze and others (G.F.W. Leibniz, David Bohm, and Édouard Glissant) that the universe is folded in on itself. She proposes a theory of mediation as contact and connection across the folds and a set of embodied methods for detecting such cosmic connections....