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The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting
Merleau-Ponty's essays on aesthetics are some of the major accomplishments of his philosophical career, and rank even today among the most sophisticated reflections on art in all of twentieth-century philosophy. His essays on painting, "Cezanne's Doubt" (1945), "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" (1952), and "Eye and Mind" (1960), have inspired new approaches to epistemology, ontology, and the philosophy of history. Galen A. Johnson has gathered these essays for the first time into a single volume and augmented them with essays by distinguished scholars and artists, including M.C. Dillon, Mikel Dufrenne, and René Magritte. Together the essays demonstrate the continuing significance of Merleau-Ponty's ideas about art for contemporary philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic.
422 pages, Paperback
First published January 5, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 15, 2023
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241017: this is a great if familiar selection of three important essays by merleau-ponty. i have read these essays before, i have not read the critiques on these essays. 1) 'cezanne's doubt', 2) 'indirect language and the voices of silence', 3) 'eye and mind'. first come individual introductory essays, the essays, the critiques by other writers...
1) is an essay i have now read a few times (4) and was this time inspired to get some art texts to look at some of cezanne's work again, as i had previously gone by memory, but reading this essay made me look at how he developed from impressionist techniques to the beginnings of modern art. this is much on cezanne's art, biography, some reference to leonardo da vinci, some argument that his work is not reduced to psychology, shows how much thought, work, aspirations, defined his project...
2) another essay read (4) expands his reference of artists from Van Gogh, Matisse, Klee, etc., and contrasts m-p with for example Sartre, arguments for how work is written in response to sartre's 'what is literature', how with words you have more precision or 'ductility', less direct essence, that by structure one is communicating, not by direct speech but in silence...
3) read before (3) this argues that the art, artist, subject, are all necessarily 'flesh', that the artist must be embodied, that the mind must be in the gestures, the eye must precede the mind, that 'style' is more than commodity fetish, that it is how the artist is in the world, that the line becomes thinking, that the ontology of m-p's visible invisible requires element, flesh, reversibility, depth, transcendence, vertical time...
as a collection the critiques following the essays are very good, even to the extent i do not follow them. as i am not studying this work, i take these as if lectures by profs, though i am not asking clarification or interpretation of these works. there is further work on cezanne's art, disputes with Sartre, on 'style', on 'mirror stage', on Lascaux (cave paintings), on philosophical neglect of colour, against 'world as picture', on 'action painting'... great resources for further thought...
241017: this is a great if familiar selection of three important essays by merleau-ponty. i have read these essays before, i have not read the critiques on these essays. 1) 'cezanne's doubt', 2) 'indirect language and the voices of silence', 3) 'eye and mind'. first come individual introductory essays, the essays, the critiques by other writers...
1) is an essay i have now read a few times (4) and was this time inspired to get some art texts to look at some of cezanne's work again, as i had previously gone by memory, but reading this essay made me look at how he developed from impressionist techniques to the beginnings of modern art. this is much on cezanne's art, biography, some reference to leonardo da vinci, some argument that his work is not reduced to psychology, shows how much thought, work, aspirations, defined his project...
2) another essay read (4) expands his reference of artists from Van Gogh, Matisse, Klee, etc., and contrasts m-p with for example Sartre, arguments for how work is written in response to sartre's 'what is literature', how with words you have more precision or 'ductility', less direct essence, that by structure one is communicating, not by direct speech but in silence...
3) read before (3) this argues that the art, artist, subject, are all necessarily 'flesh', that the artist must be embodied, that the mind must be in the gestures, the eye must precede the mind, that 'style' is more than commodity fetish, that it is how the artist is in the world, that the line becomes thinking, that the ontology of m-p's visible invisible requires element, flesh, reversibility, depth, transcendence, vertical time...
as a collection the critiques following the essays are very good, even to the extent i do not follow them. as i am not studying this work, i take these as if lectures by profs, though i am not asking clarification or interpretation of these works. there is further work on cezanne's art, disputes with Sartre, on 'style', on 'mirror stage', on Lascaux (cave paintings), on philosophical neglect of colour, against 'world as picture', on 'action painting'... great resources for further thought...
February 8, 2012
Good resource, primary texts and secondary essays/ analysis.
January 1, 2023
I only read the essays by Merleu-Ponty, which were challenging and excellent. I will no doubt return to these essays and read some of the additional essays expounding on Merleu-Ponty’s work.
September 17, 2011
Merleau-Ponty's argument is well constructed and so-so in clarity. His aesthetic philosophy is a painters wet dream, I generally don't tend to agree with. As he does a disservice to any form of creativity other than painting (as Lyotard points out). But it is fantastic, and shows what a great writer Merleau-Ponty is when his essays outshine the others around him, not just in content but with using language that avoids esotericism and posturing whenever possible.
This is the first Ponty book I have read and coming from a limited knowledge of Heidegger and Nietzsche, I found Ponty somewhere inbetween and I will be diving into 'Phenomenology of Perception' at some point (but not just yet). I've still yet to come across a clear argument for the dissolution of the Cartesian dualism, some hints came from this but unfortunately I am still in the dark in this respect.
After reading Philosophy and Painting I will be visiting the National Gallery and the Courtauld to confront my own Being with a Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Velazquez, Rembrandt, ...
This is the first Ponty book I have read and coming from a limited knowledge of Heidegger and Nietzsche, I found Ponty somewhere inbetween and I will be diving into 'Phenomenology of Perception' at some point (but not just yet). I've still yet to come across a clear argument for the dissolution of the Cartesian dualism, some hints came from this but unfortunately I am still in the dark in this respect.
After reading Philosophy and Painting I will be visiting the National Gallery and the Courtauld to confront my own Being with a Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Velazquez, Rembrandt, ...
June 25, 2008
Merleau-Ponty is a lucid and brilliant writer. The three essays of his in this text are astounding.
April 17, 2012
important...long overdue for a revisit.
April 11, 2017
I came to MP through his famous book, "Phenomenology of Perception" (1964, I think), then I read many other books and articles by and about him but somehow missed the fact that he had this body of reflections on art and aesthetics. It was an eye-opener, and a mystery how one person could have plumbed so deeply into the mind-body problem and the meaning of embodiment, and also the depths of artistic and pictorial perception.
This collection of essays about MP's work in aesthetics is broad and deep, and no easy read. I could argue with many of them, which means it's very interesting stuff. For example, concerning the cave paintings at Lascaux, I disagree that their main significance derives from the human gesture, something. Those paintings are not anything like doodley finger-painting. I believe they are the objectifications of dreams or even self-portraits. The physical gesture is the least of it.
But these are quibbles. The essay on Cezanne was also extremely good. Overall, the book was a major mind-expander.
This collection of essays about MP's work in aesthetics is broad and deep, and no easy read. I could argue with many of them, which means it's very interesting stuff. For example, concerning the cave paintings at Lascaux, I disagree that their main significance derives from the human gesture, something. Those paintings are not anything like doodley finger-painting. I believe they are the objectifications of dreams or even self-portraits. The physical gesture is the least of it.
But these are quibbles. The essay on Cezanne was also extremely good. Overall, the book was a major mind-expander.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews