Beauty and the contemporary sublime

by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe

"Esteemed critic, painter, and writer Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe provides a provocative reconsideration of classic philosophical distinctions between beauty and the sublime. The author explores beauty in relation to a sublime now found in technology rather than in nature. He argues that the limitlessness, roughness, and temporality of the eighteenth-century sublime have given way to ideals of flawlessness and simultaneity derived from the influence of electronic media on art and popular culture. Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime investigates the representation and meaning of the beautiful, including its place in contemporary art, its morality, its relationship to femininity and masculinity, and its supposed inferiority in relation to the sublime."--Jacket.