2.7 Art, life and the interpretation of pictures David Carrier's book, Principles of Art History Writing (1991) considers the way that Caravaggio has been constructed as an artistic personality (the relevant chapter is below). The objective of Carrier's book as a whole is to demonstrate that the ‘appeal to the artist's intention adds nothing’ to the interpretation of his artworks (recall the discussion of Wimsatt and Beardsley in Author(s):
2.4 The intentional fallacy In the final sentence of the Gombrich quotation in Section 2.3, he claims there is only one reason why what the artist meant could matter to us and that is the artist's meaning or intention is ‘the real, the true meaning’. Questions about interpretation of works of art by resorting to the
2.3 Biography and psychobiography A significant, inescapable identifying feature of the twentieth century was the birth and development of psychoanalysis. Combined with romantic notions of the artist-genius and the attractiveness of the artist's ‘Life’ as evidence for writing the history of Renaissance art, psychoanalysis further ensured the continued success of the monographic construction of art history. A good example of this overlap between the increasingly redundant/discredited ‘Life’ of an artist and the more re
1.1 Biography and art history The biographical monograph, that is, a book about a single artist and his or her works, is one of the most common forms of art history writing. Biography, as a literary form, applied to art history, is underpinned by the assumption that knowing about an artist's life can help to establish both the significance and the meaning of that artist's work. This is a very common, and it seems a reasonable, assumption to make in the interpretation of pictures. It is therefore a central theme in this co
Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: analyse the pros and cons of the biographical monograph in art history examine the strengths and weaknesses of the biographical monograph in relation to other kinds of art history writing.
References Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to 3.1 Imagination and imagery From the very origins of concern with the imagination in the work of the ancient Greeks, the imagination has been associated with imagery. But what is the relationship between imagination and imagery? In chapter 12 of his book, The Language of Imagination (1990), Alan White addresses this question and argues that imagination neither implies nor is implied by imagery. 2.3 A first attempt at defining ‘imagining’ So far I have made some preliminary remarks on the meanings of ‘imagination’ and related terms, and considered one attempt at distinguishing different conceptions of imagination. In a broad sense, ‘imagining’ means thinking in some way of what is not present to the senses. Imagining may involve, but is not the same as, imaging. In a derogatory sense, ‘imagining’ may mean ‘fantasising’, as suggested by their etymological roots in Latin and Greek, and our use of the term ‘imag 2.1 Meanings of ‘imagination’ A natural starting point is to consider the ways in which ‘imagination’ and related terms such as ‘imagine’ and ‘image’ are used in everyday contexts. Ima 2 The varieties of imaginative experience What would life be like without imagination? Perhaps, in this very first question, we have found something that is impossible to imagine. Imagination infuses so much of what we do, and so deeply, that to imagine its absence is to imagine not being human. Some people, I am told, think about sex every five minutes. For them, I presume, a sudden loss of imaginative powers would be devastating. Some people (not necessarily the same ones), at certain points in their lives, think about getting marr Further reading 4.5 Two mythological songs: ‘Prometheus’ (1819) and ‘Ganymed’ (1817) Goethe's poem ‘Heidenröslein’, with which we began, is a mock folksong; ‘Erlkönig’ is a mock ballad along the lines of Scottish models. They are, so to speak, poems in fancy dress. ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Ganymed’ are songs on subjects from ancient Greek myth, but they are in no way imitations of ancient classical models. In these two poems Goethe has taken myths and created modern meditations on them of startling, but quite distinct, kinds. 4.3 Voice and accompaniment One thing that is clear from the Lieder we have already considered is that Schubert's writing for the piano is a crucial element of his skill as a songwriter. Sometimes, and throughout his career, he wrote very simple accompaniments, as in ‘Heidenröslein’ – the approach favoured by Goethe and many other writers of the time, who considered that the German Lied should not overload the poem with too much elaboration. Schubert's later version of the ‘Harper's Song’ is more complex, wit Reading Strawson Peter Strawson's paper, ‘Freedom and resentment’ did much to change the direction of the debate surrounding determinism. Strawson, as you will see, divides his paper into numbered sections. This is because he has a reasonably small number of relatively discrete points to make, and the sections help the reader to see where the discussion begins and ends. This is not the only way of doing this; you might prefer to use explicit signposting within the text; for example, using phrases such as: 2.3.2 Love Please now read ‘Dogs and Wolves’. This poem is amazing in its forceful, simple-seeming expression of an extraordinarily complex combination of thought and emotion. The ‘dogs and wolves’ are the speaker's ‘unwritten poems’. Why ‘unwritten’? One infers that other matters take priority over love poems. But – ‘unwritten’ – their la 2.1.2 The poems Your reading in this course has already prepared you to some extent, but please read the following poems (both the English and Gaelic versions are given) which are discussed in the recordings, and then listen to the recordings.  A company of mountains, an upthrust of mountains a great garth of growing mountains a concourse of summits, of knolls, 1.1 British poetry and language To begin this course, look at the sheet of references linked below. You will see that the list includes books by Sorley MacLean and by two other important Scottish poets, Tom Leonard and Edwin Morgan. Not one title was published in London. None of these writers has ever published a collection of poems in London. Yet the prizewinning work of Edwin Morgan is widely used in Scottish schools, and Sorley MacLean's work has been translated into several foreign languages. By the 1980s, a shift of th Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: understand the power of MacLean's poetry in its original Gaelic give examples of how such poetry engages with historical and cultural change. Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) This content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this
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Activity 1
Kinloch Ainort
