Beholding: Situated Art and the Aesthetics of Reception
Beholding considers the spatially situated encounter between artwork and spectator. It argues that artworks created for specific places or conditions structure a reciprocal encounter, which is completed by the presence of a beholder. These are works which demand the 'beholder's share', but not, as Ernst Gombrich famously claimed, to sustain an illusion. Rather, Beholding reconfigures Gombrich's notion of the beholder's share as a set of 'licensed' imaginative and cognitive projections.

Each chapter frames a particular work of art from the remit of a complementary theoretical text. The book establishes a transhistorical notion of the spatially situated encounter, and considers the role of the architectural host in bringing the beholder's orientation into play. The book engages a diverse range of practices: from Renaissance painting and group portraiture to intermedia practices of installation and performance art. Written within the broad remit of reception aesthetics, the book proposes a phenomenological theory of beholding, argued through an in-depth examination of artworks and their spatial contexts, selected for their explanatory potential. These various encounters allocate different constitutive roles to the beholder, bringing not only spatial and temporal orientation into play, but also a repertoire of anticipated ideas and beliefs.

1133204436
Beholding: Situated Art and the Aesthetics of Reception
Beholding considers the spatially situated encounter between artwork and spectator. It argues that artworks created for specific places or conditions structure a reciprocal encounter, which is completed by the presence of a beholder. These are works which demand the 'beholder's share', but not, as Ernst Gombrich famously claimed, to sustain an illusion. Rather, Beholding reconfigures Gombrich's notion of the beholder's share as a set of 'licensed' imaginative and cognitive projections.

Each chapter frames a particular work of art from the remit of a complementary theoretical text. The book establishes a transhistorical notion of the spatially situated encounter, and considers the role of the architectural host in bringing the beholder's orientation into play. The book engages a diverse range of practices: from Renaissance painting and group portraiture to intermedia practices of installation and performance art. Written within the broad remit of reception aesthetics, the book proposes a phenomenological theory of beholding, argued through an in-depth examination of artworks and their spatial contexts, selected for their explanatory potential. These various encounters allocate different constitutive roles to the beholder, bringing not only spatial and temporal orientation into play, but also a repertoire of anticipated ideas and beliefs.

135.0 Out Of Stock
Beholding: Situated Art and the Aesthetics of Reception

Beholding: Situated Art and the Aesthetics of Reception

by Ken Wilder
Beholding: Situated Art and the Aesthetics of Reception

Beholding: Situated Art and the Aesthetics of Reception

by Ken Wilder

Hardcover

$135.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Temporarily Out of Stock Online
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

Beholding considers the spatially situated encounter between artwork and spectator. It argues that artworks created for specific places or conditions structure a reciprocal encounter, which is completed by the presence of a beholder. These are works which demand the 'beholder's share', but not, as Ernst Gombrich famously claimed, to sustain an illusion. Rather, Beholding reconfigures Gombrich's notion of the beholder's share as a set of 'licensed' imaginative and cognitive projections.

Each chapter frames a particular work of art from the remit of a complementary theoretical text. The book establishes a transhistorical notion of the spatially situated encounter, and considers the role of the architectural host in bringing the beholder's orientation into play. The book engages a diverse range of practices: from Renaissance painting and group portraiture to intermedia practices of installation and performance art. Written within the broad remit of reception aesthetics, the book proposes a phenomenological theory of beholding, argued through an in-depth examination of artworks and their spatial contexts, selected for their explanatory potential. These various encounters allocate different constitutive roles to the beholder, bringing not only spatial and temporal orientation into play, but also a repertoire of anticipated ideas and beliefs.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781350088405
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 05/14/2020
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Ken Wilder is Reader in Spatial Design at the Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London, UK

Table of Contents

List of Plates
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Sacred Imagery
Chapter 1: The Beholder As Witness
Chapter 2: Of Clouds and Terrestrial Beholders
Chapter 3: The Melancholic Beholder

Part II: Group Portraiture
Chapter 4: The Artist as Beholder
Chapter 5: Two Modes of Beholding
Chapter 6: Theatricality and the Beholder

PART III: Abstraction
Chapter Seven: Beholding a 'Reversible' Space
Chapter Eight: Virtual Space and the 'Literal' Beholder
Chapter Nine: On Repetition and Beholding

PART IV: Intermedia
Chapter Ten: The Complicit Beholder
Chapter Eleven: The Beholder in the Expanded Field
Chapter Twelve: The Dislocated Beholder

Bibliography
Notes

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews