Online research in philosophy

This paper considers whether pictures ever implicitly represent internal spectators of the scenes they depict, and what theoretical construal to offer of their doing so. Richard Wollheim's discussion (Painting as an Art, ch.3) is taken as the most sophisticated attempt to answer these questions. I argue that Wollheim does not provide convincing argument for his claim that some pictures implicitly represent an internal spectator with whom the viewer of the picture is to imaginatively identify. instead, I defend a view on which the external spectator simply imagines herself interacting, psychologically and otherwise, with the depicted scene. I explore some of the consequences of the two positions for pictorial aesthetics, arguing that the view I favour is at least as competent as Wollheim's at accommodating those phenomena we have any reason to think hold.

The Phenomenology of Painting examines the practice of painting - how a painter works with materials, the elements of space, form and color - and viewer response to a work of art. Nigel Wentworth seeks to answer some of the central questions of the philosophy of art, such as: To what extent can a painting and its meaning be understood to result from the artist's intentions? In what way can the painting be understood as an expressive object? What does it mean for a painting to be a representation of something? And what is the nature of aesthetic quality in painting? In offering responses to these questions, Wentworth offers a new theory on aesthetic quality.

Richard Wollheim is one of the dominant figures in the philosophy of art, whose work has shown not only how paintings create their effects but why they remain important to us. His influential writings have focused on two core, interrelated questions: How do paintings depict? and how do they express feelings? In this collection of new essays a distinguished group of thinkers in the fields of art history and philosophical aesthetics offers a critical assessment of Wollheim's theory of art. Among the themes under discussion are Wollheim's explanation of pictorial representation in terms of seeing-in, his views of artistic expression as a type of complex projection, and his notion of the internal spectator. In the final essay Wollheim himself responds to the contributors. This book will be eagerly sought out by all serious students of the theory of art, whether in departments of philosophy or art history.

The inhuman in the humanities : Darwin and the ends of man -- Deleuze, Bergson, and the concept of life -- Bergson, Deleuze, and difference -- Feminism, materialism, and freedom -- The future of feminist theory : dreams for new knowledges -- Differences disturbing identity : Deleuze and feminism -- Irigaray and the ontology of sexual difference -- Darwin and the split between natural and sexual selection -- Sexual difference as sexual selection : Irigarayan reflections on Darwin -- Art and the animal -- Living art and the art of life : women's painting from the western desert.

Comparisons between the visual and verbal arts and the barrier between poetry and painting have long been a source of theoretical debate and have generated a large body of critical discussion. It is believed that the discussions about ekphrasis do not lay sufficient emphasis on the poet-reader/viewer/spectator, and the reader of the poem as a spectator or the ekphrasic spectator. Most writers frequently overlook the role of modern critical theories like Reader response and Spectator response in the analyses of ekphrastic poems. The spectator is either clubbed with the reader with a slanting bar (reader/spectator) implying no difference between the two or is assigned a passive role compared with the reader's. The reader of an ekphrasic poem is also a spectator. Being a spectator involves reading poems, which, in fact, are reading paintings or sculptures. In this context, the reader is therefore different from an ordinary reader, for he is both a reader and a spectator. The inter-art text within the text, studied from this angle, unfolds the plurality of meaning as well as different aspects of culture, race, gender and so on. This paper examines the poems written on one art object, The Mona Lisa, the western icon of art and beauty. The poems chosen are those of Yeats, Angelina Weld Grimke and John Stone.