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.

Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers,

101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.

In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,

P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland

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, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORIAL PREFACE

LIST OF ILLUSTRA TIONS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

PART I

ABSTRACTING AND DEPICTING

vii

Xl

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 Philos­ophy 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 imagina­tive 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, dis­turbingly, 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 recogni­tion 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, discri­mination, 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 philosophi­cally 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 unin­formed 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 Philos­ophy. 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 type­scripts and proofs and Yvonne Kaye for putting up with my incessant demands for letter writing, typing and re-typing, organising and remem­bering what a job of this sort entails. Only they can know how in­adequate 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

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN

ALPHABETICAL ORDER

AUERBACH, Frank (b. 1931) 5 studies in pencil for Bacchus and Ariadne (private collection) Bacchus and Ariadne, 1972 oil on board 101 x 127 em (private collection) photo © Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd. Head of J. Y.M. oil on board 71.1 x 61 cm (private collection) photo © Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd.

BRAQUE, Georges Road near I'Estaque, 1908 oil on canvas 60.3 X 50.2 cm Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York ©ADAGPI986 Man with Guitar oil on canvas 116.2 X 80.9 cm Collection: Museum of Modern Art, N ew York. The Lillie P. Bliss Bequest ©ADAGP 1986

26

25

27

151

CITROEN, Paul 302 Metropolis photo montage reproduced by permission Kunsthistorisch Instituut der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden

HOBBEMA, Meindert 276 The Water Mill with the Great Red Roof, 1670 oil on canvas 81.25 X 109.5 em The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of F. C. Logan

xi

Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

KLEE, Paul 302 Mountains in Winter, 1925 aquerell, 28.7 X 37 cm reproduced by permission Kunstmuseum, Bonn, W. Germany © ADAGP Paris and Cosmopress, Geneva 1986

MALEVICH, K. S. 148 Suprematist Composition, 1915 oil on canvas 101 X 62 cm Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam photograph Bridgeman, Art-Library, London

MATISSE, Henri Dance, first version Museum of Modern Art, N ew York ©DACS

The Red Studio, 1911 oil on canvas 181.25 X 240 cm Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York ©DACS

METZINGER, Jean Dancer in Caje, 1912 oil on canvas 148 X 114 cm Courtesy of Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York ©ADAGP 1986

MONET, Claude Rouen Cathedral in Full Sunlight oil on canvas 100.5 X 66.2 cm Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Juliana Cheny Edwards Collection.

NEWMAN, Barnett Onement III, 1949 oil on canvas 182.5 X 84.9 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York

30]

148

149

149

NOLDE, Emile 28 Dance Around the Golden Calf, 1910 Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlung, Munich, W. Germany © Nolde-Stiftung Seebiill

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER xiii

PICASSO, Pablo 150 Portrait of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, 1910 oil on canvas 39112 X 285/8 in The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman ©DACS 1986

Three Women oil on canvas The Hermitage, Leningrad ©DACS 1986 photograph Bridgeman Art-Library, London.

Woman Weeping, 1937 oil on canvas On loan to Tate Gallery, London ©DACS 1986 photograph Bridgeman Art-Library, London

POLLOCK, Jackson Autumn Rhythm oil on canvas 105 X 207 in The Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, New York George A. Hearn Fund, 1957 (57.92)

152

152

147

POUSSIN, Nicholas 23 The Worship of the Golden Calf oil on canvas The National Gallery. Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery. Origin of the Sacrament of. the Eucharist 24 oil on canvas National Gallery of Scotland. Sutherland Collection Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery of Scotland

RAPHAEL 23 Madonna and Child with Book Pencil 19.3 X 15.2 cm Albertina Collection, Vienna, Austria

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

REMBRANDT van Rijn Holy Family oil on panel 66.5 X 78 cm Reproduced by permission of Rijksmuseum Stichting, Amsterdam.

TITIAN Bacchus and Ariadne oil on canvas The National Gallery. Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery.

VERMEER van DELFT, Jan Woman Reading Letter by Window Reproduced by permission of Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.

VAN de WEYDEN Descent from the Cross oil on panel Reproduced by kind permission of National Museum of Painting and Sculpture, Musae de Prado, Madrid, Spain.

ZIFF, Paul Untitled prints

PHOTOGRAPHS © MARTIN KEMP (pp. 269-276)

24

25

301

147

153 154

Church of Sant' Ignazio, Rome, general view of interior looking 269 East.

POZZO, Andrea 269 Perspective Projection of a Column and Other Architectural Elements Using the Distance-Point Method, from the Perspec-tiva Pictorum et Architectorum, Rome, 1693-1700.

POZZO, Andrea 270 Demonstration of the Scheme for the Painted Dome of Sant' Ignazio, Showing the Plan of the Drum, from the Perspectiva.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER xv

POZZO, Andrea 270 Demonstration of the Use of a Grid of Strings to Project the Illusionistic Design on the Curved Vault of the Nave of Sant' Ignazio, from the Per!;pectiva.

POZZO, Andrea 271 Ceiling Fresco of the Nave of Sant' Ignazio.

POZZO, Andrea 272 Detail of the South-West Corner of the Nave Vault of Sant' Ignazio, Viewed from an Off-Centre Position.

POZZO, Andrea 273 Painted Dome of Sant' Ignazio

POZZO, Andrea 273 Photographic Reproduction of the Dome of Sant' Ignazio. Photographed from an Off-Centre Viewpoint.

Photographic Reproduction of the Nave Ceiling of Sant' Ignazio. Photographed from an Off-Centre Viewpoint. 274

LAURETI, Tommaso 274 Triumph of Christianity over Pagan Idols. Ceiling of the Sala di Constantino, Vatican, Rome.

POZZO, Andrea 275 Detail of the East End of the Vault of Sant' Ignazio Showing the Angel with a Mirror.

The Size-Distance Illusion. 275