Appearance and Reality
October 28, 2012
I realise that my life is full of contradictions. I’m shy yet I enjoy attention; high-intellect attracts me yet I’m also fond of comic books; I love to visit my roots yet I’m mostly found hidden away in the world of academe. Added to that is the struggle in which I’m perpetually caught between appearance and …
Quantities and Qualities
September 30, 2012
At a recent philosophy conference in Porto the organizers treated the delegates to a tour of some famous port wine cellars. We were shown the vintage wine collection, of which the company was very proud. Perhaps not realising we were philosophers, the tour guide asked if we had any questions. I’ve never understood what defined a wine as vintage …
Riefenstahl’s Olympia
July 5, 2012
Can art be beautiful even though it’s wrong or would its wrongness destroy its beauty? This rather abstract question of contemporary aesthetics is made concrete in the example of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s work. Riefenstahl was revolutionary, pioneering in the 1930s a number of cinematographic innovations. She used unusual angles on her subjects; she distorted the …
Mahler’s 2nd
March 26, 2012
Life, death, its meaning, resurrection. On Saturday 24th March an audience at Nottingham’s Albert Hall were treated to an insight into all of the above when they attended a performance of Mahler’s epic second symphony. The event was staged by the Lakeside Arts Centre and included around 200 performers from the University of Nottingham orchestra …
Equivalent VIII
December 18, 2011
What is art? Does it have a defining essence? Many have attempted to find it yet so many of the definitions seem flawed. Only a few hundred years ago, for instance, we thought of art as being about the faithful representation of a subject matter, such as in a portrait or landscape. But we are …
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