Only a promise of happiness: the place of beauty in a world of art

This is a grand work by a distinguished scholar in the field of aesthetics, and as such, deserves the attention of art historians, theorists, and artists in addition to the book's more predictable audience of philosophers.The scope of the phrase "world of art" is ambitious and extensive: Nehamas is as comfortable assessing ancient Greek art as he is rubbing elbows with the eighteenth-century man of taste, theorizing the gaze of Manet's Olympia, and judging John Currin's women to be beautiful bodies in ugly paintings.