Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art Volume I (Aesthetics)

Book Description

In his Aesthetics Hegel gives full expression to his seminal theory of art. He surveys the history of art from ancient India, Egypt, and Greece through to the Romantic movement of his own time, criticizes major works, and probes their meaning and significance; his rich array of examples gives broad scope for his judgement and makes vivid his exposition of his theory. The substantial Introduction is Hegel's best exposition of his general philosophy of art, and provides the ideal way into his Aesthetics. In Part I he considers the general nature of art: he distinguishes art, as a spiritual experience, from religion and philosophy; he discusses the beauty of art and differentiates it from the beauty of nature; and he examines artistic genius and originality. Part II provides a sort of history of art, divded into three periods called Symbolic (India, Persia, Egypt), Classical (Greece), and Romantic (medieval and post-medieval up to the end of the eighteenth century). Part III deals individually with architecture, scuplture, painting, music, and literature.

Customer Reviews:

Not since Aristotle has Philosophy so Illuminated Fine Art.......2000-08-08

It is not every century that is so fortunate to receive a vision of Fine Art that illuminates the foundations of Art and what Art means for the human species. Hegel first distinguishes between ordinary Aesthetics and his notion of Fine Art, that is, Human Creativity. Nature can be Aesthetic, but only Humans create Fine Art, and it is Fine Art that Hegel wishes to explore in this masterpiece.

In great detail, Hegel explains why his concept of Spiritual Freedom is central to Art, just as it is central to Politics, to Religion, to Free Thinking and to Science. Fine Art is distinguished by its direct and personal appeal. A human hand fashions a single object with such care, devotion, skill and imagination that it may be treasured by millions for centuries. This is no act of conditioned reflexes, but an act of profound Freedom and awareness of Spiritual reality.

The key to Art, for Hegel, is always the Spirit. If the Spirit can shine through, then a work of Fine Art can be a great work. The more the Universal Spirit of humanity shows forth, the more attractive that work is to the millions. For that reason, Hegel suggested, the greatest Art is religious Art or any Art that rises to the level of the spiritually sublime, as in Tragedy.

Hegel considered that there is a hierarchy among the Arts. The Arts with the most matter are always a little bit lower than the Arts with less matter. For example, for Hegel, Architecture is the lowest form of Art, because the Original Idea can rarely be perfectly executed through coordinating and budgeting the large crowd of workers needed to complete it.

Sculpture is higher than Architecture, but the limitations of the large marble mass were considerable when compared with the relative Freedom offered by oil on a canvas exhibiting colors, shapes and light, said Hegel.

Higher than Painting are Dance and Music, Art forms that again require many people. However, the substance of these Art forms is not found simply as the human body or the musical instrument, rather, it is found within fleeting motions of the body, or the fleeting vibrations of the instrument. Music is ethereal, and when a musician stops playing, all Music itself stops. Further, Music is invisible to the eye, audible to the ear but also to the heart, and has the capability of manipulating human emotions in the most unique manner.

But the highest form of Art, said Hegel, is Poetry, and the highest form of Poetry is Tragic Drama. Drama is an imitation of Life - not just as in Comedy, the external vagaries of Life, but the inner Life of the human being who suffers and who dies.

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10th Anniversary of Blessings (10th Anniversary of Blessings)
Chris Thornton
Manufacturer: Susan Scheewe Publications, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1567704042

Customer Reviews:

A nice compilation of hard to find material..........2003-03-13

This is a nice, thick chunk of reprinted comics from the heyday of the Dell Walt Disney duck comics by Carl Barks. The book actually collects into a single volume four of the smaller out-of-print Gladstone Comic Album series, the same series that you can still find ... although the issues reprinted here are not--to my knowledge--offered individually on this site.
In this volume you will find some classic Carl Barks stories featuring Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge including "The Land Beneath the Ground," "Sheriff of Bullet Valley," "Only a Poor Old Man (which I have heard referred to as 'Money Lake'," as well as many short Donald Duck stories know collectively as the "Mastery" stories. All of the major works are by Barks and, unless I am mistaken, all but one of the shorter stories is by Barks as well.
Bottom line: This is a good, comprehensive collection of Duck Material and worth considering.

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Walt Disney's Comics in Color, Volume 7
Carl Barks
Manufacturer: Gladstone Pub Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Graphic Novels | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0944599362

Book Description

This is one of the seven numbered collections of Walt Disney comic albums published by Gladstone. Each volume represents from two to four albums that were part of Gladstone Publishing's regular and giant monthlies that came out during the years 1988-1990. This volume contains the 4 albums; Uncle Scrooge:Hawaiian Hideaway, Donald and Daisy, Mickey Mouse: The World of Tomorrow,and Donald Duck Adventures: Ancient Persia.

