Article of the Year 2024

Marcos Nadal & Martin Skov, “The Sensory Valuation Account of Aesthetic Experience.” (Nature Reviews Psychology, 2024).

The authors Marcos Nadal and Martin Skov take up the challenge of studying aesthetic experience, a core phenomenon for the field of aesthetics, and its relation to non-aesthetic experience. They do this with empirical methods but with appropriate awareness of philosophical work on the topic. Nadal and Skov argue that neurobiological mechanisms that are needed for experiencing aesthetically are shared with non-human animals. The argument that aesthetic experience should be seen as domain-general sensory valuation is based on careful consideration of previous studies in empirical aesthetics, and it challenges some previous notions in the field by suggesting that aesthetic experience is not “disinterested, non-utilitarian and uniquely human”. As such, it is a bold and insightful statement that at the same time clarifies the conceptual framework in aesthetics and makes this framework accessible for other fields of research.

In sum, the article is a well-balanced example of research with relevance to both empirical and philosophical aesthetics, and hence, it furthers discussion of the key concepts in the field of aesthetics in an exceptionally comprehensive manner.

The recipient of the award was chosen by the Society’s Vice-President Onerva Kiianlinna (University of Helsinki & Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research) on behalf of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics.

Article of the Year 2023

Since 2015, the Finnish Society for Aesthetics has awarded a high-quality research article in the field of Aesthetics. In 2023 the award goes to Michelle Liu for her article “Mental Imagery and Poetry” (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 81, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 24–34).

In her article Liu analyses the way in which the psychological and philosophical concept of “the mental image” can be helpful in exploring the role of images in poetry beyond the traditional ekphratic approach. Liu shows how the ekphratic approach can be enriched rather than replaced by a deeper understanding of the relationship between mental imagery and poetry.

Liu also argues that an analysis of mental imagery in poetry offers a potential solution to “the heresy of paraphrase”, the idea that the imagist effects in poetry cannot be paraphrased without them losing their effect. The capacity of language to evoke mental images opens the possibility of finding a suitable prose paraphrase which does justice to the poem.

The article tackles an interesting and important topic in the field of aesthetics and literary studies from an enlightening perspective. It is strengthened by the acuity of argumentation and conceptual clarity which contribute to the article being worthy of this recognition.

The recipient of the award was chosen by Jussi Pentikäinen (Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki) on behalf of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics.

Since 1997, the Finnish Society for Aesthetics has awarded the Finnish Aesthetic Act of the Year. The aim of the prize is to highlight an important aesthetic feat made in the field of either art, city planning, architectural renovation or media where the aesthetic dimension can make a difference. With the award, we aspire to foster discussion about aesthetics and its role in society. The award is given to a person or community that has through its acts, products, or thoughts raised discussion about art, beauty, and aesthetic value. Beginning from 2015, the Finnish Society for Aesthetics has also awarded a global aesthetic award, as well as an award for a high-quality research article.

In 2020, the award of the Article of the Year is granted to Associate Professor Marguerite La Caze (The University of Queensland) for her article “Becoming a Victim: A Dry White Season”. In this article, La Caze offers an insightful elaboration of individual and collective victimhood through consideration of its portrayal in a work of cinematic fiction, Euzhan Palcy’s film A Dry White Season (USA, 1989), based on André Brink’s 1979 novel of the same name. La Caze’s nuanced reading of the film that makes visible the conditions and consequences of resistance in apartheid South Africa is very topical, as it opens perspectives also to contemporary debates on the status of victimhood. At the time of its release, the film was criticized for placing an Afrikaner schoolteacher as its central character, who becomes a victim of the apartheid regime for supporting Black resistance. This criticism reflects today’s questions on “the right of ownership” to the status of a victim in relation to collective suffering: who can represent whom? This question, besides being an artistic and philosophical topic at large, also touches upon political discussions on representation, gaze and production of different positions in a culture. In her erudite writing, La Caze brings to the fore the transcultural stakes in translating a specific problematic into an international scale, a fact that addresses the seemingly uncomplicated portrayal and public reception of the film. The particular strength of the article is to allow for an array of interpretations that, even if contradictory, resist simple categorization and any idea of a singular truth, a position that makes it especially worthy of the Article of the Year award.

The recipient of the award was chosen by PhD Martta Heikkilä (Finnish Society for Aesthetics) and PhD Janne Vanhanen, and the award was announced in the annual seminar of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics in Helsinki on the 10^th of December 2021.

In 2020, the award of the Article of the Year is granted Professor María Puig de la Bellacasa (University of Warwick) for her essayistic article “Re-animating soils: Transforming human–soil affections through science, culture and community”. In the article, Professor Puig de la Bellacasa challenges the human-centered tradition of division between the human subject and non-human object while bringing aesthetics into current posthuman discourses and the domain of new materialism. She introduces soil as an active agent in the process of aesthetic meaning-making. The argumentation boldly opens into different fields of inquiry and experiments with the plasticity of aesthetics, negotiating between animated and non-animated binaries. While making her argument on shared aliveness, Professor Puig de la Bellacasa uses aesthetics as an organic part of the multidisciplinary methodology. Thus, she promotes the visibility of aesthetics in other academic fields and markedly achieves one of the most important criteria of this award.

The recipient of the award was chosen by Riikka Haapalainen (Finnish Association for Avantgarde and Modernism, Finnish Association for Museum Education Pedaali) and Onerva Kiianlinna (Finnish Society for Aesthetics) and the award was announced in the annual seminar of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics in Helsinki, the 7th of December 2020.

In 2019, the award of the Article of the Year is granted to Dr Mark Windsor (University of Kent) for his article “What is the Uncanny?”, published in The British Journal of Aesthetics (volume 59, issue 1, pages 51—65).

In his article, Dr Windsor convincingly argues that the emotion of uncanniness can be defined as “an anxious uncertainty about what is real caused by an apparent impossibility”. By doing so, Dr Windsor offers an important contribution to the study of aesthetic categories, as so far uncanniness has received very little attention in analytic aesthetics despite its prevalence in art and popular culture. Dr Windsor’s detailed account develops the insights of Freud’s notion of the uncanny with the conceptual precision of analytic philosophy and positions itself carefully with regards to existing research. His argument is rich, comprehensive and yet balanced, making his article a great example of a well-written journal article. The article also maps out possible perspectives for future research on uncanniness, to which Dr Windsor’s article offers a solid starting point.

The recipient of the award was chosen by Dr Harri Mäcklin (University of Helsinki), and the award was published in the Finnish Society for Aesthetics’ annual seminar in Helsinki, the 10th of December 2019.