The Perfect Spectator: The Experience of the Art Work and Reception Aesthetics

What really happens between a spectator and a work of art at the moment of encounter? How does one experience “meaning” in a work of art? How does an interpretation of an art object come to take hold for a viewer? How can that process of interpretation, which often takes place at a subconscious level beyond language, be understood and articulated? In The Perfect Spectator, author Janneke Wesseling, Professor of Visual Arts at Leiden University in the Netherlands, addresses these questions b...