In a message dated 3/31/08 9:21:50 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Can anyone come up with any examples of an
> image maker who didn't know how to make the image that he did make?
>
There's an element of confusion in the notion that's prompting the use of the
phrase "the image". All "images" are multiplex. I've argued before that to
call a novel "a" work is silly. What we call the novel is the result of
countless "works of art". Many novelists like Doctorow and Didion have said
they
frequently begin with no idea of where they are going. Other novelists know
only
their ending, or some critical central scene. So Doctorow wrote the first
scene of "RAGTIME" with no idea what the "completed" novel would be like.
Often
such kick-start stuff is eventually rewritten to fit the storyline that
evolves, sometimes it's thrown out entirely -- but sometimes it's kept intact.
For openers, what does Chris have in mind when he says, 'know how'? Michael
is right in suggesting all that's required to get SOMETHING on canvas is the
ability to wield a brush adeptly, combined with a notion of the next immediate
thing you want to lay on the canvas -- in the sense of what paint or ink you
want to apply to render what immediate bit of "picture". If you just move on
from that bit to the next, and to the next, eventually the canvas will be
covered. Whatever ends up covering the whole canvas is obviously something you
knew
how to do.
I sense a suppressed assumption that when Chris refers to "the image", he
means the conglomeration of everything on the canvas when the painting is
"finished". Well, no matter what we may think of it -- or even the painter
himself
may think of it -- the painter obviously knew "how to do it".
So, still a further assumption may be that the whole pic replicates an
"image" the painter had in mind when he started -- or that he developed as he
worked. Croce argued that the creative part of a work of art is entirely in the
mind; the painting of it is mere "execution". An analogy might be drawn with
the
poet who "thinks up" his poem, and only later writes it down. Croce may be
persuasive about the poet, but most of us would feel the "execution" of a
painting
is part of what the painter deserves to credited for when we call him an
"artist". (Although I did know a painter who agreed with Croce. He claimed he
"saw" in his mind's eye the entire picture, and that that was his inspired
work,
his "creation". Getting it onto canvas was a snap. He said.)
Brian is right in observing that words can eventually come to affect our
"thinking". I figure language evolved as a working tool. In the large
majority
of cases it needs only be "serviceable", and general agglomerating words are
handy for daily usage.
It's when we begin to do such things as philosophize, or draft laws or
contracts, that the quick serviceable locutions of daily life get us in
trouble.
"Hang the picture of the man and the tiger over the fireplace, please," says
the
decorator, and the only question the handyman has is, "How high?" The
philosopher sags onto a hassock and ruminates. "Now, what precisely does the
decorator have in mind when he says 'the picture'? The physical paint on
canvas? The
image? Why does he call it "THE picture? And what does the 'of' mean in 'the
picture OF'? Etc." Philosophers tend to be bad CEOs.
The more abstract and general the word, the greater the potential for
fuzziness and misunderstanding: rules, purpose, interpretation, meaning,
referent,
concept, truth, notion, explanation, taste, art. And yet there are times when
even those words can be used with so little a possibility for critical
misunderstanding that we can call them "serviceable".
In sum 'the image' tends to consider as unitary something that is multiplex.
It may be serviceable for the decorator, but it can give a philosopher loads
of, shall we say, pause.
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