Silk Screen Techniques by J. I. Biegeleisen and Max Cohn (review)

Books 251 for the discussions of theory. These include Perkins and Cooper’s analysisof perception of incomplete forms,Haber’s surveyof geometric optics and the more technical accounts of geometry by Sedgwick and Lumsden, and Coffman’s description of how the left and right hemispheres work together in perception. The discussions of issues includes Rosinski and Farber on how viewers of perspectivaldepictions compensate for being at incorrect viewings points; Olson, Yonas and Cooper on children’s perception of pictures and Cobe on perception of representations by animals; and Kennedy’s account of blind people’s use of haptic pictures. This material seems to test theories of picture perception. Determining if animals or people from cultures without depictions can see pictures tests Goodman’s theory that we must learn to see pictures. Studying compensations for seeing perspectival pictures from wrong viewing points and how we see non-perspectival pictures relates to the dispute between Gombrich and Goodman about whether perspective is an arbitrary convention. But providing empirical disconfirmation of such theories isn’t easy.That perspectiveis‘themost successful’(11,220) mode of depiction or that animals without language can seepictures (11, 308) are not necessarily, as implied here, objections to Goodman’s account. Frequently earlier data turn out to be confused or confusing. Jones and Hagan show that previous studies of Africans’ picture perception used misleading charts and were racially biased; what positiveconclusions can be drawn is harder to determine. It may be that theories of aestheticians are too vaguely formulated to be empirically testable. But showing that would require an explanation of the relations between a theory of perception and the data supporting it, and between theories of perception and aestheticians’theories. At least four positions on the later question may be found here. One: A correct theory of perception can disprove some aestheticians’claims. If perspective is the basis of perception and so non-conventional, Goodman is wrong. Two: Psychologists discover what painters and possibly art historians have already implicitly been aware of. Matisse and Vuillard flatten pictures, Hochberg says, using Gestalt laws only later discovered by psychologists. Three: Psychology may suggest, but cannot confirm or disconfirm theories of art. Gombrich’s account of ‘making and matching’ in Art and Illusion is derived from psychology, but his claims about the value of naturalism involve a personal interpretation. Hochberg’s more favorable evaluation of modemism-a flattening of the picture allows for ‘a vastly wider subject matter’ (II,89) than in traditional art-is not simply a product of his different analysis of perception. Four: Psychology can say nothing substantive about aesthetics. Vision, Wartofsky argues in his paper, is ‘a cultural and historical artifact, created and transformed by our own modes of representation’ (11, 132). Perhaps psychology only describes how pictures have taught us to see. Until it is clear which of these not all incompatible positions are correct, non-psychologists like myself interested in applications of psychologyto art will have a hard time knowing how or if psychologyis useful for us.Synthesizingthis large massof often specializedmaterial is difficult. Sometimes it isn’t clear what the data could show. Friedman and Stevenson gather statistics on pictures depicting motion without linking that data to a theory of such pictures; surprisingly, they don’t mention Gombrich’s important paper on their subject. Their paper, like many here, would be easier to follow if better motivated. Often what larger questions are at stake, or what different approaches are available isn’t explained; and since this material is intended in part for nonpsychologists , this seems a serious defect. Here, as often in work intended to be interdisciplinary, the gap between specialists in different domains is hard to bridge. Only one essay here contributes directly to the study of art. Perkins and Hagan brilliantly showexperimentallythat the two major theories of caricature are wrong, and propose new approaches. Whether the rest of this fascinating work on psychology can be used equally productively by those interested in art remains, still, an open question. Silk Screen Techniques. J. 1. Biegeleisen and Max Cohn. Dover, New York, 1980. 185 pp., illus. Paper, $3.00. Reviewed by Romas Viesulas* This book is a reprint of the onepublished by the samepublisher...