Bakhtin and the Visual Arts is the first book to assess the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas as they relate to painting and sculpture. Deborah Haynes' in-depth study of Bakhtin's aesthetics, especially his theory of creativity, analyzes its applicability to contemporary art theory and criticism. With such categories as answerability, outsideness and unfinalizability, Bakhtin, the author posits, offers a conceptual basis for interpreting the moral dimensions of creative activity.