art and allusion

Notes from Session 5 of Tate Modern Course, Beyond Seeing

Notes from Session 5 of Beyond Seeing, Tate Modern

Touch and Tactile Values

The main theme of this week's session was touch, and in particular its relationship with sight.

Molyneux's Problem
On 7th July 1688 a Doctor wrote to the empiricist philosopher John Locke, author of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding in which he'd described the newborn's mind as a tabula rasa: a blank slate. This Doctor Molyneux posed a problem for Locke. Locke didnt reply to this letter. But when Molyneux wrote again in 1693 Locke recognised the interesting problem that Molyneux was posing and included a discussion of it in the new edition of his Essay. Here is Molyneux's Problem:

"Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t'other; which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see. Qaere, Whether by his sight, before he touch'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube. '

As originally posed, Molyneux's Problem also included the question of whether the formerly blind man would be able to tell how far away from him these objects were by sight alone.

Molyneux's Problem became a focus for discussion for  two hundred years with a range of major thinkers including  Berkeley, Leibniz, Voltaire, Diderot, Helmholtz and William James, giving their responses.

The problem is essentially about whether there is unlearned communication between the sense modalities of touch and sight. Locke's response was no, the man would not be able to distinguish the objects by sight alone. Early empirical evidence from the restoration of a cataract sufferers' sight seemed to back him up on this; however animals deprived of light ((who would do this?) still achieve depth perception. Others such as Leibeniz (and Richard in our group discussion) thought that reason would allow the man to make an inference about which was which. (You can read transcript of a discussion about Molyneux's Problem from ABC Radio's Philosopher's Zone here. Shaun Gallagher has an interesting and detailed discussion of Molyneux's Problem here)

The point of introducing Molyneux's Problem here was to raise questions about the integration of sight and touch in our understanding of art...

Berenson and Fry on Tactile Values
The art historian and connoisseur Bernard Berenson writing about Giotto in his book Italian Painters of the Renaissance,  set out his view about tactile values. For him effective figure painting needed 'the illusion of being able to touch the figure'. He wrote:

'I must have the illusion of varying muscular sensations inside my palm and fingers corresponding to the various projections of this figure, before I shall take it for granted as real, and let it affect me lastingly.'

The critic Roger Fry in his 'Essay on Aesthetics' of 1909 suggested that the emotional effects of painting are felt, that rhythm in visual art  'appeals to all the sensations which accompany muscular activity'. Similarly mass, and space depicted in visual art appeal to kinetic and tactile qualities.

In the gallery we looked at several representational paintings in the State of Flux section. The idea was to focus on tactile values, imagined movement around painted spaces,  sensations of depth, imagined feel of textures etc. with a view to seeing familiar works under a new description. This was most effective with a painting by Pierre Bonnard The Bowl of Milk. Here the space, had depth, but was tilted towards the viewer in an almost vertiginous way that seemed to tip us out of a tactile engagement. Nevertheless there were objects seemingly contrasted between hard and soft (hard stone, soft hair etc.). Approaching the image in this way suggesed an interpretation of it as expressing a conscious, or possibly pre-conscious desire on the part of the artist for it not to be read as a straightforward  space that the viewer could enter in imagination (in the way a Renaissance painting might be). Rather Bonnard was moving towards a kind of abstraction that forced the viewer to be more aware of the painted canvas as formal pattern and surface as well as recognising the mass and depth of what was depicted.

Notes on the Touch Tour - session 4 of Beyond Seeing, Tate Modern

The Touch Tour was led by Marcus Horley, Curator of Access Projects, Tate Modern

Marcus Horley gave a fascinating explanation and demonstration of Tate Modern's approach to interpreting works for visitors who are visually impaired. The five principal methods curators use to interpret works to visitors who are visually impaired are:

Touching original artworks
This can only be carried out under careful supervision,  and then only of works selected as sufficiently robust by the curatorial and sculptural conservation department, using 'paper conservation' gloves to avoid damage through skin oils.