Book Description

Reader and audience appeal, global constraints, large-scale desiderata, dynamics, consummation scenes, characters, relationships, structure, embodiment, voice, the line level. Developing and testing a theory of writing. Discusses such topics as originality, credibility, contrivance, crudeness, monotony, repetition. Story appeal, story impact. Threat, hope, need to know, tension and pace. Character realization, character identification, character appeal, repellant characters, character change, character and dynamics, a group as a character. The reality of relationships, the identity of relationships, the appeal of relationships, relationships and dynamics. Architecture, design, types of structure, sequential structuring, story steps, the set-up, openings, endings. Embodiment, scene appeal, scene impact. Micro-dynamics. Point of view. Voice. Showing, telling and doing. Setting. Titles. Comedy.

Customer Reviews:

So many pages, so few insights.......2006-12-27

The basic premise here is as sound as it is obvious: You must hook the reader/viewer from the outset, and then keep him/her hooked. The book is thus about the tricks of the trade in reader/viewer hooking. The author disparages "devices," but in fact offers nothing but. His views are offered as dogma, usually in a way that summarily trashes other views. For example, on p. 257: "Most books on fiction writing present this [first or third person use] as a choice for the writer. The choice is spurious. Third person should be used. Readers object when character suffering is presented in the first person: the character is perceived as whining; [...]" That simple. It is fortunate that Salinger wrote "The Catcher in the Rye" without the benefit of this book's advice.

Draughon is very big on coining new terms, since according to him the old ones are either misleading or meaningless. For example, still on p. 257, the term "stance" appears for the first time in the following sentence: "Three questions are confounded under this single term [point of view]: (1) whether one or more than one stance is used to tell the story, [...]" So far, no explanation of what the author means by "stance". The next use of the term is two paragraphs down: "More than one stance should be used." Still no explanation. At the third use we get it, sort of: "Shifts in stance (that is, shifts in "point of view") are [...]" This seems to indicate that "stance" is synonymous with "point of view", but that the author prefers "stance" for the novelty of it.

Apparently this kind of thing is "advanced" stuff. It seems to constitute the how-to side of the author's new theory of writing, which is offered in another book. The I-am-the-smartest-person-I-know tone is irritating, as are the incessant put-downs of "N.Y. editors" and "academics." Enough already! The useful content of this book - yes, there is some - could have been boiled down to a dozen pages.

If you think Draughon's advice will get you past the much-vilified "N.Y. editors," think again. It hasn't worked for him. All his books, including this one, were self-published through iUniverse or its subsidiaries. You might want to save your money toward the $499 minimum package at iUniverse. After all, even James Joyce had to self-publish at first.

Great book -- skips the basics........2006-12-08

His writing style is annoying (how many times do I need to hear how much he loathes literary fiction -- once would have stuck) but I found the knowledge amazing.

The Iglesias book is good to dip into, but I find that this -- though more of a struggle to read -- is a better whole.

Useless to me........2006-03-19

This book is basically a bunch of the author's opinions on the elements of good fiction and film. These elements carry rather abstract titles such as 'character appeal', 'consummation scenes' etc.; the rest have been listed by other reviewers so I won't repeat them. The ensuing chapters amble around the subject,however, and give no real insight as to how these principles might be applied practically.
The author's primary opinion consists of a vehement bias against what he terms 'academic' fiction, which he claims people do not enjoy and read only to impress other people at dinner parties. The constant reiteration of this opinion borders on rant.
Now I'm not completely averse to the notion that there are genre writers who could show 'literary' writers a thing or two, but in a book dubbed 'advanced' writing, I expected a very detailed explication of craft, not these discursive ramblings on what the author considers to be good, bad or indifferent in film and fiction.
Others have noted the overburdened syntax, and it is distinctly irritating. I quote one sentence from page 19:
'Of course, ex post facto criteria of any sort can also be used by the human artist in guiding the generating of the novel or drama in the first place, since they can be applied as soon as some component of the novel or drama to which they are relevant is thought of or created.'
I rest my case!

Made Me Stop, Think, and Rewrite! A+.......2006-03-19

I've been writing for some time, and after reading Advanced Writing, I realized just how many gaps exist in the manuscript I am working on, (fiction). I've read books on writing, and they've been of great help. Advanced Writing, however, broke everything about great story writing down, clearly demonstrating the elements of a great, page-turning manuscript. Although I kept the basic premise of my new novel, there's an entire rewrite taking place, and I've got Mr. Draughon's book to thank for it. I KNOW I'll produce a tighter, far better manuscript as a result of this book. A+ from this reader, (and writer).

