ABSTRACT
Can a belief, such as Wollheim’s that a painting can serve as a conduit between the mind of the painter and the viewer—even if wrong—nonetheless become an element in shared belief about the nature of paintings? This chapter claims that a painting is not so much a communication device—though it can be this—as an artifact that has a place in the world beyond any meaning with which its maker might have furnished it, whether by conduction of a mental state or encoding or both. Yet the question of emotional appeal and response is inevasible if one is to trace significance a painting for historical purposes. This chapter argues that meaning is a term subject to semantic ascent, and is usually unhelpful when applied to paintings. Rather than seek meaning, this chapter suggests that analysts should seek what Hacking calls the point: a combination of meaning, interpretation, and use that is constantly liable to change. Using examples, the argument contrasts historical retrieval of the original significance of a painting, with historical understanding, which would account for its present effects in the inevasible light of an entire set of past uses, acknowledging that successive uses unavoidably affect subsequent understandings of earlier uses. This chapter refers to scholars Benedetto Croce, E.H. Gombrich, Ian Hacking, Saul Kripke, W.V.O. Quine, Richard Rorty, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Richard Wollheim; and artists Gerard David, Gerrit Dou, Jan Gossaert (called Mabuse), the Master of the Embroidered Foliage, and Mark Rothko.
