20 June 2018

Art Theories Exercise 1.0

In his book, The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle writes that there are “portions of the real world, objective facts in the world, that are only facts by human agreement. I need to make a list of 10 such ‘things’ that exist only because we believe them to exist, and then say how these things differ from e.g. mountains and forests. Understand why Searle puts the word “objective’ in inverted commas. In my understanding Ontology is the reference to being – to exist and have properties and relations and is part of physics and biology of all things. Ontology is about things and an ontological statement is a statement about what we think is real. Epistemology is about knowledge and epistemological statements are statements about what we think is true. In the realm of ontology, objective things are mind-independent and subjective things are mind-dependent. In other words, objective phenomena are those that exist outside of, or independently of, the human mind. This includes things like rocks, trees, physical bodies, and concrete behaviours. Subjective things, on the other hand, exist only in the human mind and through the human mind. This includes thoughts, feelings, perceptions, motivations, desires, fears, dreams, and so on. In the realm of epistemology, on the other hand, objectivity and subjectivity refer to the status of truth-claims. So, in the realm of epistemology, a statement is objectively true if it is true for all rational observers, that is, if all rational people, exposed to the same evidence, would be able to agree on the same conclusion. I presume this would be the reason that the author, Searle, puts “objective’ in inverted commas. My explanation to myself is is the following statement: This is a computer – we call it a computer, and therefore it is subjective. We named and created this computer for our purposes. A statement is subjectively true if even rational observers exposed to the same evidence would be unable to agree on the same conclusion – I can think of something like, “This computer is the best computer.” In the world we are being born into, the author argues that we do not question these things, (or objective facts) as we grow up in a world which has created these things. As Searle says, “they seem as natural to us as stones and water and trees”. The idea of this discussion is that the natural world’s features exist independently of our representations of them.

My list

1. Money to buy with 2. Facebook (to connect socially) 3. Cellular phone (to talk over distance to someone) 4. Computer (to record work and research for my studies in art) 5. Chair (to sit on) 6. Oil painting (to admire) 7. Dinner party (to socialise whilst eating) 8. Political party (to govern) 9. Book (to read from) 10. University (to study for a career)

What I found interesting in the discussions of Searle is ; “From a God’s-eye view, from outside the world, all the features of the world would be intrinsic, including intrinsic relational features such as the features that people in our culture regards such. God could not see computers, chairs, bathtubs, etc., because intrinsically speaking there are no such things. Rather, God would see us treating certain objects, such as computers, chairs, bathtubs, etc., But from our standpoint of view, we need to distinguish those true statements we make that attribute feature to the world that exist quite independently of any attitude or stance we take” . As I then understand, we create observer relative features and assign functions to, collective intentionally and add institutional structures to these realities. We can even assign functions to natural phenomena, like rivers and trees – which can be assessed as good or bad, depending on the functions we assign to them. A sunset can be aesthetic, a river or the sea good to swim in, and the wood of a tree can be used to make a furniture or to lite a fire.

It is important to see then that functions we give are never intrinsic to the physics or biology of any phenomenon, but are assigned from outside by conscious decisions – they are always observer and user relative. In reality, money consists of pieces of paper, yet those papers represent something much more valuable, for different people in different places and different times. These pieces of paper have the power because we give it that power, which is linked to having or not having money. This means to us that money exists, because we can use it for the purpose we created it. We employ money for what is was created for, its uses are spending, saving and earning. We are also dependent on this thing called money to life our daily lives, such as so eat, sleep, be safe, as money buys the food, pays the rent. We also need to continuously use these things (list of 10 in my case) in order for it to function for why we intended it to function. We also expect some form of intelligence in order to use something, understand its function and use it accordingly. There is also the necessity to ‘believe’ that these things are as we have assigned them as, or it will cease to function as what it is defined as. Searle remarks about this: ” This is a remarkable feature of social facts; it has no analogue among physical facts.” On the point of money – it has changed over decades in terms of its physical form – debit and credit cards, e banking, even more so now, with crypto currencies! Form does not matter, as long as it functions as money. I am also thinking about a telephone to the latest smart phones, what an incredible revolution of change, but still we assign and enhance the features that ‘suit’ us. What I also understood is that social realities are creations of the human mind, but not individual human minds, they are created from collections of human minds. I cannot by myself create a social reality; this will be seen as a figment of my own imagination. We live in a world where we are constantly creating new social realities, and my readings took me to the following understandings: • this social world is not part of nature and • depends entirely on us humans and not on the blind and impersonal forces of nature. But human beings are inherently part of the natural world. I quote directly from the SoundCloud recording of Philosophy Talk “The power of the human mind to create social realities must have its roots in human psychology, which must ultimately have its roots in human biology, which must ultimately have its roots in physics.” I am to ‘talk’ about ‘talk – I should not lose sight that language is dynamic and one needs to understand the context and semantics about how we talk about nature and culture, as thought language and social interaction we brought things, rocks, clouds, fish, as well as debt, justice, anxiety, into our existence. The fact that facts are “objective’ is because they are not brute facts, they require human agreement and need human institutions for their existence.

