Marvelous images : on values and the arts

265 Pages·2008·12.999 MB·English

by  Walton, Kendall L

MARVELOUS IMAGES
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Kendall L. Walton
M A RV E L O U S I M AG E S
On Values and the Arts
1
2008
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walton, Kendall L., 1939–
Marvelous images : on values and the arts / Kendall L. Walton.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-517794-7; 978-0-19-517795-4 (pbk.)
1. Aesthetics. 2. Art—Philosophy.
3. Photography—Philosophy. I. Title.
BH39.W328 2008
701'.17—dc22
2007023755
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
PREFACE
This volume and its forthcoming companion, In Other Shoes: Music, Metaphor,
Empathy, Existence, reproduce a number of essays that I have published over the
years and introduce several new ones. All explore topics in aesthetics or philoso-
phy of the arts, broadly conceived, but most of them—well, all of them—take
up issues in other areas of philosophy at the same time: philosophy of mind,
philosophy of language, or value theory. The present collection begins with a
cluster of essays concerning values and the arts.
Many works of art are marvelous—marvelously beautiful, or aesthetically valu-
able in other ways. I have long been skeptical of the theoretical importance of
notions of aesthetic value, and I still am. Nevertheless, the opening essay of this
volume, “ ‘How Marvelous!’: Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value,” explores a
kind of value that fi ts common conceptions of aesthetic value surprisingly well,
despite differing greatly from most traditional accounts. One new postscript
cites several precedents, however; another describes different ways in which a
work might be good because it is bad. “The Test of Time,” an adaptation of
a review of Anthony Savile’s excellent book with that title, examines the claims
of durability or longevity as an indication of aesthetic value, and considers what
sort of value this must be if time is a reasonable test for it.
Works of art possess values of other kinds also, and serve them in important and
distinctive ways. “ ‘How Marvelous!’ ” considers how aesthetic value is related to
other varieties, as well as how it differs from them. “Morals in Fiction and Fic-
tional Morality” and “On the (So-Called) Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance” focus
especially on moral values, and on works that subvert them as well as ones that
serve them. They address the peculiar conundrums concerning works of fi ction
with moral dimensions that I noted in Mimesis as Make-Believe, which have been
discussed subsequently under the misleading rubric of “imaginative resistance.”
vi PREFACE
Besides marveling at particular works of art, one cannot but fi nd remarkable
the resources artists have at their disposal—the media they work in and the
techniques they employ—which make possible the production of marvelous
objects and ones that are effective in serving or subverting values of various
sorts. The essays in part II examine the medium of visual representation. Some of
them develop and defend the account of depiction I presented in Mimesis. Others
consider what is special about two important species of depiction—photography
and still pictures (with emphasis on the fact that they are still).
“Pictures and Hobby Horses: Make-Believe beyond Childhood,” a lecture
designed for general audiences, is an informal introduction to my theory of
depiction and the notion of make-believe it rests on. I include it partly because
it provides relatively easy access to the central features of my views on these top-
ics, for readers not familiar with Mimesis, but also because it approaches them
from a different angle, one that brings out my indebtedness to Ernst Gombrich.
UnlikeMimesis, it reproduces the order in which I originally developed the ideas
it sketches, starting with the problem of how to account for the visualness of
pictures and other depictions, then introducing the theory of make-believe in
order to solve it, and after that exploring applications of the theory to fi ctions of
various kinds and a wide range of related phenomena.
“Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism” initiates and
anchors my attempt to discover what is special about photographs. Photographs, I
say, are aids to vision; on seeing a photograph of a bear, one sees (indirectly) the bear.
This is not the only respect in which photographs differ from pictures of other kinds,
but it is the most important one. I have included several postscripts to this essay clar-
ifying features of my transparency claim that have sometimes been misunderstood,
and indicating directions in which I think further investigation would be fruitful.
I do not do much in these essays by way of replying to objections or assess-
ing rival theories. An exception is “On Pictures and Photographs: Objections
Answered,” which considers arguments advanced by Noël Carroll and Gregory
Currie against my account of depiction and the transparency thesis.1 “Seeing-In
and Seeing Fictionally” and “Depiction, Perception, and Imagination” examine
relations between my account of pictorial representation and that of Richard
Wollheim, in the process clarifying and elaborating my account.
Although much has been written about photography using still photographs
as examples, there are very few discussions of what is special about still pho-
tographs as opposed to moving ones, or of the medium of still pictures gener-
ally. The depiction of motion and change by means of unchanging marks on a
picture surface, in particular, has been insuffi ciently remarked or investigated.
1. I replied to other objections in an essay not included here, “Looking Again through
Photographs: A Response to Edwin Martin” (Critical Inquiry 12 [1986], 801–808). Cur-
rie’s more recent writings on pictorial representation go in a different direction, utilizing
a notion of perception like imagining.
PREFACE vii
“Experiencing Still Photographs: What Do You See and How Long Do You See
It?” fi rst published in this volume, tackles these topics. Although it concen-
