Fisher, Part III

Three Major Theories of Art

Art is representation (mimetic theory)
Art concerns form (formalism)
Art involves expression (expression theory)

A fourth?: George Dickie's Institutional Theory of Art

Studying these theories can enliven our appreciation of artworks themselves
How evaluate theories of art?

Does it explain the social worth of art?
Does it explain the unique aes value of art
Does it explain the relation of art to morality
Does it give an adequate account of avant garde art?
Is it internally coherent?
Does it let us count as art what (and only what) we think is art? Does it handle our intuitions about what is and is not art?

Fisher suggests that none of these classical theories gets the essential feature of art, but each explores an absolutely central feature of art

Need to combine them for most adequate theory

Chapter 9: Mimetic Theory (Art as representation)

Some artworks are clearly representational

They represent something outside themselves in the world
Sculpture, tragic plays, poems, movies, short stories, novels, operas

Common person sees art as representational

Encounters an art object and thinks about what it represents

Asks if it provides a good likeness of what it represents

Whole point of (some) art (movie, play, novel, painting) is to experience an illusory representation of the subject matter

Hound of the Baskerville

Naive view about rep: Rep of beautiful objects are beautiful; rep of ugly/offensive objects are ugly or offensive

Photograph of a beauty is beautiful and of an ugly is ugly?

Photo of beautiful landscape to get beautiful photograph? Not photograph ugly, boring landscape with poor lighting as get ugly poor photograph

Photos at Halsey are of ugly scenes but beautiful photos?
Could have a high quality painting of an ugly man, and the painting need not be ugly? Or ugly, but well done painting?
Why think a rep of X must have same features as X?

Language represents but lacks same features

Historically art seen as representational

From Greeks to 18^th century
Only with rise of Romanticism in 18^th century, emphasis shifted to expression
With modernism emphasis was on form and abstraction

Did representation become less central?

Assumption art primarily representational seen in (false?) idea of progress of visual arts

With Renaissance invention of perspective and later forms of realism (Dutch still lifes) get progress in competence of visual artist to represent subjects more and more realistically/accurately
Progress in movies, from silent to sound from black/white to color; movies getting better to represent their subject

Not just dif styles, but capacity of art to fulfill its function has been improved

Assumption here: Goal of art is perfect representation and viewer looks for this
By these criteria, photography better than painting

19^th century idea that painting was dead because photography was invented
Photography made painting outmoded and superfluous

Fisher says art critics often emphasize rep content

Is story unified? Does it end appropriately? Is it believable?
As opposed to its form, tone, how well edited the film was, how it makes you feel, etc.

QUESTIONS ABOUT REPRESENTATION AND ART
Must artworks always represent something?

Are all artworks and art-forms representational?
No; Non-representational art includes abstract painting and sculpture, instrumental music
"Images in art develop their own meanings beyond accurate report of what things appear to be like";

Here representation suggests realism

Representation is relevant to art but art has other components as well

A commitment to art as rep has led some to deny non-rep art is art;

Want art to be simple: This art object represents (X) that (Y)
Since Christo's running fence and Cage's 4'33" don't represent anything, they cant be art

Not all representations are art

Non-art representation include many uses of language (names), some uses of pictures (reconnaissance photos), signs

NATURE OF REPRESENTATION
What is representation?

Representation of X (the external item, the subject matter of the art?)
E.g., what makes an artwork (photograph/painting) a rep of its subject and not of something else?
But how does something stand for (represent) something else?

Do representations re-presents X (the thing represented itself)?

But this would involve treat art as if it's the real thing

(But it isn't) Except living theater!
We don't come screaming out of a horror movie as if madman is after us.

Representation as imitation

Rep can be accomplished by imitation
Imitation as a mechanism of representation
Mimetic = mimicry = imitative

Plato viewed art as imitative

Art imitates nature
Art is a mirror

Reflection of an appearance (which is itself a reflection of real thing-the Form)

Plausible to see painting, sculpture, plays as imitative

Play seems best example of imitative arts as can imitate people and events almost perfectly

But how is literature, poetry imitative?

Assuming imitation involves resemblance, then literature/poetry not imitative for even graphic literature doesn't resemble what it represents

"Red-hot bar" conjures up image of red hot bar, but the words don't imitate=resemble appearance of red hot bar

Literature doesn't look, sound, or feel like what it represents

Since literature is clearly representational, imitation/resemblance can't explain representation in general

Thus: Imitation=resemblance not an adequate account of linguistic representation

Imitation as resemblance can't even explain pictorial representation

What makes it true that a picture, sculpture, movie, etc is about a particular subject matter? That it refers to it?

Because picture resembles X?

Problem: Resemblance is symmetrical, but representation is not (almost never)

Picture/painting of the pope resembles the pope (and therefore represents him on this account)

But pope also resembles the picture, but the pope does not represent the picture

Problem: Pictures/paintings don't represent the models who sat for them, even though they are the persons the pictures most resemble.

