BRIGADA CONTRA FUGAS Y DERRAMES GRIFERO N°

The nature of the artw ork's prescribed imaginative content is partly determ ined by the way it is shaped and m anipulated to guide one's imaginings; the lyrical description, the jagged, painted expression or the draw n out harmony. The artw ork, by virtue of the way it guides our imaginative engagement, shapes and determines the nature of the prescribed imaginative content. The content is partly constituted by the description. Thus we are constrained to imagine a situation presented to us as manifested in and through the w ork's artistically m anipulated medium. This, of course, may well be distinct from how the artist or spectator might otherwise have chosen to represent it. For example, in

Paul Beriy's expressionistic anim ated film The Sandman, we are not licensed to imagine the sandman

as a playful mischievous fairy, as he is usually portrayed. The telescoping shots, angular sets and razor sharp face of the sandm an himself prescribes the im aginative understanding that he is, in fact, a deeply malevolent, evil threat to the innocent, sleeping child.

The point can be emphasised in another way if one considers two works concerning the same

subject m atter in distinct media. Le château de Chilian was photographed by Adolphe Braun in 1867

and painted by Courbet in 1874. Both treat the same scene from precisely the same viewpoint, but in different media.^ The im aginative content, in terms of the basic pictorial narrative and conceptual material, is the same. That is, precisely the same objects, parts of the world, are being represented from the same view point, w ithin the same artistic tradition and genre. Nevertheless, the works are different and distinct in the im aginings they prescribe. The m anipulation of oils to portray the particular scene necessarily prescribes visual im aginings distinct from those prescribed through the photographic medium. The nature of the visual descriptions in the two cases are necessarily different, deriving almost solely from the distinct and different natures of the media utilised. The handling of the paint, as contrasted w ith the chemical processing of an exposed image, presents imaginatively different aspects.

The same point applies in relation to works in the same medium. The distinct gestural marks upon a painting may have expressive characteristics of their own. But what the marks are expressive of, and prescribe us to perceptually imagine, also depends upon their relationship to each other and to

the way other pictorial conventions are used. The way the paint is applied, evoking a flat surface as in Dali or prescribing the thick, visceral, layered textures of Auerbach, aspectivally effects what we are to imagine. They not only prescribe perceptual im aginings but also significantly preclude the possibility of others. Thus, just by virtue of the differences of the m arked, painterly surface, Dali's

beautifully, sensuously finished portrayal of the crucifixion in The Christ of Saint Jean de la Croix

cannot prescribe the same imaginings as the scratched, worked, disfigured surface of Nolde's Life of

Jesus . Dali's painterly rendering puts Christ at a distance from us, inviting us to perceptually imagine and contemplate the event as if from another sphere or dimension. Nolde's technique and rough finish, by contrast, prescribes our imaginings as very much a part of the rough, raw world which is vqry much of this earth. Of course, this is further enhanced by the distinct spatial relations and conventions m anipulated in the paintings. The space from which Dali's Christ hangs is ambiguous. The delineation between the world below Christ's feet and the space from which he hangs is unclear. Thus Christ seems to free float above the world in an undefined space. By contrast, Nolde's perspective is flatter, more emphatically compressing Christ's place in our world of clay. Thus, Nolde prescribes us to imagine Christ's drama as played out amongst our earthly cares and woes.

Of course, we can come to see the world as if it were as it is manifestly characterised in a particular artw ork. Thus, in this sense, the im aginative understanding prom oted by a w ork is divorceable from it. So after a vivid experience w ith a Francis Bacon portrait in the Tate, 1 may w ander around, im aginatively perceiving others as distorted, corrupting and diseased. But the material sm eared nature of Bacon's paint w ork clearly constrained and guided us tow ards this imaginative understanding of humanity, in our engagement with the artwork. That is, the imaginings the work itself prescribes, which give rise to the understanding, are anchored to the distinctive nature of the artwork concerned. The point is that the features of the work, the way they are shaped and constituted, prescribe our imaginings in a particular way. Through doing so, they thereby shape the possibility of a particular imaginative understanding. Hence the form and content of the artwork, and what it prescribes us to imagine, cannot be wholly separated off from each other.2

It follows from the inseparability of form and content, that what we imagine in engaging with an artw ork is from a particular point of view. The most straightforw ard case is where the artist is representing how and in what way a represented subject thickly understands a particular state of affairs. First person confessions or reports are often the most straightforward cases in this regard. For

example, in The Great Gatsby we im agine the state of affairs as prescribed through Nick's own

portrayed understanding of events and his inter action with the other characters. Our im aginative understanding of Gatsby himself is shaped through this representation, one which we understand to 2 See Michael Podro's "Depiction and The Golden Call" in N. Bryson, M. A. Holly and K. Mo.xey (eds.), Visual Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), pp. 163-189, for a more dckhled philosophical treatment of how the material nature of paint shapes our particular engagement with paintings.

