Carroll—A contemporary introduction—Chapter 1 (Part 2 of 2)

Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)

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[33]

Part II
What is representation?

Pictorial representation

...

...

...

[34]

...

Traditional approaches to
pictorial representation

... The resemblance theory of representation states that x represents y just in case x resembles y. ... the illusion theory of pictorial representation maintains that x represents y just in case x causes the illusion of y in spectators. ...

...

... Plato thought painting to be strictly analogous to holding a mirror toward an object. ... [hence] Plato held what we are calling a resemblance theory of representation. ... Note that this theory claims two things. First that resemblance is a necessary condition for representation—that x represents y only if x

[35]

resembles y. But it also claims something else, namely that if x resembles y, then x represents y. ... The first occurrence of "if" here signals that resemblance is a sufficient condition for representation—... The "only if" portion of the formula states that resemblance is a necessary condition for representation. ...

... if x resembles y, does it follow that x represents y? This seems false; ... Imagine two [identical] automobiles... They roll off the assembly line one after the other, ... These two ... will resemble each other maximally, but neither represents the other. ...

... Resemblance is a

reflexive relation.

... But

representation is not reflexive:

I resemble myself in every respect, but I do not represent myself. ...

... resemblance is a

symmetrical relation.

That is, if x is related to y, then y is related to x in the same way (xRy if and only if yRx). If I am Pat's brother, then Pat is my brother. ... But

representation is not a symmetrical relation.

If a picture of Napoleon resembles Napoleon, it follows that Napoleon resembles his picture, but it does not follow that Napoleon represents his picture. ... Thus,

[36]

resemblance cannot serve as a model for representation, ... there will be many cases of resemblance ... that will not warrant attributions of representation. ...

One might try to get around this objection via amending the resemblance theory by stipulating that x must be a visual design. ... Thus, even if Napoleon resembles his portrait, we will not say that he represents it because Napoleon is not a visual design. But this calls attention to a[nother] problem ...

What most visual representations
resemble most
are other visual representations.

A picture of Richard Nixon looks more like a picture of Bill Clinton than it looks like Richard Nixon. ...

...

...

Resemblance, then, does not appear to be a sufficient condition for representation. But is it a necessary condition? ...

... When we say that

one object represents another object,

we mean, at the very least, that

the first object is a symbol for the second object.

... But what is a symbol? ... Peirce

[37]

defined a symbol as

a sign
"whose special significance or fitness
to represent just what it does represent
lies in nothing but the very fact
of there being a habit, disposition or other effective rule
that it will be so interpreted."

...

Consider a military map. A thumbtack can stand for an armored division, but it does not resemble an armored division. ... In a context like this one, what stands for the armored division is arbitrary. ... But

if the symbol relation (denotation) is the core of representation,

and if denotation can obtain without resemblance,

then resemblance is not a necessary condition for representation.

Carroll—A contemporary introduction—Chapter 1 (Part 1 of 2)

Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)

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[19]

1
Art and representation

Part 1
Art as representation

Art, imitation and
representation

... In the course of outlining his utopia, [Plato] argued that poets—particularly dramatists—should be outlawed. ... According to Plato, the essence of drama was imitation—the simulation of appearances. ... he believed that appearances appeal to the emotions and that stirring up the emotions is socially dangerous. An emotional citizenry is an unstable citizenry, ready to be swayed by demagogues ...

Arguments like Plato's against poetry are

still heard today

when it comes to discussions of the mass media.

How alike are these arguments, really?

Often we are told that TV with its seductive imagery ... makes for an unthinking electorate.

Because seductive TV imagery makes us ready to be swayed? Because this imagery appeals to the emotions? Who is making that argument quite like Plato?

...

Aristotle, however, believed that Plato's case was overstated. ...

[20]

... Tragedy evokes pity and fear in spectators, but, he said, it does this for the purpose of catharsis—that is, for the purpose of purging the emotions. ...

... Aristotle also thought that Plato was mistaken in presuming that drama did not address the mind ... He maintained that people can learn from imitations, ...

Though Plato and Aristotle disagree in their diagnosis ... Both take poetry to be involved essentially in the imitation of action. ...

What painters try to do, on the Platonic-Aristotelian view, is to reproduce the appearances of things—to copy them— ...

... Plato and Aristotle primarily thought of dance and music as accompaniments ... They were parts of drama, ... Thus, along with drama and painting, Plato and Aristotle thought of music and dance as primarily imitative or representational arts.

[21]

When the Greeks used their word for "art," they had a broader conception in mind than we do today. For them,

an art

was

any practice that required skill.

Medicine and soldiering were arts on this conception. ... [they] would not have defined the arts, in their sense, as solely involved in imitation. However, it is clear that ... [they] thought that these [today's fine arts] shared a common feature: ... imitation.

... the theory of art that we find presupposed [here] ... We may state it thus:

x is an artwork only if it is an imitation.

...

Today, after almost a century of abstract painting, ... the theory that art is imitation appears to us to fail as a general theory of art, ...

...

... in deference to Plato and Aristotle, we should also add that ... When they went in the theater, or when they went to the unveiling of a new sculpture, what they saw were imitations ...

