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Theoretical Perspectives on the Arts, Sciences and Technology David Carrier Readers are invited to communicatc with the section Editor at the Department of History and Philo5ophj. Carnegie-Mellon University. Pittsburgh, PA, 15213. U.S.A. 1. INTRODUCTION This article is presented as the first in a regular series of discussions on theoretical issues related to Contemporary art. In this installment, I introduce and then analyze some details of contemporary writer Norman Bryson’s work on art theory. The commentary begins in Section I1 with a discussion of the general problems of art theory. My major field of interest is philosophy and Bryson’s is English literature. Both of us are interested in the theory of art history. Section 111suggests that Bryson’s semiotic theory is best read in relation to the well-known work of E. H. Gombrich. The semiotic theory of art aims to replace Gombrich’s more traditional account. Semiotic accounts treat visual artworks as symbols whose reference is established by knowing their place in a larger system of symbols. Such symbols are one special sub-class of all those signs-texts, visual images, bodily gestures, and so on-which a comprehensive semiotic theory seeks to categorize and study. Section IV notes how the semiotic account. though it draws in part from recent French philosophy, makes claims about symbols which Wittgenstein and also Freud discussed. Semiotic theory is complex because it relates art theory to an important contemporary philosophical tradition. Section V indicates how, if Bryson’s account is accepted, we are led to think of the social history of art in new ways. For Gombrich, a naturalistic picture is matched directly against that world it depicts; for a semiotic theorist, such naturalism requires knowing a socially constructed code. Finally, Section VI tentatively investigates the ways in which use of such a code involves an appeal to the active role of the spectator who views a picture. Here the semiotic approach opens for debatesome complex and fascinating current issues. II. GENERAL PROBLEMS OF ART THEORY The readership of Leonurdo might be imagined as dividing into five groups: ( I ) artists, who are interested particularly in processes of art making; (2) philosophers. whose first concerns are with abstract theorizing about the arts; (3) art historians. who are involved professionally with the display or analysis of accepted artworks: (4)art critics, who seek vocabularies for describing novel artworks; and ( 5 ) scientists, engineers, and others concerned with contemporary art. Inevitably members of each group are involved first in their own concerns. While a certain division of labor is thus unavoidable. the situation that now exists, in which these groups have great difficulty engaging in dialogue, seems undesirable. Isolated from art history and criticism, aesthetics easily becomes overly abstract. When artists lack any real intellectual concerns. artmaking readily becomes a craft activity. Separated from philosophy or from awareness of the concerns of practicing artists. art history and criticism cease to be relevant to anyone except narrow specialists. Nelson Goodman, Richard Wollheim and Arthur Danto are, in the Englishspeaking world, the three best-known aestheticians. How many artists or critics and historians are familiar with their work? How much of what appears in major art history journals like the Art Bulletin or The Burlington Rer%ie\t,is comprehensible to contemporary artists? Look at the commercial journals-Arn. Artforum. Art in Amerim, Artnewswhich , whatever their limitations, provide a most lively forum for discussion of work important in the current market. How many philosophers follow these discussions? Obviously this situation is in part the product of larger social conditions. Nowadays every field is specialized, so that even within the relatively narrow discipline of philosophy. logicians or social philosophers have great difficulty talking to aestheticians. Nor is it really correct to think of such specialization as new. Few Kenaissance painters were involved in the abstract theory of perspective. oi- were really knowledgable about the classical texts illustrated in their paintings. Still, narrowness of interests should not be encouraged, for much is learned, at least in my experience, by looking outside one’s own specialty. The working assumption of the founder of Z.eontirdo was that all would gain from such discussion, and it is easy to...

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