具体描述
Arthur Danto's assessment of the achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe is a lucid and graceful introduction to a controversial artist by the most distinguished philosophical critic of the arts in our time. While fully addressing the most public dimensions of Mapplethorpe's career—the branding of his work as pornography and the legal and censorship issues that surround the exhibition of his photographs—Danto's essay breaks with common responses by offering a fascinating and deeply sympathetic account of Mapplethorpe's aesthetics.
In Playing with the Edge, Arthur Danto returns the discussion of Mapplethorpe to a consideration of his artistic legacy. He refuses to retreat from the sexual content of Mapplethorpe's images, claiming that the content and the artistic character of the photographs simultaneously invite and deflect the charges of pornography and together define the importance of Mapplethorpe's work. Danto discerns the images' uniqueness in the relation of trust between the photographer and his subjects.
Through a fascinating exploration of the relation of Mapplethorpe's images to those of other artists (Titian, Sherman, Winogrand, Cartier-Bresson, Golub) Danto presents a compelling argument for Mapplethorpe's enduring position in the history of art, no less than the history of our times.
FROM THE BOOK:"There is a tension at the heart of Robert Mapplethorpe's art, verging on paradox, between its most distinctive content and its most distinctive mode of presentation. The content of the work is often sufficiently erotic to be considered pornographic, even by the artist, while the aesthetic of its presentation is chastely classic—it is Dionysiac and Apollonian at once. The content cannot have been a serious possibility for a major artist at any previous moment in history. It is particular to America in the 1970s, a decade Mapplethorpe exemplifies in terms of his values, his sensibilities, and his attitudes."
作者简介
Arthur Danto is Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and art critic for The Nation. He is the author of more than 15 books, including Encounters and Reflections, 1990 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism.
目录信息
"Calmly reasoned and beautifully measured, Danto's essay is a paradigm of how serious art criticism ought to proceed should it wish to bring us to see the taste, the delicacy, the complexity and the moral uncertainty of an art object such as Mapplethorpe's."—Daniel Herwitz, California State University, Los Angeles
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读后感
From Publishers Weekly The erotically candid photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, became the focus for the controversy over federal funding of the arts. Danto, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia and an art critic for the N...
From Publishers Weekly The erotically candid photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, became the focus for the controversy over federal funding of the arts. Danto, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia and an art critic for the N...
From Publishers Weekly The erotically candid photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, became the focus for the controversy over federal funding of the arts. Danto, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia and an art critic for the N...
From Publishers Weekly The erotically candid photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, became the focus for the controversy over federal funding of the arts. Danto, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia and an art critic for the N...
From Publishers Weekly The erotically candid photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, became the focus for the controversy over federal funding of the arts. Danto, professor emeritus of philosophy at Columbia and an art critic for the N...
用户评价
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这本书的阅读过程，对我而言更像是一场高强度的智力体操。它没有冗余的铺垫，直击核心问题，那种干净利落的论证方式让人倍感痛快。我发现自己经常需要停下来，反复琢磨某些段落的深层含义，因为它所探讨的议题往往跨越了学科的界限，涉及到心理学、社会学、甚至一点点混沌理论的影子。作者的视角非常独特，他似乎总能看到别人看不到的那些“不和谐音”，并且能将其编织成宏大叙事的一部分。书中关于“适应性学习”的论述尤其精彩，它强调的不是如何快速融入，而是如何在融入的过程中，保留自身的独特性并不断对环境施加影响。对于职场中感到受限的专业人士来说，这本书无异于一剂强心针，它不仅提供了思考的框架，更重要的是，它提供了采取行动的勇气——那种基于深刻理解而非盲目冲动的勇气。它让我意识到，真正的创新往往发生在那些被主流忽视的角落里。
这本书的结构布局和内容密度达到了一个令人惊叹的平衡点。它不像一些学术专著那样让人望而却步，也不像一些通俗读物那样流于表面。作者似乎拥有一种魔力，能够将那些原本分散在不同领域的观察和见解，精准地汇聚到一个核心主题下，让读者清晰地看到各个要素之间的相互作用力。阅读过程中，我时常会联想到自身过往的一些决策失误或错失良机，这本书提供了一个后见之明下的分析工具，帮助我理解当时自己为何会受到现有框架的限制。特别是书中对群体行为中“沉默的共识”如何形成和瓦解的剖析，极其精妙，它揭示了许多社会现象背后的无形推手。这本书更像是一份邀请函，邀请那些对“现状”感到不满，并愿意付出努力去理解和重塑自身处境的人，一起参与到这场持续不断的“试探与重构”的游戏之中。
如果用一个词来形容这本书的感受，那就是“清醒”。它像一盆冷水，浇灭了许多关于成功学的虚假热情，转而引导读者去直面现实中那些复杂、模糊、充满灰色地带的真实挑战。作者的写作风格非常冷静克制，很少使用煽情的词汇，但正是这种克制，使得每一个论点都显得掷地有声，具有强大的说服力。我特别喜欢书中对于风险评估和机会捕捉的讨论，它并非教你如何规避风险，而是教你如何量化风险，并将其转化为可控的“输入变量”。这本书在阐释复杂概念时所展现出的精准度和优雅性令人印象深刻，它没有降低读者的智力门槛，反而要求读者投入同等的专注度来解码其中的智慧。这本书读起来需要时间和心力，但它给予读者的回报是巨大的——一种对不确定世界的掌控感和从容不迫的态度。
