Aesthetic Judgment and the Modern Era

Bartolomeo Cristofori, Grand Piano. Florence, Italy 1720 (Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

by Andrew Swensen

In our era of fascination with technology, it only seems natural that our art would reflect what has become the spirit of the age. It is interesting to watch how innovations in the hard sciences become innovations in the humanities. Robotics, software engineering, digital information storage and retrieval have all become tools of the trade for artists. Yet this contemporary situation has a couple of traps, and we would be wise to not substitute our infatuation with the new for our continuing pursuit of great art.

Andrew Swensen discusses the age of innovation and argues for keeping our eyes on aesthetic judgment when art meets new technology. Click here to read the full text of the article.