The experience of touching Umberto Boccioni's sculpture 'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space' was very different from merely looking. Aspects of the smoothness and curves of the material became apparent using a sense - touch -  that we are rarely permitted to use in a gallery (for good reason in Boccioni case - there was evidence of damage caused by skin oils by illicit touchers). Touching the Gaudier-Brzeska sculpture 'Seated Woman' revealed aspects of it that aren't immediately visually available, such as the angular planes on apparently smoothly curving surfaces, and the changes of texture at various points...it also felt, through gloves, very much like stone, despite being  cast in bronze. Most of us felt a sense of privilege at being able to interact this intimately with the artworks; but also, there was a transgressive element for some.

Use of handling objects
Marcus brought in some tactile objects which he uses to explain different aspects of the works in Tate Modern, ranging from touchable painted textures, to a half size reproduction of 'Bust of Diego' by Giacometti - a work which was surprisingly heavy (the original weighs in at 8.8 kg), again an aspect of Giacometti's scultpure that most visitors to the gallery will not appreciate. Unless you are familiar with the artistic materials, the weight of a sculpture is hard to intuit from the appearance.

Raised images
Using a device to raise the lines of an outline drawing, Marcus demonstrated how interpretation can be aided by having a touchable 'map' of a picture. We related Heather Bowring's raised image  interpretation of Roy Lichtenstein's 'Whaam!' to the original work. The raised image using different textures provided a map of the painting that the viewer could be guided through. Heather Bowring explained what motivates her work in an email to me:

'I have been making sculptured narrative paintings that are meant to be seen and touched, for the past three years and have shown this work extensively during the same period.   I developed this style of work as a result of a chance remark from an elderly lady. She had lost her sight gradually over the past few years and I asked her where she went to see and feel art. She replied " I don't go anywhere, because you are not allowed to touch".   I told her that I would make work that she could touch and have done so ever since.   The work has also attracted the attention of many groups aside from the visually impaired, including adults and children with learning difficulties, and school children.  The one moment that has always stayed with me was when I had an exhibition in Guernsey.  A group of autistic children were brought in and I had been told that one child would not interact,  communicate, give eye contact or show any emotion.  After twenty minutes he stepped forward and felt 'Share my dream' and in the following fifteen minutes he felt his way around the painting, stopped and looked down for a while and then continued for another fifteen minutes feeling.  He then turned and smiled.  This was the first time he had done so in four years.  Another child who had been born blind, felt ' Incoming Tide'  he told me " I remember this day, it was a happy day because I was on my holiday"   My work crosses the divide of seeing and feeling, and by encouraging the sense of touch this opens up dialogue between viewers and myself. '

Whilst raised images are probably very useful for those of the partially sighted who are used to 'reading' diagrams and images with their fingertips, they proved quite difficult to understand from touch alone. Perhaps this is because we haven't had the experience of 'reading' raised images before. One of the benefits for the partially sighted of the printed form of a raised image (available from line drawings) is clearly that they can take home a touchable record of what they have experienced.

Verbal descriptions
Interpreters use spoken descriptions to complement the other methods. Marcus was particularly adept at this, combining a light touch with art historical information and an accurate description of what was in front of the viewer. A verbal description of Rodin's 'The Kiss', for example, might trigger memories of having seen this famous work before and a sense of the aura of being in its presence again (even though it is not a unique object, in the sense that there are many versions of this sculpture in existence).

I-map
This is an interactive computer animation method using audio as well as visual techniques for understanding and appreciating pictures, breaking them into manageable elements and reassembling them ..see www.tate.org.uk/imap/

More information about Tate Modern's Touch Tours is available here.

Beyond Seeing: Notes from Session 3 - Taste and 'Taste'

Taste and 'Taste', Session 3 of Beyond Seeing, Tate Modern.

