What can philosophy reveal about painting and how might it deepen our understanding of this enduring art form? Philosophy of Painting investigates the complex relationship between the painted surface and the depicted subject, opening up current debates to address questions concerning the historicality of art. Embracing contemporary painting, it examines topics such as the post-medium condition and the digital divide, and the work of artists such as Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Amy Sillman and Katharina Grosse.

Illustrated with 24 colour plates and highly readable throughout, Philosophy of Painting provides a philosophically rigorous defence of the relevance of painting in the 21st century, making an original contribution to the major ideas informing painting as an art. Here is a clear and coherent account of the contemporary significance of painting and the pressures and possibilities that distinguish it from other art forms.

Jason Gaiger is Professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford, UK.

Preface
1. Philosophical Questions
2. A Window onto the World
3. Surface and Subject
4. Resemblance and Denotation
5. The Specifically Visual
6. Modernism and the Avant-Garde
7. Contemporary Painting
Bibliography
Index