The Act of Painting

Paintings are physical objects - that (if anything) seems to be true regarding the art of painting, and not only almost all art historians but also many philosophers - Hegel (1988 [1835], 35) as well as Nelson Goodman (1976) - have agreed with this popular opinion. Some philosophers of art, however, have argued for a different view: According to the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1922 [1909]), or the American philosopher Robin G. Collingwood (1938) paintings are, as well as other works of art, mental objects. The intended PhD thesis aims to show that both of these highly diverging views are misleading, because they overemphasize different aspects of those artefacts that we call "paintings" and take as works of art. Although the popular view is right in claiming that every painting depends on a material object in a certain way, it cannot explain how the physical components of a painting might contribute to its aesthetic value. On the other hand, the often-so-called Croce-Collingwood theory can acknowledge the dependence of the aesthetic value of a painting on the mental content within the artist's mind but fails to capture the physical nature of the act and the media of painting. The intended PhD thesis aims at developing a more convincing philosophical understanding of painting by focusing on the act of painting, i.e. the activity and the processes that lead to the creation of a painting. It shall describe the act of painting in great detail as a procedure involving a certain kind of mental "pre-production" which I will call "pre-painting", as well as a vast selection of elements of both aesthetic and non-aesthetic qualities, ranging from painting materials, painting surfaces, socio-political circumstances, or even the psychological status of the artist to other objects of art. Once the act of painting has been investigated thoroughly, the analysis is expected to result in an understanding in which mental and physical qualities of a painting are given their due share in determining the aesthetic value of the object. The project will end in a book-length study that throws light on the deep interconnectedness between the physical and the mental aspects of painting.