Art and its Shadow is an extraordinary analysis of the state and meaning of contemporary art and film. Ranging across the work of Andy Warhol, cyberpunk, Wim Wenders, Derek Jarman, thinking on difference and the possibility of a philosophical cinema, Mario Perniola examines the latest and most disturbing tendencies in art.Perniola explores how art - notably in posthumanism, psychotic realism and extreme art - continues to survive despite the hype of the art market and the world of mass communication and reproduction. He argues that the meaning of art in the modern world no longer lies in aesthetic value (above the art work), nor in popular taste (below the art work), but beside the artwork, in the shadow created by both the art establishment and the world of mass communications. In this shadow is what is left out of account by both market and mass media: the difficulty of art, a knowledge that can never be fully revealed, and a new aesthetic future.

Art and Its Shadow

Arts & Photography

Perniola, Mario

History & Criticism

Continuum Intl Pub Group

Art & Its Shadow (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

Continuum

We live in a world where the one time opposition between things and humans has been transformed, where the centre of contemporary sensibility is the encounter between philosophy and sexuality, where sex extends well beyond both the act and the body. We live in a world where to be sexy is to ignore the distinctions between animate and inanimate objects of desire, where the aesthetics of sex are being revolutionised. An organic sexuality, based on sex difference and driven by desire and pleasure, is being replaced by a neutral, inorganic and artificial sexuality, a sexuality always available but indifferent to beauty, age or form, a sexuality freed by thought from nature. The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic takes the reader on a radical, new tour of Western philosophy - from Descartes, Kant and Hegel to Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre - to reframe our understanding of personal experience and the aesthetic, to examine how, if we are to remember how to feel, we must become a thing who feels, we must think ourselves closer to the inorganic world and move further from our bodies.

Sex Appeal of the Inorganic (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

We live in a world where the one-time opposition between things and humans has been transformed, where the center of contemporary sensibility is the encounter between philosophy and sexuality, where sex extends well beyond both the act and the body. We live in a world where to be sexy is to ignore the distinctions between animate and inanimate objects of desire, where the aesthetics of sex are being revolutionized.An organic sexuality, based on sex difference and driven by desire and pleasure, is being replaced by a neutral, inorganic and artificial sexuality, a sexuality always available but indifferent to beauty, age or form, a sexuality freed by thought from nature.The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic takes the reader on a radical, new tour of Western philosophy-from Descartes, Kant and Hegel to Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre-to reframe our understanding of personal experience and the aesthetic, to examine how, if we are to remember how to feel, we must become a thing who feels, we must think ourselves closer to the inorganic world and move further from our bodies.

The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

In The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, MarioPerniola puts forth the radical argument that we are shifting away from organic sexuality, based on desire and pleasure, and moving towards a more neutral inorganic and artificial sexuality, a sexuality always available but indifferent to beauty, age or form. Perniola takes the reader on a tour of Western philosophy, from Descartes, Kant and Hegel to Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre, to reframe our understanding of personal experience and the aesthetic world around us. In order to realize the sex appeal of the inorganic Perniola argues that we must become 'things that feel', we must think ourselves closer to the inorganic, creating an alliance between senses and things. Examples from contemporary culture that, for Perniola, are emblems of the sex appeal of the inorganic, include progressive rock music, fashion, deconstructive architecture and the novels of Georges Perec.

Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, The: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World (Bloomsbury Revelations)

Bloomsbury Academic

In our contemporary age aesthetics seems to crumble and no longer be reducible to a coherent image. And yet given the vast amount of works in aesthetics produced in the last hundred years, this age could be defined "the century of aesthetics". 
20th Century Aesthetics is a new account of international aesthetic thought by Mario Perniola, one of Italy's leading contemporary thinkers. Starting from four conceptual fields – life, form, knowledge, action - Perniola identifies the lines of aesthetic reflection that derive from them and elucidates them with reference to major authors: from Dilthey to Foucault (aesthetics of life), from Wölfflin to McLuhan and Lyotard (aesthetics of form), from Croce to Goodman (aesthetics and knowledge), from Dewey to Bloom (aesthetics and action). There is also a fifth one that touches on the sphere of affectivity and emotionality, and which comes to aesthetics from thinkers like Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Lacan, Derrida and Deleuze. The volume concludes with an extensive sixth chapter on Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Brazilian, South Korean and South East Asian aesthetic thought and on the present decline of Western aesthetic sensibility.

20th Century Aesthetics: Towards A Theory of Feeling (Philosophy, Aesthetics and Cultural Theory)

Enigmas: The Egyptian Moment in Art and Society

In this succinct and innovative book, Mario Perniola, one of Italy’s most influential philosophers and critics, argues that our society is living through an “Egyptian moment”—a postmodern era marked by a particular brand of reification. As the products of high technology come increasingly to assume organic properties, to be endowed with an independent capacity for perception, humanity becomes thing-like, not in the familiar sense of unconscious alienation, but rather in the sense of a deliberate and cynical treatment of itself as an object. We are, he claims, undergoing a process of self-mummification. Perniola mixes philosophy and aesthetics with clarity and erudition, whether he is discussing ‘strategic beauty’ in the work of Baltasar Gracian, the “anti-cynicism” of Carlo Michelstaedter, or Guy Debord’s notion of the secret. In his approach to such topics as periodization, the place of the mirror in Western thought, hermeneutics and utopianism, he draws from ‘high’ and “mass” culture with sometimes startling effect. The scope of Perniola’s enquiry is impressively wide, ranging from Pulcinella to the latest form of video culture, via baroque aesthetics. But his focus, always, is on contemporary experience, an experience brought about neither by a return of the repressed nor by future shock but by their enigmatic coincidence. Enigmas provides an original and acutely perceptive guide to a condition in which ancient past and imaginable future are not merely similar, but can all to easily be confused.

Verso

In this succinct and innovative book, Mario Perniola, one of Italy’s most influential philosophers and critics, argues that our society is living through an “Egyptian moment”—a postmodern era marked by a particular brand of reification. As the products of high technology come increasingly to assume organic properties, to be endowed with an independent capacity for perception, humanity becomes thing-like, not in the familiar sense of unconscious alienation, but rather in the sense of a deliberate and cynical treatment of itself as an object. We are, he claims, undergoing a process of self-mummification.Perniola mixes philosophy and aesthetics with clarity and erudition, whether he is discussing ‘strategic beauty’ in the work of Baltasar Gracian, the “anti-cynicism” of Carlo Michelstaedter, or Guy Debord’s notion of the secret. In his approach to such topics as periodization, the place of the mirror in Western thought, hermeneutics and utopianism, he draws from ‘high’ and “mass” culture with sometimes startling effect. The scope of Perniola’s enquiry is impressively wide, ranging from Pulcinella to the latest form of video culture, via baroque aesthetics. But his focus, always, is on contemporary experience, an experience brought about neither by a return of the repressed nor by future shock but by their enigmatic coincidence.Enigmas provides an original and acutely perceptive guide to a condition in which ancient past and imaginable future are not merely similar, but can all to easily be confused.

Contre la communication

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

LEO SCHEER

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Books by Perniola, Mario

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Perniola, Mario. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Art and Its Shadow

Art & Its Shadow (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

Sex Appeal of the Inorganic (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, The: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World (Bloomsbury Revelations)

20th Century Aesthetics: Towards A Theory of Feeling (Philosophy, Aesthetics and Cultural Theory)

20th Century Aesthetics: Towards A Theory of Feeling (Philosophy, Aesthetics and Cultural Theory)

Enigmas: The Egyptian Moment in Art and Society

Enigmas: The Egyptian Moment in Art and Society

Contre la communication