Aesthetics: Contemporary Theories

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Aesthetics Contemporary Theories
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Last Week

• The relevance of Intentions
• Intentional Fallacy
• Scrutiny vs Retrieval
• Postulated Author (Nehamas)

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This Week Style

• General Style
• Individual Style
• Signature

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Jenefer Robinson on Style

• Reading 52

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Individual Style

• Expresses a coherent set of attitudes, quality of
  mind etc. which seem to belong to the artist
• IMPLIED ARTIST (cf Nehamas mentioned in footnote
  9. p.625).

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Individual Style

• Always a way of doing something
• Involves relative consistency
• Only implied artist cf Tolstoy the implied
  author is compassionate even if real man was
  intolerant

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Only some features stylistic

• Reject style/content distinction what can be as
  important stylistically as how (cf Goodman
  quotation p.624).
• Same features can be a stylistic element for one
  artist, not for another
• Take into account the oeuvre

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Style vs Signature

• Signature is just a clue to who did it
• Style is an expression of implied personality