Seeing, Painting and Art

Abstract

The author first sketches some of the problems inherent to Cartesian perspectivalism, following certain arguments offered by N. Bryson. While agreeing with Bryson’s critique of the »Essential Copy«, he nonetheless argues that at least a part of modern European art contains similar features to those that Bryson discovers in classical Chinese art. Examples of such art are the works of Cézanne or Rodin, with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of perception and existential phenomenology offering a theoretical elaboration of its essential traits. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the seen and the visible is nevertheless found wanting, for it remains captive of the phenomenological transcendental ego which is overcome in J. Lacan. In the concluding part of the paper the author argues that if we want to retain the notion of art, we should, at the same time, ascribe more relevance to the Imaginary. In his view the notion of artistic experience could bridge the gap between the »epistemological« and the phenome-nological interpretation of art.