Call for Contributions and Guest Editors, 2022 ff.
For all the sections in our journal we generally invite submissions on any issue in aesthetics and the philosophy of the arts, taken broadly. We also invite reviews of recently published books in these areas. We can request for a review copy of books with the publisher if we do not have it handy yet. Please contact our reviews editor, Arthur Cools.
Next to a general call for papers, we also invite submissions in the themes specified below. Please find the relevant deadlines for submissions to the different sections below.
We also seek guest editors for Arts & Artists. The editorial board assists with reviewing the contributions in this section. Your selection of contributions may be in line with your own research interests.
(Mark specific deadlines for different sections)
CALLS FOR ARTICLES
7500 words maximum, reviewed anonymouslyWe welcome articles addressing questions about art and aesthetics. We particularly solicit contributions in upcoming issues of Aesthetic Investigations on the following themes.
In general, we invite guest editors with a strong view on a subject for a special issue. Please send an email to editor@aestheticinvestigations.eu elaborating your subject as well as your aptitude for helping us out as a guest editor.Arts, Ontology and Politics
(Guest editor: Jan Bierhanzl, Institute for Philosophy, Prague and Charles University, with Arthur Cools)
Deadline for submissions: 1 September 2022.
The aim of this issue is to explore the social meanings and the critical potentialities of artistic creation today and to discuss the contemporary theories that intend to account for it. We face today a difficult tension between the subversive dimensions of artistic creation and the instrumentalising, moralising and/or controlling dimensions of political activism. The subversive dimension is intrinsic to art’s autonomy but cannot account for its social meaning. Political activism reclames the social meaning of artistic creation but at the cost of art’s autonomy. This tension puts the social and critical potentialities of artistic creation under pressure. What does it mean today to be subversive as a work of art? (How) is art still capable of critically contributing to a (dis)sensus communis? (How) can art reveal truth today? In what ways is art entangled in power relations and in what ways does it become a means of resistance to power relations? In short, how to define the relations between arts and politics? It is clear that the answers to these questions imply each time an understanding of art. However, this understanding is itself part of the debate. We welcome contributions that address the kinds of questions mentioned above and develop them in relation to understanding art today, whether from a continental or an analytic perspective.
The problem of the building (Philosophy of Architecture)
(Guest editor: Paul Guyer, Jonathan Nelson Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at Brown University, with Rob van Gerwen and Sue Spaid)
Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2022.
The quality of our built environment tends to encourage lively debate. That is because all users of the built environment are direct stakeholders. As a result of this we all have an opinion about such things as the aesthetic of others imposed upon public space, about the relationship between the public and private practices, between the old and the new, innovation and imitation, we have opinions regarding issues of scale, materialisation, detail and their propriety when applied in a certain context, the experiential poverty of endless repetition or the arbitrary banality of diversity for its own sake, or indeed about the arrogating power implicit in any act of building, frequently unleashing painful social processes of gentrification and slummification. Perhaps a rappelle á l’ordre by the discipline of aesthetics to ground those opinions inferentially on a more secure basis could help those involved in the creation of the built environment to recalibrate some of those opinions. With this call for papers, you are invited to contribute to the journal, which will focus on these issues:
• Philosophical questions concerning the authority and inferential grounding of design decisions
• The role of aesthetics in architectural and urban design and design education and its relationship to ethical considerations
• The relationship between the practice of and the reflection upon architecture and urban design
Models and Sitters: The Art and Aesthetics of Posing
(Guest editors: Hans Maes, Aurélie Debaene, and C. A. York. All from University of Kent, Canterbury)
Deadline for submissions: 1 June 2023
There is an emerging debate within both the art world and academia that investigates and revalues the role of models in art practice, ranging from models in life drawing sessions, to models who pose in front of a camera or walk down a runway. Models have remained shrouded in an air of mystery, often relegated to the realm of private anecdotes or altogether absent from discussions of the art that they contributed to. This largely untouched area of research presents a valuable opportunity to assess past and ongoing practices within the arts. These practices consist of areas such as how models are viewed by artists and art schools, how they are (not) acknowledged in galleries and museums, and how their creativity may (not) be considered.
Like models, sitters for portraits also pose. And as is the case for models, the creative and artistic input of sitters has not always been recognized and has rarely been theorized. Here, too, we see a valuable opportunity to examine an important aspect of the artistic process and to investigate the role of the sitter along with the nature of posing.
The guest editors kindly invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, and welcome submissions which include, but are not limited to, explorations of:
• What is a pose?
• What are the differences in posing between models and sitters?
• How do modelling and artistic medium interact?
• Are athletic models any different from visual arts-based models?
• What is the collaborative significance of models within the arts?
• How do Western approaches to modelling and their representations differ from non-Western takes?
• Is modelling objectifying?
• How do stereotypes feed into practices of modelling and sitting?
• What are some of the ethical challenges that models and sitters encounter?
• Can modelling constitute an art form?
• What is the role of modelling in art education, and does this differ from professional art-making?
• How does the model’s identity affect the act of posing and eventual artwork?
• In what way can models and/or sitters be creative?
• Is the pose, as some have claimed, essential to the genre of portraiture?
• How can authenticity in portraiture be achieved if portraits necessarily involve posing?
• What is the relation between posing and fictionality?
• How does personal style – of the model or the sitter – enter into the act of modelling or sitting?
Evaluation and description
(Guest editor: Clint Verdonschot, with Sue Spaid)
Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2023
(more details to follow)
(Guest editors: Mateusz Salwa and Adam Andrzejewski)
Deadline for submissions: 1 June 2024.
(more details to follow)
CALLS FOR PAPERS IN ARTS & ARTISTS
3000 words max.Contributions to the Arts & Artists-section are not reviewed anonymously, and should not normally exceed 3000 words. For our Arts & Artists section we welcome short texts addressing questions about particular artists and their art. We particularly solicit papers attempting to initiate or refresh aesthetic discussion in our journal on the following themes:
Ongoing theme for Arts & Artists essays:
Which philosophical problem(s) do you feel you are dealing with in your art today? This may be expanded to: Which philosophical problem(s) is artist X dealing with in their art today?
Alternatively, you can seek to discuss an artist or œvre consistent with the call for the current special issue (see the calls for Articles, above).
CALLS FOR SHORT PAPERS IN FRESH
3500 words max.Contributions to the Fresh section are not reviewed anonymously, and should not normally exceed 3500 words. For our Fresh section we welcome short texts addressing questions about art and aesthetics. We particularly solicit papers attempting to initiate or refresh aesthetic discussion in our journal on the themes of our special issues, see above with the Articles; and on the following themes:
Ongoing theme for Fresh essays:
Why ... aesthetics / Why aesthetic ...(author to fill in the dots.)
What is your conception of aesthetics? Aesthetic Investigations requests philosophical responses (of no more than 3000 words) to our open-ended discussion on “Why ...Aesthetics”, inviting aestheticians to defend anything from evolutionary aesthetics, the reduction of aesthetics to the philosophy of perception, the tendency toward neuro-aesthetics, the search for wonder, the focus on surprise, or the objections to any of these.
