Georg Simmel: Essays on Art and Aesthetics - Hardcover

by Georg Simmel (Author)

Georg Simmel is one of the most original German thinkers of the twentieth century and is considered a founding architect of the modern discipline of sociology. Ranging over fundamental questions of the relationship of self and society, his influential writings on money, modernity, and the metropolis continue to provoke debate today.
Fascinated by the relationship between culture, society, and economic life, Simmel took an interest in myriad phenomena of aesthetics and the arts. A friend of writers and artists such as Auguste Rodin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Stefan George, he wrote dozens of pieces engaging with topics such as the work of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rodin, Japanese art, naturalism and symbolism, Goethe, "art for art's sake", art exhibitions, and the aesthetics of the picture frame.

Author Biography

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) taught at the University of Berlin and the University of Strasbourg. His many books include The Philosophy of Money, The View of Life, and Georg Simmel on Individuality andSocial Forms, the latter two both published by the University of Chicago Press. Austin Harrington is associate professor of sociology at the University of Leeds. His most recent book is German Cosmopolitan Social Thought and the Idea of theWest: Voices from Weimar.