Introduction

This chapter introduces the main theme; namely, the admittedly complex relationship that holds between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation of picture. It focuses on the general rationale of the aesthetic appreciation of pictures, are those by Elisabeth Schellekens, Dominic Lopes and Clotilde Calabi with Wolfgang Huemer and Marco Santambrogio. The chapter includes cinematic pictures into the discussion with Robert Hopkins and Enrico Terrone. By Greg Currie, Georges Roque and David Davies examines how pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation relate, if they do, to the gestures of the artist when she made the picture. From an evolutionary point of view, for instance, it is clear that the two things, seeing-in and aesthetic appreciation, must be kept apart. Defenders of the link between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation may bite the bullet and reply that, properly speaking, aesthetic appreciation occurs also whenever transparent pictures are attentively experienced.