ABSTRACT
The previous chapter, the first on a specific art form, was devoted to music since this has often been thought to be art at its purest. But it is a notable fact that the word ‘art’ is most naturally associated with another form, namely, painting and while the idea of representation is problematic when applied to music, representationalism, the view that art at its best is a method of representation or that representation is one of the chief functions of art, comes into its own when applied to painting. In its commonest version, representationalism is a normative view, for it leads people to place a high value on very lifelike portraits such as those by Rubens and Velásquez and to wonder whether there really is any art in, for instance, abstract painting and sculpture. It is quite widely believed, in fact, that there is an important connection between lifelike representation and artistic value, and for a long time historical understanding of the development of painting was dominated by a concept of artistic progress that consists precisely in better and better methods of representation. Nor is representationalism lacking adherents among philosophers of art. While Plato decried art because it did no more than reproduce the appearance of things, Aristotle made the activity of representing things the distinguishing character of what we call the arts. Some very famous artists, too, have taken a strongly representational view. The sculptor Rodin, for instance, is recorded as saying, ‘The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal’ (Goldwater and Treves 1976: 325). Yet, as we shall see, though representation is clearly important in painting, representationalism does not adequately explain its value, and even as a descriptive theory it is false with respect to the visual arts. It is only once we see the errors in representationalism that we can appreciate the sort of value that visual art can have, and the first step in doing so is to look more closely at the idea of representation.
