The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts

This volume presents a variety of perspectives on the expression of emotion in the visual arts, and will be of interest to students and researchers in the philosophy of art and aesthetics as well as those interested in conceptual issues in the visual arts.

Derek Matravers is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK. He has written Art and Emotion (1998), Introducing Philosophy of Art: Eight Case Studies (Routledge, 2013); Fiction and Narrative (2014); Empathy (2017); and, with Helen Frowe, Stones and Lives: The Ethics of Protecting Heritage in War (2024). He has been the co-editor on several collections, and is the author of numerous articles in aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. He edits, with Paloma Atencia-Linares, The British Journal of Aesthetics.

Vanessa Brassey is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, UK, and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Visual Arts. Her research focuses on the malleability and adeptness of our perspective-taking and the role this plays in our appreciation of the visual arts. She was previously the postdoctoral fellow for the British Society of Aesthetics and is also an exhibiting figurative painter.