Redon on titles of drawings

Odilon Redon, Roger and Angelica, Pastel, 1910

"The title that occasionally identifies my drawings can be superfluous. It is justified only when it is vague, indeterminate, and even equivocal. My drawings inspire and cannot be defined. They do not determine anything. They place us as music does in the world of the ambiguous and the indeterminate."

Odilon Redon, "Confessions d'artiste", Soi-même. Journal (1867-1915) in Henri Dorra, Symbolist Art Theories, University of California Press, 1995, p. 55.

Knowing ingorance

I increasingly find the act of writing is merely a process of skirting around my own ignorance.

Essence of mind/Chords of reality

Internal and external

Pencil and crayon on paper

Touch and sight

Pencil on paper

Head/World Paradox

1. We experience the external world outside the head.

2. The head contains all experience, including that of the external world.

3. We experience the external world inside the head.

Mind/Reality Paradox

1. We can distinguish between internal subjective experience and external objective reality.

2. The distinction between internal experience and external reality occurs within internal subjective experience.

3. We cannot distinguish between internal subjective experience and external objective reality.

Portrait

Ink and oil pastel on paper, 2009

Objects and appearance/Mind and reality

If we separate the object (the 'thing in itself') from its appearance ('in our senses') then we have created the problem of how the object and its appearance are related. One solution might be to remove the separation. Without this the object and the way it appears to us are identical (aspects of the same), and so the realms of the ideal and the real are merged (aspects of the same).

One could point out that there are many cases where the mind departs from reality (dreams, hallucinations, misperceptions, etc.), and that these cases strongly suggest a disparity between the appearance and the objectivity of the world. In such cases, though, the subject concerned is still having a real experience, i.e. the world as it appears to them at that time is veridical. But their understanding of that experience (say, a dream) at a later point may in retrospect change when compared to the norm.

This is in essence no different from misapprehensions, such as the person who thinks it is Friday and then realises it is actually Saturday. At the time it was in force the experience of it being Friday was entirely real. It only appears as unreal in comparison with a subsequent understanding. Likewise, our dreams appear unreal on waking, but utterly real while being dreamed.

A constituent of realness is the mental activity required to perceive it

We could say that objects in the world do exist; they have objective properties like colours, shapes, sounds, tastes, etc. that (by any reasonable definition) are real. But their realness occurs only by virtue of the activity of a certain kind of mental apparatus, and this activity cannot be disentangled from the realness that the objects have. This on the grounds that if the operation of the mental activity is altered (through intoxication, through training, by surgery or lesion to the brain, as examples) the nature of the reality experienced can vary from the norm.

To answer the question, then, does an object x exist when we cease to pay attention to it (either by perception or conception) we can say that it does not, on the grounds that the quality of realness that any particular object has consists in part of the mental activity in play when the realness is experienced. Without that mental activity the realness, as such, is not in play. When we experience realness it is, quite literally, an experience, which is to say the experiental aspect is central to the condition.

Nature and divisibility

Nature (or reality) is is neither continuous nor discontinuous. When we are analysing natural phenomena it's fine to decide that a distinction can be applied here, or a separation there, as long as it is understood that in doing so one is creating a distinction that exists only by virtue of the act of creating it. To believe then that the distinction is an aspect of reality existing quite separately from the person who supposes it to be there is fallacy. It must also be accepted that in creating the distinction one is immediately presented with the problem of how the separated parts are related (a problem that could be resolved by the removal of the distinction).

It should not be inferred from this, however, that the distinction has no place in reality, since the mind is part of the world it perceives, and insofar as reality exists at all it exists in the mind of the person who is themselves a constituent of that reality. Mind and reality become identical, and include all the forms reality takes consequent on the mind that creates it.

Realism and anthropocentrism

Any version of realism that assumes the world as it appears to humans is equivalent to the world 'as it is' must be dubious. Because the world appears to humans in one sort of way does not means it appears that way to all creatures. Nor need it necessarily have always appeared to humans as it appears now. Different perceptual systems, different understandings of natural events, will give rise to different kinds of realities. How do we determine which is the 'real' reality? Is it not more likely that the nature of reality is conditional on the nature of the perceiving agent? In which case reality is an observer-dependent phenomena.

Smiling in photographs

When did people start smiling in photographs?

Art and consciousness

Patrick Caulfield, Interior with a picture, 1986

Art training consists in large part in cultivating perceptual awareness, particularly visual awareness. Artists are especially sensitive to visual phenomena and, referring continuously to examples provided by other artists, their potential for transcription into art. Often when we experience an artwork we are invited to share in the artists' heightened sensitivity in a way that heightens our own. If there are degrees of intensity in conscious experience then art can induce a greater degree than other kinds of stimulant.

The variety of beliefs

For every idea or opinion held exists the potential for another that opposes it, however delusional, irrational or trivial the contradiction might appear. Every occurrence of the ugly has the potential to be regarded as beautiful, and something beautiful could just as well seem pretty or empty.

This does not deny there are truths, or occurrences of beautiful or ugly things, but rather that they are not intrinsically, universally, or eternally so. Values or qualities depend on associations that extend beyond the item in question.

Painting and conscious awareness

Philip Nicol, Sun Shower, oil on canvas

This painting depicts a scene that I have never seen in actuality. It may be something the artist never actually saw either. But this creates no problems for me in recognising what I see. I am able to 'remember' not only each object but the way they appear subject to the peculiar lighting conditions in play.

