Philosophy and the Visual Arts: Seeing and Abstracting

365 Pages·1987·14.84 MB·English

by  Michael Podro (auth.)

PHILOSOPHY AND THE VISUAL ARTS
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCES
VOLUME 1985
PHILOSOPHY AND THE
VISUAL ARTS
Seeing and Abstracting
Edited by
ANDREW HARRISON
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBUSHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT/BOSTON/LANCASTER/TOKYO
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Philosophy and the visual arts: seeing and abstracting / edited by Andrew Harrison.
p. cm.(Royal Institute of Philosophy Conferences; v. 1985)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-94-0 I 0-82 13-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-3847-2
001: 10.1007/978-94-009-3847-2
1. Art-Philosophy. 2. Art, Abstract. 3. Color in art. 4. Visual
perception. I. Harrison, Andrew. II. Series.
N70.P475 1987 87-28442
701 - dc 19 CIP
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
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All Rights Reserved
© 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
and copyrightholders as specified on appropriate pages within
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITORIAL PREFACE vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRA TIONS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER Xl
PART I
ABSTRACTING AND DEPICTING
MICHAEL PODRO I Depiction and the Golden Calf 3
Plates [1-141 23
CAR 0 L Y N WI L DEI Painting, Expression, Abstraction 29
ANDREW HARRISON I Dimensions of Meaning 51
ROG ER L. TAYLOR I Cubism - abstract or realist? 77
PETER HOBBIS I Representing and Abstracting 97
PAUL CROWTHER I Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract
Art 121
DIETER PEETZ IOn Attempting to Define Abstract Art 135
Plates [15-271 147
PAUL ZIFF I On Being an Abstract Artist 155
PART II
DEPICTING COLOURS
BERNARD HARRISON I Identity, Predication and Colour 169
JOHN GAGE I Colour Systems and Perception in Early
Abstract Painting 191
JOHN CLARK I Colour, Culture and Cinematography 201
PETER LLOYD JONES I Form and Meaning in Colour 221
ADAM MORTON I Colour Appearances and the Colour Solid 235
v
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART III
THE LIMITS OF DEPICTION
MARTIN KEMP / Perspective and Meaning: Illusion, Allusion
and Collusion 255
Plates [28-401 269
KENDALL L. WALTON / Looking at Pictures and Looking at
Things 277
Plates [41-441 301
JOHN FISHER / Some New Problems in Perspective 303
ANTONIA PHILLIPS / The Limits of Portrayal 317
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED 343
INDEX 353
EDITORIAL PREFACE
This volume consists of papers given to the Royal Institute of Philos
ophy Conference on 'Philosophy and the Visual Arts: Seeing and
Abstracting' given at the University of Bristol in September 1985.
The contributors here come about equally from the disciplines of
Philosophy and Art History and for that reason the Conference was
hosted jointly by the Bristol University Departments of Philosophy and
History of Art. Other conferences sponsored by the Royal Institute of
Philosophy have been concerned with links between Philosophy and
related disciplines, but here, with the generous support of South West
Arts and with the enthusiastic co-operation of the staff of the Arnolfini
Gallery in Bristol we were able to attempt even more in the way of
bridge building; not only were we able to hold some of our meetings in
the Gallery, thus making them as accessible as possible to the general
public, but we were also privileged in having our discussions supported
by two exhibitions of contemporary painting that together presented
contrasting aspects of the abstracting enterprise. One, featuring works
by Ian McKeever, and drawings and painting by Frank Auerbach, some
of which are discussed and illustrated in the present volume, was about
the painterly exploration of 'abstracting from' images in nature and in
painting itself. The other, curated by Waldemar Januszczak, while
showing some figurative works, was concerned with the 'pure' power of
colour perceived 'abstractly, in its own right.! This backdrop of real art
thus presented two central aspects of the nature of abstraction in art,
tensions between which provided Il1uch of the intellectual and imagina
tive dynamic with which the papers in this volume are concerned.
Moreover, the extended venue of our deliberations provided a meeting
place for a wide variety of people ranging from painters and students
and teachers of painting to the most 'detached' scholars and theorists
who found, sometimes to their surprise, the extent to which they were
exercised by common problems. A major debt of gratitude is due to
Mr. Jeremy Rees and his gallery staff at Arnolfini for adding these
further dimensions to an academic conference.
An important item in the Conference, which does not reappear here
VII
Andrew Harrison (ed.), Philosophy and the Visual Arts, vii-x.
© 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Vlll EDITORIAL PREFACE
since it was a talk/performance rather than a submitted paper, was the
contribution of Sarah Rubidge of the Ballet Rambert, on 'Expression
and Abstraction in Modern Dance'. All those present would wish me
