WHAT DO PAINTINGS MEAN?

Art is semantically equivocal. Meaning is attributed to art by individuals and cultures. It is not inherent in the work. The genres of still life and landscape were invented by painters to avoid meaning. The first still life and the first landscape without narrative or historical figures were radical paintings.

These paintings are about perception; the artists perception of the subject matter and the artists and viewers perception of the finished work. With abstraction the initial perception comes from perceptual memory and then from perceiving what happens in the work as it develops. We tend to think of perception as a kind of simple automatic thing we have in common with other animals. But, as more and more is learned about the brains contribution to perception it becomes clear that, as suggested by David Premack, the quality of perception determines the quality of intelligence.

We, however, have a drive to interpret. It serves us very well in practical life. Being constantly concerned with meaning, purpose and cause and effect is adaptive. This successful habit perseveres even when there is nothing to interpret. In fact, those areas of human experience where meaning is largely absent are the most interpreted. They provide a hay day for interpretation because there are no limits, no constraints; there are no inherent essential meanings which when discovered put an end to further interpretation. Looking at these areas it becomes clear not only that anything can be interpreted but, that anything can be interpreted in any way. Art is one of these areas, a semantic free-for-all.

This perspective is possible if one emphasizes experience and recognizes that the phenomenon of meaning is circumscribed. Invoking meaning is an adaptive mental function or strategy for organizing experience but meaning is not a characteristic of the world. In other words, we use the mental constructs of meaning the way an elephant uses its trunk, as a tool for dealing with the world.

The mistake that causes so much trouble in art and religion is that we take this practical adaptive strategy to be based on an objective all pervasive quality of the universe. The phenomenon of meaning, however, inheres in human conscious minds not in the universe. <sup>(1)</sup> An organism which only has the ability to see red believes the world is red. An organism which must interpret believes the world can be interpreted. To quote Rumi, "The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why."

You can't understand art or reality. You can to some extent experience them. The full experience of art and the world unconstrained by the structures of meaning is probably enlightenment.

-- Anthony Thompson 10/05

<div style="color: #333333"><sup>(1)</sup> For an extensive discussion of the proposition that human concepts come from the human brain and reflect its particular construction rather than objective properties of reality, see: Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Philosophy in the Flesh. 1999, New York, Basic Books</div>