Aesthetic Autonomy

Problems and Perspectives

edited by B. van Heusden and L. Korthals Altes

Book cover: Aesthetic Autonomy

Extent: 144 pages

Publisher: Peeters Publishers

Subjects: Art & Art History, Literary Studies

Series: Groningen Studies in Cultural Change

Series volume number: 15

Language: English

(Hardback) (Published)

(December 2004)

ISBN: 9789042915794

Price: $57.00

In stock

This volume contains a selection of essays presented at the international conference on Cultural Crises in Art and Literature, held in Groningen in November 2002, in a special session on the question of the autonomy of the arts. Do we witness, in western culture, the end of the autonomy of the arts as it has been conceptualized and institutionalized since the eighteenth century? Indeed, developments of quite a different nature seem to have contributed to a blurring of boundaries between art and non-art, art and the market, art and politics or ethics, as well as between the arts themselves, and between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. Although this volume does not pretend to map this complex process in its entirety – partly because it is impossible to step out of one’s own history – it is meant as a contribution to the elucidation of the process itself, offering some challenging explanations as to the heat of the current debate.

  • Edited by L Korthals Altes
  • Edited by B van Heusden