The sense of taste, like that of smell, is a direct response to molecules that enter our bodies - in the case of taste sensors on the tongue and palate respond to molecules dissolved in saliva. It has a judgmental aspect: at its crudest it allows us to discern what tastes good from what tastes bad.

A widely held view is that all judgements of taste are subjective. You might prefer pistachio flavoured ice cream, I might prefer mango. And, undeniably, tastes differ. But there is no 'correct' view here about which preference is right. In the classic phrase de gustibus non est disputandum ('there's no disputing about taste') ...and yet in the world of wine tasting, it seems that there is wide inter-subjective agreement about which wines taste best...For more on the philosophical questions about the taste of wine, listen to this podcast interview with philosopher Barry Smith, editor of a forthcoming book about this topic Questions of Taste (due out in July, highly recommended).

Taste has been used as a model of aesthetic judgement.  A person of good taste in art is one who reliably makes good assessments of the quality of works of art. Like the use of 'taste' in the gustatory sense, judgements of taste in the world of art rely on experience: you can't tell what something tastes like without tasting it (though smell might give you a strong hint); you can't judge a work of visual art purely on a verbal description of it (though, again, this might give clues). Rather in both cases you need to get first hand experience of it.

For most of this session we discussed the question whether there could be standards of taste in art, whether judgements about art are really like judgements about ice cream (or crisp) flavours.

The Eighteenth Century philospher David Hume gave one answer in his essay 'Of The Standard of Taste' (the link here is to the full text with useful annotations and commentaries) . He recognised the similarities between human beings in their physiological experience of the world; but also the different levels of discrimination that individuals can achieve. Also, the senses are not always functioning at an optimal level: if we are tired, or have just tasted something bitter, this can affect our sense perception.

Hume recalled the story from Don Quixote of two wine connoisseurs tasting wine from a barrel. One declared that there was a slight metallic taste; the other that there was a leathery flavour. Less sensitive drinkers mocked them. But when the barrel was drained to the bottom they found an old key with a leather fob. This story is supposed to illustrate the kind of discrimination that we would like to find in an ideal experiencer of a work of art (and also, presumably , how nice it would be if we could get some external corroboration analogous to the key and fob in the realm of judgments of artistic qualities).

Hume thought that there were four qualities that an ideal critic should exhibit. If the critic had these qualities, then they could be trusted as a reliable judge of artistic quality and so provide us with standard of taste.

First, a good critic needs what Hume called 'delicacy of taste'. This is what the wine tasters in the example above demonstrated.

Secondly, a good critic needs practice. The skill of making judgment about works of art is one that benefits from repeated use.

Thirdly, a good critic needs to be free from bias. Not easy to achieve, but that's the ideal goal.

And lastly, a good critic needs to have a sound understanding of whatever he or she is assessing. So if looking at a landscape painting, the good critic will be aware of other great landscape paintings, of work by the artist's contemporaries, and so on. This would allow a critic to judge that a work was derivative or heavily influenced by someone else. It would also, incidentally, allow the critic to recognise qualities such as originality or allusion.

In contrast with Hume, Clive Bell, writing just before the First World War, in his book Art (good title!) argued that to judge the aesthetic quality of a work of art requires no special background knowledge. What is needed is sensitivity to what he called Significant Form (patterns of lines, shapes and colours capable of evoking the aesthetic emotion in the viewer). For Bell art history is interesting, but not a pre-requisite of engaging with artworks seriously...(more on Bell's theory of art in chapter one of my book The Art Question).

There is also the possibility that much (or all) of what we call taste in art is a self-fulfilling prophecy of the rich and  powerful who determine which works are 'in' and which 'out.' They come to a consensus about which artists merit attention, but this consensus may not be based on any objective quality of the work (it might simply be a matter of 'investment potential'): if they'd focussed their hype on a different artist, the same effect might have been achieved in terms of reputation...This is the cynical view...but if you read the interviews in the recent Collecting Contemporary ed. Adam Lindeman you will find some support for this.

