How do we appreciate a work of art? Why do we like some artworks but not others? Is there no accounting for taste? Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to explore connections between art, mind, and brain, Shimamura considers how we experience art. In a thoughtful and entertaining manner, the book explores how the brain interprets art by engaging our sensations, thoughts, and emotions. It describes interesting findings from psychological and brain sciences as a way to understand our aesthetic response to art. Beauty, disgust, surprise, anger, sadness, horror, and a myriad of other emotions can occur as we experience art. Some artworks may generate such feelings rather quickly, while others depend on thought and knowledge. Our response to art depends largely on what we know--from everyday knowledge about the world, from our cultural backgrounds, and from personal experience. Filled with artworks from many traditions and time points, "Experiencing Art" offers insightful ways of broadening one's approach and appreciation of art.

How do we appreciate a work of art? Why do we like some artworks but not others? Is there no accounting for taste? Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to explore connections between art, mind, and brain, Shimamura considers how we experience art. In a thoughtful and entertaining manner, the book explores how the brain interprets art by engaging our sensations, thoughts, and emotions. It describes interesting findings from psychological and brain sciences as a way to understand our aesthetic response to art. Beauty, disgust, surprise, anger, sadness, horror, and a myriad of other emotions can occur as we experience art. Some artworks may generate such feelings rather quickly, while others depend on thought and knowledge. Our response to art depends largely on what we know--from everyday knowledge about the world, from our cultural backgrounds, and from personal experience. Filled with artworks from many traditions and time points, "Experiencing Art" offers insightful ways of broadening one's approach and appreciation of art.

The authors skillfully combine a philosophical and pragmatic approach, exploring the cognitive processes behind children’s painting. To deepen children’s understanding, the book suggests meaningful tasks for each phase of imagery and offers methods for encouraging children to discuss the concepts involved in their work. Focusing on children from 1-1/2 to 11, the authors include in this second edition: a more detailed discussion about painting in the preschool; an expanded description of techniques effective in motivating five- and six-year-olds; and a stronger emphasis on painting as a more central, rather than occasional, activity in all classrooms. “Experience and Art is a lean, wise, and useful book . . . that speaks to those who teach children.” —From the Foreword by Elliot W. Eisner

Art for Children Experiencing Psychological Trauma aims to increase understanding of art’s potential to enhance learning for children living in crisis. In this ground-breaking resource, the first of its kind to focus specifically on the connection between art education and psychological trauma in youth populations, readers can find resources and practical strategies for both teachers and other school-based professionals. Also included are successful models of art education for diverse populations, with specific attention to youth who face emotional, mental, behavioral, and physical challenges, as well a framework for meaningful visual arts education for at-risk/in-crisis populations.

Learn to understand, judge and experience art with EXPERIENCING ART AROUND US and its accompanying CD-ROM. Buser examines the traditional visual media of painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as recent areas such as urban design and preservation, photography and film. Integrating Western and non-Western art, this textbook will expose you to a wide variety of artistic works from around the world and provides up-to-date coverage of the contemporary art scene. Analyzing a single work from four different points of view, EXPERIENCING ART AROUND US will give you a wider variety of study aids than any other text on the market. The ArtExperience CD-ROM that comes with your text contains studio art demonstrations, interactive exercises that explore the foundations of art, and image flashcards, ideal for preparing for tests.

In this multidisciplinary book, Sanda Iliescu articulates a rich, multi-faceted approach to the aesthetic experience. Through in-depth discussions of her own lived encounters with art, architecture, and the world around her, she advocates a way of looking that blends sensory perception, formal analysis, social and political consciousness, and personal memory. Focusing special attention on the aesthetic concept of the figure-ground problem, the author challenges this foundational principle’s presumed hierarchies and shows how a new and more dynamic understanding of it can enhance our way of looking at and understanding art and architecture. Works discussed in the book include a wide range of contemporary and historic art and architecture, among them artworks by Rembrandt, Matisse, Eva Hesse, and David Hammons; architecture by Zaha Hadid, Peter Zumthor, and Weiss/Manfredi; and non-Western works such as a thirteenth-century Chinese vase and the Ryōanji dry garden in Kyoto, Japan. Personal and engaging, this book is for a wide audience of those practicing, studying, or with an interest in the creative fields, from beginners to seasoned professionals.

This book introduces art projects that resulted from unconventional explorations, curious experiments and their creative translations into sensorial experiences. Using electronic and digital art, bioart, sculpture and installations, sound and performance, the authors are removing boundaries between natural and artificial, real and imaginary, science and culture.The invited artists and researchers come from cutting-edge fields of art production that focuses on creating aesthetic experiences and performative situations. Their artworks create a spatial aesthetic experience for visitors by manifesting themselves in physical space. Experiencing the Unconventional is a unique selection of works by artists not based on formal similarities, but on investigative practices. It offers in-depth insights and first-hand working experiences into current production of art works at the edge of art, science and technology.

"Learning Mind: Experience Into Art is astonishing in its range of authors, depths of perception, and subjects, gliding elegantly among three thematic clusters, from 'Being of Being an Artist' to 'Making Art and Pedagogy' and, finally, to 'Experiencing Art.' The editors have brilliantly and imaginatively realized the promise of their anthology's tantalizing, terse title."--Moira Roth, author of Traveling Companions/Fractured Worlds "Jacob and Baas have gathered together an exceptional group of some of the most articulate writers about art of this generation, as well as some of the most intelligent, thoughtful, esteemed and socially engaged artists. The Learning Mind invites them to speak from their own experiences with art; what emerges are important biographical moments of insight about the way art is a device for transforming consciousness."--Jennifer Gonzalez, University of California, Santa Cruz

Across the nine thematic chapters of Experiencing Medieval Art, renowned art historian Herbert L. Kessler considers functional objects as well as paintings and sculptures; the circumstances, processes, and materials of production; the conflictual relationship between art objects and notions of an ineffable deity; the context surrounding medieval art; and questions of apprehension, aesthetics, and modern presentation. He also introduces the exciting discoveries and revelations that have revolutionized contemporary understanding of medieval art and identifies the vexing challenges that still remain. With 16 color plates and 81 images in all—including the stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, the mosaics of San Marco, and the Utrecht Psalter, as well as newly discovered works such as the frescoes in Rome’s aula gotica and a twelfth-century aquamanile in Hildesheim—Experiencing Medieval Art makes the complex history of medieval art accessible for students of art history and scholars of medieval history, theology, and literature.