It depicts a scene — a collection of objects — I have seen countless times in various configurations and under numerous lighting conditions, but perhaps rarely paid attention to.

So there is a strong sense of familiarity without there being an equally precise sense of actual location.

What this painting, and others like it, seem to do is bring to the front of my conscious awareness a visual experience that I have experienced but not appreciated. It directs my attention towards, for example, the coloured puddles each reflecting a different part of the space above. There is a delight in remembering these that comes from seeing them as puddles and patches of paint at the same time.

Since my attention is on the painting, and not the scene it depicts (as it would be in actuality), I give consideration to what I might otherwise overlook. My immediate conscious awareness is populated by both a vividly present arrangement of marks and something more remote in my memory. It makes me conscious of my own mind.

(With thanks to Philip Nicol for permission to reproduce the painting)

Perception and world

The world generated by perception is not the world 'as it is'.
The world 'as it is' is infinite, the world as perceived is finite.
What we perceive is a fragment of an infinite potential; the world in entirety is not perceptible.
Yet we are also part of the world in entirety.
And what we perceive is the world as it is, since we are the world as it is.

Ruskin on Science, Art and Literature

"In science, you must not talk before you know. In art, you must not talk before you do. In literature, you must not talk before you think...

Science: The knowledge of things, whether Ideal or Substantial.
Art: The modification of Substantial things by our Substantial Power.
Literature: The modification of Ideal things by our Ideal Power."

John Ruskin, Deucalion - King of the Golden River and the Eagle's Nest, 1872, p. 303

The brain and reality

The function of the brain is not to represent reality but to generate it.

Perception and the appearance of reality

Studies of animal vision suggest that different species have very different visual experiences of the world. Cats and dogs, for example, are red-green colour blind, although they see more in the periphery and at night, while snakes can 'see' infrared frequencies at night although not things that keep still. Horses, with eyes at each side of the head, see a greater panorama than humans, while insects like flies and bees have compound eyes which make up a mosaic-like image composed of many individual units. Some insects, like butterflies, see more colours than us, while others, like bees, see less but can see in the ultraviolet spectrum.

What appears to humans, with our particular perceptual apparatus, as reality will appear quite different to another species. Something that is an object to us may not be to a fly, and vice versa. This tells us that the way the world is divided up according to human perception is not the only way it can be divided up, and that in fact what constitutes reality is something of a moveable feast depending on the structure of the perceptual systems being used. Reality is subjective.

Clare Chapman

Clare Chapman, Dusk #2, 2008, oil on canvas, 100×140cm

Plato's Indeterminate Dyad and the division of the unlimited

"We assume that the 'Indeterminate Dyad' is a straight line or distance, not to be interpreted as a unit distance, or as having yet been measured at all. We assume that a point (limit, monas, 'One') is placed successively in such positions that it divides the Dyad according to the ratio 1 : n, for any natural number n. Then we can describe the 'generation' of the numbers that follows. For n = 1, the Dyad is divided into two parts whose ratio is 1 : 1. This may interpreted as the 'generation' of Twoness out of Oneness (1 : 1 = 1) and the Dyad, since we have divided the Dyad into two equal parts. Having thus 'generated' the number 2, we can divide the Dyad according to the ratio 1 : 2 (and the larger of the ensuing sections, as before, according to the ratio 1 : 1), thus generating three equal parts and the number 3; generally, the 'generation' of a number n gives rise to a division of the Dyad in the ration 1 : n, and with this, to the 'generation' of the number n + 1. (And in each stage the 'One' intervenes afresh as he point which introduces a limit or form or measure into the otherwise 'indeterminate' Dyad to create a new number...

Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, (Routledge, p. 122, n. 35)

About writing

Writing is really re-writing.

Bergson: Mind, matter and memory

"Thereby also some light may be thrown upon the problem toward which all our enquiries converge, that of the union of body and soul. The obscurity of this problem, on the dualistic hypothesis, comes from the double fact that matter is considered as essentially divisible and every state of the soul as rigorously inextensive, so that from the outset the communication between the two terms is severed. ... But if these two postulates involve a common error, if there is a gradual passage from the idea to the image and from the image to the sensation; if, in the measure in which it evolves toward actuality, that is to say, towards action, the mental state draws nearer to extension; if, finally, this extension once attained remains undivided and therefore is not out of harmony with the unity of the soul; we can understand that spirit can rest upon matter and, consequently, unite with it in the act of pure perception, yet nevertheless be radically distinct from it. It is distinct from matter in that it is, even then, memory, that is to say, a synthesis of past and present with a view to the future, in that it contracts the moments of this matter in order to use them and to manifest itself by actions which are the final aim of its unison with the body. We were right, then, when we said, at the beginning of this book, that the distinction between body and mind must be established in terms not of space but of time."

