Whatever the intended interpretation of the term "pictorial language", it appears as if we are here in front of an empirical hypothesis about the way the brain processes paintings. A way to test the hypothesis is to look for, in paintings, traces of the linguistic workings of the mind, which would show that the brain operated under linguistic constraints.

However, no matter what we could find that resembles linguistic activity in paintings, there are phenomena, such as isllusionistic paintings, or even artistic photographs, that do not appear to have been generated under linguistic (in some to be specified sense) constraints, but as mechanical renderings of the distribution of light and color in an environment. (Unless, of course, one endorsed the doubtful notion of a "language of vision".) Hence the question: What is really "linguistic" in paintings. And: Aren't we here in front of a largely unspecified metaphor?

In his book : "The languages of art", Nelson Goodman proposes an analogy between description in language, that is a way of representing an individual as something else (as when I describe "Brutus" as "The man who killed Ceasar")and depiction in art, which is also a way of representing things as. As descriptions in language may be particularly rich and original and give us access to a new insight, depictions may also give us access to new combinations of properties of our world that improve our knowledge of the world. I still find this analogy illuminating.

This is a very different view from Roberto Casati's view of art as a conversational ploy, though not in contradiction to it. I am in agreement with Casati's point of view. My 1981 exhibition at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York was titled "Ten Conversation Pieces." It included paintings, photographs, collages, bookbindings, and, at the opening, my one-performance band, Old Man Rivet and the Rivetheads, performing one short piece titled "I Want To Be Riveted."

Regarding Avigdor's hypothesis, Roberto says: "A way to test the hypothesis is to look for, in paintings, traces of the linguistic workings of the mind, which would show that the brain operated under linguistic constraints."

This would not be a valid test of the hypothesis that this is the way the brain processes paintings. Scientific methodology requires the null hypothesis to be tested. A proper test would seek one example of the brain processing paintings in a non-linguistic way. In order to do this we would need to define what constitutes a linguistic system of neural interaction, and that definition would need to be inclusive of visual, aural and written languages.

I think it is sufficient to note that there are many paintings, and schools of painting, which are based on the type of formal grammar and syntax that Avigdor's essay suggests. That provides a lot of fodder for dissertations and art historians, and for many conversations.

"Regarding Avigdor's hypothesis, Roberto says: "A way to test the hypothesis is to look for, in paintings, traces of the linguistic workings of the mind, which would show that the brain operated under linguistic constraints."

Minsky: "This would not be a valid test of the hypothesis that this is the way the brain processes paintings. Scientific methodology requires the null hypothesis to be tested. A proper test would seek one example of the brain processing paintings in a non-linguistic way. In order to do this we would need to define what constitutes a linguistic system of neural interaction, and that definition would need to be inclusive of visual, aural and written languages."

Actually, my point was about production, not about perception of paintings. But Minsky's warning is appropriate.

Avigdor Arikha

The message of the Altamira masters is different from the messages delivered by Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer or Ellsworth Kelly because the environment in which the art of Altamira was produced differed fundamentally from the environment of a twentieth century artist. Mastering the brush or the pencil stroke is still as important for the artist as it has been for Hokusai, Holbein or Rembrandt, but the fact that the human hand is being challenged progressively by robotics has had an impact on the process of creating art long before the phenomenon could be recognized by the general public.

I was surprised at the credit given to Klee in the essay: "Klee’s investigations into the constitutive elements of the picture gave Modernism its grammar." and: "Klee’s approach was influenced by metaphysics, mysticism and music."

The Pedagogical Sketchbooks certainly contributed to the genre of pedagogical artists' books, but if the Bauhaus is what gave Modernism its grammar, I would give the credit first to Kandinsky for Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Point and Line to Plane. But I don't know that I would give the Bauhaus that credit solely, important as its contributions may have been. The Constructivists and Futurists certainly made great contributions. Not all contributions to the "grammar" of an artistic movement are made by pedagogues, and I think of Cézanne and the students of William Merritt Chase, as in the "Precisionist" paintings of Charles Sheeler, who, like Nadar, also was a painter/photographer. And let's separate the notions of "abstraction" and "non-representational."

As for the conversationally provocative statement: "the regression of the 1960s perpetuates a setback, one that influenced art cognition negatively."

That contradicts Avigdor's earlier emphasis on the importance of the brush, the hand. and the quality of the line. Franz Kline made those three elements the subject of hundreds of paintings. I regard Kline as the definitive manual on using edge definition techniques to create illusionistic space. Clyfford Still, Morris Louis, Mark Tobey, Rothko, and many others came out of the "Modernist" school, combining the movement of the brush with a spiritual approach, while focusing on the "push/pull" of the image plane. At the same tme, Willem deKooning advanced the work of 19th c. painters like Turner, Ryder and Whistler.

It would only make sense to me in the case we would agree in saying that the ACTIVE bit refers to a DISPLAYING attitude while processing the information of a work of art.

I understand ATTITUDE as a sort of high order proposition in which the relevant data are processed. This high order proposition could be:

[DISPLAY (whatever)]

Now, this attitude elicits a series of additional processes which make us perceive and consider the "whatever" bit in a different light. We may concentrate in the new perceptual considerations and EVALUATE them according to all sorts of personal preferences, some of which are well described by A.A.

In a De Sica film of the 50s, Miracolo a Milano, the protagonist, Toto, achieves the feat of making his very poor neighbours VALUE a sunset as a work of art by DISPLAYING it before them, i.e., by telling them to watch it as if it were a performance. This is precisely what I have in mind!

