There is an important way that a picture’s visible appearance connects us with certain personal qualities of its maker. I will say that pictures make those qualities manifest. This connection is, I say, crucial for understanding the interest that pictures have for us. I will (1) say something about what it is for a work to manifest skills; (2) ask whether reproducing a picture could ever result in an object with the same manifestation properties as the original; (3) draw a distinction between aspects of a picture which manifest skills, and aspects that enable the picture to manifest skills; (4) ask how paintings and photographs differ in the manner of manifestation; (5) consider the evolutionary background to our interest in artefacts that manifest skills (6) ask how the importance of connecting with the personal qualities of the maker should affect the “implied artist” debate.
Greg Currie is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of York. His work is centred on the connection between the arts and the human mental capacities that enable us to produce and enjoy them. Having written a good deal about fiction and its relation to the imagination he has turned recently to pictorial art and the nature of perception. He also writes about irony, cinema and the early signs of aesthetic activity in human evolution. He is editor-in-chief of Mind & Language.
Eileen John is a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. Her research is primarily in aesthetics and philosophy of literature. She is broadly interested in the cognitive and ethical importance of art, with a special interest in how literary works address philosophical questions. Recent publications concern aesthetic consistency, moral learning from art, and sentences and thought. Her current research is on disagreement about art. She co-directs Warwick’s Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts.
