The Question of Painting: Rethinking Thought with Merleau-Ponty

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Since the latter half of the 20th century, committed art has been associated with conceptual, critical and activist practices. Painting, by contrast, is all too often defined as an outmoded, reactionary, market-led venture; an ineffectual medium from the perspective of social and political engagement. How can paintings change the world today The question of painting, in particular, fuelled the investigations of a major 20th-century philosopher: the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907-61). Merleau-Ponty was at the forefront of attempts to place philosophy on a new footing by contravening the authority of Cartesian dualism and objectivist thoughtan authority that continues to limit present-day intellectual, imaginative, and ethical possibilities. A central aim of The Question of Painting is to provide a closely focused, chronological account of his unfolding project and its relationship with art, clarifying how painting, as a paradigmatically embodied and situated mode of investigation, helped him to access the fundamentally intercorporeal basis of reality as he saw it, and articulate its lived implications. With an exclusive and extended conversation about the contemporary virtues of painting with New York based artist Leah Durner, for whom the work of Merleau-Ponty is an important source of inspiration, The Question of Painting brings todays much debated concerns about the criticality of painting into contact with the question of painting in philosophy.

Reviews

Andrews' book -- like a compelling piece of music or a film -- demands repeated encounters; it demands to be read again so that the details of each individual argument can be savored anew, appreciated within the context of a fully-expanded expression (one that could be realized only at the end) An ambitious, erudite undertaking. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
This meticulously researched book highlights the questioning mode of Merleau-Pontys thought, outlining the philosophers interrogations in the realms of the perceptual world and language. Taking a chronological but non-linear approach to Merleau-Pontys writings, Jorella Andrews elegantly brings the philosophers non-dualistic, inter-corporeal and open understanding of reality into conversation with modern and contemporary art. The Question of Painting shows that Merleau-Pontys aim to rethink thought is still relevant to painting today and to the ways in which art itself can change the world in which we live. * Ariane Mildenberg, Senior Lecturer in Modernism, University of Kent, UK *
This important study offers a compelling rethinking of how and why art matters. Andrews develops her case by way of an exceptionally fine exposition of Merleau-Pontys phenomenological understanding of painting as the deeply engaged apprehending of the world and the fabric of our shared existence within it. The refreshingly generous analysis makes newly apparent the value of such an approach for illuminating the ongoing ethical and intellectual significance of sustained artistic commitment to the visual broadly understood. * Alex Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan, USA *
With an agile multidisciplinary method, Jorella Andrews navigates the classic paintings of art history and the worlds of cutting edge, inter-cultural contemporary painting. Her deep scholarship articulates the intricacies of Merleau-Pontys aesthetic thinking and nondualistic ontology, with breathtaking range and freshness, forwarding it into our times. The Question of Painting is a tour de force of unanticipated juxtapositions of texts and images that show the power of painting, visual art, and philosophy to arrest and re-shape the social and political landscape. I have enjoyed it and learned very much from it. * Galen A. Johnson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Rhode Island, USA *

Author Bio

Jorella Andrews is Head of the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.