[lit-ideas] Re: escher
- From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2015 08:38:18 -0700
On Apr 8, 2015, at 3:40 AM, Omar Kusturica wrote:
One wonders also what kind of painting would represent the proposition that a
bachelor is an unmarried male. At most what could be represented is a
middle-aged man with no wife around, but we would be hard pressed to conclude
from this whether he is a bachelor, a divorcee, a widower, a married man
whose wife is at work or what not. Saying that he is a bachelor does not so
much affirm anything but rather excludes some other relevant possibilities.
Or, what kind of painting would represent the proposition that unicorns don't
exist, or that Paris is the capital of France. There is a host of things that
can be said in language but not represented pictorially.
Of course, this is more evidence that language is nothing like a sequence of
pictures.
You exclude abstraction from the category "picture"? And say means, "with some
degree of certainty" rather than "suggest"? I'd argue that a painting can tell
you that Paris is the capital of France in the way that arriving at the Gare de
Lyon will tell you that you've arrived in the capital, by hints that you read
and process? "No second city would have this or that." Perhaps your argument
is that language is more direct? Less allusive? (Except when I'm writing it).
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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