Mantegna's Dead Christ (p. 201) most resembles the model Mantegna used, but doesn't represent him but rather Christ.

Problem:: In Cezanne's painting of his wife, dress resembles fence post more than dress, but represents a dress (p. 204)

Thus: Resemblance doesn't guarantee (not sufficient for ) representation

Nor is significant resemblance necessary for representation

Language represents without resembling

Many representations depend entirely on conventions (and not on natural resemblances)

Weather front represented by a line with semi-circles and wedges

Cross represents Christianity

Cartoons and caricatures don't significantly resemble what they represent

Caricature of Churchill resembles a bulldog more than Churchill, but its about Churchill

Does Rep depend on artist's intentions?

Consider, Munch's the Scream (206)

Intention gives much better account of representation than does resemblance

The painting certainly does not resemble a scream

Know what a painting represents by looking at its appearance, title, and figuring what Munch intended it to represent

Anti-intentionalists think that intention of artist should not be given total (a lot? any?) weight in what artwork represents

Reject appeal to artists intention as support for interpretation

Exaggerated view of power of intention to determine meaning or rep

Would Caravaggio's John the Baptist be about the virgin Mary, if he'd intended it as such? (p. 23) (No)

PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF ART AND ARISTOTLE'S REPLIES

To what extent can/does art (as representational?) convey truth and insights? (Does art need to be representational to do this?)

Plato/Socrates: Artworks (and artists) are poor sources of knowledge

If Homer and other poets had knowledge of subject mater, why didn't they do things in real world instead of just imitate them in art?

Artists can write about education, politics and the military, but we don't ask them for real answers to real questions

Eg. Contrast the user of a horses bit and reins (knows how to use them) and the maker of the bit and reins (knows how to make them) with the painter who only knows that they look like

Mere appearance all painter knows

Painter of a cobbler, knows nothing about shoe repair or construction

Aristotle reply to Plato: Art is not about particular appearances but tells us truths about universals

E.g., Arthur Miller's The Crucible is not just about the Salem witch trials or the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s (when it was written), but represents any situation where mass hysteria is fostered by demagogic leaders who try to use it to suppress dissent. Thus it conveys universal truths (of the sort Plato is interested in)

Plato: Art appeals to an inferior part of the mind (sensation, emotion), rather than the rational understanding, reason, logic, which are the proper way to gain knowledge

Art appeals to our irrational side and encourages us to be irrational ("it waters the passions instead of drying them up")

It feeds the passions and lets them rule

But passions should be controlled if we are to be happy and virtuous

Aristotle's reply? Catharsis

What is Catharsis? And why valuable?

To purge emotions and drain them away? An emotional release?

Feeling emotions gives us pleasure

Raises emotions and lets us learn from them?

"Poetry might reveal the nature of things with an intensity and breadth lacking in rational thought"

Questions about emotions:

Why is the other than rational (feeling, sensation, emotion) irrational?

Might not emotion be rational, or at least cognitive (truth bearing)

Why read poetry or sing at a funeral

To release emotions?

For an emotional reaction that gives insight?

Can't a good novel explore virtue, vice, and deep truths of life as well as can reasoning (if not better than reasoning?), by stirring up emotions and feelings?

A novel or a movie about war may not be as good as real thing in letting us understand the war but it may do it better than rational description

More on Representation

Summary of three mechanisms of representation (rep can be done via):

Imitation and Resemblance (painting resembles who it represents about)

But resemblance is neither nec nor suff for representing

Not necessary (for language represents w/o resembling

Nor sufficient (as people resemble their portraits but don't represent them)

Convention (as opposed to natural resemblances)

Language, propositions represent without resembling (linguistic rep)

The cross represents Jesus/Christianity

Cartoons and caricatures don't significantly resemble what they represent (Caricature of Churchill resembles a bulldog more than Churchill, but its about Churchill) Why? In part because of convention.

Intention of artist

Munch's the Scream (205) doesn't look like a scream, but it refers to (reps) it in part because of the intention of the artist

If a work of art has content, meaning, purpose, point, and there is something it is about, does that make it representational?

Fisher says no (?)

Art can have meaning w/o referring or representing.

All art has content and is about something and has interpretation and it can do this without representing anything

Ned: Instrumental music has content, is about something?

Fisher asks why equate having a meaning, content or being about something with having representative imagery?

Formalists allow that there are ideas, meaning, and point behind abstract art.

Duchamp's fountain, does not represent a urinal (thought it resembles, or is identical with one), but he uses it to convey disgust with the high status of art?

Duchamp's toilet has a point or meaning, but the image he gives doesn't rep or stand for it, but rather an occasion for our reflection about this point

Mightn't the urinal represent disgust with much conventional art?

Does Fisher confuse meaning with value?

Beautiful abstract art might have no meaning, but be valuable as it is beautiful, conveys emotions, and so on?