to record our gratitude here for her outstanding contribution to the
Amolfini event.
Nonetheless the questions which these papers address turn on a
straightforward, and in many ways traditional, philosophical issue. It is
this. In the history of modern painting we find ourselves faced with an
apparently simple, actually very tricky, contrast between painting (and,
of course, other sorts of art too) which is representational, or 'figurative'
as opposed to being 'non-figurative' and thus 'abstract'. But what, really,
do we mean by this? To the self-consciously uninformed outsider who
is a peculiarly central figure in the history of twentieth century art, this
contrast may seem easy to express: some paintings are, reassuringly,
recognisable as pictures of things we see and care about, others, dis
turbingly, are not. But nothing, whether in everyday life or in art is ever
just seen. There is always, as Professor Ziff reminds us in this volume,
"more to seeing than meets the eye". Seeing, whether the visual recogni
tion of things or of pictures of things, or the visual experience of colour
and of colour's emotional power over us (with which the middle section
of this volume is concerned) inevitably involves the selection, discri
mination, the active shaping of attention that permits us to "make
something of what we see". This active abstracting in experience is both
the core topic of any serious philosophical enquiry into the nature of
understanding and is also what prompts the motivating curiosity at the
heart of the enterprise of painting. One of the aims of this volume is
to look behind the (often very useful) generalities of philosophical
aesthetics to some of the detailed exploration of abstraction in the
visual arts, since it is in these details that most of what is philosophi
cally illuminating can be found. It is fashionable to suppose that as we
enter a period of 'post-modernism' in contemporary painting artists
should leave an interest in abstraction behind them. But serious work
cannot be like tRat: it always learns and reincorporates; what emerges in
the discussions here is that the puzzle and explorations of philosophers
and art historians are aspects of the concerns of painters themselves,
continuous in turn with the difficult questions self-consciously unin
formed laymen ask.
The collection is organised into three sections. The first set of papers
centres mainly on the issues of abstraction and representation, with
EDITORIAL PREFACE IX
what abstraction is and its relation to the making of drawings and
paintings at any time. The middle section is concerned with colour, with
how far our experience of colour, as well as its emotional impact on us,
is 'tied to more or less fixed points in judgment, language and the ways
in which our various technologies present colour to us. Notoriously, our
colour predicates have a highly ordered and subtly complex structure!
must our experience of colour be similarly or inescapably, ordered?
Just as colour harmonies and dissonances are the perennial concern of
painters, these questions are part of a perennial philosophical interest.
The final section is, on the face of it, concerned with more traditional
topics in the visual arts, with the nature of representation and depiction
and with the role of the use of perspective in conveying meaning that
transcends mere visual replication, but, as the reader will see, the
uniting theme is that of painting's pushing against the 'limits' of such
procedures, an issue central to the problems of abstraction. As is
proper, none of these compartments are watertight.
All the papers here, except one, are published for the first time in
this volume. Professor Bernard Harrison's paper is published by kind
permission of Nicholas Rescher, Editor, The American Philosophical
Quarterly.
Organising the Bristol Conference and preparing the present volume
would not have been possible without the constant help and support of
everyone of the contributors here. I must, however, particularly thank
Michael Padro for his tireless enthusiasm, practical help and guidance,
and Adam Morton for his enthusiastic co-operation in what must have
seemed a virtually endless task within the Bristol Department of Philos
ophy. Pat Panton's work at the conference stage and Carolyn Wilde's
ready assistance added immeasurably to the enjoyment of the project.
Above all I must thank Mo Harrison both for putting up with me and
also for her seemingly endless labours on the preparation of the type
scripts and proofs and Yvonne Kaye for putting up with my incessant
demands for letter writing, typing and re-typing, organising and remem
bering what a job of this sort entails. Only they can know how in
adequate my thanks to them are.
A.H.
x EDITORIAL PREFACE
NOTE
I Borderlines: Abstracting from Art and Nature Paintings by Frank Auerbach and Ian
McKeever at the Arnolfini Gallery, Narrow Quay, Bristol BSI 4QA from 31 August-
6 October 1985
and
Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue? Works by Zadok Ben-David, Anthony Caro,
Alan Green, Anish Kapoor, Gerhard Merz, Piet Mondrian, John Murphy and Julian
Schnabel, at the Arnolfini Gallery, Narrow Quay, Bristol BSI 4QA from 31 August -
6 October 1985