A look at Danto's many discussions of the end of art and its meaning. Also examined is Hegel's idea of the end of art and his use of the dialectic to explain it. Both philosophers sought the meaning of art in the object or artwork--more so for Danto, because he thinks the object is a material one that would exclude conceptual artists' thought…

In this article, the author talks about art-house cinema, avant-garde film, and dramatic modernism. He believes that the most important modes of film practice are art-house cinema and the avant-garde, both of which contrast with the classical Hollywood mode of film practice. While the latter is characterized by its commercial imperative, corporate…

This study of Egyptian aesthetics interprets the historical and political context of artistic discourse in the early twentieth century. In a period marked by intense struggle between landlords and rural laborers during the Depression and World War II, I compare the rise of the Egyptian Surrealists from the late 1930s, and the Contemporary Art…

"Tragedy," both in what the author calls the strict and nuclear ancient Greek sense of the term (which does not imply that tragedy is clearly and distinctly defined, even in ancient Greece) and in the looser, derived sense of the word, has a long and compelling history. It is not only true that tragedy as practice and performance has a…

This article addresses shifts in the pedagogical positioning of art theory and art practice through the decades of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and considers how shifts to postdisciplinarity might inform practices in the art academy today. It considers legacies of modernity to disclose methodological and ideological scaffolds upon which studio art…

The methods by which environmental issues are aestheticized in late-twentieth-century film is directly and historically related to those established for grand manner painters by Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) and taught at the French academy from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. That these fundamentals were part of the training of…

Recent theories of the aesthetic appreciation of nature or natural environments have done much to clarify what might be essential to such appreciation. Such accounts are incomplete, however, as they depend on a strict separation between works of art and nature itself. This paper shows how classical Chinese landscape painting offers a way to…

This study of Egyptian aesthetics interprets the historical and political context of artistic discourse in the early twentieth century. In a period marked by intense struggle between landlords and rural laborers during the Depression and World War II, the author compares the rise of the Egyptian Surrealists, from the late 1930s, and the…

The "all-over" abstract canvases that Jackson Pollock produced between 1943 and 1951 present a pedagogical challenge in how to account for their apparently chaotic structure. One reason that they are difficult to teach about is that they have proved notoriously difficult for art historians to come to terms with. This is undoubtedly a consequence…

Museums have become a crucible for questions of the role that traditional art and art history should play in contemporary art. Friedrich Nietzsche argued in the nineteenth century that museums can be no more than mausoleums for effete (fine) art. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, curators dispelled such blanket pessimism by…

Rembrandt's art lends itself as a fertile resource for teaching and learning social studies. His art not only captures the social studies themes relevant to the Dutch Golden Age, but it also offers a description of human relations transcending temporal and spatial frontiers. Rembrandt is an imaginative storyteller with a keen insight for minute…

This article features an arts education curriculum project that was designed to use the oeuvre of Rembrandt van Rijn--seventeenth-century Dutch painter, etcher, and draftsman extraordinaire--as a teaching resource. A partnership of scholars, university professors, museum educators, and classroom teachers designed the project, which uses Rembrandt…

The artist and scientist have been depicted as polar opposites since Michelangelo claimed that Leonardo da Vinci was wasting time with foolish inventions while his art suffered. However, the artist taking on the role of the researcher has precedent. In the 1960s, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), led by Bell Labs' engineer Billy Kluver,…

The National Endowment for the Humanities funded the Rembrandt Project for the purpose of developing an online teaching resource that can provide a means for accessing Rembrandt's art and his world. The Web site for the project includes numerous links that direct teachers to American museums that hold paintings, etchings, or drawings by Rembrandt…

Among the harshest critiques ever received during my doctoral coursework came from a professor who was noticeably perturbed that I had researched and written a paper on an artwork without considering the title in the interpretation and analysis of the work. The professor insisted that the title is necessary to understand the piece. As a diligent…