Aesthetics and Painting (Continuum Aesthetics)

205 Pages·2008·2.52 MB·English

by  Jason Gaiger

AESTHETICS AND PAINTING
Continuum Aesthetics
Series Editor: Derek Matravers, Open University and
University of Cambridge, UK
The Continuum Aesthetics Series looks at the aesthetic questions
and issues raised by all major art forms. Stimulating, engaging and
accessible, the series offers food for thought not only for students
of aesthetics, but also for anyone with an interest in philosophy
and the arts.
Titles available from Continuum:
Aesthetics and Architecture, Edward Winters
Aesthetics and Film, Katherine Thomson-Jones
Aesthetics and Literature, David Davies
Aesthetics and Morality, Elisabeth Schellekens
Aesthetics and Music, Andy Hamilton
Aesthetics and Nature, Glenn Parsons
Aesthetics and Painting, Jason Gaiger
AESTHETICS AND
PAINTING
JASON GAIGER
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Jason Gaiger 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 10: HB: 0826485200
PB: 0826485219
ISBN 13: HB: 9780826485205
PB: 9780826485212
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaiger, Jason.
Aesthetics and painting/Jason Gaiger.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8264-8520-5
ISBN 978-0-8264-8521-2
1. Painting–Philosophy. 2. Aesthetics. I. Title.
ND1140.G343 2008
750.1--dc22
2008016672
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Painting and Philosophy 1
The relevance of philosophy 1
The practice of painting 5
A preliminary defi nition 8
Two requirements 13
2 A Window onto the World 16
Art and imitation 16
Alberti’s On Painting 21
Plato’s theory of mim eˉsis 27
Ideal form and sensory knowledge 33
3 Surface and Subject 38
Two forms of awareness 38
Sustaining illusion 40
Ambiguity and pictorial representation 46
Representational seeing 53
Strong twofoldness 58
4 Resemblance and Denotation 63
Pictorial signs 63
A symbol theory of art 70
Rules and conventions 77
Seeing and reading 83
5 Pictorial Style 91
The problem of style 93
Individual and general style 97
The specifi cally visual 102
v
CONTENTS
A logic of depiction 106
Wölffl in’s history of vision 111
6 Modernism and the Avant-Garde 116
The limits of formalism 116
Greenberg’s theory of modernism 124
Abstraction and the easel picture 131
Contemporary challenges 137
Notes 144
Bibliography 165
Index 175
vi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Colour Plates
Plate 1 Pieter de Hooch, A Woman Peeling Apples, c. 1663
Plate 2 Dioskourides of Samos, Strolling Masked Musicians,
2nd century BC
Plate 3 Diego Velázquez, The Waterseller of Seville, c. 1618–22
Plate 4 Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints,
1505
Plate 5 Adolph Menzel, Lady with Opera Glasses, c. 1850
Plate 6 Diego Velázquez, Las Meniñas, c. 1656
Plate 7 Leroy de Barde, Still Life with Exotic Birds, c. 1810
Plate 8 Georges Braque, The Portuguese (The Emigrant), 1911–12
Plate 9 Francisco de Goya, The Duke of Wellington, 1812–14
Plate 10 Pablo Picasso, Violin, 1912
Plate 11 Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait with a Thistle, 1493
Plate 12 R embrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with Two Circles,
1661–62
Plate 13 Jacopo Tintoretto, The Presentation of the Virgin, 1552
Plate 14 Paul Cézanne, Woman with a Coffee Pot, c. 1890–95
Plate 15 Jackson Pollock, Silver over Black, White, Yellow and Red,
1948
Plate 16 Gerhard Richter, Christa and Wolfi , 1964
Figures
Figure 1 T he visual cone, illustration from Brook Taylor, New
Principles of Linear Perspective, London, 1715
Figure 2 Duck-rabbit (Kaninchen und Ente), illustration from
Fliegende Blätter, Vol. 97, 23 October 1892
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Katerina Deligiorgi, Andy Hamilton, Charles
Harrison, Derek Matravers and Paul Wood for their advice, encourage-
ment and support in producing this book. Special thanks are due to Andy
and Katerina, who read and commented on every chapter, and whose
detailed criticisms and suggestions helped to shape my ideas and
s ustained me in the belief that it is possible to reconcile the twin impera-
tives of writing about philosophy and art.
I would also like to thank the British Academy for the award of a
research grant to cover the costs of the illustrations.
viii
CHAPTER 1
PAINTING AND PHILOSOPHY
THE RELEVANCE OF PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy is said to begin in wonder.1 But it also begins in perplexity,
doubt, curiosity and a stubborn insistence on asking diffi cult questions,
including questions about the nature and purpose of philosophy itself.
This book is a study in philosophy, more precisely, that particular branch
of the discipline that has come to be termed aesthetics. It is therefore
important to start by asking what, if anything, philosophy can tell us about
painting and why painting should be considered an appropriate subject
for philosophical enquiry. Although directed at the same underlying issue,
these two questions tend in different directions. The fi rst asks whether
philosophy can reveal something about painting that might otherwise
remain obscure or hidden: in what ways might it deepen our understand-
ing and how does it differ from other forms of writing and thinking about
art such as art history and art criticism? The second question asks why
philosophers should be interested in painting in the fi rst place. Does paint-
ing raise a distinctive set of problems in aesthetics that are not already
addressed within other areas of philosophy? And might refl ection on
these problems cast light on more abstract philosophical concerns, such
as the distinction between appearance and reality or the status of repre-
sentations?
Painting is a non-discursive art form whose effects are realized through
the arrangement of shapes and colours on a material support. A painting
does not depend on axioms or chains of inference, nor, even in the most
extended sense, can it be said to raise a claim or defend a position. It is
therefore far from obvious that a discipline that is primarily concerned
with abstract reasoning and logical argument is equipped to provide
s pecial insight into a creative practice that operates through images rather
than words. Although we might criticize a painting on the grounds of
artifi ciality or insincerity, we cannot assess it in terms of its truth or
falsity. Such an approach surely rests on a category mistake. But that we
cannot argue with a painting does not mean that we cannot argue about it.
1