I think you would have to define "metaphor" very carefully, and then apply
semiotics - for example one might argue along Peircean lines that even an
abstract painting is a metaphor, to the extent that the ikonic can stand
in for itself, double itself.
One might also ask of course what "standing in" means, and whether or not
metonymy might be a better route to go - even a 2d crucifixion is only a
metaonymic representation of a 3d "in the round" tableau.
Alan
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Bailey, George W. S. wrote:
> Perhaps I can chime and and state that all paintings are
> metaphors...
>
> No, all paintings are not metaphors. The cow painting above my desk is not a
> metaphor. Rembrandt's self-portrait in the house on Hampstead Heath, London,
> is not a metaphor. The number of paintings that are not metaphors is vastly
> greater than those that are, if any.
>
>
> > hence Magritte realistically painting a pipe, and as part of the painting
> > pointing
> > out in French that "this is not a pipe."
> >
> I hope this is not offered as an example of something profound.
>
> Understood in context, this work and hundreds like it aim to call the
> viewer's attention to the fact that what is present on the surfact of the
> painting (paint) is not identical with nor ( as Plato insisted) in any way
> a reliable source of information about what it presumably depicts (a pipe).
> (That anyone with any sense ever though otherwise, and so needed this fact
> called to his or her attention, is one of the many straw men that
> preoccupied the self-appointed avant-garde throughout the 20th century.)
>
> What's metaphorical about what Magritte is doing? His painting is not a
> metaphor for the proposition that what is present on the surface of the
> painting (paint) is not identical with nor in any way a reliable source of
> information about what it presumably depicts (a pipe). A device for calling
> the viewer's attention to this point is not thereby a metaphor for anything.
>
>
>
> > A painting is objectively a blotch
> > of color(s) or lack thereof that stands for something else (physical,
> > mental, whatever);
> >
> >
> No, the colors in some paintings do not stand for anything else. There are
> just there to be experienced as they are - colored shapes.
>
>
> > meanings and associations with objects/ideas are in the
> > mind of the painter and/or the viewer, not on the canvas.
> >
> >
> Whether meanings can be there on the canvas is a difficult issue. Relative
> to public interpretive conventions, specific meanings can be instantiated by
> the paint on the canvas. These can be meanings no one can access now because
> of ignorance of previous interpretive conventions, for example.
>
> > The genius of
> > Jackson Pollock, to me, resides in using what seems to be a totally
> > internally focused and random approach, not trying to literally represent
> > anything... and arriving at arrangements of color that suggest the
> > dehumanization, linearity, overtechnolization and so forth of modern life
> > without even attempting to directly represent any of its detritus.
> >
> You are projecting this meaning into Pollock's paintings. His paintings are
> a good example of paintings that do not mean anything. Other's created
> interpretations of them that were generally accepted but that have nothing
> to do with what he was doing.
>
> But regardless, if I agreed that Jackson's paintings suggest the
> dehumanization of modern life, I still do not see why you want to call them
> metaphors for the dehumanization of modern life. "Juilet is the sun' does
> not suggest something I can lable with a literal phrase as you use "the
> dehumanization of modern life." What "Juilet is the sun" suggests about her
> I cannot express in other terms.
>
> Suppose you say "Pollack's paintings metaphorically express the character of
> human life." Of course, I won't ask you what that characrter is, since if
> they do, the best you can do is to tell me to look and see for myself. But I
> have seen his paintings and read much of his personal history and I do not
> see them as expressing the character of modern life, metaphorically or
> otherwise. People like to pretend that they do this, but such people are
> only projecting their own perspectives onto the paintings.
>
>
> - George
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Internet Text at http://www2.sva.edu/~alans/
Partial at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Partial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
CDROM of collected work 1994-2000/1 available: write sondheim@panix.com
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