Esthetics

L’œuvre dont l’interprétation est inachevable prend-elle la forme d’un mystère ou d’une énigme ? Engage-t-elle un processus de compréhension qui vise à dissiper un brouillard mystérieux ou un travail de déchiffrement de signes énigmatiques ? Ces deux processus entretiennent quoiqu’il en soit un rapport à ce qui reste inatteignable et indémêlable, logé pourtant au cœur de l’œuvre. S’agit-il de privilégier une de ces deux méthodologies interprétatives ? Plus précisément, la dynamique interprétative doit-elle chercher à lever – certes partiellement – les voiles du mystère qui enrobent l’œuvre, dans un processus de dévoilement herméneutique, ou à diagnostiquer l’état des tensions contradictoires en présence, dans un processus de déchiffrement explicatif ? Ou bien, serait-il souhaitable qu’elle conjugue ces deux mouvements ?

Facial appearance is important for normal psychosocial development in children with cleft lip and palate (CLP). There is conflicting evidence on how deficient maxillary growth may affect nasolabial esthetics. We retrospectively investigated nasolabial appearance in two groups, the Langenback (35 children; mean age 11.1 years; range: 7.9-13.6) and Vomerplasty (58 children; mean age 10.8 years; range: 7.8-14), who received unilateral CLP surgery by the same surgeon. The hard palate repair technique differed between the two groups. In the Langenback group, palatal bone on the non-cleft side only was left denuded, inducing scar formation and inhibiting maxillary growth. In the Vomerplasty group, a vomerplasty with tight closure of the soft tissues on the palate was applied. Thirteen lay judges rated nasolabial esthetics on photographs using a modified Asher-McDade's index. Nasolabial esthetics in both groups was comparable (p > 0.1 for each nasolabial component). Inferior view was judged as the least esthetic component and demonstrated mean scores 3.18 (SD = 0.63) and 3.13 (SD = 0.47) in the Langenback and Vomerplasty groups, respectively. Mean scores for other components were from 2.52 (SD = 0.63) to 2.81 (SD = 0.62). Regression analysis showed that vomerplasty is related with slight improvement in the nasal profile only (coefficient B = -0.287; p = 0.043; R(2 ) = 0.096). This study demonstrates that the use of vomerplasty instead of the Langenbeck technique is weakly associated with the nasolabial appearance among pre-adolescent patients with UCLP.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between nasolabial symmetry and aesthetics in children with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate (CUCLP). Frontal and basal photographs of 60 consecutively treated children with CUCLP (cleft group: 41 boys and 19 girls, mean (SD) age 11 (2) years) and 44 children without clefts (control group: 16 boys and 28 girls, mean (SD) age 11(2) years), were used for evaluation of nasolabial symmetry and aesthetics. Nasal and labial measurements were made to calculate the coefficient of asymmetry (CA). The 5-grade aesthetic index described by Asher-McDade et al. was used to evaluate nasolabial appearance. Correlation and regression analysis were used to identify an association between aesthetics and CA, sex, and the presence of CUCLP. Ten measurements in the cleft, and 2 in the control, group differed significantly between the cleft and non-cleft (or right and left) sides, respectively. The significantly higher values of 9 of 11 CA in the children with CUCLP indicated that they had more asymmetrical nasolabial areas than children without clefts. However, the regression analyses showed that only a few CA were associated with nasolabial aesthetics. In conclusion, nasolabial aesthetics and nasolabial symmetry seem to be only weakly associated in patients with CUCLP.

The essay reflects on concepts that have traditionally been understood as a borderline between aesthetics and psychoanalysis: the notion of  disgust and that of  nausea.Nausea is  a  psycho-physiological  signal  that  makes  us  feel  our  co-existence  with  a  huge  number  of  human and non-human entities. It is for this reason that it should not be confused with the feeling of  disgust. The latter, in fact, is a self-defense reaction produced by the significant-machine, while the nausea is a feeling of  engulfment,  of  filling  that  makes  us  skid  and  makes  us  lose  the  anthropo-centric  orientation. It  is  an ecological feeling.

Dans son œuvre fulgurante mais dense, partagée symétriquement entre photographie et littérature, Édouard Levé, ne s’est guère privé d’utiliser et de subvertir des formes héritées de la liste. Classifications, fragments, listings, accumulations et parataxes – entre autres – y figurent en bonne place. Davantage qu’aux quatre grands livres de photographie dans lesquels la variation et la sériation s’ingénient à distendre et troubler les rapports entre texte et image, l’analyse s’attachera à démontrer de quelle façon les quatre textes que sont Œuvres, Journal, Autoportrait et Suicide font usage de cette rhétorique particulière. Si l’influence subversive de l’art contemporain et de ses mises en liste est particulièrement marquée dans Œuvres et si, dans une certaine mesure, Journal se présente comme une tentative de neutralisation du monde et du sujet par la récriture de rubriques, on voudrait saisir les enjeux de ces formes dans Suicide et surtout Autoportrait, deux textes à la littérarité plus affirmée, dans lesquels la parataxe et l’effet-liste rendent compte par la kyrielle, la querelle et la contradiction d’un moi émietté.

