Book review of Still Life: Contemporary Painters by Amber Creswell Bell. Thames & Hudson, November 2021. 272 p. ill. ISBN 9781760762025 (h/c/), $40.00. Reviewed September 2021 by Lindsey Reno, Acquisitions Librarian/Liaison, University of New Orleans, Earl K. Long Library, lreno@uno.edu.

Book review of Making History: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts edited by Nancy Marie Mithlo. University of New Mexico Press, October 2020. 296 p. ill. ISBN 9780826362094 (pbk.), $39.95. Reviewed September 2021 by Sara Quimby, Library Director, Institute of American Indian Arts Library, sara.quimby@iaia.edu.

Book review of How Photography Became Contemporary Art: Inside an Artistic Revolution from Pop to the Digital Age by Andy Grundberg. Yale University Press, April 2021. 296 p. Ill. ISBN 9780300234107 (h/c), $40.00. Reviewed September 2021 by Amy Lucker, Retired, New York University, luckeramy@gmail.com.

Review of Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories by Pamela A. Parmal, Jennifer M. Swope, and Lauren D. Whitley. MFA Publications (distributed by D.A.P.), June 2021. 240 p. ill. ISBN 9780878468798 (h/c), $45.00. Reviewed September 2021 by Beth Goodrich, Librarian, American Craft Council, bgoodrich@craftcouncil.org.

Book review of Domesticating the Invisible: Form and Environmental Anxiety in Postwar America by Melissa S. Ragain. University of California Press, January 2021. 264 p. ill. ISBN 9780520342825 (h/c), $65.00. Reviewed September 2021 by Michele Jennings, Art Librarian, Ohio University Libraries, mljennin@ohio.edu.

Review of Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World by Anna Arabindan-Kesson. Duke University Press, May 2021. 320 p. Ill. ISBN 97801478014065 (pbk.), $27.95. Reviewed September 2021 by Suzanne Sawyer, Preservation Specialist/MLIS Candidate, UNC Greensboro, s_sawyer@uncg.edu.

Book review of Barbara Kruger. Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. Edited with text by Peter Eleey et al. Delmonico Books and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (distributed by D.A.P.), June 2021. 208 p. ill. ISBN 9781942884774 (h/c), $60.00. Reviewed September 2021 by Dai Newman, Cataloguing and Instruction Librarian, Columbus College of Art…[Read more]

A review of Aesthetics of the Commons edited by Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder, and Shusha Niederberger published in the September 2021 issue of ARLIS/NA Reviews (https://reviews.arlisna.hcommons-staging.org).

A review of the 2020 book The Place of Many Moods: Udaipur’s Painted Lands and India’s Eighteenth Century by Dipti Khera for inclusion in the September 2021 issue of ARLIS/NA Reviews.

Dogma persists in aesthetic discourse in the assumptions that art consists primarily of objects, that these objects possess a special status, and that they must be regarded in a unique way. I claim that they are assumptive and misleading, while Carson opposes this by supporting the dogmas. I argue that Carlson begs the question (the relevance of…[Read more]

Traditional attempts to ground ethics may be seen to be governed by the intent to preserve established values even when they seem to be most rational and critical. This essay probes the connections of some of the most prominent justifications of ethical theories to the prevailing morality of the dominant social order. This claim is examined in…[Read more]

The sensuousness of perception leads us to recognize the role of the senses in aesthetic experience. Aesthetics has traditionally admitted the sensuous through sight and hearing but has excluded the contact senses of taste, smell, and especially touch. These contact senses challenge the place in traditional aesthetics of distance and…[Read more]

This is a comment on Marcia Eaton’s article interpreting Joseph Brodsky’s claim that “aesthetics is the mother of ethics.” Eaton challenges this claiming that they are conceptually interdependent, neither coming first. While Eton wishes to retain the metaphor, I argue in favor of Brodsky’s position, giving ethics priority.

Difficulties in dealing with values follow from the failure to distinguish clearly between values as characteristic kinds of human experiences and value judgments as statements about such kinds of experiences. Values originate in the basic conditions under which human beings conduct their lives at different times and places. Value judgments are…[Read more]

The assessment of normative issues must begin by examining basic human needs. Judgments do not create values but only recognize them. Such factual knowledge enables us to determine policy and guide actions, and the human sciences can contribute by identifying such structural universals. This can underlie efforts to establish moral beliefs and…[Read more]