[22]

...

So, in their own time, the imitative (mimetic) theory of art advanced by Plato and Aristotle had some initial plausibility. It coincided with the dominant examples of Greek art and it also

informed readers about
what to look for and to appreciate

in the art of their contemporaries,

Seriously, Boomer?!

Constant Lambert—Music Ho! (ii)

Constant Lambert
Music Ho! A Study of Music In Decline
(1934)

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[201]
(g) The Spirit of Jazz

By jazz, of course, I mean the whole movement roughly designated as such, and not merely that section of it known as Afro-American, or more familiarly as 'Harlem'. The negro once enjoyed a monopoly of jazz, just as England once enjoyed a monopoly of the industrial revolution, but for the negroes to imagine that all jazz is their native province is as if an Englishman were to imagine that all locomotives were built by his compatriots. Even the Harlem section of jazz is by no means so African as might be supposed.

...

[202] ... The European's enthusiasm for so-called negro music is in equal ratio to the negro's appropriation of European devices, and the more the European tries to imagine himself 'down on the Delta' the more the negro tries to imagine himself in an aristocratic salon. In this connection, it is amusing to recall the situation that arose recently when a well-known negro-dance arranger

[203]

was called in to produce a ballet for a highbrow company trained in the classical tradition. While all the Europeans flung aside their carefully won training to indulge in an orgy of pseudo-Charlestons the negro himself was moved to tears, not by his own work but by the classic elegance of Lac des Cygnes.

...

[205] ... The phrase 'barber-shop chord'—which denotes a chord of unusual succulence—dates back to the days when a guitar hung in every negro barber's shop, and a client who was waiting would vamp about on the instrument until at a lucky trouvaile everyone would shout 'Hold that chord'. It need hardly be pointed out that this type of harmonic experiment is as sophisticated in its method as that of the contemporary composers who—deny it hotly though they may—compose 'at the piano'.

...

The superiority of American jazz lies in the fact that the negroes there are in touch not so much with specifically barbaric elements as with sophisticated elements. ...

[206]

The sudden post-war efflorescence of jazz was due largely to the adoption as raw material of the harmonic richness and orchestral subtlety of the Debussy-Delius period of highbrow music. ...

... Though popularly regarded as being a barbaric art, it is to its sophistication that jazz owes its real force. It is the first dance music to bridge the gap between highbrow and lowbrow successfully. The valse has received august patronage from Beethoven onwards, it is true, but the valses of the nineteenth-century composers are either

[207]

definite examples of unbending or definite examples of sophistication—sometimes both. ... In the nineteenth century the split between the classical and popular came between a follower of Liszt, let us say, and a follower of Gungl. Today the split occurs between a composer like Kurt Weill and a composer like Jarnach—both of them pupils of Busoni.

The same rapprochement between highbrow and lowbrow—both meeting in an emotional terrain vague—can be seen in literature. [e.g. Eliot] ...

[208]

The words of jazz songs mark the first popularization of that well-known modern vice—the Inferiority Complex. Until recently a certain exuberant self-confidence has usually formed the spiritual background of a popular tune. ... A general air of physical attractiveness, sexual bounce and financial independence is naturally assumed by the writers of pre-war song hits. ...

In modern songs it is taken for granted that one is poor, unsuccessful, and either sex-starved or unable to hold the affections of such partner as one may have had the luck to pick up. ... For the most part...the heroes and heroines of modern songs meet with the rebuffs they deserve and take refuge in the unmute reproach of 'Ain't misbehavin' ', and 'Mean to Me',...

[208]

... The other side of the medal, the series of crazy words, crazy tune numbers, with their assumed galvanic energy has an equally neurasthenic basis. The so-called 'hot' songs are as depressing as the so-called 'sweet'; they spring from no genuine gaiety such as inspires the marches of Sousa, the sardanas of Bou and the valses of Waldteufel—they are a desperate attempt to hide an underlying boredom and malaise.

Well, one does wonder if the author has not badly misjudged all of this simply for ignorance of The Blues as a major tributary.

Constant Lambert—Music Ho! (i)

Constant Lambert
Music Ho! A Study of Music In Decline
(1934)

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[21] During the war people had sterner things to think of than Schönberg, and a concert of his works would have been not only impracticable, but unpatriotic. The general cessation of musical activities during the war resulted in many pre-war works only becoming known a considerable number of years after they were written. This may seem platitudinous, but it should be remembered that it would not necessarily be true of literature. ...

[22] Purely practical and circumstantial difficulties of war, finance, patriotism and musical inefficiency having kept back the actual hearing of contemporary music, the wave of enthusiasm for this music that carried away the intellectual world shortly after the war was, though the intellectuals hardly realized it, mainly retrospective in character. It could not be compared for example to the contemporary interest in Brancusi's sculpture or Edith Sitwell's poetry. It was a 'hangover' from a previous period, and the famous series of concerts given by Eugène Goossens in London in 1920 were historical in more ways than one. They apparently announced the dawn of a new era, but curiously enough their most potent arguments were drawn from the era which we all imagined to be closed.