ABSTRACT
The dramatic conception of painting charges art with the task of depicting a self-contained unity of figures and objects that are related to each other dramatically—that is, through the figures' actions—and whose dramatic disposition is essentially expressed by the "index of absorption" by which they are marked. The pastoral conception makes clear that the effacement of subjectivity in which aesthetic subjectivity consists depends upon a movement of the affected soul into the work. One of the first paintings that Fried uses to introduce the idea of a dramatic aesthetic approach is Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin's Un Philosophe occupe de sa lectur. The flipside of this kind of representation is the particular relation to the spectator it exhibits. The insight meant to encapsulate Denis Diderot's imperative can be formulated as follows: artworks achieve their purpose—namely, to be beheld—most optimally when they depict something or present that depiction in such a way that the spectator is negated in this representation.
