Artistic Creation

Artistic creation has proven remarkably resistant to philosophical analysis. Artists have long struggled to explain how they do what they do, and philosophers have struggled along with them. This study does not attempt to offer a comprehensive account of all creativity or all art. Instead it tries to identify an essential feature of an activity that has been cloaked in mystery for as long as history records. Jeff Mitscherling and Paul Fairfield argue that the process by which art is created has a good deal in common with the experience of the audience of a work, and that both experiences may be described phenomenologically in ways that show surprising affinities with what artists themselves often report.

Jeff Mitscherling is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Guelph.
Paul Fairfield is professor of philosophy at Queen's University at Kingston.

Preface: Tracking Intentions
Chapter 1: What Artists Tell Us
Chapter 2: Some Central Concepts and Theories
Chapter 3: More Clues from Plato and Aristotle
Chapter 4: A Model of the Work of Art
Chapter 5: Structural and Hermeneutic Considerations Involved in Artistic Creation and Aesthetic Judgment
Chapter 6: Implications
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Authors