Searle, John R, 1995 The Construction of Social Reality, Penguin Books, London ( ISBN:978-0-14-193317-7) Kindle Book Searle,

John R, SoundCloud – Philosophy Talk (John Searle discuss the metaphysics of the social structure at Berkley, a live recording)

Picturing what we see

Exercise 1.1 The Eye of Silence

From my understanding Ernst was for most of his career associated with the Dada and Surrealist movements; so spontaneous, irrational impulse, when painting with a loaded brush, played a major role in his art. The artist employed and experimented with a few techniques. With decalcomania he strived to create arbitrary textures (created accidental situations) on the canvas, which he then reworked to resemble rock formations and forms of animals, plants, and architecture. His search and use of these technical discoveries, rather than just using a paintbrush, helped Ernst to create imagery that could not be known in advance – thus not consciously calculated art. Unscraped thick blobs of paint create valleys and crevices. I read that he used `grattage’, a grating of scratching of wet paint with a variety of tools, such as a comb, a fork, a razor,to exploit the plastic character of wet oil paint. Edmund Burke Feldman in Varieties of Visual Experience, discuss Frottage, Graggate and Decalcomania and he refers to another interesting Ernstain technique, ‘eclaboussage, widely used today. Ernst dropped paint from a perforated tin can swung from a string suspended above the canvas, the paint splashes were manipulated like the squeezed pigment in decalonamina. Turpentine dropped on a freshly painted canvas was also used to create splash patterns, dilute the wet paint partially – which I found is not far from Pollock throwing paint. I feel the clouds, the woman, the eyes and the choice of colour were intended; and the unintended ended is a primordial-like landscape, in a grotto like formation coexist under the sky. It is not a natural landscape one looks onto, but an imaginary and haunting space. Ernst used the technical processes ( exploiting change effects) into artistic images, he used his artistic imagination as a creative instrument, which I believe to be ambiguous. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalised term for seeing patterns in random data. Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. It explains why some people claim to have seen UFOs, Aliens or even Elvis. Other examples are , in the discolourations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face of Jesus; or one sees the image of Mother Teresa in the folds of a cinnamon bun; or Lenin in the soap scum of a shower curtain; of seeing an alien spaceship in a pattern of lights in the sky. I also read the following: “It is well known that apophenia and pareidolia are related to the human instinct to see patterns and find meaning; both are rooted in our evolutionary history. Our species has stupendous pattern-recognition abilities, so stupendous, in fact, that we often see patterns where there are none. We’ve evolved to find meaning in patterns and infer causal relationships from coincidences.” (Chabris, Christopher and Daniel Simons. 2010. The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. Crown) Subject and surface govern the practice.

My tutor comments on the difficulty to understand artistic intent and feels that my comments were to the point in this exercise.

Exercise 1.2

I had to contemplate what theory is, and the best idea I could bring is to look at what a scientific theory is :  “A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts.”  Greenberg argued that “Modernist art does not offer theoretical demonstrations.   It can be said, rather, that it happens to convert theoretical possibilities into empirical ones, in doing which it test many theories about art for their relevance to the actual practice and actual experience of art”  (Greenberg, 1995, 92)  Art theories are in many ways so unlike, there could be systematic ideas and general principles, but it is philosophical, interpretive, and mostly  the concern of artists, critics and spectators.  The study material lead me to how we think about art and how we reason about art, and not about what is being observed through art by us.  I tried to consider the opposite of theoretical in art, as being practical. Can theoretical imply a more verbal discussion on art and on the other side, the non theoretical,  the place where experimental art explores and discover and expand?

