Investigations Into the Phenomenology and the Ontology of the Work of Art

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Peer F. Bundgaard

   Pages 1-13Open Access

3. Temporal Aspects of Literary Reading

   • David S. Miall

   Pages 15-30Open Access

4. Memory and Mental States in the Appreciation of Literature

   • Marisa Bortolussi, Peter Dixon

   Pages 31-49Open Access

5. Temporal Conflict in the Reading Experience

   • Cathrine Kietz

   Pages 51-73Open Access

6. The Aesthetic Experience with Visual Art “At First Glance”

   • Paul J. Locher

   Pages 75-88Open Access

7. What Is a Surface? In the Real World? And Pictures?

   • John M. Kennedy, Marta Wnuczko

   Pages 89-107Open Access

8. The Idiosyncrasy of Beauty: Aesthetic Universals and the Diversity of Taste

   • Patrick Colm Hogan

   Pages 109-127Open Access

9. Why We Are Not All Novelists

   • Shaun Gallagher

   Pages 129-143Open Access

10. Aesthetic Relationship, Cognition, and the Pleasures of Art

    • Jean-Marie Schaeffer

    Pages 145-165Open Access

11. More Seeing-in: Surface Seeing, Design Seeing, and Meaning Seeing in Pictures

    • Peer F. Bundgaard

    Pages 167-189Open Access

12. Depiction

    • John Hyman

    Pages 191-208Open Access

13. Green War Banners in Central Copenhagen: A Recent Political Struggle Over Interpretation—And Some Implications for Art Interpretation as Such

    • Frederik Stjernfelt

    Pages 209-223Open Access

14. The Appropriation of the Work of Art as a Semiotic Act

    • Francis Édeline, Jean-Marie Klinkenberg

    Pages 225-242Open Access

15. Sculpture, Diagram, and Language in the Artwork of Joseph Beuys

    • Wolfgang Wildgen

    Pages 243-257Open Access

16. Back Matter

    Pages 259-264

    PDF

​This book investigates the nature of aesthetic experience and aesthetic objects. Written by leading philosophers, psychologists, literary scholars and semioticians, the book addresses two intertwined issues. The first is related to the phenomenology of aesthetic experience: The understanding of how human beings respond to artworks, how we process linguistic or visual information, and what properties in artworks trigger aesthetic experiences. The examination of the properties of aesthetic experience reveals essential aspects of our perceptual, cognitive, and semiotic capacities.  The second issue studied in this volume is related to the ontology of the work of art: Written or visual artworks are a specific type of objects, containing particular kinds of representation which elicit a particular kind of experience. The research question explored is: What properties in artful objects trigger this type of experience, and what characterizes representation in written and visual artworks? The volume sets the scene for state-of-the-art inquiries in the intersection between the psychology and ontology of art. The investigations of the relation between the properties of artworks and the characteristics of aesthetic experience increase our insight into what art is. In addition, they shed light on essential properties of human meaning-making in general.

• Aesthetics and art
• Art History
• Artwork and Perception
• Cognitive Semiotics
• Knowing Art
• Ontology of art
• Phenomenology and cognitive science
• cognitive aesthetics
• phenomenological aesthetics
• psychology of art

• Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

  Peer F. Bundgaard

• Humanomics Centre Department of Arts and Culture, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

  Frederik Stjernfelt

Peer Bundgaard is professor at the Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, and is the Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive Semiotics.

Frederik Stjernfelt is professor at the Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, and is member of the Danish Academy as well as the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Post-doctoral habilitation Diagrammatology (Springer 2007). He is also a guest professor at Humboldt University Berlin 2010.