The aim of this article is to examine how weather phenomena affect the landscape, not only in terms of its visual or geomorphological appearance, but also by modifying the emotional disposition that the landscape evokes. By adopting an atmospheric perspective, I intend to demonstrate that each landscape possesses its own mood (Stimmung), closely linked to the atmospheric-climatic events that unfold within it. My hypothesis is that such phenomena, due to their pervasiveness on a sensory level, can produce a real metamorphosis (...) of the landscape, which also extends to the affective qualities that the landscape ‘radiates’, and which therefore do not primarily depend on the perceiver. My analysis is structured into two parts. In the first part, a) I attempt to prove that meteorological and climatic atmospheres, due to their extra-psychic nature, cannot be explained in empathic-projective terms; and b) I propose understanding the landscape as an expressive whole whose ‘emotional physiognomy’ changes according to the atmospheres that pass through it. In the second part, I support my argument with a literary example to show how the fundamental emotional tone (Grundstimmung) of the landscape can change radically following the manifestation of a specific atmospheric phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two aspects of Maximilian Beck’s philosophical reflection: his adherence to naive (phenomenological) realism and his claim to the autonomous existence of the affective qualities of the objectual world. Therefore, my contribution will be structured as follows: after a brief overview of Beck’s defence of naive realism (§2), I will attempt to show how, in his opinion, the affective qualities characterizing the world (i.e., the places and things we encounter) are in principle independent of the perceiver, possessing (...) an objectivity of their own. It is pertinent to mention here that Beck calls these affective qualities “objective moods” (objektive Stimmungen) (§3). After that, I will try to illustrate the “externalist” aspects of Beck’s theory of the apprehension of Stimmungen, highlighting its differences from the “projective empathy” theses that were circulating at the time, particularly in the version proposed by Theodor Lipps (§4). In the final section, I will present two arguments that Beck puts forward in support of his theory of the objectivity of the Stimmungen (§5). (shrink)

Perhaps no meteorological phenomenon has enjoyed more interest than the wind. Both mutable and ambiguous, it has been interpreted in many ways over the centuries. This is particularly evident in the graphic arts, which have employed different strategies of representation. Taking the neo-phenomenological interpretation of the wind as a _‘_quasi-thing_’_, this paper explores the most common ways of representing this particular phenomenon within the European iconographic tradition, with the aim of identifying those that can best depict it in its quasi-thingly (...) nature. More specifically, this work aims to show that – under certain conditions – painting is not only able to express the particular meteorological and affective nature of the wind, but can also be a useful tool for shedding light on the so-called theory of atmospheres, which are themselves grounded in the thesis of the spatiality of feelings. With the help of a few examples from modern and contemporary painting, in which the wind finds its place as an aesthetic phenomenon, this paper outlines the possible characteristics of an atmospheric art in which the phenomenon is represented in all its affective power. Such art discloses or emphasizes the affective influence that phenomena such as the wind can exert on us, radically altering our sensory relationship with the world. (shrink)