Since its settlement by British colonists in the 17th century, the North Fork of Long Island, New York has attracted artisans of all types, from cabinet makers to clock-makers and builders to boatwrights. Beginning in the mid-19th century, American artists began to explore the area in depth, visiting its picturesque towns and villages, its untouched landscapes and pristine coastlines. Later, many of these visiting artists built or bought properties on the North Fork, and made it a place to call home. "A Shared Aesthetic" explores the history of the many painters, printmakers and sculptors who lived, worked and exhibited on the North Fork. It documents over three-hundred years of the rich artistic and cultural history of the area through original letters, diaries, photographs, and the artworks themselves. 127 colour & 42 b/w illustrations

This book examines the incorporation of newly accessible mass media into practices of religious mediation in a variety of settings including the Pentecostal Church and Islamic movements, as well as the use of religious forms and image in the sphere of radio and cinema.

The Aesthetic Animal answers the ultimate questions of why we adorn ourselves, embellish our things and surroundings, and produce art, music, song dance, and fiction. Humans are aesthetic animals that spend vast amounts of time and resources on seemingly useless aesthetic activities. However, nature would not allow a species to waste precious time and effort on activities completely unrelated to survival, reproduction, and the well-being of that species. Consequently, the aesthetic impulse must have some important biological functions. A number of observations indicate that the aesthetic impulse is an inherent part of human nature, and therefore a primary impulse in its own right with several important functions: The aesthetic impulse may guide us toward what is biologically good for us, and help us choose the right fitness enhancing items in our surroundings. It is a valid individual fitness indicator as well as a unifying social group marker, and aesthetically skilled individuals get more mating possibilities, higher status and more collaborative offers. The book is written in a lively and entertaining tone, with beautiful color illustrations. It covers a wide field of aesthetic behaviors from cave art, graffiti, tattoos, and piercings over fashion, design, music, song, and dance. It presents an original and comprehensive synthesis of the empirical field, synthesizing data from archeology, cave art, anthropology, biology, ethology, behavioral- and evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics. It is a must-read for people interested in biology, psychology, anthropology, architecture, design, fashion, body culture, art, and the evolution of aesthetics.

Recent calls for a return to aesthetics occur precisely at a moment when it is increasingly evident that nothing concerning aesthetics is self-evident anymore. Determined to recover the value of aesthetic experience for artistic, cultural, and social analysis, the contributors to this volume--prominent scholars in literature, philosophy, art history, architecture, history, and anthropology--begin from a shared recognition that ideological readings of the aesthetic have provided invaluable insights, in particular, that analyses of aesthetics within historical and social contexts tell us a great deal about the experience of aesthetic encounters. From multiple and complementary perspectives, the contributors address topics as varied as Nabokov and Dickens, Caravaggio and Shelley Winters, gender and sexuality, advertising and AIDS. Taken together, their essays constitute a sustained and multifarious effort to resituate aesthetic pleasure in the mixed, impure conditions characteristic of every social practice and experience, however privileged or marginalized, and to ask what happens to the aesthetic if we consider it apart from--or at least in tension with--its historically dominant discursive formulations. As such, this volume establishes a renewed sense of aesthetic discourse and its usefulness as a tool for understanding culture.

Gerald C. Cupchik builds a bridge between science and the humanities, arguing that interactions between mind and body in everyday life are analogous to relations between subject matter and style in art. According to emotional phase theory, emotional reactions emerge in a 'perfect storm' whereby meaningful situations evoke bodily memories that unconsciously shape and unify the experience. Similarly, in expressionist or impressionist painting, an evocative visual style can spontaneously colour the experience and interpretation of subject matter. Three basic situational themes encompass complementary pairs of primary emotions: attachment (happiness - sadness), assertion (fear - anger), and absorption (interest - disgust). Action episodes, in which a person adapts to challenges or seeks to realize goals, benefit from energizing bodily responses which focus attention on the situation while providing feedback, in the form of pleasure or pain, regarding success or failure. In high representational paintings, style is transparent, making it easier to fluently identify subject matter.

When the masks come off, only one law matters... Half-human. Half-succubus. All work and no play. Ambitious prosecutor Lily Knight fights like a demon in the courtroom, but she's as dangerous to herself as others. Touch-starved by choice, she refuses to live beholden to any lover. "Innocent" doesn't describe Sebastian Ritter's craving for dominance in bedroom and boardroom. But one brush of his fingers over her skin tells Lily that he didn't commit the horrific crime he's charged with. With her life and secrets on the line, Lily races to find the real culprit. From the infuriating incubus who taught her to tempt and take, to intrigues and indiscretions at a masked cabaret, each unraveling thread entangles her further in a perilous game of seduction and lies. To survive, she must embrace her power, unleash her hunger, and surrender control...at the risk of becoming the monster she fears most of all. Cambion's Law offers trope-flipping paranormal suspense, modern noir fantasy, and dark romantic tension with a slow burn, subversive power dynamic grounded in mutual consent. Perfect for fans of Book of Azrael, Ninth House, and TV's Jessica Jones or Lucifer.

Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.-Friedrich Schiller Only through Beauty's morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge. - Friedrich Schiller Friedrich Schiller Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom. Friedrich Schiller - - Friedrich Schiller

Rupert Maas of the Maas Gallery in London, which was founded fifty years ago by his father Jeremy, a pioneer dealer in Victorian painting and sculpture, also acts as an expert for the ̀Antiques Roadshow', on Victorian and twentieth-century art. --Book Jacket.

This collection of essays explores the ancient affinity between the mathematical and the aesthetic, focusing on fundamental connections between these two modes of reasoning and communicating. From historical, philosophical and psychological perspectives, with particular attention to certain mathematical areas such as geometry and analysis, the authors examine ways in which the aesthetic is ever-present in mathematical thinking and contributes to the growth and value of mathematical knowledge.

To "look good" and to "be good" have traditionally been considered two very different notions. Indeed, philosophers have seen aesthetic and ethical values as fundamentally separate. Now, at the crossroads of a new wave of aesthetic theory, Marcia Muelder Eaton introduces this groundbreaking work, in which a bold new concept of merit where being good and looking good are integrated into one.