Bergson, Matter and Memory, p.220

(with thanks to Alise Piebalga for the reference)

Ruskin's definition of imitation

"Whenever anything looks like what it is not, the resemblance being so great as nearly to deceive, we feel a kind of pleasurable surprise, an agreeable excitement of mind, exactly the same in its nature as that which we receive from juggling. Whenever we perceive this in something produced by art, that is to say, whenever the work is seen to resemble something which we know it is not, we receive what I call an idea of imitation. Why such ideas are pleasing, it would be out of our present purpose to enquire; we only know that there is no man who does not feel pleasure in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such surprise can be excited in no more distinct manner that by the evidence that a thing is not what it appears to be. Now two things are requisite to our complete and most pleasurable perception of this: first, that the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to a deception; secondly, that there be some means of proving at the same moment it is a deception. The most perfect ideas and pleasures of imitation are, therefore, when one sense is contradicted by another, both bearing as positive evidence on the subject as each is capable of alone; as when the eye says a thing is round, and the finger says it is flat; they are, therefore, never felt in so high a degree as in painting, where appearances of projection, roughness, hair, velvet, &c. are given with a smooth surface, or in wax-work, where the first evidence of the senses is perpetually contradicted by their experience; but the moment we come to marble, our definition checks us, for a marble figure does not look like what it is not: it looks like marble, and like the form of a man, but then it is marble, and it is the form of a man. It does not look like a man, which it is not, but like the form of a man, which it is. Form is form, bonâ fide and actual, whether in marble or in flesh — not an imitation or resemblance of form, but real form. The chalk outline of the bough of a tree on paper, is not an imitation, it looks like chalk and paper — not like wood, and that which it suggests to the mind is not properly said to be like the form of a bough, it is the form of a bough. ...
...Whenever...I speak of ideas of imitation, I wish to be understood to mean the immediate and present perception that something produced by art is not what it seems to be. I prefer saying "that it is not what it seems to be," to saying, "that it seems to be what it is not," because we perceive at once what it seems to be, and the idea of imitation, and the consequent pleasure, result from the subsequent perception of its being something else — flat, for instance, when we thought it was round."

Ruskin, ibid. p. 24

Painting as perception

"To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts; — what is there in the possession of gold and jewels to compare with delights like these? And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to transfer to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the blowing winds, the white water of the rushing cascade, as with a turn of the hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. These are the joys of painting."

Wang Wei (Chinese, fifth century), in The Mind of the Artist Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art by F. R. Stockton.

Ruskin on great art and ideas

"But I say that the art is greatest, which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas, and I call an idea great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received."

John Ruskin, Modern Painters, I, II, p. 11

Cobra: indeterminate forms in painting

Tegn, Christian Dotremont, 1971

"The forms which appear to us today as the most valuable, as much through their formal arrangement as by their expressive intensity, are not properly speaking either abstract or figurative. They participate precisely in these cosmic powers of metamorphosis where the true adventure is located. (From where there arise forms which are themselves and something other than themselves, birds and cacti, abstraction and new figuration.)"

Jean-Michel Atlan, 'Abstraction Adventure in Contemporary Art', Cobra, 1950

Metaphysics and regress

The goal of metaphysics is not just to try and understand why we exist but why we know we do and why we ask about it, and then why we want to ask why, and so on. This evokes the potential of an upwardly spiralling regress.

A mind composed of contradictory beliefs

As I am drifting off to sleep I repeatedly hold two opposing thoughts: first, that as each day passes I grow a day older, and that this process extends indefinitely, and second, a belief that cuts across the first, that this process will definitely stop at some point, and I will cease to grow a day older each day.

Each belief is strongly held, despite the contradiction, and this seems to me to offer support for a view of the mind that is not unified — in the sense of consistent and harmoniously ordered — but fragmented and contradictory.

Bush and the Presidential portrait

George Bush confronts his Presidential portrait

Seeing yourself as another person, seen from both the point of view of others and yourself; to see yourself as others see you at the same time as seeing yourself as yourself, but also separate from you. All this must take place at the moment you see your portrait.

Light-heavy stone

The stone feels heavy next to the pebble but light next to the boulder. Is the stone heavy or light?

Dialethism and truth

If there is a concern that sympathy for dialethic position (in which something is true and false at the same time) undermines the value of truth, then it should be borne in mind that it may be true that something is both true and false; if so, dialethism upholds the value of truth.

The measure of the universe

We do not measure the universe in itself but our capacity to behold it, which is really a measure of our capacity to behold ourselves, and our own extent.

KUBism

Enamel sign for KUB Bouillon, photographed at L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue antiques market, France, Summer 2008.

The summer of 1912 was a very productive period in the development of cubism. Picasso was living in the town of Sorgues, north of Avignon where Braque would join him. A common sight would have been the advertisements for KUB bouillon, a popular brand of seasoning. The opportunities for punning this presented did not escape the artists, and Picasso directly referenced KUB in a painting that year, which some have seen as an example of proto-Pop art :

Picasso, Landscape with Posters, 1912

Richardson (A Life of Picasso, Vol. 2, p. 352) recounts that the Germanic-sounding KUB came under suspicion at the start of WWI as Maggi, the corporation owning the brand, erected signs and posters across France carrying "code numbers of purely administrative significance." Fearing these were enemy signals the authorities ordered them removed or defaced. This caused Picasso, with his connections to German dealers, some anxiety as to whether his own references to KUB might come under similar suspicion.

Georges Braque, L'Affiche de Kubelick (Le Violon), 1912

Valuing painting

How can you put a price on a painting? — it's either worth nothing or everything.

The point of doing art

Surely the point of doing art is to make work unlike that being made by your contemporaries. If not, then what?

Shchukin and the psychological shock

"If a picture gives you a psychological shock, buy it. It’s a good one." Sergei Shchukin

Deirdre, Fernand. 2008. The lost picture show. The Sunday Times magazine, January 13 2008, p34.

