Learning to Look: Dispatches from the Art World
Alva Noë
Abstract
This book presents a collection of short, stimulating essays that explore how we experience art and what it means to be an “observer.” Ranging far and wide, from Pina Bausch to RoboCop, from Bob Dylan to Vermeer, it uses encounters with specific artworks to gain entry into a world of fascinating issues—like how philosophy and science are represented in film; what evolutionary biology says about art; or the role of ethics, fakes, and copies in our experience of a work. Each essay arises out of an art encounter—in a museum, listening to records, or going to a concert. Carefully articulating the ... More
This book presents a collection of short, stimulating essays that explore how we experience art and what it means to be an “observer.” Ranging far and wide, from Pina Bausch to RoboCop, from Bob Dylan to Vermeer, it uses encounters with specific artworks to gain entry into a world of fascinating issues—like how philosophy and science are represented in film; what evolutionary biology says about art; or the role of ethics, fakes, and copies in our experience of a work. Each essay arises out of an art encounter—in a museum, listening to records, or going to a concert. Carefully articulating the experience of each of these encounters, the book proposes that, like philosophy, art is a sort of technology for understanding ourselves. Put simply, art is an opportunity for us to enact ourselves anew.
Keywords:
art,
art encounters,
artworks,
philosophy,
evolutionary biology,
ethics,
fake art,
art copies
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2022 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190928216 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2022 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190928216.001.0001 |
