Description
Whitney Davis is a wonderful art historian with a supple mind, a feel for the broader humanities, and deep interests in philosophy, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis. He is also a scholar with a profound knowledge of the history of queer theory and gay life. These qualities and interests make him the ideal--perhaps uniquely ideal--person to write this book. -- Daniel Herwitz, University of Michigan, author of The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption In Queer Beauty, Whitney Davis inspires us to view Kant--and all aesthetics--differently. Davis critiques 'disinterestedness' and other modern concepts to show that they sustain sexuality and aesthetics in recursive relationships. Who else but Davis could give a philosophical account of the genealogy of sexuality and aesthetics that, politically, allows homoerotically inclined viewers to '(re)discover their participation in the dynamical constitution of ideals of beauty' and, ethically, reveals that a task of art is the idealization of erotic sociability 'that might eventually ensure that humanity will flourish rather than decline?' Who else could invoke the 'sniper' of the 'Monk's Head' orchid as a metaphor to give queer beauty and beauty queered their philosophical due and forever change our thinking about sexuality and aesthetics? -- Michael Kelly, University of North Carolina
About the Author
Whitney Davis is professor of history and theory of ancient and modern art at the University of California at Berkeley. Educated at Harvard University, he is the author of A General Theory of Visual Culture, along with five other books on prehistoric, ancient, and modern arts and art theory, as well as on the history and theory of sexuality.
Reviews
... A difficult but thrilling book to read. -- Kevin Ohi, Boston College Victorian Studies
Book Information
ISBN 9780231146906
Author Whitney Davis
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press