Thinking with Images: An Enactivist Aesthetics

170 Pages·2018·5.105 MB·English

by  John M. Carvalho

Thinking with Images
What does it mean to think with images? For Carvalho, it means freeing
ourselves from the constraints of aesthetic theories and instead really engaging
with works of art as particular objects. Starting with works by Bacon,
Michals, Duchamp and Godard, Carvalho shows us how to discover the
questions these works set for us but do not directly answer, questions we
didn’t previously realize we should care about. Engagingly written, this book
will change the way you think about art.
—Deborah Knight, Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada
This book advances an enactivist theory of aesthetics through the study of
inscrutable artworks that challenge us to think because we do not know
what to think about them. John M. Carvalho presents detailed analyses of
four artworks that share this unique characteristic: Francis Bacon’s Study
after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953); the photographs of
Duane Michals, based on a retrospective of his work, Storyteller, at the
Carnegie Museum of Art (2014); Étant donnés (1968) by Marcel Duchamp;
and Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Le Mépris (released in the United States
as Contempt). Carvalho argues against the application of theory to derive
appreciation or meaning from these artistic works. Rather, each study enacts
an embodied cognitive engagement with the specific artworks intended to
demonstrate the value of thinking about artworks that might be extended to
our engagement with the world in general. This thinking happens, as these
studies show, when we trust our embodied skills and their guide to what art-
works and the world around us afford for the activation and refinement of
those skills. Thinking with Images will be of interest to scholars working in
the philosophy of art and philosophical aesthetics, as well as art historians
concerned with the meaning and value of contemporary art.
John M. Carvalho is Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University where
he teaches graduate seminars on aesthetics and undergraduate courses on
contemporary music and film. He is the author of “Annunciations: Figur-
ing the Feminine in Renaissance Painting,” “Strange Fruit: Music Between
Violence and Death,” and many more essays on aesthetics.
Routledge Research in Aesthetics
Michael Fried and Philosophy
Modernism, Intention, and Theatricality
Edited by Mathew Abbott
The Aesthetics of Videogames
Edited by Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor
Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature
A Philosophical Perspective
Richard Gaskin
The Pleasure of Pictures
Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation
Edited by Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini
Thinking with Images
An Enactivist Aesthetics
John M. Carvalho
Thinking with Images
An Enactivist Aesthetics
John M. Carvalho
First published 2019
by Routledge
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ISBN: 978-1-138-61602-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-46253-5 (ebk)
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For my father and the memory of my mother

Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Thinking with Images 1
1 Aesthetics without Theory 12
2 The Baroque and Bacon’s Popes 35
3 Chance Meeting with Duane Michals 59
4 Étant donnés | Marcel Duchamp 84
5 Le Mépris or Contempt, a Film by Jean-Luc Godard 118
Conclusion 144
Bibliography 146
Index 153
Illustrations
0.1 Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés: 1⁰ la chute d’eau,
2⁰ le gaz d’éclairage (detail of façade) (1946–1966) 2
1.1 Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, A Lady Taking Tea (1735) 13
1.2 Raphael, Portrait of Pope Julius II (1511–1512) 15
1.3 Johannes Vermeer van Delft, The Art of Painting (Die
Malkunst) (1665–1668) 28
2.1 Francis Bacon, Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope
Innocent X (1953) 36
2.2 Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650) 41
3.1 Duane Michals. American, b. 1932. Things Are Queer
(detail) (1973) 60
3.2 Duane Michals. American, b. 1932. René Magritte
Asleep (1965) 66
3.3 Duane Michals. American, b. 1932. Balthus and
Setsuko (2000) 68
3.4 Duane Michals. American, b. 1932. A Letter From My
Father (1960/1975) 76
4.1 Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés: 1⁰ la chute d’eau,
2⁰ le gaz d’éclairage (detail of interior) (1946–1966) 85
4.2 Marcel Duchamp, La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires,
même (1915–1923) 94
4.3 Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) (1934) 106
5.1 Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mépris (1963), film still 119
5.2 Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mépris (1963), film still 123
5.3 Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mépris (1963), film still 128
5.4 Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mépris (1963), film still 140
Acknowledgements
This book languished for a long time under the misconception that I could
find philosophy in art. The thought was that artists are thinkers as con-
ceptually deep as philosophers and their thinking could be found in their
works. At the time, I was laboring under the idea that thinking was some-
thing that took place in the head. I also thought the thinking I would find in
artworks would be very much like the thinking I found in philosophy. When
I was able to give up these conceits, things came together rather quickly and
with very different results.
There are so many people to thank for helping me get to these results.
Among them, several stand out for their enduring support and encourage-
ment. Alexander Nehamas inspired me from the beginning, and his influ-
ence is felt here in a shared affinity for detailed attention to the sensuousness
of artworks. Joseph Margolis positively provoked me early in my career,
and echoes of his conception of art as culturally emergent entities can be
heard throughout this book. Michael Krausz also supported me early on
and recommended me to the American Society for Aesthetics as coordina-
tor of local arrangements for the fiftieth anniversary meeting of the ASA in
Philadelphia. Through my affiliation with that society, I learned the aesthet-
ics that was never part of my formal training. I am very grateful for all of
this continuing encouragement and support.
Others stand out for their direct impact on the direction this book takes.
Georg Theiner asked me to review a book by Alva Noë for an interdisci-
plinary journal where he was an editor. It was my first exposure to Noë’s
work, and it was a revelation. I did not yet know how close contemporary
thinking in the philosophy of mind had come to the studies of embodied
cognition I did before I had a career. Making that discovery, I leaned on the
work of Shaun Gallagher which connected my interests in the writings of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty to current trends in enactive embodied cognition.
Making these connections allowed me to abandon the early idea that think-
ing takes place in the head. I was now able to think about thinking as a set
of embodied skills a philosopher or an artist sets out to deploy or enact in
a culturally rich environment. With the help of these interventions, I was
ready to abandon that first conceit.