This paper aims to clarify characteristics of aesthetic experience of blind people. Aesthetics has long treated the blind as people who have extraordinary ability of sense of touch under the strong influence of Molyneux’s problem. As Derrida advocated, sense of touch has played a fundamental role in the tradition of Western metaphysical thought because it can grasp an essence directly without any interference of preconception. This study questions this connection between blind people and sense of touch by conducting field research. The result of interview shows that blind people rather tend to avoid to touch objects by hand so as to follow the code of conduct of sighted people. Instead, they like to use another sense modality such as audition or sense of smell. Of course they sometimes rely on sense of touch too, but the way of using it is completely different from what aesthetics has expected to be. This misunderstanding about blind people was strengthened because aesthetics has referred to them only in the limited context and has paid little attention to their real life. This paper argues the possibility of aesthetical approach to handicapped people and evaluates its significance from the viewpoint of disability studies.

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One of Jacques Rancière’s contributions to aesthetics is his re-reading of the history of aesthetics. Rancière refers to the regime that has identified art as “art” since the end of the 18th century as “the aesthetic regime of art.” Against the short divisions of art history by modernism or postmodernism, he seeks to describe the long term. For Rancière, ideas of “modernism” and “postmodernism” need critique because the two cannot treat general transformations in the aesthetic regime of art. We will explain how his thinking can renew the discourses of modernism and postmodernism. This essay first examines the pre-existing modernist and postmodernist thinking that Rancière criticizes. It then deals with his view of the history of art history by reading Le partage du sensible. This reading aims to emphasize the work’s originality with regard to modernist and postmodernist thinking. We finally investigate his analysis of political art in Malaise dans l’esthétique, whose arguments offer us a new point of view fot reconsidering contemporary political art. We conclude this essay by stating that Rancière recognizes the political effectiveness of the “mixtures” of the heterogeneous that fundamentally characterize the aesthetic regime.

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My paper shows one of the textual sources for the wall painting of the temple of Fortuna Virile (the church of Santa Maria di Secundicerio) (Italy, Rome, 872-882) which presents the Marian cycle with her last days, the story of St. Basil and the story of Mary of Egypt. This is the oldest example, which presents the Last Days of the Virgin Mary - the Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin by Christ, the Departure of the Apostles, and the Arrival of the Apostles - therefore it is important to discover its textual source. First of all, I point out that one of the Apostles is departing from his grave to attend Mary’s death in the scene of the Departure of the Apostles. Secondly, I indicate that this unique episode is found in a Greek text, which is written by pseudo St. John in the early 6th century. All stories of this temple are based on the Greek texts, therefore this wall painting might suggest the lost Greek visual culture has been persecuted by iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire.

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Alberti’s impresa called the Winged Eye, carved in relief in his self-portrait plaque and medals, also drawn on some manuscripts from the end of 1420’s and the 1430’s, was described by Wind (1958) as the divine and awful God’s eye and is like a mystic Egyptian hieroglyph. Alberti was influenced by the discovery of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica in 1419, and studied about hieroglyphs in the 1420s’ from Fracesco Filelfo, who was translating Pultarch’s Moralia that contains On the Worship of Isis and Osiris. However, it is also interpreted as a human eye since the Winged Eye is linked to the words “QUID TVM” from a poem by Virgil. In Alberti’s text of Anuli, the Winged Eye is a symbol of god and has human qualities such as prudence and providence. The Winged Eye is a Chimera-type image influenced by Egyptian and Greco-Roman cultures and is based on Egyptian hieroglyph’s eye and their amulets, as well as Roman coin reliefs of Octavianus in 38 BC, evil eyes and the Roman Winged Phallus amulets. The author suggests that when Alberti created the Winged Eye, he applied the Greek word “symbollon” which originally means “to throw together.”

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Pietro Perugino wurde in den 1480er-Jahren von Theologen Baltori ein Altarwerk in Rom in Auftrag gegeben. Diese Kreuzigung, die nach ihrem Besitzer Fürsten Galizin Galitzin-Triptychon genannt wurde, ist eine Verbindung von den meditativen Bildthemen mit der naturalistischen Ästhetik. Schon wiesen F.Hartt und J.Wood auf einen großen Einfluß der niederländischen Malerei auf das Altarbild Peruginos hin. Aber sie nahmen keine Notiz von den gefühlvollen Figurendarstellungen von Hl.Maria und Hl.Johannes. Der Verfasser bemerkte die Ähnlichkeit zwischen dieser Figurendarstellung des Hl.Johannes und derjenigen in dem Triptychon von Niccolò da Foligno in der Pinacoteca Vaticana. Die Kreuzigung Niccolòs hat eine Zusammanhang mit derjenigen der Eyckischen Schule in der Cà d’Oro zu Venedig. Es ist bewährt, dass die Figurenkomposition dieser Kreuzigung das Abbild von der Kreuzigungsminiatur in jenen Heures de Milan ist. Niccolò da Foligno wird als einer der Meister Peruginos in seiner Umbrien-Zeit betrachtet. Aus diesem Grunde kommt es zu dem Schluß, dass Perugino für die Darstellung der Galitzin-Kreuzigung auch das Vorbild der Eyckischen Schule verwendet hat. Peruginos Altarbild konnte deswegen die Doppelfunktion eines Andachtsbildes erfüllen: die religiöse Versenkung und den optischen Charme.

