Varieties of Aesthetic Experience: On the Affective Potential of Art

Tone Roald creates a new foundation for aesthetics by taking seriously real-life experiences with works of art. Relying upon descriptions of experiences with art in the autobiographical and literary texts of St. Augustine, Denis Diderot, Stendahl, Virginia Woolf, and Proust, as well as fifteen-years' worth of interviews with museumgoers about their most intense experiences with visual arts, Roald explores the variety of aesthetic experiences available to us throughout history and articulate...