trates primarily on photographs, having begun as a contribution to a sympo-
sium on photography, its conclusions apply to still pictures in general, indeed
to “still” depictions of all sorts: sculptures, paintings, and drawings, as well as
photographs. As a bonus, refl ection on “still” media brings interesting features
of motion pictures into focus.
The two older essays constituting part III treat very general issues concerning
the understanding and appreciation of works of art of many kinds. “Categories
of Art” and “Style and the Products and Processes of Art” both address the moss-
encrusted questions of intentionalism in aesthetic theory. Each fi nds a role in
appreciation and criticism for facts about the circumstances of a work’s genesis,
including the artist’s intentions—but very different roles in the two cases.
The value of works of art, why they are important and why people esteem
and treasure them—not far from the surface in any of these essays—is especially
evident in “Style,” which thus connects with the more recent essays of part 1,
especially “ ‘How Marvelous!’ ”
An unmarked theme of several of the essays in this volume, made explicit
only in “Experiencing Still Photographs,” is the difference between two things’
appearing (to be) different, and their appearing differently, a distinction that is
commonly overlooked—when, for example, people claim that if a forgery and
the original are visually indistinguishable they must be identical aesthetically.
“Categories” and “Style” both, in different ways, illustrate this distinction and
underscore its importance.
I have saved for In Other Shoes essays focusing primarily or substantially on empa-
thy and its relatives, especially what I have called “other shoe experiences,” and
essays on emotional responses to fi ction, on music, on metaphor, and on existence
claims and the ontological status of fi ctional entities. This may seem a scattered
assortment, but the essays draw a network of substantial, if sometimes unex-
pected, connections among these topics.
The choices as to which essays to include in which volume were inevitably some-
what arbitrary. “Pictures and Hobby Horses” contains informal observations about
empathy—about empathizing with people in pictures—and about what later
came to be called mental simulation, topics I address more systematically and thor-
oughly in In Other Shoes. In “Style” I argue, in effect, that empathy with artists and
performers is a fundamental ingredient of much appreciation of the arts.
Readers with special interests in music may want to consult “Categories”
and “Style” in addition to the essays devoted primarily to music that are col-
lected in In Other Shoes. Musical performance, music making, is a paradigm of
the “processes of art” discussed in “Style.” Both “Style” and “Categories” bear on
questions concerning musical personae, and musical examples are prominent in
each of them.
viii PREFACE
While wrestling with notions of aesthetic value in “ ‘How Marvelous!’ ”
I found myself thinking about the nature of sports and the values they may
involve. A new essay to appear in In Other Shoes—“ ‘It’s Only a Game!’: Sports
as Fiction”—examines sports and the experiences of participants and spectators
more directly.
Each of the essays in both volumes is intended to stand on its own, to be under-
standable apart from any of my other writings. This makes for some unavoidable
overlap among them, especially in introductory sections. Several contain short
sketches of ideas presented more carefully in others or in Mimesis as Make-Believe
before going on to make their distinctive contributions. Minor editorial adjust-
ments aside, the texts of all but two of the reprinted essays are complete and
unchanged (although I have inserted several new footnotes, in square brackets).
The exceptions are “Pictures and Hobby Horses,” which fi nds here a more or less
settled form after its varied life as an occasion-driven lecture, and “The Test of
Time,” which was modifi ed to be independent of Savile’s book.
Footnotes in the various essays and references to writings of other scholars con-
stitute an extensive but seriously incomplete record of my intellectual debts.
I should mention especially David Hills and Patrick Maynard, whose stimula-
tion and advice for many decades is inadequately acknowledged in my references
to them. I can’t overemphasize the benefi ts of numerous casual conversations and
offhand comments—by many colleagues at the University of Michigan over the
years, by lecture audiences, and by students in courses and seminars—which not
infrequently pointed toward what I came to see as signifi cant insights, or alerted
me to problems in my views or infelicities in my formulations of them. Thanks
to Katherine Kuehn, whose detective and diplomatic skills were indispensable in
obtaining permissions for the illustrations and arranging for their reproduction
in this volume. Thanks also for support from the Dean’s Offi ce Discretionary
Fund, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and
from the University of Michigan Department of Philosophy.
CONTENTS
part i. aesthetic and moral values
Chapter 1. “How Marvelous!”: Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value, 3
Postscripts to “ ‘How Marvelous!’ ” 20
Chapter 2. The Test of Time, 23
Chapter 3. Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, 27
Chapter 4. On the (So-Called) Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance, 47
part ii. pictures and photographs
Chapter 5. Pictures and Hobby Horses: Make-Believe
beyond Childhood, 63
Chapter 6. Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of
Photographic Realism, 79
Postscripts to “Transparent Pictures”: Clarifi cations and To Do’s, 110
Chapter 7. On Pictures and Photographs: Objections Answered, 117
Chapter 8. Seeing-In and Seeing Fictionally, 133
Chapter 9. Depiction, Perception, and Imagination: Responses to
Richard Wollheim, 143
Chapter 10. Experiencing Still Photographs: What Do You See and
How Long Do You See It? 157
part iii. categories and styles
Chapter 11. Categories of Art, 195
Chapter 12. Style and the Products and Processes of Art, 221
Index, 249