If you are interested in doing some further reading on philosophical questions about  'Taste and 'Taste'', Carolyn Korsmeyer's essay on Taste in the Routledge Companion to Aesthetics is a very  good place to start.

Beyond Seeing: Notes from Session 2...Oswaldo Macia

For this week we focussed on the work of the artist Oswaldo Macia who uses both sound and smell in his work. Oswaldo gave a lively introduction to his 'symphonies' in smell and sound.

Listen to a short clip of artist Oswaldo speaking about the sense of smell Download smell.mp3 (45 seconds)...and a longer clip about his work Provoke/Evoke Download provoke-evoke.mp3 (4 minutes 15 seconds) - this uses animal excrement - for uses of human excrement in art, see this link.

Oswaldo's website is at www.oswaldomacia.com. It includes versions and illustrations of many of his pieces and several articles about him.

If you want to find out more about the science of scent and its perception, Luca Turin's book The Secret of Scent is fascinating, though it gets a bit technical at times. Turin makes a useful distinction between flavour and perfume. Flavourists make equivalents to real smells - the smell of a ripe mango, for example; perfumers make perfumes that resemble nothing in particular, dealing in abstract effects. As Turin puts it (p.17):

'Flavourists are to perfumers roughly as Stubbs is to Kandinsky...The job of the flavourist is the olfactory still life...Very seldom does a perfume reveal its sources of inspiration.'

Turin makes the controversial assertion that perfumes are not about memory and sex, but about beauty and intelligence...I'm not sure Im completely convinced about that [see evidence from one scientist who thinks there is a strong link between smell and early memory here]. There are many interesting asides such as one about the fugitive nature of fragrance memory that made me wish Turin had had less to say about the chemistry and more about the subjective experience of smell.

Learn more about the basics of our sense of smell on Smell 101.

Beyond Seeing - Tate Modern - Notes from Session One

Notes from Beyond Seeing, Tate Modern , Session One

Aims and Course Outline here.

The orthodoxy is that we have 5 senses:

Sight
Hearing
Smell
Taste
Touch

Some people add proprioception (awareness of one’s own body position).

There was an interesting series of short programmes about senses that aren’t usually though of as senses on Radio 4 recently – still available on listen again: Extra Senses. This focussed on the senses of Pain, Balance,Time, Temperature and Digestion).

In practice the senses rarely operate in isolation from one another.

If we suspect the senses are misleading us in some respect we use other senses to corroborate: e.g. a stick looks bent under water, so we touch it to see if it is bent. If we accept that all our senses can mislead us, then checking by consulting another sense isn't infallible. Another check is by asking other people if they perceive things the same way (though such inter-subjective agreement doesn’t guarantee anything: mass delusions are possible if unlikely).

In the history of Philosophy, Plato stands out as one who argued that reality lies beyond the world of appearances given to us by the senses. In his famous analogy of the cave in The Republic he imagined a kind of proto-cinema with prisoners chained facing a wall/screen: (recommended!) a fun animation of the cave on You Tube). Behind them (though they don't know this) is a road, and behind that a fire. People walk along the road carrying objects which cast their flickering shadows on the wall. The prisoners take these flickering shadows for reality. Then one day one of the prisoners breaks free, turns to face the road, sees the fire, and eventually goes out beyond and looks at the sun.

Most of us are like prisoners in the cave. According to Plato we make the mistake of taking imperfect representations of reality for the real world. This relates to his theory of Forms - we might try and draw a circle, but this will always be imperfect. But the real world is the world of the Forms where there exists the Form of the perfect circle. We don't get to understand a circle by looking at imperfect circles, but by reasoned thought (which for Plato is a kind of recollection). Philosophers aren't seduced by misleading appearances given by the senses - that's why Plato wants them in charge of his ideal republic.