Exercise 1.2 Works of art in which theory plays a decisive role

JMW Turner, Snow Storm – Steam boat off a harbour’s mouth, 1842, and oil painting on canvas. The chaos of the storm is captured by using swirls of colour that almost conceal the ship which looks as if it is caught up in the turmoil of the storm – he uses masses of colour to define form and visual effect of water and a storm and tell a story of nature.

3 Works of art in which theory seems absent

Jackson Pollock, Silver on Black, White, Yellow and Red, 1948 done in enamel on paper laid on canvas. This painting is a recording of the artist expressing by a process where he, dripped, splashed and hurled paint onto the canvas lying on the floor to create an exciting and animated abstract pattern.

Here my tutor referred to work of Duchamp where his work becomes a catalyst for discussion, rather than as an aesthetic object. I can understand that his work appears to propose something, make a statement of even ask something.

Cezanne

Reflection the distinction between them

I read the idea that we as humans make pictures of facts.  The very moment modern human beings appeared, somewhere about 60,000 years ago,
there, anthropologists tell us, we immediately find an abundance of art, decoration,
images, totems, likenesses of animals and human beings, and in general pictures
of facts. a time we find ourselves looking at pictures which are sometimes easily appreciated at the first glance, but others need to be explored to understand the purpose, how it resembles to reality, the cultural context and the way form and colours are used to produce the subject matter. At the onset of this assignment, I realised the importance of a broad reading on art and that my need for a good vocabulary and knowledge, but that was again the reason for taking formal studies. It seems traditional art has as its main goal to reproduce the visible world: The Imitation Theory as Sokrates and Plato have discussed. The idea of art being expressionist, and or a mixture or only expressionist grew with Modernism, A lot of developments in modern art, especially post-impressionist paintings, challenged the Imitation Theory, since imitation just was not their goal. To explain or show why these new works were art, a new theory of art was needed. The new theory also worked to make other things start to count as art, such as masks and weapons from anthropological museums. This new theory, the Reality Theory do not pretend that artworks were imitations, an example is Roy Lichtenstein’s huge paintings of comic-book panels “are not imitations but new entities, as giant whelks would be” (p. 36). The same goes for Robert Rauschenberg’s actual bed, which he hung vertically on a wall and streaked with paint. A naïve person or uninformed person (“Testadura”, Danto calls him) might not realize this is art and might think it’s just a really messy bed. Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Boxes” look just like actual, ordinary ones. Why are they art? Each Warhol box “is” more than a regular box; it ‘is’ an artwork, using this new theory of art. “What in the end makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo Box is a certain theory of art” (p. 41). This couldn’t be art without a lot of both theory and history.

