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Philosophy and the Arts, Lecture 19:. “Art as Language-I”. Can Art be a Language??. Suppose you are making final plans to graduate, so you make a visit to the A&S office to have your credits checked. “Did you take a foreign language?” “Got that one covered.” “What? French, German, Spanish?”
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Philosophy and the Arts,Lecture 19: “Art as Language-I”
Can Art be a Language?? • Suppose you are making final plans to graduate, so you make a visit to the A&S office to have your credits checked. • “Did you take a foreign language?” • “Got that one covered.” • “What? French, German, Spanish?” • “No, I took Art.” • Let me tell you that won’t work.
Some years ago, a Baylor art historian suggested we often fail to understand works of this sort because we don’t understand the language, and he compared this to not understanding Greek. Wouldn’t it sound just a bit odd to speak of “translating” the Mona Lisa into German?? Abstract Expressionism
So maybe art isn’t a language... • Joseph Margolis has argued that art meets none of the criteria required for a language. • Arthur Danto says art has to be meaningful, but I think he would agree that art is not a language, on all fours with French, Spanish, English, or whatever. • Probably the best work yet done on this general subject was by E. H. Gombrich, in his Art and Illusion.
Early on, Gombrich presents us a question, why did the Egyptians draw things as they did? The answer suggested by this cartoon is that there were a few people walking around that looked like that (that’s a joke, son). Gombrich begins to answer by saying there is no “innocent eye.” Why did they do that??
Not really… • Constable was one of Gombrich’s favorite painters, and one of mine. • His works look so natural, so realistic. Surely, he painted things as they really are. • But Gombrich took photos of the scenes Constable had painted, and found this was not the case. He found significant differences. • Again, no “innocent eye.” Vision is always selective.
Why did Durer do that?? • The point is not just that Durer had never seen a rhino before. • This example supports Gombrich’s case that art, like language, develops conventions. Just as we learn to use words such as ‘desk’ and ‘chair’ to stand for this and this, so we learn to accept certain lines and shapes as representing the human figure. • But, in Durer’s circle, there was no recognized schema for a rhino.
I think Stubbs taught us how to see, and how to draw, horses. Nobody before or since did it better. Stubbs and his horses…
What?? • To take the picture on the previous slide (Edinburgh Castle), I climbed up the Sir Walter Scott monument (I was younger then). And I got it all in by using a wide-angle lens, not available in the 19th century. The same is true of the slide before it. • This shows that not even a camera is an “innocent eye.” • So is art a language? No. But it has one feature in common with language, that it must, and it does, employ conventions.
Remember the little girl who said “Pigs are rightly named, because they are such filthy animals.” Or recall the preacher who said Adam and Eve were super-intelligent, because “Adam named the animals, and got every one right!” Close with 2 stupid “old man” jokes.
