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Slideshow

“On Copying a Picture”--Robert Hopkins (New York University)

Robert Hopkins (NYU)
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115 Peabody Hall
Robert Hopkins
Department of Philosophy
New York University

Major artists often copy each other's work. Rubens copied Raphael and Titian, Van Gogh copied Millet and Hiroshige. These copies closely reproduce the content of the originals, even down to small details. It is hard to imagine a similar practice in literature. Retellings are not unknown, but they deviate from the originals in significant respects, on pain of producing only fresh inscriptions of the original texts.

What explains this difference between the pictorial and literary arts? Various answers suggest themselves, but I explore only the deepest. I argue that, lacking syntax, pictures exhibit a radical form of semantic holism. What, and whether, one mark means depends on what, and whether, the marks surrounding it mean. The upshot is that every picture-maker must solve anew the problem of making pictorial meaning, of depicting whatever she intends to represent. The task of copying the content of another picture can be the task of solving this problem at scale. No parallel task confronts someone who seeks to reproduce the descriptive content of a text. Moreover, where there are problems to be solved, there is room for technique in solving them; and for solving them in one’s own distinctive way. Depicting leaves room for the manifestation of technique and individual style to a degree that describing does not.

Rob Hopkins works mostly in the philosophy of mind and aesthetics. He’s currently writing a book on the sensory imagination, relating it to other forms of imagining, to perception and to episodic memory. Previously, he’s published on pictorial representation and picture perception (the subject of a book, `Picture, Image and Experience´ 1998), on other topics central to the philosophy of the visual arts, including the aesthetics of sculpture, photography, painting and film; and on the epistemology and metaphysical status of aesthetic and moral judgement. His work has appeared in various journals, including Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Nous, Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Review.

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