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express Nick's own developing understanding. A more complicated example is Crime ntid Punishment.

Our perception of the world throughout the novel is tense and often confused. This is, of course, a reflection of Raskolnikov's own subjective uncertainty. Yet there are incidents in the novel where we are to take the events represented as not witnessed either by Raskolnikov or anyone else. In such cases we typically refer to an omniscient author. Indeed, the great realist novelists of the nineteenth century often relied almost wholly on this method of representation. But even in these cases, what is being represented is nonetheless done so from a particular viewpoint. We cannot but imagine Sonya praying in anguish except in a range of possible ways. We imagine her facing a particular way, we imagine th e tears running down her left cheek, her face turned inward toward the wall. Where she prays alone, we are not prescribed to take the way we imagine her to be as constitutive of the way another character in

Crime and Punishment sees her. If what we are prescribed to imagine can be taken as reliable, we are to take it as the way she is actually praying and we should thus feel for her appropriately.

Of course, such impersonal authorial representation may well turn out to be unreliable. Indeed, artists often provoke tension, pace and enrich our imaginings by oscillating between the impersonal view points and those of different characters. Thus questions concerning the reliability of the viewpoints we are prescribed to imagine may come to the fore. An extreme example is Kurosawa's film

Rashomon. It is the story of a single violent occurrence as retold by four narrators, three of them on trial in a courtroom. Each time, we are prescribed to im agine w hat each narrator suggests actually happened. Each narrator tells a story apparently consistent with the facts, which does credit to themselves in some way or other. All agree to the basic facts, that there was an attack, a rape and a murder. The point of the film is that there is a truth of the matter which, for various reasons, is being covered up by tliree of them. The point is not that what is true is wholly relativised to the viewpoints we are prescribed to im agine. Rather, it is that though any representation is from a particular viewpoint, nonetheless one character's representation may be sound whilst the others may be false. Hence it may be part of the state of affairs we are prescribed to imagine, to wonder as to the reliability or otherwise of the representation afforded. Furthermore, though what we are prescribed to imagine is from a particular viewpoint, it needn't be the viewpoint of a particular character w ithin the state of affairs to be imagined.

Typically, artw orks prescribe us to im agine states of affairs and characters with certain feelings. That is, it is often a constitutive part of our imaginings that we feel in certain ways with regard to what we are imagining. O ur perspectival imaginings are shaped in order to prescribe our attitudes and feelings toward the im agined state of affairs. That is, the aspectival nature of the artwork promotes a particular imaginative understanding. Thus it is that artw orks can afford insight,

reveal significances or re-examine the familiar in fruitful ways. For example, in The Crijing Game, we

are encouraged to identify with Stephen Rea's character. Moreover, he is portrayed as at a loss in the face of his feelings for the transsexual Dil, at a stage when both his and the audience's sym pathies

have already been skilfully engaged in a particular way. The way our imaginings are guided through the film 's narrative construction, the way our sentim ents are engaged and deepened through our imaginings, already preclude certain responses prior to the shock revelation that Dil is a man. Thus it is, that through engaging our imaginative understanding and deepening it in this way, the film can provoke questions about personal identity, sexuality and love which we m ight otherw ise leave unasked. The engagement of our imaginative sympathies for the characters, as fitting objects of concern and compassion, enables the development of certain possible imaginative understandings.

A very different example is the way Francis Bacon represents distorted individuals in particular ways, as isolated, frightened and rotten, fitting objects of both fear and pity. Our perceptual imaginings with Bacon's work gives rise to the im aginative understanding of the human condition as corrosive, searing and brutal. Indeed, after engaging with artworks, we may still fee! the significance of the imaginative understanding prescribed by the artwork. Thus when we leave the cinema, say, we may still be reflecting upon our imaginative understanding of those we may consider deviant. When we leave the art gallery, we may walk round somehow perceiving the corruption, decay and brutalisation of humanity in those we meet on the way home. Of course, quite how this imaginative experience relates to our own imaginative understanding, will effect both how plausible and profound we take the understanding prescribed by the artw ork to be. Hence the relationship between art and action is a complex one. Nonetheless, if the w ork is valuable as art, the imaginative understanding promoted will be both significant and bear certain possible relations to our world.

