Author(s): Sanda Iliescu

ARCHITECTURAL THEORY | ROUTLEDGE | ART THEORY | RECOMMENDED FOR STUDENTS

In this book, Sanda Iliescu brings aesthetics back into the conversation, exploring the subject through compelling examinations of lived experiences of works of art and architecture.  Written specifically for beginning students. The sometimes personal, sometimes intellectual and speculative form of the essays will be refreshing to readers accustomed to the more technical, jargon-laden approach of many academic texts and brings aesthetics back into the contemporary discourse about art and architecture – not in order to escape the necessity of political or historic al understandings of art and architecture, but to ground such approaches in our actual lived experience of works.

This book will appeal to readers who might not have much, or any, background in the plastic arts.  An important premise of this book is the idea that highly nuanced aesthetic concepts can be explored and presented in fairly simple and accessible prose and thus made accessible to this audience.  It takes an interdisciplinary approach, considering canonical works of art, but also many buildings, gardens, and works of design, arguing that well-designed functional objects can establish a special bridge between the fine arts and our everyday lives.

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.