For my own understanding I see art as visual, with a language (theory?) embedded in this visual context by which we can connect through a form of aesthetically appreciation. Art also carries the history and culture of whatever the picture shows us, whether this is metaphorical or figurative. In her book, Looking at Pictures, Susan Woodford leaves me with the following thoughts: ” The theory of art helps us to reflect on what we see and or read into an artwork, is also brings with it a point of view. Theory find words to describe and analyse art, and hopefully provides a way to progress from passive looking to active, perceptive seeing.” I found the following comments in an article, Art History from a Global Perspective, by Rosalie van Deursen thought provoking: “The traditional 19th century notion of art history is based on Greek Antiquity, with the Italian Renaissance as hinge-point. Everything that happened there after in the Western world is either a continuation therefrom, or a counter-reaction there-against. From the 19th century on, Eastern art history underwent a process of gradual globalization. Art forms of non-western traditions were also studied, especially by archeologists, anthropologists and linguistic and the cultural specialists of the relevant regions.” The following remarks on the Tate website with regards to Modernism stimulated my thoughts: “Although many different styles are encompassed by the term, there are certain underlying principles that define modernist art: A rejection of history and conservative values (such as realistic depiction of subjects); innovation and experimentation with form (the shapes, colours and lines that make up the work) with a tendency to abstraction; and an emphasis on materials, techniques and processes. Modernism has also been driven by various social and political agendas. These were often utopian, and modernism was in general associated with ideal visions of human life and society and a belief in progress.” Modernist Art, as seen by Greenberg (1995, 92) does not offer theoretical demonstrations. The Enlightenment criticized from the outside, the way criticism in its more accepted sense does; Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized. It seems Gustav Courbet was one of the first artist to challenge conventional art theory. Courbet challenged convention by rejecting the historical and mythological subjects that had dominated art for centuries; he painted scenes of daily life, used large scale previously reserved for history painting and in a realist style. Impressionism was also a movement away from the theories of the Old Masters: they chose to paint scenes of everyday modern life, wanted to capture the movement and effects of light that they saw in nature and rejected established styles, using instead rapid brush marks and bright colours. Their radical technique and creation of paintings which can appear quite abstract, place them as important innovators in the early history of modern art. Realistic, illusionist art had ‘concealed’ the medium, using art to conceal art. Modernism used art to call attention to art. It is not in principle that Modernist painting in its latest phase has abandoned the representation of recognizable objects, however it has abandoned in principle the representation of the kind of space that recognizable, three-dimensional objects can inhabit. Representation, or illustration, as such does not abate the uniqueness of pictorial art; what does do so are the associations of the things represented. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting – the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of pigment – were seen as treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Modernist painting has come to regard these same limitations as positive factors that are to be acknowledged openly. Accordingly, from Greenberg’s perspective, Manet’s paintings became the first Modernist ones by virtue of the frankness with which they declared the surfaces on which they were painted. The Impressionists, in Manet’s wake, abjured underpaying and glazing, to leave the eye under no doubt as to the fact that the colors used were made of real paint that came from pots or tubes. Cezanne sacrificed verisimilitude, or correctness, in order to fit drawing and design more explicitly to the rectangular shape of the canvas and emphasize the flat surface of the canvas. Braque was important because the was the first to extensively explore the idea of depicting the same object form more than one point of view. In art history of the past we learn that Leonardo da VInci discovered a technique for showing shapes without using lines – sfumato. It seems that artists exploited the fact that the marks of tools can be expressive in themselves – thus offered new possibilities of expression, like manipulating the paint. I read the following as words of Matisse in Art of our Century: ” someone once told me there was a difference between the way I saw women and my depiction of them. I answered by saying that if I ever in real life saw such women as I represented in my pictures, I would be terrified. I do not create a woman; I draw a picture. I basically work without a theory. I am aware only of the forces I use” ( which I would see as his emotional expression) . The Modernist artists of the early 1940 -1950’s were supported by probably the most influential art critic in the twentieth century Clement Greenberg, who emphasised the importance of the formal properties of art – such as colour, line and space – over subject or meaning.

My tutor observes that I have been reading widely and comments on ‘theory’ as a “wide -reaching term” and argues that any creative work has some theoretical underpinning, such as just to create an illusion that is convincing. I can just start to imagine the journey I am about to discover through thinking and reading about how theory has found its way into my own art making process.

Exercise 1.3 Speculate how someone would see art.

In a Dyson vacuum cleaner the design and curved lines as well as the latest technology it used is put to the front, if compared to a old fashioned style vacuum cleaner. Industrial design could here have to do with appearance and not just function. From a modern user’s perspective it could be seen as not just functional, but also an object of display due to aesthetics of the design or the experience of the appearance of something nice to look at due to the curved lines and or colours of the object. It can also be seen as a mass production product, competing with other similar looking/functional products, and wants to ‘stand out’ by differentiating its appearance.  Some people may also call it beautiful, but that does not necessary imply it is art.

John Tenniel, a political cartoonist during 1820 – 1914, and his illustrations of Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865. He depicted these characters and illustrations from his imagination by starting with preliminary pencil drawings, further drawings in ‘ink and Chinese white’ to simulate the wood engraver’s line, then transference to the wood-block by the use of tracing paper. Then the drawings were engraved to the highest standards, in this instance by the Dalziel Brothers. On Wikipedia I read that Tenniel was knighted in 1893 for his artistic achievements. I would think from a viewer’s perspective illustrative drawings in books are artworks as they show a visualised imitation of the imagined story line and draws the reader into the story.

