On Apr 11, 2009, at 11:46 PM, Saul Ostrow wrote:
Why would a chair have an essence - its design and it manufacture
may describe
a chair's essence - but this would not refect its function but
perhaps the
act of sitting
Odd coincidence. I was at a gallery reception last evening and was
discussing art matters with a fellow artist (and retired art
professor) and a videographer. We were talking about how a painting is
an abstraction of whatever is portrayed and how, when he tried to get
that across to his neophyte undergraduate students, some of them were
stuck on what it "really" showed. He said that he would point to a
chair and ask them what it was. "A chair." And then he would turn it
upside down an ask again. "Well, still a chair." But, he countered,
you can't sit on this one. Both the other person and I said that that
seemed to be an extreme form of utilitarianism. He didn't agree. "A
chair is for sitting. You can't sit on a painting of a chair. You
can't eat off a table by Monet." etc.
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Michael Brady
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