How do we perceive a picture (painting, drawing, photography, etc) as a meaningful whole and as being "art", a three dimensional reality and not simply as two dimensional images or sub-parts of images?
Dear Paul,
As I understand it, there are two schools of thinking centered around the early phenomenological philosophers beginning with Husserl. His way of thinking speaks of the suspension of judgments of being or non-being in the perception of a picture. When we perceive Dürer´s etching "The Knight, Death, and the Devil," we do not affirm the being or non-being of the picture as such, nor even as the scene in which an action is unfolding. On the other hand, Ortega and Sartre hold that we comprehend the picture as an unreality, a fiction as such, as opposed to the way we comprehend the world around it. If I personally had to choose between the two schools, I would go with Husserl. When we perceive long cartoon films like "Fantasia" and like the plethora of such films being made today, we suspend judgments of reality or unreality in order to derive maximum enjoyment from them.
Here is a reproduction of "The Knight, Death, and the Devil." When we focus our eyes on the picture and try to recognize its component parts, we do not ask whether they are real or not, but what persons, places, or things they are meant to be. Let everyone make the same test himself or herself.
This is a topic well explored by Rudolph Arnheim, by the Gestalt School, by Ernst Gombrich and, today, by visual studies...
Dear Paul,
If I can understand your question you are curios on individual or subjective perceiving/evaluation of two dimensional art works and the images of the common and everyday reality?
I thought always art should find and represent (delineate) the truth of our world and the notions and desires originated from our relationship with the environment around us. Not only superficial but innate truth which may return the essence of our experiences. Thus, I think we are predestined by our cultural backgrounds how to approach art work and the common reality. This cultural heritage which reveals in us is very different and various. That is why evaluation of art is so diverse and many cannot even approach the quintessence of an art work.
Dear Nelson,
I think you said that the message of this Dürer wood engraving is which matters. This message is what has been determined by cultural heritage and expresses the advantage of the celestial truth in contrast with the earthly life.
Some decades ago I learned in school that art is in most cases not a more or less well-made copy of nature but a transformation of the artist's perception of nature to whatever media is available to them. My arts teacher be forgiving if I've got this wrong.
I'm not an expert at all, so I offer my layman's idea on this. What if we all are artists and create a transformed perception by texting, scribbling, drawing, you name it? Would there be a difference between 'art' and 'non-art' art? In Germany we've had a discussion about serious music and pop music, as well as serious science and popular science. Your question, Paul, seems to point to a similar distinction in graphical arts.
@Nelson, unfortunately I feel unable to watch cartoons or comics. They look too strange for me to be digested as something useful or entertaining. I never watched that movie Avatar until 'The End'. But that's my personal incapacity. It was a different experience, though, when I could interact with such characters, e.g. in games as Civilization (long ago, no time for that anymore).
Dear Michael,
I can appreciate your inability to watch cartoon movies. Our children and grandchildren watch them with little difficulty. What is the difference? For kids, the difference between reality and unreality, though perceptible, can be suspended with greater ease. Because we are much more concerned with grave problems of the real world, we find it tough to live in an "unreal" world perceived as real. My suggestion to you would be to attend good performances of classical theatre. Then the suspension of judgments of reality may come with greater facility.
@ Jorge, Gombrich and the Gestalts provide an excellent basis for understanding perceptual processes. However, some much has developed in the last 20 years that needs to be taken into our understanding, from the work of neuroscience.
@Nelson, I like your suggestion watching classical theatre, which was one of my favourite leisure activities back in Germany, where there is a theatre around in every larger town. Here in Thailand, it's a different story. And you can be sure, I miss it. Thanks for the reminder, anyway.
Whoops, Michael, I forgot where you were situated! My error! Will classical Thai theatre serve the same purpose? I would imagine not, because it is so stylized that a Westerner cannot suspension illusions of reality or unreality. This is not a critique of their stylization but of our own limited vision.
Dear Paul:
So, try Semir Zeky ( http://neuroesthetics.org/ statement-on-neuroesthetics.php ) and his neuroesthetics proposal...
Dear Paul,
in L'Imaginaire from 1940 Jean-Paul Sartre gives the most decisive – or rather radical –answer to your question: art is not perceived at all but it is imagined. Of course, this distinction operates with a terminology one would have to look into deeper.
Some points:
- perception can never grasp its object entirely whereas the object of imagination does not transcend the very act of imagination. Thus, imagination is "free" in the sense of a spontaneous act of a subject, albeit triggered by some material basis.
- perception makes a positive ontological thesis (the object of perception "is" treated as "being over there"). Imagination does the opposite. Its object is ontologically negative.
Hoping to have aroused your curiosity on Sartre, with kind regards
Franz
Here is a study which gives some answers about emotion perception in art context and non-art context :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24983515
Rudolph Arnheim's pioneer studies on thias subject are still quite sugestive....
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