Practical Form: Abstraction, Technique, and Beauty in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics

A groundbreaking study of the development of form in eighteenth-century aesthetics

In this original work, Abigail Zitin proposes a new history of the development of form as a concept in and for aesthetics. Her account substitutes women and artisans for the proverbial man of taste, asserting them as central figures in the rise of aesthetics as a field of philosophical inquiry in eighteenth-century Europe. She shows how the idea of formal abstraction so central to conceptions of beauty in th...