Of course, a thick understanding of others and the world is not itself distinctive of art. However, what is, is the manipulation of media and conventions to prescribe our imaginings, in a way which enables us to entertain imaginative understandings we otherwise could not achieve. Artworks are constitutively aspectival, rather than clear windows through to a separable im agined content. In part, the artworks constitute the nature of what is to be imagined. The aspectival m anipulation of our imaginings by artistry cultivates our imaginative understanding of certain states of affairs, which may be taken to bear a significant relation to our actual situation. Art's manipulation of media, conventions and techniques to portray worlds and characters in certain ways, for example Dil as a fitting object of compassion, or Bacon's characterisations of butchered figures, is distinctive of art. Their aspectival nature means that form and content cannot be separated. Furthermore, it means that art's peculiar relation to cultivating imaginative understanding allows for the possibility that art may develop our m oral sensibilities.

Yet, the committed aestheticist may argue, how could art bear a significant relation to our moral sensibilities? The mere fact that imagination is involved in our engagement with artworks does not entail that art cultivates our moral aspect. For, the aestheticist claims, the mode of experience afforded by art is necessarily of a different order from that we encounter in the real world. An artwork is constructed in order to engage our imagination. Thus we get pleasure from the delight artw orks afford

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and they serve to distract us from the vagaries of the real world. C ontrastingly, the aestheticist argues, the real world is not imaginatively constructed. This is not straightforw ardly to deny that the im agination plays a significant role in our everyday life. As we saw in the last chapter, the imagination enables us to understand and respond appropriately to the world and others. Rather, the claim is, what the imagination does in art is unrelated to the imaginative experience arising from the real world.

But this cannot be true. For example, consider Picasso's Weeping Woman.^ This, if anything

could be, is a paradigm atic example for the aestheticist. There is little, if anything, in the way of context or narrative to place the expression of grief against. Our imagination is not even prescribed to imagine a particular type of event as giving rise to this grief. Furtherm ore, the techniques of abstraction used involve destroying, re-ordering and thus reconstituting the hum an features. The cubist concerns under which this process falls are driven by a concern with the nature of sight in particular. We do not have to feel such anguish ourselves to recognise the feelings expressed in the work. But the fact that the techniques and formal features of the work give rise to its expressive qualities, does not entail art's autonomy from our im aginative experience of life. The very reason the w ork's formal qualities are so expressive is precisely because they vivify aspects of suffering we can recognise from our own actual and imaginative experience. The acid tears eat into the face, the jagged features are gouged by despairing fingers, the whole physiognomy of the face is distorted. The content of the work cannot be wholly divorced from its formal features. The im aginative force of these features arise from our experiences and thick understanding of various things; of grief, of crying, of things ripped apart, of grasping for something. Thus it is that the w ork's formal features can hope to show us something significant about a particular form and understanding of grief. Indeed, it is only because there is this inter-relation between our imaginative understanding of the real world and what the work expresses, that it can hope to shape our response and understanding of a particular form of grief.

It also follows that art cannot even be held to be wholly parasitic upon our understanding of the world and our place in it. Now the puritan about art recognises what the aestheticist could not; namely, that our understanding of the world feeds, preoccupies and makes intelligible our imaginings in art. Nonetheless, the puritan concludes, we would be better off if we wasted less time on art. Rather, he suggests, we should preoccupy ourselves with the nature and problems of the real world. This is because the puritan holds that though our understanding is engaged by art, what we imagine in art aims at pleasure rather than truth. Indeed, he suggests, though art cannot improve understanding, it may perniciously degrade or confuse true understanding. Yet this argument cannot be sound. The value of artworks as such, does not rest upon ideological evaluation. Of course, it may be true that the value of

^ My discussion of Picasso’s Weeping Woman is indebted to Carolyn Wilde's “Painting, Expression, Abstraction”

an artwork depends upon the imaginative understanding and insight it promotes. However, this does not entail that our imaginative engagement is automatically marred by any association judged immoral by the moral theory we take to be true. If this were so, then Ridley Scott's 7492 would be judged a bad artwork because of the imaginative sympathy it prescribes for the morally impure European founders of North America. But the value of '1492 lies precisely in the insight it affords into the men, conditions and events upon which civilisations are founded. Such imaginative depth would be lost, to the disvalue of the work as art, if the imaginative understanding prescribed were so overly simplistic as to suggest that such men were either wholly good or bad. Thus it is that we are concerned with whether the artwork relevantly constrains our imaginative engagement and in doing so conveys and promotes a particular, significant imaginative understanding.

Moreover, we are concerned with whether the imaginative understanding promoted is adequate to that which it concerns. Thus, the significance of the imaginative understanding promoted must also concern whether the work advocates an immoral imaginative understanding or not. Hence the value of an artw ork may be m arred to the extent it glorifies or advocates what is morally flawed or evil. For example, where the overall imaginative understanding promoted by a work involves inciting racism, then the work's value as art is dim inished. This is not to declare that art should correspond to one particular moral theory or imaginative understanding of the world. However, if an artwork is to be significant and offer us insight, it must enable us to recognise, understand and discriminate more closely