(with thanks for Florence Martellini for the reference)

Rembrandt as a painter of experience

"Rembrandt’s paintings are not an image of the world but an interpretation of the experience of the world."

Jean François Chevrier, Museum of Seattle, “Craigie Horsfield”, p20

(with thanks to Florence Martellini for the reference)

Qualities imply what they are not

It seems true that no quality can exist of itself, that is, 'up-ness' cannot exist apart from 'down-ness', or 'red-ness' apart from 'green-ness'. Each quality possesses within itself something of all the qualities it is not, and this is especially so of opposites, which seem to announce their absent partner each time they are cited: the closed door is also not open, the heavy weight is also not light. It was Heraclitus who pointed out that the path up the hill is also the path down.

Artists and rational argument

"The creative artist, like the philosopher, is fully committed to a truth-seeking activity, trying to see below the surface of things and acquire a deeper understanding of human experience, however, he [sic] publishes, or publicly presents, his insights in a different form from the philosopher, a form that relies on direct perception and intuition rather than on rational argument."

Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy, 2001

As a generalisation this is probably unobjectionable, but as a rule it is dubious. Putting aside the question of whether 'truth' is the main objective in either activity (one can imagine both art and philosophy being practiced for reasons other than the search for truth), and the quibble about gender assignment, what remains doubtful is the opposition of 'direct perception' and 'intuition' versus 'rational argument'. It's possible to think of philosophical arguments that appeal to direct perception and intuition (especially in the eastern tradition — through the direct contemplation of nature, the elliptical remark, or koan form) as well as artistic statements that are the result of a reasoned, logical process (some of Sol LeWitt's 'structures' spring to mind, as well as other constructivists and process-based artists). This may be over-loading Magee's generalist claim, but it is worth resisting the easy separation of art and philosophy.

Where is the music?

If I hear a piece of music that I know but haven't heard for years, it can seem both new and familiar at the same time — some parts I recognise and some I don't. Where in this process is the music? It cannot be entirely external to me ('on the radio') since part of my experience of hearing it is determined by what I recover from memory, which presumably is internal to me (including the thoughts I associate with the music, which are not in the music itself)? Yet it cannot be entirely internal to me ('in my head') as there are sections I seem to have no memory recall for. These seem to be delivered 'fresh in' from the world — I hear but don't recognise.

The question of where the music is is not entirely clear, or more precisely the question of where my experience of the music originates is not clear. The common-sense answer that the music is playing outside of me but I experience it inside of me doesn't suffice since it makes just as much common sense to say the playing and the experience, to me at least, are one in the same. For there's no experience without the playing, and the playing is nothing without the experience.

Interdependence of the (post)human

"If I am to enter into a consideration of 'posthuman understanding,' as promised in the subtitle of this book, I must come clean. And I write 'interdependent, interrelated, interaction,' for I would submit that whether the imperious and imperialistic Western mind knows it or not, and whether it likes it or not, we have always been interdependently, interrelatedly in interaction with the entirety of our world.

This is to say that in the posthuman sense, there is no all-or-nothing demarcation between humans and other humans, or between humans and other organisms, or between organisms and the world, or between life and non-life."

Floyd Merrell, Sensing Corporeally: Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003

Things as words ("artificial converse")

...The other, was a Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great Advantage in Point of Health as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is in some Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortning of our Lives. An Expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on. And this Invention would certainly have taken Place, to the great Ease as well as Health of the Subject, if the Women in conjunction with the Vulgar and Illiterate had not threatned to raise a Rebellion, unless they might be allowed the Liberty to speak with their Tongues, after the manner of their Ancestors; such constant irreconcilable Enemies to Science are the common People. However, many of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the New Scheme of expressing themselves by Things, which hath only this Inconvenience attending it, that if a Man's Business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater bundle of Things upon his Back, unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those Sages almost sinking under the Weight of their Packs, like Pedlars among us; who, when they met in the Streets, would lay down their Loads, open their Sacks, and hold Conversation for an Hour together; then put up their Implements, help each other to resume their Burthens, and take their Leave.

But for short Conversations a Man may carry Implements in his Pockets and under his Arms, enough to supply him, and in his House he cannot be at a loss: Therefore the Room where Company meet who practise this Art, is full of all Things ready at Hand, requisite to furnish Matter for this kind of artificial Converse.

Another great Advantage proposed by this Invention, was that it would serve as a Universal Language to be understood in all civilized Nations, whose Goods and Utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their Uses might easily be comprehended. And thus Embassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign Princes or Ministers of State to whose Tongues they were utter Strangers...

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Part III, Ch. 5, (1726)

(with thanks to Jon Clarkson for the reference)

The size of a thought

Will it be possible to measure the physical space occupied by a thought? If a physicalist theory of mind is accepted then it should be possible in principle.

But if we wanted to measure the physical space occupied by, say, the direct perception of a window, would we be able to do this without including the physical space occupied by the window, and the space between the window and the perceiver?

Deep Art Manifesto

...

1. Artists should operate at the extreme frontier of ideas.

2. Artists must respond to ideas emerging from science, technology, philosophy and to wider social change.

3. Artists should be concerned with the global history of art, not just its recent past or local context.

4. The economic imperatives of the art market and the cultural imperatives of the art institutions are acknowledged, but not prioritised.

5. It is recognised that the art of tomorrow will appear quite different from that of today, and will require different kinds of understanding.

