-----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, Dec 18, 2010 6:10 pm Subject: Re: How transitory is a mental image?
It would be good to know, first of all, what a "notion" is. But assuming you mean something like a remembered image, I think the neurologists have confirmed that we reconstruct our memory of something each time we think of it. It's very hard to know exactly what a remembered image is (if it is) until we describe it or draw it or recite it and then the media has its influence too, remaking the image according to the media or/and our skill with them. When the artist paints a remembered image I think he or she is reinventing a supposedly remembered image. This sounds about right. If you never try to put the memory into words or pictures-focussing on details of faces etc-then you have a much better chance of getting more information from it later that you didn't understand when it was happening. If you paint from memory then you are most certainly reinventing what was there, even when working from an aide de memoire, whether photograph or sketch, because you know that the aide before you doesn't contain all of of wht was there. As for notion in the philosophical sense,"philosophical notion" is now reaching its high point in Ngram. I used philosophical notion because notion is too broad. KAte Sullivan