“The perception of a work of art, unlike the perception of an image, is such that we usually tend to recognize what we see, thus to see what we already know. Whereas image perception is automatic deciphering, art-sensing happens through the passage from passive to active seeing and sensing; and it takes a particular kind of attention for passive vision to be turned into emotionally resonant, active seeing. The viewer perceiving passively a Rembrandt portrait as an image only, will miss its pictorial emotion. The passage from passive to active perception engages the processes that define "art cognition".”

Typically, when we see an image, we tend to recognize what the image is an image of (of the Eiffel Tower, of Einstein, of a rose, and so on). The recognition involved in the perception of a work of art must go beyond this. Is it the recognition of the way in which this particular work of art is both related to, and different from, other works of arts (of the same artist, of the same tradition, of the same genre)? To what extent is the “discernment” involved the ability to see the work of art as belonging to a family or to a genealogy of works of art (drawing, for instance, on “the past visual experiences of looking at paintings, reminiscent of other paintings”)? What is the relationship between regognizing the work of art as a work of art among works of art, and what Arikha calls the “unfolding of the pictorial syntax”? More generally, what might the relationship, if any, between a genealogical model (an "epidemiological" model, I am tempted to say) and a grammatical model of art?

To Richard Minsky: You are certainly right about Kandinsky's celebrated theoretical writings. However, Klee's so called 'Pedagogical Sketchbook' is only a minuscule extract from Klee's notes that were published posthumously under the title 'Das Bildnerische Denken', 542 pages, Basel, 1956

Avigdor Arikha

My own perspective is that of a humanist interested in science rather than of a scientist interested in the humanities (as well, inescapably, as that of daughter of artists familiar with the vagaries of artistic creation). From this position, I have noticed with interest (as has Dan) a tendency among some of the cognitive scientists and philosophers here to single out as examples for their arguments precisely those figures - such as Duchamp - which, historically, stand explicitly in contraposition to what artistic experience has otherwise been throughout history, both in the Western world and elsewhere.

This tendency might point to a need for philosophers to concentrate on works which seek to embody a conceptual attitude to artistic experience. Does it also indicate an impossibility for the conceptual examination of what happens when we gaze at 'traditional' art, the art that provokes emotional experiences, rather than thoughts, in the first instance?

I don't think so. Yet, the first step towards finding a meeting-ground would require an agreement, not on what constitutes 'art' and what not (some of the messages have been addressing this question) but on the criteria necessary for establishing how the perception of a work of art differs from that of an ordinary object.The one question implies the other. But we need to settle for a set of phenomenological considerations and empirical studies of what is historically given as an art object: the goal is not to interrogate the validity of this category, nor to deny its value - quite the contrary. And to take its value fully on board entails recognizing the historicity of art objects; what we must avoid is the denial of the humanist perspective within the scientific one, and vice-versa.

"Dans le cas, par exemple, de la contemplation d'un tableau, on peut concevoir, de manière encore hypothétique mais plausible, que les architectures du plaisir esthétique engagent, en premier lieu, les aires visuelles de l'écorce cérébrale qui analysent la forme, la couleur, la distribution dans l'espace, éventuellement la simulation de mouvement.

Remontant dans la hiérarchie corticale, une "synthèse" succède à l'analyse, le cerveau reconstruit les formes, les couleurs et les figures en un tout cohérent qui occupe la mémoire de travail. La capture du rythme, des formes et des couleurs, de leur harmonie, active sélectivement les mémoires stockées dans le compartiment à long terme, donne du sens au tableau ou plutôt fait surgir une multiplicité de sens parfois contradictoires.

L'oeuvre d'art mettrait à contribution le niveau le plus élevé de la hiérarchie des fonctions cérébrales : celui des intentions et de la raison. Elle créerait l'harmonie entre la sensualité et la raison sans recours obligé au raisonnement explicite. C'est la libre joie sans délibération formulée ! Mais l'art possède une dimension supplémentaire, la faculté d'éveil, le pouvoir évocateur qui fait surgir dans le cerveau du spectateur images, mémoires, souvenirs, gestes, et suscite le rêve. Il donne à penser. Il invite au rêve partagé d'une authentique "vie bonne", avec cette liberté de dire et de faire comprendre dont seule la poésie est capable, mais ici sans le recours au langage. Il parvient en fait à ce que ni le droit ou la morale sous leur forme normative, ni la science avec son langage d'objectivité rigoureuse ne peuvent : développer l'imaginaire, susciter de nouveaux plans de vie commune, en quelque sorte rêver un futur partagé et harmonieux"

(La nature et la règle, 1998, pp. 338-339).

Il me semble que le discours du neurobiologiste est ici en cohérence avec celui du peintre (AA). Il est vrai qu'un même "appétit" de peinture les unit (JPC se déclare "iconophile").

Je retiens seulement que JPC emploie un vocabulaire plus restrictif. Là où AA parle de "langage pictural", JPC définit l'art comme une expression "sans délibération formulée". Cela évite des confusions.

" Sa main opère. Son œil suit. La main va, aveugle, source du regard. Qu’aura t’il peint ? Ce qu’il aura vu ? Ce qu’il aurait aimé voir ? La main aura accompli quelque chose. Elle l’aura déçu. Egaré dans une zone insoupçonnée. Instrument de perdition ou de révélation " (1966, dans Peinture et regard, 1991, p. 240).

Une main qui court plus vite que les yeux ! Voici un terrain d’expérience pour les sciences cognitives. J’aimerais savoir si, à la lumière des découvertes récentes, il est possible d’en savoir plus : métaphore ou réalité ?