Las relaciones entre estética y política, entre arte y poder, forman parte de una discusión que ha acompañado el estatuto de las prácticas artísticas desde que éstas tienen en los estudios estéticos uno de sus pilares de fundamentación. Esta relación ha estado mediada por los términos que suponen las prácticas artísticas, tanto los supuestos por la crítica kantiana, al colocar a lo bello y al juicio estético como elementos de análisis, como en las teórias modernas que versan sobre lo sublime y las utopías como valores intrínsecos del trabajo artístico. Para hacer la crítica de estos supuestos y generar nuevas perspectivas que permitan establecer vínculos y fronteras entre los campos del poder y del arte, el presente texto apunta algunas líneas exploradas por Jaques Ranciere, con el  n de problematizar estos dilemas claves del ámbito contemporáneo del arte.

In English, see: Csilla Markója: Popper and Lukács. Anatomy of a Friendship. In: Acta Historiae Artium. This is the extended version in Hungarian / A fiatalon elhunyt filozófus, műkritikus, Popper Leó szenvedélyes és inspiráló kapcsolata Lukács Györggyel, egy rövid életű, de termékeny barátság története.  Popper Leó kapcsolata kora képzőművészetével és gondolatainak hatása a Vasárnapi Körre.

This article presents a new approach to studying aesthetics by weaving together a thread of ideas based on investigating the problematics of the philosophy of art from a behavioral paradigm in order to exceed the margins of aesthetics. I claim that it makes no sense to ask if something is art, but rather we should be looking out into the manners in which art subsists, consists, and insists itself. Several notions of what I call behavioral aesthetics are proposed such as observation, aesthetic experience and aesthetic conditioning, behavioral materialism, outcomes , behavioral memory and replication or acquisition, interaction and intra-action, emotional engineering, artificial instincts, aesthetic dissonance, and the problem of measurement. The proposed goal of behavioral aesthetics consists in studying the process of individuation as constitutive of art with the methods of Bernard Stiegler's general organology and genealogy of the sensible. The article presents a behavioral stance as a borderline mode for approaching the genealogy of aesthetics. I mostly refer to Tania Bruguera's Behavior Art School and Wright Judson's Behavioral Art, and the paradigm of new materialism, notably agential realism of Karan Barad.

Embodied knowledge, so it seems, is one less explored aspects of cultural globalization. This talk will present elements from a work-in-progress on the impact of cultural globalization on the performance of embodied knowledge in everyday life. The paper takes lead from my work on the globalization of pop-rock music; especially how its materiality as sound affected embodied musical knowledge worldwide. It then looks at additional realms, notably food and clothing, where global proliferation of material objects, gadgets and devices has induced acquisition and performance of embodied knowledge in routine everyday life. Framing the discussion, theoretically, is the notion of cultural cosmopolitanism.

Résumé

Cet article tente de développer une approche philosophique de l’œuvre littéraire qui éviterait tout surplomb pour penser « avec » la littérature. Quelques prémisses méthodologiques dirigent une telle entreprise vers la rencontre d'une œuvre singulière, le roman Aurélia de Gérard de Nerval, et d'un concept de la tradition esthétique, le sublime. L'enjeu de cette mise en relation est triple : il s'agit d'abord de montrer qu’une analyse de l’œuvre à travers le prisme du sublime révèle l'existence d'un questionnement métaphysique en jeu dans le récit, nourrissant une autre lecture d’Aurélia. Ensuite, c’est le concept du sublime lui-même qui se trouve transformé dans son essence par une certaine incarnation dans l'écriture nervalienne. La dernière partie a pour objectif de faire apparaître en quoi cet enrichissement réciproque de l’œuvre et du concept aboutit à une réflexion sur la performativité du régime littéraire du langage, rendant compte philosophiquement, mais grâce à la littérature, d'une puissance de sens propre à celle-ci.

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a philosophical approach to the literary work which thinks “with” the work. A methodological introduction shapes the meeting between Gérard de Nerval’s Aurélia and the concept of the sublime. The challenges are many: we must first show that an analysis of the novel through the lens of the concept of sublime reveals the existence of a metaphysical reflexion in the narrative and gives rise to another way of reading Aurélia. Then the concept itself is transformed by its embodiment in Nerval’s writing. The last part aims to show how the reciprocal enrichment of the work and the concept leads to a reflexion on the performativity of the literary mode of language, showing philosophically, but through the literature, the power of the work’s meaning.