Hegel's Aesthetics of Materiality

I propose that Hegel's various reflections on the material dimensions of different artistic media, in the Third or the "Particular Part" of theAesthetics, in effect amount to an "aesthetics of materiality." I show that Hegel is focused to some extent on the distinctive aesthetic potential inherent in the material forms themselves, considered independently of and prior to the way these forms efface themselves for the sake of enabling a decidedly spiritual presence to arise from them. Though it is common to think that art, for Hegel, is exclusively focused on the sensuous presentation of spirit, the lingering aesthetic presence of materiality inhering the very medium of the artwork, I propose, is not external to, or an encumbering of, art's beauty, but essential to it.