6. Art cannot be understood or appreciated without the application of knowledge, thought and effort; but if applied these should be rewarded.

7. Making art transforms materials that in turn have the potential to transform human thought and experience. Art does change the world.

8. To be avoided as ‘thin’ art: that which perpetuates the routine orthodoxies of current art practice; the sterility of art that refers exclusively to its own modes of production; work that is parasitic on art’s historic reputation for profundity without making any significant contribution of its own; work that is readily assimilated into the contemporary art establishment because that is its sole ambition; work that is over-reliant on the apparatus of art institutions for its existence and validation.

9. Artworks should be complex in resonance and compelling in execution, profoundly disruptive rather than superficially shocking, and if beautiful then also not.

10. The primary significance of art lies in the intent and activity of the artist, of which the artwork is only the echo.

11. Artists should pioneer the novel synthesis of the improbable.

12. Art should extend human thought and experience beyond what is conceivable.

Art-philosophy

Art-philosophy is a kind of 'concrete thinking' that makes the art object into a philosophical idea and the philosophical idea into an art object.

(The philosophical idea should not explain the art object, and the art object should not illustrate the philosophical idea. Neither should exhaust the other.)

Artistic awareness

To have a heightened sensitivity to the experienced world and the ability to translate it into something other than itself.

Multiple realities of an image

Wartime public information poster (1940s UK )

The shoe form in the image exists as both a shoe and the horse's body, simultaneously and separately. The image is a poster designed to attract attention, the dual existence of the shoe form serves to induce a conceptual frisson because of its doubled function. But there are other levels of interpretation required: there is the level of pixels constructing an image (on the computer screen); the ink and the paper, interpretable as an image as a whole; the level in which it reads as a wartime poster, an object of historical and nostalgic interest; an example of a certain style of graphic art; an attempt to make light of an often grueling and inconvenient condition of wartime living; the intimation of different modes of getting about, one aided and another not; the shoe leather serving also as horse's coat, as the lace acts also as rein. It's less that these multiple realities unite in one image than the single image exists in multiple, distinct states. It's actually doubtful that this really is a 'single' image, in the sense that it consists in just one thing.

Deletion oblivion

What happens to the things that get deleted?

Dilemmas

How do you know when you're:

a. Seeing both sides of a finely balanced argument, or b. dithering?

Or, how do you know when you're:

a. Acting boldly and decisively, or b. acting in haste?

Bocs show

To be and knot to be

(Oil on circular panel with rope, 2008)

In 1912 Picasso made a famous cubist collage, Still life with chair caning, that used a piece of rope as a frame. This painting is often cited as a significant moment in the development of modern art because of the inclusion of extraneous materials into the painted object. However, 18th and 19th century artists like J M W Turner had framed paintings in rope, and during this time it was quite common to frame nautical paintings using a piece of rope taken from a vessel depicted in the work.

Suspicion

(Oil on panel, 2008)

In the movie Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) we see the world from the viewpoint of a wife who suspects her husband may be a cheat and a murderer. But when two police inspectors come to call, and add to her doubts about her husband’s behaviour, we momentarily see the world from another point of view. One of the inspectors is startled by the Picassoesque reproduction he sees on her wall, and we are supposed to share his confusion about a painting that epitomises the incomprehensible way in which modernist artists chose to depict reality.

Portrait of a man painting his self-portrait

(Oil on panel and easel, 2008)

This work is based on a portrait painted by Baciccio in 1665 of the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini was one of the key figures in the Baroque period of European art, and is perhaps best known for sculpting the Ecstasy of St Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. He also made a famous sculpture of David, which is said to contain his own facial features.

Young woman painting her own reflection

(Oil on panel with easel and cloth, 2008)

This work is based on a painting by Nicholas Renieri (1590-1667) of a young woman at a mirror, which is housed in the Museé des Beaux Arts in Lyon. It is a painting of vanity, and in order to be vain — to love ourselves — we must see ourselves as something in the world, that is, as an object to be looked upon. This is why the image of the mirror occurs so frequently as a symbol of self-love; the mirror turns her from just being a subject that looks out at the world into also being an object that can be looked upon.

Thirteen small paintings

(Oil on panels, various sizes, 2008)

Drip paintings 1 and 2

(Oil on panels in gilt frames with infusion stands and diluted pigment in bags, 2008)

We tend to think of objects, like paintings, as inanimate and lifeless, perhaps even as dead. But is it so simple? If we think of other objects as separate from us, as something quite distinct, then we overlook how they form part of our own lived experience. Other things we experience are really an extension of our living selves. In hospitals, IV drips are often administered to sustain life on the edge of death, and here they remind us that as we experience the paintings they come into our life. They are both lifeless and life.

With thanks to SGD (UK) Ltd. for generously supplying IV bags and sets

Portrait of itself

(Oil on panel with mirror, 2008)

When I look in the mirror to paint myself I see the reverse of how others see me. When I see my self-portrait reflected in a mirror I see myself the same way round as others see me. When I look in the mirror, do I see me or a reflection of me? Are not the reflection I and the same? If so then I am doubled, in two places at once: where I stand as I paint and where I appear in the mirror.

I am a brain

(Life-size model of a human brain in resin and metal, 2008)

I am a brain,
I can’t see,
I can’t smell,
I can’t hear,
I can’t touch,
I don’t know where I am.