Plato argued that mimetic art should be banned from this ideal republic on the grounds that it is a copy at several removes from reality. The Form of a table exists, the painter however works from the world of appearances (already removed from the Form) and then effectively makes a copy of a poor copy. Plato wanted to ban such representations because they are unreliable sources of knowledge...He explained why in Book X of The Republic.

For more on Plato's Cave, listen to this podcast of an interview with Simon Blackburn on this topic, or this podcast chapter on Plato's Republic from my book Philosophy: The Classics. There is an excellent article by Myles Burnyeat on Plato and censorship of the arts (originally in the London Review of Books) which is reprinted in my book (ed.) Philosophy: Basic Readings, 2nd ed. (Routledge).

René Descartes engaged in a pre-emptive scepticism about the senses in his Meditations (especially Meditation One). He engaged in 3 waves of doubt:

1) Doubted the evidence his senses (because they have on occasion deceived him).

2) Even fundamental beliefs such as that I am sitting writing now might be doubted by someone who recognises that they could be dreaming...

3) Even if in dreams triangle always have 3 sides etc. this could be the work of an Evil Demon (or in a modern version, I could be plugged into a highly misleading virtual reality machine)..

Everything seems open to doubt. But wait! Any time I doubt anything at all I am having a thought. So the very act of doubting (or any other kind of sensing, feeling etc.) proves that I must exist...There must be some thinking thing, even if it has no body and isn't thinking about what it thinks it's thinking about. That's is known as Descartes' Cogito argument, from the Latin Cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am (though he formulates it slightly differently in the Meditations. Listen to a podcast on Descartes here. The upshot of all this is that Descartes at this point in Meditations is more certain of his existence as a mind than as an emodied being in a world of material objects...Again, the senses may be misleading, but thought if it goes along the right lines, is reliable...Later in the Meditations Descartes introduces the idea of a non-deceiving benevolent God who makes whatever anyone perceives clearly and distinctly true (but the arguments here are much dodgier).

So at least two major philosphers (Plato and Descartes) for different reasons, downplayed the evidence of the sense as a source of knowledge...

There is, of course, a major empiricist tradition in British philosphy that went in the other direction and recognised that most (some thought all) knowledge comes to us via the senses. John Locke in the 17th Century argued that there were no innate ideas, and that the child's mind is a tabula rasa (a blank slate) which gets written on by the senses; in the 18th Century David Hume maintained that all our ideas came ultimately from sensory impressions (which got combined in various ways)....A major debate in Philosophy was between the Empiricists and Rationalists...Present day philosophers may be Platonists about geometry or mathematics, but almost all recognise that sensory experience is what places us in the world...

In the Gallery

In the Material Gestures hub of Tate Modern we looked at particular works asking the questions:

What would this sound like?
What would this taste like?
What would this smell like?
What would this feel like?

This was an invitation to focus on different aspects of particular works in a kind of synaesthesia, but also to recognise that visual stimuli often imply the imaginative involvement of other senses...The process of combining different sensory imaginings lead several people to remark on an increase in the precision of their visual memory of a work.

Next week: Oswaldo Macia on sound and smell pieces in the Starr Auditorium, level 2 (the same level as the café).

 

 

Beyond Seeing - Tate Modern - Aims and Course Outline

BEYOND SEEING

Tate Modern, 1st June – 9th July 6.30-8p.m.
Led by Nigel Warburton (ticket holders only)

Course Aims

• To explore and discuss a range of ideas about the senses and their relevance to art and philosophy

• To relate these ideas to particular works in Tate Modern

Overview

Week 1 Appearance vs Reality (East Room, level 7)
Week 2 Oswaldo Macia (sound + smell) in Starr Auditorium
Week 3 Taste and ‘Taste’ (East Room, level 7)
Week 4 Marcus Horley (not seeing)
Week 5 Touch and Tactile Values (East Room, level 7)
Week 6 Imagining (East Room, level 7)

Notes will be available after each session on www.virtualphilosopher.org

Notes from Session One: Appearance and Reality