Illusions in Nature and Art ed. by R. L. Gregory, E. H. Gombrich (review)

Books 341 the subject inspires. The aesthetic side of the subject is, I confess, by no means the least attractive to me. Especiaally is its fascination felt in the branch which deals with light, and I hope the day may be near when a Ruskin will be found equal to the description of the beauties of coloring , the exquisite graduations of light and shade, and the intricate wonders of symmetrical forms and combinations of forms which are encountered at every turn ....’ In lighter vein, he was a tennis champion and an expert at chess and billiards. After teaching in Cleveland, Ohio, and Worcester, Massachusetts, he was invited to head the physics department of the newly-formed University of Chicago, where he remained for over 35 years, bringing fame to himself and the university. This life of Albert A. Michelson has been written by a daughter of his second wife. Because Dorothy was quite young when her father passed away, she in her maturity had to do extensive research. Her grasp of the scientific accomplishments of her father is quite remarkable. (On the human side, however, Dorothy unfortunately writes about herself in the third person.) In Michelson’s book, Light Wavesand Their Uses (1903), the great physicist predicted a unique art of color: ‘Indeed, so strongly do these color phenomena appeal to me that I venture to predict that in the not very distant future there may be a color art analogous to the art of sound-a color music, in which the performer, seated before a literally chromatic scale, can play the colors of the spectrum in any succession or combination, flashing on a screen all possible gradations of color, simultaneously or in any desired succession, producing at will the most delicate and subtle modulations of light and color, or the most gorgeous and startling contrasts and color chords! It seems to me that we have here at least as great a possibility of rendering all the fancies, moods, and emotions of the human mind as in the older art.’ Such an art has since been effectively realized by a number of artists in kinetic and mobile color expression (cf., for example, T. D. Jones, The Art of Light and Color (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1972) (reviewed in Leonardo 8, 83 (1975)) and F. J. Malina, ed., Kinetic Art: Theory and Practice-Selections from theJournal ‘Leonardo’ (New York: Dover, 1974) (reviewed in Leonardo 8, 178 (1975)). 00 Art and the Mind: Essays and L e c t u r e s . Richard Wollheim. Allen Lane, London, 1973. 349 pp., illus. $6.00. Reviewed by Virgil C. Aldrich. It is hard not to love a book that says in its preface: ‘Philosophy has virtually nothing to offer those who would rifle it. Like paint, it requires that we find ourselves in it before it gives us anything.’ The pity is that one who is not conversant with works of art will not understand the utterance. But even some who are professionally conversant with art have difficulty with this notion of what it is for something to be found or seen ‘in’ an art-work. For example, Goodman (p. 309), i n his reply to Wollheim’s penetrating review of his Languages of Art, says: ‘What we “can see in” a picture seems to me far from clear.’ So he reduces the depth notion of a picture that shows you a man ‘in’ it to the flat notion of a man-picture. Wollheim wisely argues that what is missing here is the mind of the viewer-including the artist’s-without which no sense can be made of the obvious fact that people do see things in things, under two descriptions: one that fits the picture qua picturing device, the other that fits what it pictures-what is ‘in’ it. ‘Work of art’ has this dual sense, in general. Collingwood‘s mistake was to overlook this duality in too exclusive favour of the mind (imagination). So, for him, the whole work of art is ‘in’ the artist’s head or mind *Dept. of Philosophy, University of Utah, 338 Orson Spencer Hall, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, U.S.A. (p. 250...