‘I don’t know where I am’

Paintings and objects by Robert Pepperell

UWIC Gallery, 1st floor, Capitol Centre, Cardiff

“I don’t know where I am. What I mean is that I’m not certain where my physical boundaries are because I believe all boundaries, whether belonging to animate or inanimate objects, are fuzzy and blurry; nothing has fixed or precise edges. The consequence is that things we normally consider to be located in a defined place are actually spread across space. So while I know roughly where I am in the world I can only know this with a limited degree of precision. This is especially so when it comes to specifying the location of my mind, which (to some extent) is present in this document you are reading and in the works on show in this gallery.”

Keep it fresh

The student

Using the mind...

Resisting sadness and happiness

The idea that stayed with me from listening to a buddhist monk was that one should resist the impulse to happiness as much as the impulse to sadness.

Music as speech

Music as a form of archaic speech, with the rhythms, repetitions and pitch shifts of the intimate but wordless language we hear as infants. It's often said that Jimi Hendrix 'spoke' with him guitar, and one hears a kind of primordial voice in the strains of a violin. The construction of musical phrases carries the same arcs and patterns of spoken language, with sonorous overtones and the emotional senses of anger, danger, joy, etc. which we learn from early language.

Touched by music

Music as a form of touch: a rhythmical pressure like being stroked, rocked or patted. We talk about 'feeling' the music, being 'touched' by it, being 'hit' by a sound, being 'grabbed' by a melody.

The world is flat (sometimes)

The world is only spherical when considered from a particular viewing position. From some positions it can appear flat, just as a coin appears round from some positions and rectangular from others.

Moved by music

Air guitarists, living room conductors...when the impulse takes us to mimic the action of the instrument we hear it is as though we are trying to make the sound come from us, as though we are the player or orchestrator.

As for foot tappers, anthem swayers, and dancers...it is not so much that we are responding to the music — as a puppet would to strings — but that we want the music to respond to our actions.

Listening to music is not a solely auditory experience, we associate it with spatial activity and physical movement, and there is evidence that, in the case of trained musicians at least, passive listening can active the motor cortex:

See Involuntary Motor Activity in Pianists Evoked by Music Perception

Non-absolutist view of the unity and pluraity of mind

The cognition is a unity as well as a plurality. The contents are not absolutely different and distinct. A relation presupposes that two terms which were once apart are now held together. The relation is the cementing bond between them. Things which are absolutely autonomous and independent of one another cannot be brought into relation, or to put it the other way round, the relata have to shed their exclusive autonomy and discreteness if they are to be bound by a relation. So the terms of a relation are neither absolutely identical nor absolutely different. Absolute identify of the relata would annul the duality of the terms, which is a necessary condition of relation. Absolute difference, on the other hand, would never allow the terms to come into a point of contact, which is again the presupposition of a relation. Thus the affirmation of absolute unity of the cognition in spite of its relation to different contents is only an imperfect statement of fact. It is one and many at the same time. [my emphasis]

The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism by Satkari Mookerjee, p. 51

Suspicion, perplexion and indeterminacy

Still from Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941).

In this scene, police inspector Benson examines a reproduction of Picasso's Still life with Pitcher and Fruit (1931), and is clearly perplexed. The sequence in which his bemusement, indeed shock, is make clear can be seen as an abrupt switch in subjective positions in the 'narrative space', as Stephen Heath calls it ("Narrative Space", in Questions of Cinema, 1980).

"Benson's painting too – 'his' insofar as it catches him out in his gaze – has its effect as a missing spectacle: problem of point of view, different framing, disturbance of the law and its inspectoring eye, interruption of the homogeneity of the narrative economy, it is somewhere else again, another scene, another story, another space." (Heath, p. 24).

By this point in the film we have come to appreciate the unfolding doubts in the mind of Lina about the motives and behaviour of her husband Johnnie. These doubts we experience from her (subjective) point of view. But since they are doubts – rather than confirmations – they retain a strong degree of ambiguity, which is maintained throughout the film until the final (and for many, quite unsatisfactory) scene. This ambiguity, as Heath suggests, is mirrored in the disconcerting painting examined by Benson, presented both as a continuation of the ambiguous theme and as a reversal of the subjective positions we have to adopt within the narrative space (presumably unlike Benson, Lina is quite 'at home' with the Picasso).

The film and the painting within the film both demonstrate the alarming effects of conceptual and perceptual indeterminacy, which can be seen in the gradual deterioration of Lina's mental state as her suspicions grow about Johnnie and Benson's utter perplexion about the Picasso.

Working hard

How do we know if we're trying too hard or if what we're trying to do is hard?

(This on the basis that the best work is produced with the least conscious effort but the most preparation)

I am a brain...

I am a brain,
But I can't see,
I can't feel,
I can't smell,
I can't taste,
I don't know where I am...

Intentionality and consciousness

"Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

To talk about conscious states of mind being 'intentional' is normally taken to mean they are directed at something other than themselves, often things in the 'real world', e.g. to be conscious of the curtain in my room requires a relation between the curtain and my thoughts about it. But intentionality also implies a relation between me and my thoughts about the curtain (to the extent that 'I' and my thoughts can be dissociated). Moreover, there is an implicit relation between my act of thinking and the mental representation of the curtain about which I am thinking (on the grounds that the curtain, in this case, I think about is not a 'real' curtain in the world but a mental representation of it). So, we have at least the following terms in play:

1. ME –> 2. MY THOUGHT –> 3. OBJECT OF THOUGHT –> 4. OBJECT IN THE WORLD

What happens with this sequence when I think about myself? Is term 4 identical with term 1, i.e. am I as an object in the world the same as 'me' the person thinking about myself? Am I, as an object in the world, the same as my thoughts about myself, including my thoughts about objects in the world? And what happens when I introspect on my thoughts about my thoughts, i.e. when I contemplate my experience of my consciousness of something like the curtain, or myself? Surely my thoughts become in themselves intentional objects, multiplying the complexity of the 4-term relationship above.

