The discipline of aesthetics, founded by Baumgarten in the mid-18th century, is said to have been developed by a number of renowned philosophers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, a close reading of their texts reveals that none of them called their theories ‘aesthetics’. Rather, they even differentiate their own theories from aesthetics. So what exactly was ‘aesthetics’ at the time? Aesthetics at the time was not regarded as an advanced, free philosophical discussion of sensibility, beauty or art, but rather as a theory of technique, one of the basic disciplines at the university. This paper clarifies the actual image of aesthetics at the time, based on the aestheticsrelated books published at the time and materials such as university lecture catalogues and textbooks. The results show that (1) for more than 20 years after its foundation, few books entitled ‘aesthetics’ were published in the public domain and lectures of aesthetics were not fully implemented until the mid-1770s; (2) aesthetics was a German local discipline linked to the German university system until the early 19th century; and (3) its establishment as a philosophical discipline and its spread throughout Europe required Hegel’s aesthetics—even

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In the 1570s, Mannerist painter Alessandro Allori (1535-1607) composed an arttheoretical treatise, Ragionamenti delle Regole del Disegno d’Alessandro Allori con M. Agnolo Bronzino, structured as a pedagogical dialogue between himself and his master, Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72). Although the text offers a valuable contemporary account of sixteenth-century Florentine art theory and practice, the relationship between Allori’s theoretical discourse and his artistic practice, as well as the formative influence of Bronzino, remains insufficiently explored. Previous studies have primarily approached it as an instructional manual or contrasted it with Giorgio Vasari’s metaphysical conception of disegno. This paper first reassesses the Florentine pictorial tradition that likely served as Allori’s model, in order to explore his ideals of drawing and form. Second, through comparative analysis of the text and selected works, it interprets Allori’s theory as a development within the disegno discourse rooted in Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura (1436). Third, it clarifies the distinctive features of Allori’s concept of drawing by contrasting it with that of Vasari. Finally, it elucidates the historical dimension of Allori’s text, which previous studies have left insufficiently clarified, by analyzing it in light of Bronzino’s influence.

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Grayson Perry, winner of the 2003 Turner Prize, is an artist best known for his use of craft mediums, particularly pottery. This paper examines how Perry positioned himself within the art world of his time, focusing on the complex interplay between his early pottery works and broader trends in art and craft. His early works are characterised by aggressive and provocative imagery. While previous research has interpreted these works as externalizations of his fantasy world or fetishism, this paper proposes reinterpreting them as attempts at strategic positioning within the art world, rather than merely personal expressions, considering their relationship to contemporary art trends and the rise of craft criticism from the 1990s to the 2000s. To this end, this paper analyses Perry’s provocative imagery to reveal his intention to engage with art historical discourse, and examines how he leveraged the marginal position of ceramics in the Anglo-American art world. It argues that Perry’s use of ceramics as a craft medium served both as a subversive challenge to art world hierarchies and as a means of capitalising on the emerging revaluation of craft practices during that period.

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This essay examines the film audience movement conceived by filmmakers Noda Shinkichi (1913-1993) and Matsumoto Toshio (1932-2017). Noda and Matsumoto, through their collaborative work within the Kiroku Eiga Sakka Kyokai (Documentary Filmmakers Association) and the Eizo Geijutsu no Kai (Association for Film Art), exploring issues of filmmakers’ subjectivity and new methodologies for documentary films. However, the history of their involvement in the audience movement, particularly through the activities of cine clubs and independent screenings, remains underexplored in previous studies. In this paper, we examine Noda and Matsumoto’s writings on the audience movement from the late 1950s to confirm their arguments. We then note that Noda started the Suginami Cine Club in 1967, and that Matsumoto also proposed the idea of a new audience movement in his controversy with Nagisa Oshima. Noda and Matsumoto’s visions of the audience movement diverged over their perceptions about capital and power, particularly in how they sought to address constraints on mass desires. However, they shared a common goal of creating a new cycle that encourages interaction between filmmakers and audiences, which operates independently of the traditional film industry.

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Kyoko Michishita (1942-) is a pioneering Japanese feminist known for introduced the American women’s liberation movement to Japan, as well as an artist who created numerous video artworks. Her early work, Being Women in Japan: Living with the Ocean (1974), is a 50-minute video that first embodied her feminist ideas. It documents a woman involved in kelp fishing in eastern Hokkaido through interviews and on-site footage. Utilizing video’s synchronous sound and long-duration recording, Michishita portrays the woman as a professional and independent individual. This video also captures shifts in the relationship between women and the fishing industry, aligning it with the contemporaneous rise of oral history practices among women. Created during the 1970s, when female travel was often linked to consumer culture, this work represents an attempt by an urban woman to engage with a rural woman in a non consumptive, relational manner. For Michishita, video creation can be regarded as a feminist practice oriented toward consciousness-raising, and this work serves as an exhortation for other women to engage in creative forms of encounter.

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