Symbolism by Robert Goldwater (review)

Books 163 place for a number of less variable, or rather invariable. features of vision, too, [see, for example, R. G. Coss in Leonardo 1, 273, (1968) and G. C. Rump in Leonardo 11, 63 (1978) and also J. J. Gibson in Leonardo 11, 227 (1978) and the subsequent discussion ].) Godfrey Vesey looks at the Visible Appearance of Objects, and he does so by discussing mainly the arguments of John Locke and Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'So we interpret it and see it as we interpret it'. Alan Tormey's essay Seeing Things: Pictures, Paradox and Perspective stresses the importance of perspective (central perspective) as the only true means of pictorial fidelity, although this must be placed in the context of a process of selection, which is 'subjectively guided by habits and motives remote from the rigid laws of Euclidean optics' (p. 72). Nicholas Wolterstorff has written on The Look of Pictures and Its Relation to the Pictured. He maintains that 'knowing the pictorial situation of a picturer often helps us to know what he is to be counted as having pictured' (p. 105).Margaret A. Hagen, in her essay on Representational Art and the Problem of What to Depict, asks: 'What kind of image must an artist produce if he or she wishes the audience to recognize the depicted contents of the work?' (p. 107).To come to an answer, she proposes a 'generative theory', a system for analyzing the perceptual similarities and differences among works of representational art, entirely in perceptual terms. She excludes cognitive and affective aspects in her essay, but stresses their importance at the end. She even admits that it is in no way clear that representation has ever been the primary concern of art. John M. Kennedy in Depiction Considered as a Representational System writes that 'the study of pictures touches our basic beliefs about this world and its objects' (p. 163)and he somewhat modestly concludes that 'what pictures do in the last analysis isshow something' (p. 163).This is because of the depicting capacities of (pictorial) elements (interesting, in this context, the drawings of congenitally blind people that he discusses) and the configuration in which they occur. The artificiality of the arrangement makes it possible to use them in metaphorical and literal communication. Rudolf Arnheim, writing on Dynamics and Invariants, argues that the analysis of the factors that enable a work to convey its message depends on the establishment of the objective properties of an art object and the conviction that one 'is dealing with an objectively existing creation of the human mind' (p. 184). Monroe C. Beardsley discusses the Role of Psychological Explanation in Aesthetics, reminding readers of George Dickie's stance that psychology is not relevant to aesthetics. His main aim seems to be to show that the problem remains unsolved (especially for literary artworks), even more, that the real problems have not been discerned yet. Joseph Margolis puts forth Prospects for A Science of Aesthetic Perception. He concludes that in the support of a science of aesthetic perception one must reject the thought of finding the model of the required discipline in any of the familiar 'reductive undertakings' such as informational, ecological, neurophysiological models, etc. The science of aesthetic perception can be found only 'in the company of a general science of human culture' (p. 236). The necessarily very brief review of the book's contents may have conveyed an idea of how very stimulating it is and also how difficult it will be to digest. The Role of Criticism. Alexander Cirici, et al., in Theory and Criticism (T & C) (No. I, Oct. 1979) (in French and English). CAYC, Buenos Aires. 87 pp. Reviewed by Michael Rosenthal" At first sight this is a neat small publication on the role of critics of contemporary visual art. Essays from critics of several countries provide an assortment of views on matters that range from those dealing theoretically with a critic's job to those that are more concerned to report on the state of affairs of the visual arts wherever a critic is based. Before I can make more specific remarks about the essays, I must point out that the texts are so poorly...