It may be possible to disentangle this knot of relations, but it may be more fruitful to question the validity of the distinctions upon which the relations rest. Can 'I' really be dissociated from my thoughts, and can my mental representation of the curtain really be different from the curtain 'in itself', i.e. in the 'real world'?

One way to answer in each and all such cases would be 'yes and no'. Yes, we can draw a distinction between, for example, me and my thoughts about something, but at the same time we must recognise these terms are referring to something continuous, i.e. I am my thoughts about something. So 'no', the dissociation is not absolute.

The necessity for drawing distinctions is grounded in our primordial capacity to impose divisions on the continuous fabric of reality, the reinforcement of those divisions with language, and the consequent seeming 'naturalness' of the divisions in our everyday discourse. We are then put in the position of trying to account for these distinctions as if they were human-independent and natural, rather than human-dependent and synthetic.

It is in the realm of thought (mind) that we find both the world and our thoughts about it, while being forced to accept (contra idealism) that the world and our thoughts about it are one (insofar as idealism holds we cannot know the world beyond the mind). This does not erase the distinction between mind and world (a distinction that is entirely valid, and indeed necessary if we are to exist at all) but neither does it assert the distinction as anything other than a consequence of the very process that brings us and the world into being in the first place.

Objective and subjective knowledge (the ontological distinction)

"Some entities that exist in the real world have a subjective mode of existence" (Searle). For Searle, pains and tickles and itches, and all our thoughts and feelings have an ontological subjectivity, unlike mountains, molecules and tectonic plates that have ontological objectivity. This distinction seems less than clear cut. All our knowledge and experience of mountains, etc. is subjective, i.e. it exists within our minds. We can't know reality in any other way. We may chose to distinguish within our minds between certain kinds of thoughts — ones that we classify as referring to the external world our our internal world — but this does not overcome the fact that all those thoughts are, by definition, mental and therefore subjective, which is not to deny they are just as real as molecules.

How do I distinguish between the mountain and thoughts or feelings about the mountain?

Objective and subjective knowledge (the epistemic distinction)

Speaking of the epistemic distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, John Searle (video) asks us to separate objective knowledge, of the kind x was born in 1606, and subjective knowledge, of the kind x was a better artist than y. Supposedly, the former is a fact of the external world and the latter is an opinion held by the internal psyche.

But consider what happens if the new evidence comes to light suggesting the birth actually took in 1605 due to a miscalculation in the way calendars were drawn up in the early 17th Century or a mistake in the attribution of a birth record. A dispute then erupts between scholars of the period, some of whom retain the belief that the birth occurred in one year and others who hold it occurred in another. The apparently objective fact now becomes subjective, being dependent on the views of different minds.

And in the case of the belief that one artist is better than another: presumably Searle has grounds for holding that one artist is better than another, i.e. there are some criteria by which the judgment can be made, else it is an entirely fickle one. Given that there are such criteria, it is conceivable that these could be formalised and tested across the population as a whole, allowing us to arrive at 'objective' view of who is the better artist — at least by those criteria.

Since no-one alive now was witness to the birth of x we are reliant on evidence, gathered according to certain criteria and agreed consensually, to determine our beliefs. The same could be true of the relative merits of the artists, providing the criteria and evidence were consensually agreed.

The epistemic distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, therefore, may not be as clear cut, or as useful, as it might appear.

Art and the spiritual

With religious or spiritual art the art is never an end in itself, but is always directed towards something beyond itself.

Photographs and events

Found photograph, US, circa 1950s

A photograph records a moment (not a instant) as an event, but it's limitation is to represent an event just as an image, which events never are. If we look hard and long enough we can recover something of the texture and weight of the moment, its presence and live-ness, the smooth solidity of the TV cabinet and the light roughness of the net curtains, the fact that there was a life before it and a life after, and motion was continuous; as soon as it happened it was over. Each object (as it appears to us) had a birth and death, a moment of conception, production, distribution, acquisition, a term of use and a then rejection. Each was handled and positioned (the spotty cushion was placed on the armchair), each was part of the great vibration of surrounding events. Each absorbed and generated the ambient noise of its time, which filled the space as much as the objects did. Everything in the scene was anticipated and remembered, everything was the material of experience.

In order to recognise the photograph I actually have to have been 'there', which is to say I have to have experienced something of sufficient similarity for the image to make sense. I have to relive the moment which occurred in another country even before I was born.

Reading unconsciously

Sometimes while reading a book aloud to my child I find myself thinking about something else, entirely different from that which I'm reading. I can do this so long as I'm not aware I'm doing it, because as soon as I realise I'm thinking about something else I can no longer read one thing and think another.

If I happen to hear two distinct pieces of music at the same time I can only pay attention to the structure of one at the expense of the other. In a similar way I cannot think about reading and be thinking something else simultaneously, I cannot consciously hold two distinct streams of thought. But this raises the question of whether I am aware am I thinking — or just thinking. I can be aware after the fact, by which time it is too late. There is the thinking, and the fact of my awareness of the thinking, which are distinct and incompatible trains of thought.