Don't be cheated by drive-by reviewers.......2006-03-17

If you think writing is (or ought to be) simple, you're on the road to failure. Writing a quality novel or a good screenplay is not simple, and writing books that don't show you the complexities are wasting your time and guaranteeing that you remain unpublished and unproduced (and, thus, that you continue to buy more writing books!). You need this book if you're at an advanced level.
If you don't yet know much about novel writing, however, or if sentences with dependent clauses are a challenge, this book is definitely NOT for you. You will not understand the use of much of this information.
If you don't have much motivation and are looking for an inspirational book (like The Courage to Write), this book is not for you. If you've reached an advanced level, you're motivated!
If you aspire to write what late-20th century academics called "literary" fiction, you've got the wrong book--this book is for those who want to write what was literary fiction for the two thousand years preceeding the late-twentieth century and is today called quality mainstream fiction (or "A" movies as opposed to "art films").
If you're looking for easy answers, you'll find this book very frustrating, if not infuriating.

But if you're looking for information and lots of it, information not to be found in the other writing books; if you're ready to get into the complexities of writing, this is the book you've been searching for.

For example, tradeoffs. Writing is almost all tradeoffs, yet other books seldom mention that the many desirable and intuitively obvious techniques and principles they are setting forth will clash with each other in various ways and that you'll have to find some way of weighing them and finding an optimum between them. For instance, the requirement that both partners in a love story be desirable (to the audience) seems obvious, yet many movies and novels fail or fall short in this regard. Why? Incompetence? No. Because the requirements (sometimes) set forth for characterization--that a character be "complex", "flawed", etc.--conflict with this requirement for a successful love story. The real question then becomes: How much good characterization should you give up to make your love story more moving? (In this case, Advanced Writing provides other ways to do good characterization that get you out of this dilemma.)

This is only one of the many areas you'll learn a great deal about from studying Advanced Writing. If you're an advanced writer, you will have already recognized these areas and will know the importance of learning more about them.

If you're still undecided, read the excerpt on the author's website before deciding. The decision whether to get this book may be one of the most fateful decisions you ever make in your writing career.

Footnote for intermediate writers: if you've already bought this book and haven't yet learned standard terminology like "line-level writing" or "character appeal", you should read Advanced Writing a second time after you've read several more writing books. You'll find that the 30% you thought was superfluous is actually very useful. There is not one single wasted paragraph here. And re-read the Introduction. After you've learned to operate in all three writer modes and to keep them separate, you'll find this book does not hamper your creativity at all. In fact, you'll have better ideas and be better able to structure them.

Bottom line: If you don't read the book, you don't get the information.

Book Description

This songbook contains all 11 tunes from the deeper, darker, critically acclaimed 2002 DMB release, featuring reworked songs from the legendary leaked Lillywhite Sessions, plus two new titles. Includes: Bartender * Big Eyed Fish * Busted Stuff * Captain * Digging a Ditch * Grace Is Gone * Grey Street * Kit Kat Jam * Raven * Where Are You Going * and You Never Know, plus an introduction. Also available in a guitar tab edition: 02500553.

Book Description

The monograph gives a theoretical explanation of observed cooperative behavior in common pool situations. The incentives for cooperative decision making are investigated by means of a cooperative game theoretical framework. In a first step core existence results are worked out. Whereas general core existence results provide us with an answer for mutual cooperation, nothing can be said how strong these incentives and how stable these cooperative agreements are. To clarify these questions the convexity property for common pool TU-games in scrutinized in a second step. It is proved that the convexity property holds for a large subclass of symmetrical as well as asymmetrical cooperative common pool games. Core existence and the convexity results provide us with a theoretical explanation to bridge the gap between the observation in field studies for cooperation and the noncooperative prediction that the common pool resource will be overused and perhaps endangered.

Influence of Economic Instability on Health (Lecture Notes in Medical Informatics)

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Influence of Economic Instability on Health (Lecture Notes in Medical Informatics)

Manufacturer: Springer-Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Production & Operations | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Lecture Notes on Medical Sociology (Lecture Notes)

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Lecture Notes on Medical Sociology (Lecture Notes)
David Rainsford Hannay
Manufacturer: Blackwell Science
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0632003138

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Lecture Notes on Medical Sociology

Manufacturer: Year Book Medical Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0801620627

Book Description

This reference work details 37 prime-time serials that appeared on network television through 1993. For each show, there is a season-by-season guide, providing start and end of the season, time slot, comprehensive cast and credits, and an episode guide.

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