Ad Infinitum Books
Seller Rating: 3
Location: Mount Vernon, NY
|
Good
|
297 pages. Hardcover with dustjacket. Good condition. ART. As Ellen Dissanayake argues in this [...]
297 pages. Hardcover with dustjacket. Good condition. ART. As Ellen Dissanayake argues in this stimulating and intellectually far-rangingbook, only by discovering the natural origins of the human need of art will we truly know what art is, what it means, and what its future might be. Describing visual display, poetic language, song and dance, music, and dramaticperformance as ways by which humans have universally, necessarily, and immemorially shaped and enhanced the things they care about, Dissanayake shows that aesthetic perception is not something that we learn or acquire for its own sake butis inherent in the reconciliation of culture and nature that has marked our evolution as humans. What "artists" do is an intensification and exaggeration of what "ordinary people" do, naturally and with enjoyment--as is evident inpremodern societies, where artmaking is universally practiced. Dissanayake insists that aesthetic experience cannot be properly understood apart from the psychobiology of sense, feeling, and cognition--the ways we spontaneously andcommonly think and behave. Includes an Index. (Key Words: Art, Humans, Rhythm, Ritual, Self-Transcendence, Ellen Dissanayake, People, Music Imagination, Enlightenment, Emotion, Dance, Empathy, Comfort).
|
$73.24
|
|