Volume 16. Peng Feng (ed.). Aesthetics and Contemporary Art.
International Yearbook of Aesthetics. Volume 16., 2012
Content
The competition between philosophy and the arts can be traced back to the ancient times. In the Twentieth Century, this competition reached its culmination when art was pronounced reaching its end while aesthetics was declared irrelevant to the arts. Formalism abandoned the beautiful in aestheticism, Dadaism betrayed the autonomous or artistic merit in formalism, finally the contemporary conceptual art rejected the aesthetic, and so aesthetics or philosophy of art was totally expelled from the art world. Now we reach a historical stage where art and aesthetics are seeking for a reconciliation. The essays in this book show this new tendency in different ways.
About the Editor
Peng Feng is professor of aesthetics and art criticism at Peking University. He is also a playwright, freelance art critic and curator of exhibitions at international level. He has curated over 200 art exhibitions including the China Pavilion at the 54. international art exhibition of Venice Biennale 2011, The 1. International Sculpture Exhibition of Datong Biennale 2011, and The 1. International Art Exhibition of China Xinjiang Biennale. He has published 15 books including Return of Presence: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory (Beijing: China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Press, 2016); Arts Studies (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2016), Cross- Disciplines: The Adventure of Aesthetics in Contemporary Art (Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press, 2015); Modern Chinese Aesthetics (Nanjing: Fenghuang Press, 2013); Pervasion: China Pavilion at the 54. International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (Beijing: People’s Art Press, 2012); Introduction to Aesthetics (Shanghai: Fudan University, 2011); Return of Beauty: 11 Issues of Contemporary Aesthetics (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2009); Perfect Nature (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2005); The Western Aesthetics and the Western Art (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2005), and so on. Since 2013, his musical The Red Lantern has been travelling in China.