Reading, contemplating, caring for nature are activities that help us to escape the mental atrophy of a web-dominated world and adopt a harmonious attitude in the struggle against mass media’s banality. This book explains how modernity and post-modernity interact with virtual reality in a messy tangle, engendering linguistic and anthropological chaos in which art seems to have lost its meaning. In the firm belief that even today the lessons of ancient thinkers can be newly relevant, the author offers a reinterpretation of contemplative approaches in order to understand the profound nature of artistic vision. And so a new feeling can emerge – eschewing shock, improvisation and kitsch, and focusing on compassion and creative imagination.

Raffaele Milani teaches Aesthetics at the University of Bologna, where he heads a research centre on cities and landscapes.

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