The invention of photography definitely changed our way of representing the world and the self. In this paper I try to show a portion of such transformation by way of regarding photography as a kind of narrative act. Painting is a 'depiction' by human eyes and hands, and depends on the particular cultural code of representation. But photography is the direct 'trace' of nature. According to C.S. Peirce, we could call the semiotic status of photographic image 'icon=index'. Photography as index does not imprint the reality of presence but that of 'once-was'. Moreover, to release the shutter means to put an end to a sequence of real incident. What photography imprints is the reality of 'once-was' and 'already-ended'. And the coherent incident structured by both the beginning and the end is a narrative by definition. Photography is the apparatus of structuring the reality as a fragment of narrative. What is, then, the peculiarity of the photographic narrative in contrast with other forms of narrative, such as painting, chronicle, history, fiction, reminiscence and the traditional narrative of self-image? That is the main subject of my paper.

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Beauty cannot be comprehended by definition. The proper way to understand beauty per se is self-knowledge. When one is asked 'what beauty is', one is asked at the same time 'what oneself is'. The most eminent beauty for Plato is that of virtue. The beauty of virtue is one of the strongest motivations of his philosophy. The task of 'Phaedrus' is to ask the possibility of understanding the rationality (logos) of this beauty by his method of philosophizing : dialektike. Plato names the power to philosophize 'love' (eros). But eros in the vulgar sense of the word is a mere sexual desire. Phaedrus, Socrates' interlocutor in this dialogue, is charmed uncritically (i.e. losing himself) by a beautiful discourse on eros composed by an orator named Lysias. Therefore, Socrates uncovers the narrowness and partiality of eros understood in this discourse and narrates the proper sense and work of it. Eros is the love of beauty or divine wisdom and this love is donated by beauty. Beauty is found at the beginning of and is situated in the end of philosophizing. Beauty is the coincident value of the beginning and the end. In this way, through examining the work and sense of eros, one can understand the rationality of beauty by dialektike. This enables one to be incarnated in eros. This means nothing else than the generation of philosophy which is the end of this dialogue.

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This essay attempts to explore the structural role of "anti-tautology" in T. W. Adorno's form conception through examining his transformation of Hegelian form-content relation. First, I analyse how Hegel's logic bears on Adorno's self-reflective critique. Adorno assimilates Hegel's "movement against immediacy" as his critical method. This movement caracterises their logical structures, and it enabled Hegel to elabo-late the form-content relation. However, Hegel's formulation could never be sufficient for Adorno. I secondly thematize in which point the latter's formulation of form differs from that of the former. As S. Zizek points out, Hegel determines form retroactively by "tautological gesture", so that every form is always-already mediated in the content. On the contrary, Adorno anticipates not-yet mediated anti-tautological form which will in turn mediate the past form-content relation. But significantly, he is well aware that the purest form (that only the avant-garde artworks may suggest) cannot be immediate but are always-already part of mediated content in our consciousness. This desperate aspiration for pure (void) form is supposed to urge the logic of creation of artists, Adorno himself, and our thinking.

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Fra Angelico, attivo gia nel 1417 come pittore Guido di Pietro, entro poco piu tardi nel convento di San Domenico. Fu chiamato Fra Giovanni, ma le sue mani e i suoi occhi erano quelli del pittore ; che tentava di creare consapevolmente delle immagini autenticamente devozionali per la vita dei frati Osservanti domenicani, nelle celle del dormitorio del nuovo convento di San Marco a Firenze, essendo perfettamente a conoscenza della sua costruzione e di ogni sua funzione. Negli affreschi delle celle dei novizi, raffigurando le varie forme di preghiera, "De modo orandi", il pittore si mostro attentissimo disegnatore degli atteggiamenti delle figure, e creo una nuova immagine di Santo Domenico che si aggrappa al Crocifisso. Cosi, per i frati predicatori, trasformo la Vita di Cristo e l'Incoronazione della Vergine in immagini contemplativi ispiranti meditazione e predica. In quanto agli affreschi nelle celle dei frati conversi, con naturalezza e sottile eloquenza delle figure, rese i soggetti sacri piu educativi e comprensibili ai frati meno colti. Gli Osservanti domenicani consideravano Fra Giovanni un predicatore visivo. Tra i quali ricordiamo Fra Antonino Pierozzi, operatore del proggeto di costruzione di San Marco, la cui estetica si avvicina a quella rinascimentale di Leon Battista Alberti. Gli affreschi nelle celle di San Marco sono vere e proprie immagini meditative dal pittore-frate, la sua verita contemplata.

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Historically, the marble sculptures of Antonio Canova (1757-1822) have been criticized from two opposite standpoints. On the one hand, Canova's severely neo-classicist contemporaries were critical of the exquisitely finished surfaces and the quality of sensuality of his work. Modernist art historians, on the other hand, decried a cold academicism in Canova's work. We should note, however, that these apparently divergent criticisms both take as their essential premise the transparency of the material surface. Moreover, they adhere to Albertian notions regarding the proper distance between the viewer and the work and the appreciation of simple sculptural outline (neo-classicists) on the one hand and the perception of the artist's self beneath the surface of the work (modernists) on the other. In Quatremere de Quincy's (1755-1849) defense of Canova's work, however, we find a fluid approach to sculptural appreciation which is bound to neither of these fixed views. In some cases, Quatremere sought out sculptural outline and in others he strained his eyes to see the modulation of the surface. Although we should not limit Quatremere's attitudes merely to the issue of the criticism, we should recognize that it was only by being stimulated by the surfaces of canova's sculpture in the first place that Quatremere formulated his approach.

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