In the course of its long and tumultuous history the sublime has alternated between spatial and temporal definitions, from its conceptualization in terms of the grandeur and infinity of Nature (spatial), to its postmodern redefinition as an "event" (temporal), from its conceptualization in terms of our failure to "cognitively map" the decentered global network of capital or the rhizomatic structure of the postmetropolis (spatial), to its neurophenomenological redefinition in terms of the new temporality of presence produced by network/real time (temporal). This volume explores the place of the sublime in contemporary culture and the aesthetic, cultural, and political values coded in it. It offers a map of the contemporary sublime in terms of the limits—cinematic, cognitive, neurophysiological, technological, or environmental—of representation.

This book is a critical interdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary visual culture and image studies, exploring ideas about space and place and ultimately contributing to the debates about being human in the digital age. The upward and downward pull seem in a constant contest for humanity’s attention. Both forces are powerful in the effects and affects they invoke. When tracing this iconological history, Amanda du Preez starts in the early nineteenth century, moving into the twentieth century and then spanning the whole century up to contemporary twenty-first century screen culture and space travels. Du Preez parses the intersecting pathways between Heaven and Earth, up and down, flying and falling through the concept of being “spaced out”. The idea of being “spaced out” is applied as a metaphor to trace the visual history of sublime encounters that displace Earth, gravity, locality, belonging, home, real life, and embodiment. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, media and cultural studies, phenomenology, digital culture, mobility studies, and urban studies.

International in scope, this volume brings together leading and emerging voices working at the intersection of contemporary art, visual culture, activism, and climate change, and addresses key questions, such as: why and how do art and visual culture, and their ethics and values, matter with regard to a world increasingly shaped by climate breakdown? Foregrounding a decolonial and climate-justice-based approach, this book joins efforts within the environmental humanities in seeking to widen considerations of climate change as it intersects with social, political, and cultural realms. It simultaneously expands the nascent branches of ecocritical art history and visual culture, and builds toward the advancement of a robust and critical interdisciplinarity appropriate to the complex entanglements of climate change. This book will be of special interest to scholars and practitioners of contemporary art and visual culture, environmental studies, cultural geography, and political ecology.

Often labelled as ‘indescribable’, the sublime is a term that has been debated for centuries amongst writers, artists, philosophers and theorists. Usually related to ideas of the great, the awe-inspiring and the overpowering, the sublime has become a complex yet crucial concept in many disciplines. Offering historical overviews and explanations, Philip Shaw looks at: the legacy of the earliest, classical theories of the sublime through the romantic to the postmodern and avant-garde sublimity the major theorists of the sublime such as Kant, Burke, Lyotard, Derrida, Lacan and Zizek, offering critical introductions to each the significance of the concept through a range of literary readings including the Old and New testaments, Homer, Milton and writing from the romantic era how the concept of the sublime has affected other art forms such as painting and film, from abstract expressionism to David Lynch’s neo-noir. This remarkably clear study of what is, in essence, a term which evades definition, is essential reading for students of literature, critical and cultural theory.

This book offers an unpredictable, humorous, and politically unconstrained perspective on today's heated debates about the meaning and role of beauty in art and contemporary society.

Artists such as Maya Lin, Roxy Paine, and Dustin Yellin show the impact of human interventionon our ecosystem through a mix of installations, video, photography, and sculpture. Natural Wonders spotlights the works of thirteen artists who work in various media to depict themes of nature—both its beauty and its more disquieting aspects—from painting and sculpture to 3-D landscapes and botanical replications to dioramas and lenticular prints. The range of works encourages us to be more attentive to our natural surroundings and address timely issues such as habitat loss, environmental toxins, bioengineering, and increasing alienation from nature. Ramljak’s essay provides a broad cultural and historical context for the contemporary artworks, complemented by artist statements and an interview between environmentally minded artists Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Art - Miscellaneous, grade: A, , course: BA (Hons) Fine Arts, language: English, abstract: In Robert Rosenblum’s book "Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko", Rosenblum traces a continuing tradition in art from the 18th century to the 1960s, which centres upon the term ‘sublime’. In the past many artists (amongst them Caspar David Friedrich, Turner, Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman) and theorists (amongst them Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Francois Lyotard) have explored the transcendental nature of the sublime in art. Today we live in an age that prides itself on the loss of illusion. Ideas of transcendence in art are often seen as sentimental and viewed with skepticism. The word sublime seems to be stripped down to “the shock of the new” (often centered on horror). This essay explores how the transcendental sublime is situated in contemporary art. The ‘transcendental sublime’ will here refer to how looking at a work of art can enable one to be transported, going beyond the given limits to a place of accessing one’s spiritual side. Art that has used shock and terror to achieve a sense of the sublime will be excluded from this discussion.