The body as an aesthetic paradigm: form, function, idea

Abstract

The body has physical, biological, mechanical, aesthetic and other characteristics, each requiring different investigative assumptions. In fact, we can approach the concept of body as materialists or animists, mechanicists or vitalists, artists or scientists, even as formalists or symbolists. This paper aims at highlighting the difficulties and limitations shared by the various critical positions which deal with the concept of the Body – regardless of their heterogeneous nature –  and assessing whether there is a way of containing them, as well as at considering such difficulties and limitations not in themselves but instrumentally, since my purpose is that of isolating a specific aspect of the notion of body which stands as a paradigm for the arts and the visual culture.