Representation in Painting and Consciousness
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KEITH LEHRER REPRESENTATION IN PAINTING AND CONSCIOUSNESS Representation in the arts is a creative process of reconfiguring a subject, real or imagined, to yield some original content or inten- tional object. The first question about representation is – what is the question about representation? Gombrich (1972), Wollheim (1980), Goodman (1968), Walton (1990), and Lopes (1996), have offered us diverse theories of representation in the visual arts. They all contain interesting ideas and insights, but the diversity of theories suggests that they may be asking and answering different questions. Moreover, that should not surprise us at all, for the painter, as well as other artists have diverse goals, and one of those goals is to change our conception of representation, to modify and challenge the conventions and constraints of representation. Lopes (1996), for example, suggests that the fundamental form of representation is depiction, demotic picturing, that would enable one to recognize and identify the object depicted. We are indebted to Lopes for this important proposal, but demotic picturing may be opposed to artistic representation. The artist may start with the external subject as the stimulus to find some meaning, some feeling or emotion, some insight or idea, and so reconfigure and repattern what he or she has seen into something that has some new internal meaning or content. The stimulus for a painting, a model, for example, need not be depicted or be what the painting is about The content of a painting is one thing, and the model is something else. A painter is sometimes indifferent to producing a demotic picture of the model or subject, which has caused difficulties between famous portrait painters and those they portrayed, when what interests the artist is the reconfiguration or the reinterpretation of the model or subject. The painter may want to create a painting that has a content that did not exist prior to the painting. Put it another way, the painter attempts to interpret the subject, that is, to configure the subject in a new way that will result in a new meaning, a new content, rather Philosophical Studies 117: 1–14, 2004. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 2 KEITH LEHRER than a demotic picture. Madame Pompadour thought that Boucher did not capture her likeness well, but he represented her the way she wanted to be represented. The content of his paintings of her configured her, as she desired, though he was not good at demotic representation of her. The questions concerning artistic representation that concern me are these. What is the content of the painting? What is it for a painting to be about something? How does a painting represent what the painting is about, its content? Aboutness is an intentional notion, and so what the painting is about is an intentional object. It is like an object of thought, and this accords well with the views of Gombrich (1972) and Walton (1990). If a painter paints from a model, the painting need not be about model. The great paintings of the nude done from models are not about hired help. They are about the object represented in the painting, which is the content of the painting. The object may be an object or content, a god or goddess, who has no external existence. Suppose I paint Finger Rock Canyon in the desert. The content of my painting, what it is about, is in the painting, not in the desert. The canyon in the desert was the model or stimulus but not the content. Does my painting denote Finger Rock Canyon? It does not. The words “Finger Rock Canyon” denote it. Here is my sorting out of the matter. I distinguish what a painting is about, the intentional object or content, from what, if anything the painting denotes. I also distinguish the content from the external subject or model that serves as the stimulus for the painting. A painting need not denote the model, and the model need not be the content of the painting. Many paintings do not denote anything, though some, a painting whose function is the identification of some subject, an identification painting, may denote the subject. Some paintings may not be about anything for anybody. They are content- less paintings. Maybe some Rothko paintings are among those, and I shall return to this. That is the exception, however. We are inveterate interpreters secreting content when visually stimulated. At any rate, I am concerned with paintings that are about something. What I seek is to explain is how a painting represents its content, what it is about. I am not sure this is a pellucid objective, but it must do here. We need to distinguish representation from description. Descrip- tions have content as well as representations. The content of painting REPRESENTATION IN PAINTING AND CONSCIOUSNESS 3 differs, however, from the content of a description in the way in which the content of the painting is related to the painting. The content of the painting is specific to the particular painting in the way that the content of description is not. There may be many descriptions, different descriptions of the same descriptive content. One description may be exchangeable with another with respect to the same content. But the content of painting is not exchange- able with the content of another painting. We could add that the content of the painting is ineffable in the sense that no description of the painting, however detailed, would represent the content of the painting in the way that the painting does. The painting has a kind of representational opacity with respect to its content. In the case of the description, on the other hand, there is a kind of transparency of representation. Once you grasp the content of the description, you may ignore features of the description, the exact letters used, for example, when contemplating the content. The transparency of description is part of the explanation for why proofreading is diffi- cult. You read the description to find the content of it, and, once found, the features of the description may be ignored because of their transparency. The features of the painting are more directly related to the content of the painting than the features of the description are to the content of the description. The content of the painting is seen in the painting, not through the painting. The sensory experience caused by seeing the painting is part of the content. You can only tell what the content of the painting is like by seeing the painting. Goodman (1968), noting the difference between representation and description, has insisted upon the importance of the analog character of visual representation. I do not disagree that the analogue character is important, but I do not believe that this explains the particularity of content. A robust notion of analogue representation might have the consequence that any feature of the sensory experience of the painting could be relevant to the representation. That takes us a long way toward an account of the particularity of content, but not all the way. The reason is that analogue character, however detailed, admits of replication. The analogue replica would have the same content if the representation were analogue. The analogue character is a general character and does not capture the particularity of the artistic 4 KEITH LEHRER representation of content. The Cézanne painting of the mountain, Saint Victoire, gives you a representation of the mountain in the particular manner in which the painting is experienced. The differ- ence between the representation of content in terms of the particular sensory experience of the painting and in an analogue representation is like the difference between a most determinate character and a particular. They are not the same. In addition to the particularity of content, there is something conceptual in the content of the painting. We look at the painting and conceive of the content. Consider a painting, those of Jack Yeats illustrate the point very well, where there is something like a gestalt phenomenon that occurs in the perception of the painting. There is something you do not see at first, and then you do see it. When you do see, for example, two men in the painting, though at first you did not, the content of the painting is different for you. At first you lack a conception of the content which you later perceive. It would, therefore, be a mistake to infer from the nonexchangeability, ineffability, opacity, specificity and particularity of the content of the painting that the representation of the content is not concep- tual. It is. We conceive of the content of the painting by viewing it. The content of the painting is conceptual, and that means that it is also general. But the generality of the content cannot exhaust what the content is like because the content is also particular. These points have been observed by other estheticians. Blocker (1979), for example, insisted on the combined particularity and generality of the content. My goal is to offer an explanation of the role of the particular character of what the painting is like in the conception of the generality of content. We might formulate the problem of explanation as a paradox. On one hand, the content of the painting is particular. On the other hand, the content of the painting is something you conceive of. So it is something conceptual. If it is conceptual, then it is general. Concepts involve generalizing. The problem is to explain how the content can be both particular and general. The solution I want to develop is taken from Goodman (1968), though indirectly from Sellars (1963), and more remotely, Hume (1739) and Reid (1785).