Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art

The definitive statement on aesthetics and the history of modernism from one of France's most renowned philosophers. Composed of a series of scenes that defined modernism, Aisthesis takes its reader from Dresden in 1764 to New York in 1941. Along the way, we view the Belvedere Torso with Winckelmann, accompany Hegel to the museum and Mallarmé to the Folies-Bergère, attend a lecture by Emerson, visit exhibitions in Paris and New York, factories in Berlin, and film sets in Moscow and Hollywood. Rancière uses these sites and events to ask what becomes art and what comes from it. This incisive study provides a history of artistic modernity far removed from the conventional postures of modernism.