Abstract

Baxandall begins his Foreword to this anthology with Webster's definition of “radical” and points out that “fundamental,” not “extremist,” is its synonym. What, then, is a “radical perspective"? How can something as seemingly arbitrary and external to its object as a perspective be established as fundamental or claim intelligibly to deal with the “root aspects of aesthetic objects"? The first two words of Baxandall's title encapsulate the hoary dichotomy in aesthetic theory between integrally organic, or at least internally organized and focused, coherence (form) on one hand and denotative, linear statement (content) on the other. This is the dichotomy between art and science which for many critics is an unbridgeable abyss.