Don't stand so close to me in James Elkins et Maja Naef (eds.), What is an image?, Pensylvania State University Press, 2011 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pictures, Truths and Methods: From Function to Form in Abstract Painting
Abstract Painting Now (symposium paper), 2019
This paper takes Patrick Heron’s assertion as to the abstract nature of painting as a starting point for a phenomenological investigation into the way in which abstract works comport themselves. How do abstract paintings attain meaningfulness, and along which communicative channels is meaning attainable? Perhaps in opposition to Picasso’s denial of the possibility of abstract art, and affirmation of the vitality of figurative painting (and restatement of: ‘the power of the object’), Heron presented an alternative idea; declaring all painting to be, in effect, of the abstract. In positing an abstract primacy to one’s experience of the world in painting – Heron’s thesis, I will argue, opens more doors than it closes. In support of his hypothesis, Heron drew together the terms: ‘space’, ‘colour’ and ‘form’ – the bedrock of countless claims regarding abstraction’s truth – and invoked an: ‘abstract reality’, which painting (including that which is usually taken to be figurative painting) is seen to embody. The relationship of abstract painting to the world has proven to be a problematic one. To revisit it is to wrestle with the notion of resemblance, and therefore to speculate as to how it is that one thing is able to point to another. In this work I will examine the degree to which abstraction – as idea – is compatible with an understanding of the serviceability of pictures, and, in so doing, shed light on the extent to which pictures might operate within painting as both language and something else. Central to this is a consideration of the limits of that which is deemed communicable; the method of comprehending abstract painting’s truth(s); what it is that the spectator is able to bring to the table; and how this bringing to can be woven into a fuller conception of abstract painting’s particular operability…from which colour, form and space might be made sense of. I will position abstract painting as an involvement: a form of engagement from which the spectator might come to better understand an engagement with form.
Involvement, Inbetweenness and Abstract Painting
Painting the In-Between (exhibition catalogue), 2019
This paper situates this concern for abstraction within an art historical narrative. In the process, the author draws attention to issues relating to what E. H. Gombrich termed pictorial representation: to spectatorship and the act looking in respect of the functioning of language and the possibilities of depiction. This essay, then, looks to abstract painting’s situation with regard to the idea of figuration (the showing of other things). And so, both semiotic and phenomenological frameworks of understanding the meaning of paintings become foregrounded in the course of seeking to establish a clearer sense of abstract painting’s peculiar persistence. What might it mean for one ‘to be with abstract painting’, and, moreover, what is implied today when a claim is made for a painting to be other than abstract: i.e., figurative or representational? To locate abstract painting’s position is thus, in part, to speculate on its perceived boundedness—on the indeterminacy of location and the presumed ontology of its site of meaning.
Art Without an Author. Vasari's Lives and Michelangelo's Death, 2011
A Defence of the Study of Visual Perception in Art
This thesis examines the use of the science of visual perception in the study of art. I argue that this application of perceptual psychology and physiology has been neglected in recent years, but contend that it is being revived by writers such as John Onians. I apply recent scientific research to demonstrate what can be learned about depiction from the science of perception. The thesis uses the science of perception to argue that there are four main interlinked components in depiction. It argues that each of these components can be better understood by using the science of vision. Chapter 1 examines one component, namely resemblance. It uses studies of the retina, centre-surround cells, and attentional processes to examine how a picture can vary in appearance from its subject matter, yet still represent it. Chapter 2 examines a second component, namely informativeness. It applies Biederman's psychological theory of recognition-by-components to argue that the depiction of volumetric forms depends on the depiction of the vertices of such objects, as well as that of linear perspective. From this the chapter argues that the notion of informativeness, as developed by Lopes, should be combined with a notion of resemblance to create a more complete theory. Chapter 3 examines a third component of depiction, namely that pictures can include, omit, and distort the features of their subjects. The psychological theory of scales, as developed by Oliva and Schyns, is used to explain certain kinds of depictions of fabrics, and the perception of Pointillist paintings. The chapter also examines the issue of to what extent perception and depiction are dependent on culture rather than genetics, and shows how a combination of scientific methodology, in the form of cross-cultural psychology, and historiography, in the form of Baxandall's 'period eye' approach, can be used to investigate this issue. Chapter 4 examines a fourth component of depiction, namely the organisation of pictures. It uses studies by Westphal-Fitch et al., and Võ and Wolfe to analyse the patterns of Waldalgesheim art, and the images in the Book of Kells. By using the science of visual perception, I arrive at the conclusion that a combination of theories of recognition, informativeness, and order, developed in Chapters 1, 2, and 4, together with theories of visual decomposition, processing, and recomposition, developed in Chapter 3, form a basis for understanding depiction.
Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction
Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, 2010
Edited by CATHARINE ABELL and KATERINA BANTINAKI Oxford University Press, 2010. xii þ 242 pp. £40 cloth In their introduction, the editors of this book, Catharine Abell and Katerina Bantinaki, give an excellent account of the present state of play in the philosophy of pictures. Depiction, the mode of representation distinctive of pictures, has seen a growth in philosophical interest over the past few years, and Abell and Bantinaki think the field holds even more potential: 'While the philosophy of language has long been considered a philosophical discipline in its own right, the philosophy of depiction is usually thought of, when it is thought of at all, as a sub-discipline of aesthetics. This is like conflating the philosophy of language with the philosophy of literature' (1). That the study of depiction may grow to occupy a position comparable to philosophy of language might seem doubtful to us now, but Abell and Bantinaki are right to draw attention to the fact that the place of depiction within aesthetics is an historical happenstance. As the papers collected in this volume illustrate, there is usually only incidental concern with the aesthetic and artistic in the literature on depiction. The big issue addressed by that literature in the past is symptomatic of this unconcern with art and aesthetics: it has centred on finding a definition of depiction, one that applies equally to snapshots and Signorellis. This collection largely avoids the problem of definition to focus on issues that are only now beginning to attract substantial attention. It is telling of the state of the field just how much one such issue, the experience of pictures, dominates: it is the central topic of five of the book's eight chapters. But let me say something about the other three chapters first. The first of these, by John Kulvicki, investigates the commonplace that there are many different ways-styles and systems-of picturing. Kulvicki argues that the situation is, in some ways, simpler than this suggests: there are many different ways of producing a picture, but rather fewer ways of interpreting it. The key is to recognize that it is not the multitude of different styles and systems of picturing that are significant for interpretation, so much as the representationally salient properties they instantiate-and these present much less diversity. Kulvicki goes on to argue, with some justification to my mind, that the constraints on interpretation are explained by the fact that pictures resemble what they depict, a central plank of his own (2006) theory of depiction. Abell includes a paper of her own, investigating the epistemic value of photographs. Photographs are generally superior to handmade pictures as sources of knowledge about what they depict. Abell argues, in the face of opposing views, that this fact has its roots in the reliability of the standardized, mechanical processes of photography. Abell's position has the appeal of common sense, and it does seem to me that this is one instance where common sense has it pretty much right. Dominic Lopes's chapter begins with a less commonsensical proposal. Looking at a picture of X, it often seems natural to say 'That's X', rather than 'That's a picture of X'-something we would never do in the presence of a description of X. Lopes holds that this 'image-based demonstrative'-'That's X'-is literally, and not just figuratively, true. He argues that this is so because pictures perceptually ground such reference through deixis, an aspect of visual experience usually associated with actually being in the presence of