What
is beauty, and what is truth? These are some
of the questions which aesthetics tries to
answer. In our everyday life, we talk about
the 'aesthetics' of an artwork or piece of
design. But aesthetics goes beyond the simple
experience of art. It is also a branch of
philosophy concerned with the whole nature
of experience itself, explored through our
perceptions, feelings and emotions.
For philosophers, aesthetics crucially opens
out onto issues of subjectivity and identity.
This is because experience relates to the
question of consciousness and, by implication,
the role of the unconscious in shaping identity.
The subject of experience is also bound up
with questions of politics, psychoanalysis
and art and, more widely, with the vital issues
of modernity and postmodernity.
Introducing Aesthetics is a lively and engaging
tour through this vital field of enquiry.
Christopher Kul-Want's incisive text is brilliantly
adorned by Piero's illustrations.
***
Christopher
Kul-Want is Course Director of the MA in Fine
Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London.
Piero
ia an illustrator, graphic designer and animator.
He has illustrated numerous titles in the
Introducing series.
