Art and Identity: Essays on the Aesthetic Creation of Mind (Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, 32)

Book info: Art and Identity: Essays on the Aesthetic Creation of Mind (Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, 32) (Paperback, 228 pages) – Brill, 2013. Language: English.

Art has the capacity to shape and alter our identities. It can influence who and what we are. Those who have had aesthetic experiences know this intimately, and yet the study of art’s impact on the mind struggles to be recognized as a centrally important field within the discipline of psychology. The main thesis of Art and Identity is that aesthetic experience represents a prototype for meaningful experience, warranting intense philosophical and psychological investigation. Currently psychology remains too closed-off from the rich reflection of philosophical aesthetics, while philosophy continues to be sceptical of the psychological reduction of art to its potential for subjective experience. At the same time, philosophical aesthetics cannot escape making certain assumptions about the psyche and benefits from entering into a dialogue with psychology. Art and Identity brings together philosophical and psychological perspectives on aesthetics in order to explore how art creates minds. Editorial Reviews Review "Art and Identity is a book any scholar working the field of art or psychology should read. Those invested in the visual arts and the psychology of emotions and experience will find in it a wealth of sources and material. For those invested in literature, this book will prove resourceful as a stepping stone to further their research." - Aleksandar Kordis, in: The European Legacy, 21:5-6 About the Author Tone Roald is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, where she also obtained her Ph.D. in psychological aesthetics. She has been a visiting fellow at Stanford and has previously written Cognition in Emotion: An Investigation through Experiences with Art (2008), also published by Rodopi.
Johannes Lang is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, working on social-psychological aspects of genocide. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, and was one of the recipients of the Danish Research Council’s ‘Young Elite Researcher’ awards for 2011.