The Nazca Lines, The Condor (200BC – 500AD): Theoretically these lines are called geoglyphs and they vary greatly in terms of size, form and complexity. It is imitations of nature, a type of image making of what is seen in nature. It was presumably made by Nazca Indians. At 440 feet long and almost as wide, the condor is one of the largest zoomorphic geoglyphs, making it easy to spot as you fly over the Nazca Lines, or maybe stand on a high spot/hill/mountain. These lines are completely viewable only from an aerial vantage point and the drawings were created to precision by clearing the reddish stones of the desert and exposing the greyish sand underneath. Most of the lines are formed on the ground by a shallow trench with a depth between 10 and 15 cm. I view it similar to an etching on paper – this is on a big scale, sand is used as material and the canvass in the earth. The Condor is recognisable as an image of this bird type. I contemplate with image and picture – what is art or a story, told in inscribed lines, way back in history about a culture? I read that scholars of Andean civilisations have, for decades, debated the meaning and function of the Nazca Lines. It is generally believed that they were associated with the sacred rites of some water-cult and strategically engraved near aquifers and springs. The National Geographic explorer Johan Reinhard applied a multidisciplinary approach to the lines, writing in this 1986 book The Nazca Lines: A New Perspective on their Origin and Meaning that “No single evaluation proves a theory about the lines, but the combination of archaeology, ethnohistory, and anthropology builds a solid case.” It is likely that our knowledge and conception of the Nazca Lines will continue to change and evolve with more and more research.” My mind asks does seeing these lines at this magnitude bring about awe, admiration and a idea of beauty? I can imagine the first person to have seen it from an aeroplane must have been touched and have many questions as to what he/she was seeing, why it was there, and how did it come to be? This relates to what I read about John Onions (1992 of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, professor emeritus) and his theoretical model of World Art Studies, when he says that after we have seen something for the first time, our brain helps us deal better with it in the future; we thus recognize and create visual preferences.

Based on these preferences, art is created and art is viewed. He goes on to argue that the artistic tradition therefore appears to be largely dependent on the natural environment that human beings are passively exposed to. I would also like to pose the cultural and historical time of the creation of these lines as another idea to why the visual lines and images was created. Could this type of art be the same as what we call today land art (installation in nature)? In the book, The Collected Essays and Criticism, I found an interesting interview conducted by Lily Leino with Mr Greenberg. The part I thought appropriate here is the discussion on aesthetics and art not being subjective. Greenberg sees it as a discovery and experiencing of quality in art. It comes back to the philosophers’ answer – consensus of taste. He also touched on the broadening of the American public’s taste and a more openness. It is clear that ideas about good art are not formed by themselves.

Here my tutor suggests that context is a key point and that I should have a think about context and about function – she is happy with my reading, especially John Onions.

Exercise 1.4 Describe my understanding of Digital Art

I presumed that digital art is made with digital technologies and took to the WWW for more understanding. The Tate website explains the following: “The first use of the term digital art was in the early 1980s when computer engineers devised a paint program which was used by the pioneering digital artist Harold Cohen. This became known as AARON, a robotic machine designed to make large drawings on sheets of paper placed on the floor. Since this early foray into artificial intelligence, Cohen has continued to fine-tune the AARON program as technology becomes more sophisticated. I am familiar with the work David Hockney and many other artists are creating with and Ipad and Iphone – I understand that applying colour, drawing lines, thick or thin can be done with ease and at any place – like sitting in a coffee shop, and not having to drag all your tools and materials along. I like the idea of erasing – it seems it could assist being in a flow of creativity and changing and challenging yourself as the work progresses. In the case of Hockney there is an almost natural progression in this evolution towards use of digital art – the artist use his polaroid for collages, incorporated a colour photocopier and more recently his iPhone and iPad – what started as documenting , lead to his discovery of new possibilities with digital media. Hockney has been making photographic collages since 1982 and his work, Gregory Watching the Snow Fall, Kyoto, Feb, 1983 shows analogous frames with gaps, which our brains need to process and see the whole picture. It was almost a discovery of possibilities of vision from multiple vantage points, fixed in time and place. My art tutor in South Africa exposed me to digital art, his own. He has a Masters in Visual Arts and in 2015 formed an experimental collaboration with a artist who are highly skilled in computer programming and photography , which led to a collaborative project and a career shift for both artist. Photo manipulation software techniques, digital photography and oil painting is combined in what they experience as collaborative energy and a poetic dialogue between the different media. As recently as August 2018 they have been rewarded with international recognition and won international awards – London Contemporary Art Prize 2018 finalists and 2018 ‘F the Art World” International Art Competition – Category winner FineArt/Mixed Media. These artists see their art resist and transcend perceptions of traditional boundaries on every level.

