On Dec 24, 2008, at 12:08 PM, William Conger wrote:
I don't think we can talk anymore of sequential process in consciousness, cognition, etc. We may invent a sequence to sort out something complex but our brains are operating on multiple neuron- firing sequences simultaneously and multiply and all engage feeling or emotions and reasoned cognition both consciously and unconsciously. So in the end to say we respond emotionally first or last is meaningless (except maybe in subconscious brain stem activity.
More on me and David: I vaguely remember that when I first saw a pool painting, I didn't like it, I thought it was unappealing, austere, drear. But I kept looking (actually, I returned to the picture several times) and I began to notice my reactions and how I parsed them. Eventually, I began to feel much more sympathetic toward the painting. Then one day, I was standing next to a swimming pool painted aqua, and then I saw that the sunlight gleaming on the water crests and the ways the light was diffracted in the water and the patterns and shapes on the walls of the pool were almost exactly equivalent to the Hockney painting. Shazam!
For the record, I have always liked his drawings, perhaps because I had seen many other drawings that resemble his in technique, line quality, framing, etc., like those of Schiele, Picasso (portraits, e.g., Stravinsky), some Dine, others. I "knew" how to see them, but the pool paintings caught me with few antecedents to help guide my interpreting.
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