What is a Picture? What is Representation?
As seen in my last post on Aesthetics, Plato thinks of a Picture as an imitation of reality. The more it looks like the real thing, the better it is. This is called realism, and is representation as imitation. Now we have photography. Isn't painting just to imitate reality pretty meaningless when a camera can do it better?
Plato presents a very intuitive but naive way to think of representation, but what then is a Picture? We can say that a picture is not really about the things that are painted, the things in the picture are symbols made to create an experience for the viewer of the painting. Hegel describes a good artwork as something where the soul is revealed to itself. I think this is a good description of art and representation.
Las Meninas
Las Meninas is an enormous painting, almost 3 metres tall from 1656, made by Diego Velázquez. This painting is one of the most mysterious paintings in art history and many philosophers have pondered its meaning. John Searle called this painting a paradoxical representation.
In the painting we see the child Princess Margarita of Spain and her two maids. To the left is the painter Velasquez himself, a character in the painting, in the act of painting the King and Queen who can bee seen in the mirror hanging on the wall behind the people. The paradox of this painting is that we as viewers take the place of the King and Queen, who, as seen in the mirror, are outside of the painting but still in many ways the main characters of the painting. Most of the people in the picture have their eyes turned toward us, the viewers. But this position is already occupied by the royal couple. In most classical realist paintings the viewer is supposed to have the same perspective as the painter when he painted the scene, but in this picture the artist is part of the painting, and the main characters are outside it.
Plato's idea of a picture as an illusion, a mirror held up to reality shows us a flat, 2D surface presented as 3D. However this is not really the way we relate to visual representation. We pay attention to something that is painted as well as the painting itself, the painting is a vehicle of what is represented. It is not only what is represented, but how it is represented that is important. Van Gogh's bedroom painting is interesting because of how it is done. This painting is far from realistic, yet it is a great representation. What it represents is the artist's state of mind, not the state of the particular bedroom.
A visual representation is not a kind of illusion where our attention slips back and forth from seeing lines and colors to seeing the scene represented, it is not like we switch from giving in to the illusion to noticing it, like in the duck, rabbit illusion. We see a two dimensional canvas with lines and paint and IN this we see something three dimensional. It is not like we imagine the Princess Marguerite AS paint and canvas but we see her IN the paint and canvas. It is not about imagining or being fooled by illusion, it is a peculiar kind of seeing. When you see the duck rabbit you can see only one at the time, but when you see a painting you see the twofoldness at the same time. We get lost in the painting without forgetting that it is a painting
References
Michel Foucault, “Las Meninas”, The Order of Things, ch. 1
John Searle, “Las Meninas and the Paradoxes of Pictorial representation”
Richard Wollheim, “Seeing-as, seeing-in, and pictorial representation”
Image Credits
http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/farberas/arth/arth200/velazquez_lasmeninas.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_-Van_Gogh%27s_Bedroom_in_Arles-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duck-Rabbit_illusion
a design or representation made by various means (such as painting, drawing, or photography)
marvelous workmanship mam
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my art
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Mr. MagooThis is very insightful. A painting can carry different meanings for different viewers. Just shows how powerful visual is.
Really something to make me think. 😊 Definitely art piece is state of artist’s mind but it’s secret also lies in the eyes of observer consument. Just like in literature, every reader will squeeze things and emotions from a poem or a novel through his own filters. Btw, yesterday I had opportunity to visit a real studio, where my friend does his artwork (he is professional paintor and a poet also, at the moment I’m working on get him to join our Steemit community). Hope Noriko feels better today :*
Wow this is a great art studio, with many interesting artworks! I hope you can convince him :D artists are very popular here on Steemit. Noriko is feeling great now, I do not think it was anything serious :)
I believe that the point a painting is not to present the reality, but to present the painters view and feelings about a certain part of the reality.
"Las Meninas" is amazing, very intriguing and uncommon! The man who appears to be pausing on the stairs in the background to take a look adds to the mystery significantly.
Cheers! : )
Yes that man is creating a great depth to the picture :)
Thanks for your article @camilla.
"... the painting is a vehicle of what is represented". - So true! I always think about this when viewing art. People often forget how complex a medium it is.
Keep up the great work :)
Well done Camilla, thank you for sharing😀
Thank you :D
Greetings, actually a post to meditate and reflect. I really liked Hegel's phrase "a good artwork as something where the soul is revealed to itself". Actually, I identify with that phrase.
I thought there was something weird with the duck. And then found a rabbit! I'm so smart!!
Diego Velázquez has been one of the best painter. I was able to see Las Meninas in Prado Museum, Madrid. Thank you for sharing! I am an art lover and new steemiter. If you interest, you can check my posts:)
Resteemed this one :) really interesting post. My father in law is actually a painter (https://wildlifewatercolourpaintings.co.uk/)but I have absolutely zero talent for painting. I see photography as similar in many ways, when you talked about the reasons for painting/creating images it got me thinking about what I love about photography. In my professional life I am trying less to imitate reality than to capture it and preserve it as honestly as possible in the form of photojournalism (wedding photography) but in my personal work I'm also trying to preserve rather than imitate. For me photography is all about memories. My wife however started out in Fine Art, so her reason for taking photos is often very different from my own, as is her idea of what looks good!
I love the philosophy side of all of this, and that kind of forced introspection is one of my favourite things about these kinds of posts. But for me photography, and I can't help but feeling - painting also - is so varied because each and every artist has a different 'WHY' and most of the time different ideas that they are trying to manifest.