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THE ART OF PAINTING
PAINTING AS AN ART. By Richard Wollheim.
Princeton University Press. $45.00.
PARTISAN REVIEW
By profession Richard Wollheim is a philosopher, best-known as
the author of a concise, comprehensive treatise on aesthetics,
Art arul Its Ob–
jects.
Aesthetics, however, is not the only path Wollheim has pursued toward
understanding art. Nor is the straightforward analysis of the Anglo-American
philosophers his only manner ofwriting, despite his plain language and pen–
chant to number sections in the style offollowers ofWittgenstein. The reader
ofWollheim's latest book,
Painting as an Art,
will detect signs of the author's
complex intellectual past - much of his writing departs from philosophical
rigor to engage in emotional introspection and poetic speculation.
Wollheim has studied art, the mind, and human emotions through a va–
riety ofwriting modes, which together exhibit a network of recurring themes
and associations. His publications include a psychological novel,
A Family Ro–
mance,
whose title alludes to Freud, on whom Wollheim completed an intro–
ductory text. He also wrote
F.H. Bradley,
a monograph on the Oxford
metaphysician who happened to have influenced Adrian Stokes, Wollheim's
mentor in the field of art criticism. Stokes underwent analysis with Melanie
Klein, and his writing (as well as Wollheim's) uses some of her psychological
constructs. These specific interconnections - with Bradley representing phi–
losophy; Stokes, criticism; and Klein, psychoanalysis - are coincidental, yet
their configuration seems to define Wollheim's general enterprise. Indeed, in
his epilogue to
F.H.
Bradley,
he speculated briefly about what psychological
motivation might have produced the philosopher's metaphysics, attempting
"to relate an intellectual work to the elementary and emotional movements
of the psyche." Thus, Wollheim, early in his career, was explaining the par–
ticularities of a philosophy in terms of the satisfaction of fundamental psycho–
logical needs, much as a critic might conceive of the causes, purposes, and
meanings of a work of art.
It
was an instance of the crossing of disciplinary
boundaries that would so often characterize his later work - the intermingling
of discourses of philosophy, psychoanalysis, criticism, and art (both literary
and pictorial).
We find this mix again in
Painting as an Art
-
part aesthetics, part
psychoanalysis, part art criticism. Two introductory chapters present a the–
ory of "what the artist does" and "what the spectator sees." The reader
recognizes Wollheim here in his role as aesthetician, offering some basic
principles in preparation for the interpretation ofindividual works. At the core
of his theory are notions of "seeing-in," "twofoldness," and "expressive
