Description
Book SynopsisDetails why the arts encourage us to show that we care about important things
Trade Review"Ellen Dissanayake gives us a deep and even moving investigation of art’s capacity to touch every corner of our emotional lives."
-- Denis Dutton * Washington Post *
"Not since Dewey's Art as Experience has there been such an impressive effort to develop a naturalist aesthetics that also takes into account the experience of transcendence."
-- Thomas Leddy * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *
"Dissanayake offers an account of the origin of the arts and a cleverly argued case for a naturalist aesthetics. The premise is that 'the biological phenomena of love is originally manifested-expressed and exchanged-by means of emotionally meaningful rhythms and modes that are jointly created and sustained by mothers and their infants in ritualized, evolved interaction,' and that 'from these rudimentary and unlikely beginnings grow adult expressions of love, both sexual and generally affirmative, and the arts.'..The work draws on disciplines ranging from cultural anthropology and art history to evolutionary psychology and cognitive archaeology, with contributions from infant and developmental psychology and neuroscience..Well researched and interestingly written."
* Choice *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Love and Art
Mutuality
Belonging
Finding and Making Meaning
"Hands-on" Competence
Elaborating
Taking the Arts Seriously
Appendix: Toward a Naturalistic Aesthetics
Notes
References Cited
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
