Qucikly grasped and expanded by you, William, and nicely commented on. It's interesting to muse about what the "best" painters (of any place, any time) would make of Lincoln's face. How the impact compares to one of those photos?
As for Harris's comment, I'm afraid my judgment is that his thinking is not right. I have no clear idea of what he has in mind with the word 'signs', but I'd claim it's a perfect example of a nesting doll word. Each doll is made of words, and inside it another doll made of words, and inside that another doll made of words, and you never reach the event or object you thought was in there. Putting aside the many difficulties with the notion of "word", an example of a non-nesting-doll word is 'Parthenon'. In a message dated 1/19/11 7:12:38 PM, [email protected] writes: > You're not moved by painted portraits of Lincoln because no American > portrait > painter was good enough in Lincoln's day to do the job. Sculpture, that's > another topic. Agustus St. Gaudens probably made the best sculptures of > Lincoln. > Gravitas portraiture aside, some of the best and most compelling drawn > likenesses of Lincoln are in caricatures and political cartoons. The > absolutely > best collection of those is in the Lincoln Museum in Springfield IL. I > have two > photos of Lincoln taken directly from Hesler's original glass plates from > 1860 > (200 copies were made in c. 1960). I agree that the photographs of > Lincoln, and > probably these Hesler images, are unmatched by any paintings of him (and > most > painted images of Lincoln are copied from photos, then and now). > > Roy Harris argues that communication precedes signs; that signs are > created in > the communication process. If that's so then all words are "nesting > words" > insofar as their use is what determines their meanings and functions as > signs. > The traditional notion is that signs are a-priori there, that they have > meanings and we use them to communicate. > > wc > > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Wed, January 19, 2011 5:31:56 PM > Subject: Re: representation and its sgnification > > I've been catching up on recent postings, and my overriding impression is > that terms like 'signify', 'represent', 'mean', 'stand for', 'sign' are > regularly what I'll call "facade" words, or "nesting doll" words, but > that's > entail a long argument. One narrow but, for me intriguing, question came > to > mind. My feeble visualizing ability aside, why do I find it hard to > imagine any > painting of Abraham Lincoln having the impact on me that some of his > photographs do?
