________________________________
From: Chris Miller <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 9:19:35 AM
Subject: Fw: dead photos- alive paintings
"if some A is B, and if all B is C, thus some A is C."
"A is seeing, B is filling-in, C is aesthetic judgment." (WC)
How can all of "filling-in" be "aesthetic judgment" ?
C is not all of "filling in". C is a sphere termed aesthetic judgment. The
syllogism shows that some of sphere A (seeing) is in sphere B, and all of
sphere B ("filling in") is in C. Although all of B is in C, that does not mean
that all of C is B. Thus only a portion of aesthetic judgment is made up of
"filling-in". How much? Who knows? The syllogism simply shows that logically
some filling in is part of aesthetic judgment. If you're familiar with Venn
Diagrams you'll be able to plot this out yourself. See a book or online
treatment of Symbolic Logic and Venn Diagrams.
Aren't there many moments when we do a lot of careful seeing and filling-in
without any concern for aesthetic judgment at all? (for example: while
driving a car on a busy street)
Yes, maybe, and that's what the syllogism shows -- that only some of C is
filled by B but we can't be really sure. Why? Because some of C is not
quantifiable and neither is some of B. All we know for sure is that visual
cognition involves "constructive" seeing. Also, and this is what interests me
a lot we don't know if seeing is aesthetically constructed to some degree. I
am easily led to think that it might but don't know how it can be identified.
If it is, then we can understand why an artist like Duchamp -- number them in
the tens of thousands -- assert that something is art if they see it as art.
That's why I mis-construed William's syllogism when he first presented it, as
I assumed that "C" was "filling-in".
No, "filling in" is B.
Perhaps syllogisms cannot be constructed with words like 'seeing',
'filling-in", and 'aesthetic judgment' -- since they are so resistant to
definable, shareable interpretation..
To some extent, yes, but syllogisms do not say that the facts of the premise
are true but whether that deductions made from the premises are logically true.
Students of logic have fun making up correct syllogisms that are obviously
absurd.
Especially the phrase "aesthetic judgment", where, like William, I am not sure
that "the collection of parts in which only a few can be scientifically
demonstrated and others are merely assumed, can add up to an objectively
definable whole."
They can't. But the issue is not to define objective facts but to show how IF
those facts are true, they will logically lead to a certain conclusion. The
logic can be true and the facts may be false. In that case one seeks correct
facts to fit into the premises. The logic does not change.
And yet still, I think it's necessary to make aesthetic judgments and share
them with each other. I might even call such an activity foundational to the
human project.
That's what people do. And we like to know whether or not our judgments make
sense. Logic is one way to ensure correct reasoning. It does not require true
facts. Most talk in aesthetics is speculation but even speculation should be
logical.
Regarding one such judgment, William has been bold enough to explain his
preference for Jacques Louis David over Thomas Kinkade.
Thank you!
It's a fine explanation - and I don't want to discourage him from offering any
more - but examples of such facture (underpainting scarcely wiped with paint)
can be found in many European paintings, both good and bad, from the 15th C.
and thereafter. It can even be found within the torso of this little fellow
as painted by Mr. Kinkade:
But I said that David's technique perfectly suited his metaphor...the
transition from life to ghostly vapor. But i certainly agree that no bit of
physical data can suffice for the ineffable that makes one work a masterpiece
and another a piece of junk ....it's that mysterious stuff in C again.
http://www.thomaskinkadegallery.com/painting.php?id=468
(which also includes that provocative Modern/post-Modern feature of placing
text, some of which is untranslatable, within the image)
Some art IS text. As in Sanskrit. And text has been central to much western
art too. How about those illuminated medieval texts where letters become
elaborate pictures? Scholar Mitchell uses the term Image-Text to suggest how
we co-mingle words and images as a way of "filling in"
While we can also find examples of what we might judge great painting where
this facture is not used at all:
If it's a painting made with paint, the facture is there, perhaps not easily
seen. Nowadays we need to be alert to the redefining of "painting" that
doesn't include any paint at all. In the same way, "sculpture" isn't fixed to
carving away material but to shaping 3-D space.
Painting can be "shaping 2-D space". Letters can do that. Art has so many
options once we take away the properties of the object as the defining source.
Trouble is, that leaves us without fixed boundaries. Welcome to the postmodern.
http://www.abstract-art.com/abstraction/l2_Grnfthrs_fldr/g018_ryder_marine.ht
ml
I'm also sure that terrible paintings can be found where the artist twirled
the paint just so, building it up here and there like clumps of bloody mud in
sunlight, to let you imagine the quagmire of emotions at war with themselves
in the people he painted."
Yes. But if the paint doesn't make the masterpiece, neither does it make the
failure. The metaphor, 'clumps, etc" is sustained by something, I agree. But
what? Some part of any masterpiece may look the same as some part of any
horrid daub. I used to joke with my students by telling them that they too can
paint like Rembrandt even if they've never before touched a brush to canvas.
The mechanical skill required to daub a bit of paint is an elementary one,
common to 5 yr. olds. But knowing where to put that daub, and how much and how
forcefully, ah, that's the hard part. So in this regard, the idea, the
concept, the ineffable yearning, vision, "filling in" seeing are essential.
But please don't ask me to start looking for them! (actually -- it's quite
easy - I can just walk through the storage racks at my art club)
The Old Palette and Chisel Club?
Which brings us back to the original topic of this thread "Live Paintings -
dead photographs", and my assertion that there is a quality of liveliness - or
vitality - or "chi energy" -- that can be created by the painter but not the
photogra;pher.
Not to say that some photographs are far, far better than others -- and that
photographs have no positive aesthetic value.
But they can't accommodate the kind of aesthetic immersion which good
paintings and drawings can.
If you require the tactility of paint and drawn line as essential to "Live"
then you are necessarily limited to them. You have a tautology. But if there
is always "filling in" then it occurs with paintings as well as with photos.
And IF "filling-in" is imaginative then it means that the imaginative is a part
of aesthetic judgment, as my syllogism shows.
Not because they offer less of an opportunity for "filling-in"
But because the photographer cannot draw a line or fine tune an edge, hue, or
tone.
There are cases where photographers were good painters and good painters were
good photographers. Your statement is just narrow opinion---completely
unsupported by any facts or logic.
WC
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