On a FaceBook, posted on the OCA Drawing Skills group, a student posted his recent work done with his Ipad, Apple Pencil and an app for drawing, Procreate. He mentioned that he almost prefer it to a real sketchbook and that the loved to discover how “intuitive’ it is to use. Greenberg also commented on a question of ‘the invasion of art by technology” that the answer would lie in the results ( page 311).

In her feedback my tutor reminded me to that I did not focus fully on the question – “in this instance you were asked to list possible meanings, and then state your preferred option”. I completely missed this point. I should also have reflected on the proliferation of digital images, in particular of artworks, and what the implication of this are.

Exercise 1.5

Reflecting on Searle’s observation at the beginning of this chapter, how would you explain the difference between the construction of social reality and the social construction of reality?

Searle argues that a simple way to show that a socially constructed reality presupposes a reality independent of all social constructions, because there has to be something for the construction to be constructed out of. An example: to construct money there have to be the raw materials of bits of metal, and the raw materials cannot in turn be socially constructed without presupposing soame even rawer materials out of which they are constructed – until we reach a bedrock of brute physical phenomena independent of all representations. We can look at our world and say we live in a world made up entirely of physical particles in fields of force, some organized into systems, and some are living systems and some even evolved consciousness. Searle continues the argument that it is with consciousness that intention comes – a capacity to represent objects. The challenging part becomes the ‘objectivity’ of our worldview, and the contrast between the objective and subjective. It seems Searle observed the importance of features of the world that exist independently of those and us that are dependent on us for their existence. When we begin to specify further feature of the fundamental ontology, eg. Mountains or molecules, we discover that there is a distinction between those features we might call intrinsic to nature and those features that exist relative to the intentionality of us the users of observers. With regards to the social construction of reality we understand that everyone experiences natural elements, but how they are experienced and what they mean can be significantly different, and those experiences take on their own character when people decide to agree that that/it is the way! I came upon this great example of Daylight savings time: Daylight savings time is one we can experience happen in a single day. Reality shifts. We now perceive it as actual and real, simply because everybody agreed it was.” From my understanding we are observers as much as we are participators within this social realism. It is so that the language for social reality is descriptive through the use of our vocabulary and cannot translate to physics and or chemistry – which has invisible ontology. We had to construct social reality for our purposes. Many features of natural science conception of reality today, are still in dispute and thus problematic. For example, mathematics is a social construct: The numbers are social constructs, the symbols are social constructs, and the idea of “proof” is a social construct. How do we know this is the case? Because the conventions of mathematics had to be invented by people, and the values that are operated with had to be distinguished by cognition. I think it is important to explore how Searle summarizes realism. He sees it not as a theory of truth, not a theory of knowledge and not a theory of language ; but an ontological theory, because it says that ” there exists a reality totally independent of our representations.” ‘ REALISM IS THE VIEW THAT THERE IS A WAY THAT THINGS ARE THAT IS LOGICALLY INDEPENDENT OF ALL HUMAN REPRESENTATIONS. REALISM DOES NOT SAY HOW THING ARE BUT ONLY THAT THERE IS A WAY THAT THEY ARE. It leaves me to think of Art. It is a word we created and decisions collectively made to acknowledge this idea or act that it exists. Is it object, how do we assign value to it? The question of what art is and the why it is art, seems to be further questions I will hopefully find in these studies. Visual notation, visual images, cognition, how we perceive, how we see? Can visual epistemology be discussed? I found a youtube conference held at UC Berkley named The construction of social reality through Art. One of the points of departure for WAS in Leiden was John Onians’ statement: ‘Imagine looking at earth from another planet – why is only such a small segment of the art on earth studied?

Woodford, Susan (2018), Looking at Pictures, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London,

Feldman, E B Varieties of Visual Experience(1987) Third Edition, page , 108 – 115 and 275 -276

Ferrie, Jean-Louis, Le Pichon, Yann, (1989), Art of our Century, The story of Western Art 1900 to the present, Longman Group UK Limited, page 511

Greenberg, Clement (1993) , The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 4, Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957 – 1969, edited by John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, 1993

My tutor again suggested I do more editing in order to focus on the main points. She did give me the thumbs up for my thought about Daylight Saving and saw the work as having “interesting material”

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