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Bezmiâlem Valide Sultan Mosque (commonly known as Dolmabahçe Mosque, 1852- 1855, Istanbul) has not been properly valued in the history of Ottoman architecture. The prevalent view is that Ottoman mosques of the 18th and 19th centuries degenerated from the Golden Age because more importance was attached to decoration rather than structure under European influences, thereby breaking with the Ottoman tradition. However, this mosque shares, along with European elements, the following essential characteristics with the Ottoman mosques of the Golden Age: (1) The unified space of the prayer hall formed by the single dome without any elements dividing the space; (2) the effects of the surroundings and the opening of the prayer hall, as well as the overall construction of the mosque; and (3) The rectangle form topped by a semicircle found in every part of the mosque, like the building’s form, windows, piers, and arches, among others.

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Degas, famous for his dancer paintings, also intensively worked on landscapes in 1869, 1890-93 and c.1895-98. Previous studies emphasized elements of next-generation art such as Fauvism or Cubism appear in the arbitrary colors and distorted space in the landscapes depicted in Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme during the period of c.1895-98. This paper, first, compares the landscapes of c.1895-98 with of 1892 depicting scenery from moving train compartment. In the landscapes of 1892, it is clear that description of the foreground is vaguer than that of the background for speed of a train, and we can argue that this is also the case with the landscapes of c.1895-98. Second, through comparison of four Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme landscapes depicting the identical place with actual view, it will be shown that Degas drew them changing his standing locations on the same road. Seeing these in certain order, we have the impression that we walk further and further on the road as the hindmost house in each landscape is getting bigger. Thereby, it is concluded that Degas captured not only moving objects like dancers and racehorses but still objects which change by his move. Representation of such to-andfro motion is unique among his other landscapes.

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This paper clarified the significance of ‘Philosophy of Anthropophagy’ by a Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) in Tropicália, his work of art in 1967. He was one of the most representative artists of Brazil. His works were characterized by spatial involvement with a viewer or a viewer’s active participation. Tropicália might be one of the most important things in his works and was considered to be a ‘cannibalistic’ work affected by Oswald de Andrade, a Brazilian critic and poet. Oiticica accepted this opinion too. On Tropicália, however, Oiticica described that he was devoured by this work, while Andrade as an ideal ‘cannibal’ attempted to devour and absorb the western culture. This study started with this problem. At first, I overviewed Oiticica’s career and Tropicália and showed a problem with this work. Oiticica wrote his experience with a television set in Tropicália. This experience was problematic for ‘Philosophy of Anthropophagy’. Second, I analysed the experience from the point of view of “invasiveness”. Finally, I clarified the significance of the result caused by that invasiveness in terms of “Aesthetics of the devoured”.

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Peter Kivy claims, from his early works, that music cannot arouse “garden-variety emotion” such as joy, anger, fear, sadness. According to him, the emotion aroused by music is a special “musical emotion”; the object of this emotion is always music. This claim seems to be counterintuitive and thus elicits many objections from philosophers, musicologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and artists. However, I will argue that Kivy’s position is most plausible given the philosophy of emotion. Especially, I will show that there is no emotion deserving to be called “sadness” that is aroused by music. By appealing to philosophical considerations on emotion, I will support the following two points that Kivy emphasizes. The first is the lack of an object. There are no sad things (no loss) while we listen to music. If sadness does not occur, the lack of an object makes no matter. The second point is the paradox of negative emotion. Sadness has a negative value and we prefer to avoid it. If we can accept this, why then, are we willing to listen to music that make us sad? Again, if sadness does not occur, there arises no paradox.

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This paper clarifies Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu’s usage of the repeat sign and considers the influence of other works from the same period and his aesthetic change. In the 1960s, Takemitsu uses the repeat sign in two ways. One of the usages works as the base of “Tone Cluster” and introduces high level “Indeterminacy”. The other is inspired by the technique of the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski and introduces low level “Indeterminacy” under the control of the composer. In the latter case, the repeat sign enables each player to play independently and creates the asynchronous sound. This usage is continued in the next decade. In the 1970s, a number of passages in which different cycles and tempi accumulate simultaneously are repeated. In spite of his instruction of tempi and notes, the entire sound cannot be predicted exactly, as each passage is repeated many times, so this repetition also introduces a controlled “Indeterminacy”. In the 1980s, Takemitsu came close to Steve Reich’s “Phase-Shifting” technique. Reich’s technique implies strong “Determinacy”, and thus we can see the change in Takemitsu’s aesthetic here. While in prior works, he placed more value on “Indeterminacy”, in this period, he treated “Determinacy” and “Indeterminacy” relatively.

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