It seems to be a characteristic of consciousness that we can be aware of one stream of thought — one concatenation of meanings — at a time. However, this is by no means the same thing as a 'unity of mind.'

Multiple personal realities

To appeal to an objective world of extrinsic objects, as distinct from the subjective world of personal experiences, as the place where reality resides seems convenient until we have to take into account the huge variation in the way different people perceive the same events; the same arrangement of interior decor may seem to one person to be highly attractive while to another it may appear quite ghastly; looking through the customer reviews on a movie rental web site reveals that the same film can evoke diametrically opposing responses. Clearly in such cases different people have quite different subjective experiences when presented with objectively identical events. This weakens the case for a clear distinction between objective and subjective layers of reality and strengthens the argument that reality and subjective experience are synonymous, albeit different from person to person.

Braque on objects

Braque, Still life with purple plums, 1935

"Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them, and between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence— what I can only describe as a state of peace— which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation."

'Metamorphosis and Mystery', based on John Richardson's conversations with Georges Braque, in Georges Braque: An American Tribute, Edited by John Richardson, Public Education Association, NY, 1964. Originally “The Power and Mystery of Georges Braque,” Observer (London), December 1, 1957

Highlights and touch

Sometimes the specular highlights in illustrations are meant to tell you not so much what the object looks like but how it would be touched.

Movie people

In general, people in movies look and behave like actors.

My brain is a banana

It seems misleading to say 'my brain thinks of a banana' since the brain and the thought are one – at least if we accept the view that the brain is responsible for the mind. The mind is what it conceives, and so if I conceive a banana then my brain is a banana, at least in part.

The function of philosophy

Philosophy creates questions rather than answering them.

Discard by adult

Mind and representation

It is not at all certain that perception 'represents' the world, as many theories of mind would have it. According to such theories, the world is an external reality with various properties that are represented by the perceptual apparatus of our brains, or put another way, the external world is 'modeled' internally and it is the model we have access to rather than the external world itself.

But in order to justifiably be a representation, or a model, in the sense normally understood the representation would need to be different from what it represents; there would need to be two states: the world in itself and the representation of the world. The latter is, in a sense, an imitation of the former, they would share certain features in common but would also display certain differences. The model is a semblance of what it models, and we are used to thinking of the model as the artificial or virtual version of the original.

But is there any need to 'represent' or 'model' the world if it is the case that the world is its representation, the world is its own model? This moves closer to the enactivist position, which is essentially anti-representational. One could say that the way the world appears is the way the world is, and ask what is gained by adding a distinction between a 'real' and a 'virtual' space, except possibly more confusion?

Me as Mind

I don't have mind — I am a mind.

The present world

There is the world that is present to us when we are thinking and the world that is present in us when we are not.

Everyone is a universe

Every sentient being exists at the centre of a universe. It is a universe that is at the same time quite distinct and entirely common.

Judging the merits of art

It is much easier for artists to convince themselves of the merits of their work than others.

Writing like teeth

With teeth, so with writing: If it's causing you pain, take it out.

Careful

How do you know when you're being too careful?

Buying art

It is not the art that is bought but the artist.

Hand and fingers

When I look at a hand do I see the five fingers? When I look at the fingers do I see the hand? Can I look at all the fingers at once?

Objects and matter

Sol LeWitt, 1972

Objects are often spoken of as if they were material — in contrast to immaterial things like thoughts, feelings, spirits, and so on. Yet contemporary physics does not support this distinction, at least not in any absolute sense.

1. Objects are composed of atoms, sub-atomic particles, etc. which are effectively voids punctuated by miniscule fields of energetic vibration. Objects are not made of solid 'stuff'.

2. Our experience of objects — of the hard, material world — consists entirely of thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, etc. In other words, they are immaterial.

3. These thoughts, sensations, etc. are composed of the very same atoms and particles that are largely void.

We cannot draw anything other than a provisional distinction between the material and the immaterial.

Entropy and art: resisting the probable

Martin Creed's Work No. 850

Nutritious food is highly improbable, i.e. farthest from entropy, and we import the organised energy it contains in order to maintain our own equilibrium far from entropy, and avoid death. Therefore, in biological and evolutionary terms, we would be predisposed to be attracted to objects that are highly improbable. Simplistically put, beauty lies in the least probable arrangement of matter.

Works of art might conform to this criteria — insofar as they embody prodigious amounts of skill (effort in relation to time) to produce. This makes them highly improbable, at least in the case of the best. The fact that some works of art appear to require little or no skill to produce — in the traditional sense — may lead some to deny their value. However, any contemporary artists who attract such criticism use their skill and knowledge to play a different game. Using the well-established expectations of the viewing public they design events that are highly improbable within the context of art, and its normal codes of presentation.

One might say of an artwork, "Given what I know about art it is unlikely that x constitutes a work of art", and the skill of the artist lay in manufacturing something that confounded this expectation. From the artist's point of view, they are just doing what artists have always done: producing artefacts that resist the probable.

Impulse to action

If you think it sounds like a good idea, don't do it.

A brief definition of consciousness

Awareness of awareness

Making a living as an artist...

Do you teach because you don't sell enough paintings, or do you not sell enough paintings because you teach?