Aesthetics and Painting introduces and opens up current debates and ideas in the aesthetics of painting. At the book's center is an investigation of the complex relationship between what a painting depicts and the means by which it is depicted. The book looks at: how and why painting may be distinguished from other art forms; the relationship between the painted surface and the depicted subject; the "rules of representation" specific to painting; abstract art and nonrepresentational painting; the most recent technological and aesthetic developments and their implications; the role of the artist-and that of the spectator. A sophisticated treatment of major ideas in art and philosophy, Aesthetics and Painting remains highly readable throughout, offering a clear and coherent account of the nature of painting as an art form.

Praised in its original edition for its up-to-date, rigorous presentation of current debates and for the clarity of its presentation, Robert Stecker's new edition of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art preserves the major themes and conclusions of the original, while expanding its content, providing new features, and enhancing accessibility. Stecker introduces students to the history and evolution of aesthetics, and also makes an important distinction between aesthetics and philosophy of art. While aesthetics is the study of value, philosophy of art deals with a much wider array of questions including issues in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, as well value theory. Described as a 'remarkably unified introduction to many contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art,' Stecker specializes in sympathetically laying bear the play of argument that emerges as competing views on a topic engage each other. This book does not simply present a controversy in its current state of play, but instead demonstrates a philosophical mind at work helping to advance the issue toward a solution.

A distinguished group of scholars here probes the complex structure of aesthetic responses to nature in a discussion enriched with insights from art history, literary criticism, geography and philosophy. Exploring the interrelation among nature, beauty and art, they show that natural beauty is impregnated with concepts derived from the arts and from particular accounts of nature. The distinction and relation between art and nature are questioned, and the volume culminates in philosophical studies of the role of scientific understanding, engagement and appreciation in aesthetics.

How can we understand art and its impact? Gary Iseminger argues that the function of the practice of art and the informal institution of the artworld is to promote aesthetic communication. He concludes that the fundamental criteria for evaluating a work of art as a work of art are aesthetic. After considering other practices and institutions that have aesthetic dimensions and other things that the practice of art does, Iseminger suggests that art is better at promoting aesthetic communication than other practices are and that art is better at promoting aesthetic communication than it is at anything else. Iseminger bases his work on a distinction often blurred in contemporary aesthetics, between art as a set of products"works of art"and art as an informal institution and social practice—the artworld. Focusing initially on the function of the artworld rather than the function of works of art, he blends elements from two of the most currently influential philosophical approaches to art, George Dickie's institutional theory and Monroe Beardsley's aesthetic theory, and provides a new foundation for a traditional account of what makes good art.