Re-enchanting Art ― A Critical Realist Aesthetics

Re-enchanting Art argues that we have lost touch with the true nature of art as a universal human practice, and that a critical realist aesthetics can play a vital role in enabling us to re-discover it. The book challenges our preconceptions of what art is, what art does, and who is doing art. Through applying the key principles and concepts of the under-labouring philosophy of critical realism in all its phases (original, dialectical and meta- realism), Re-enchanting Art provides an innovative and much needed space for ‘thinking being’, helping us to re-conceptualise what art ‘means’ in the process. More than this, it also encourages us to pursue the deeper meta-theoretical project of ‘being being’, such that we don’t just settle with a new understanding of art, but we become art(ful) on an everyday basis.

The starting point for the book’s argument is that existing mainstream approaches to art and aesthetics, all too often built as they are upon irrealist assumptions, have given rise to the exclusionary ghettoization of art practice(s), holding them apart from the everyday and everywhere interests and needs of human beings in our time. In short, we have succumbed to the modernist and market-driven misconception that ‘art is what artists do’.

Offering a new theoretical perspective on art and synthesis of many existing and diverse positions and theories, this book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as scholars, of art, philosophy and more specifically, Critical Realism.

Nick Wilson’s academic work at the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries (CMCI), King’s College London focuses on creative living, i.e., how people "do" art and integrate creative practice(s) into their lives. He is particularly interested in the theory/practice consistency of those involved in artistic and creative labour, and the relationship between culture and creativity. His work in arts based learning & education draws on experience as a professional singer, everyday artist and composer, artist manager, and entrepreneurship educator at Kingston Business School (2000-2009), where he founded the innovative suite of MAs in Creative Industries & the Creative Economy. He is launching a new MA in Arts & Cultural Management in September 2014, at King’s College London.