ABSTRACT
In a famous work of neo-classical aesthetics and criticism, Laocoon and Lessing argues that the starting point for an understanding of painting is that it is and only be the organization of figures and colours in space, whereas poetry employs articulate sounds in time. Langer's phenomenology is not undisputed. In The Logic of Literature Kate Hamburger argues for the presentness, not the pastness, of the experience of the world of narrative fiction. Hamburger also contests the views of one of the major theorists of the phenomenology of the experience of the arts, Roman Ingarden, author of The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art and other studies of literature, film and music. In Painting as an Art Richard Wollheim indicates that he is only going to write about paintings which he has looked at for at least two hours. There is certainly scope in that statement for a discussion of how we set about experiencing Lessing's paradigm of spatial art.
