Real Likenesses: Representation in Paintings, Photographs, and Novels [Hardcover]

Real Likenessespresents a radical new approach to the philosophy of artistic representation. Through a close analysis of paintings, photographs, and novels it reconsiders the relationship between medium and content, and proposes a new understanding of the 'real likenesses' that we encounter in representational art.Real Likenessespresents a radical new approach to artistic representation. At its heart is a serious reconsideration of the relationship between medium and content in representational art, which counters current dominant theories that make attention to the former inevitably a distraction from attending to the latter. Through close analysis of paintings, photographs, and novels, Michael Morris proposes a new understanding of the real likenesses we encounter in representational art; what they are, how they are made present to us, and how they are created. The result is an intuitive way of thinking about how these art forms work.Introduction1. The Paradox of Painting2. Painted Things3. Photography and the Real World4. Transparency and Distraction in Photographs5. Paradox and Distraction in Novels6. Real CharactersPostscriptMichael Morris,University of SussexMichael Morris is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex. He has written on the philosophy of language, mind, metaphysics, and art, and has analysed the work of both Plato and Wittgenstein. He is the author ofThe Good and the True(Oxford, 1992),An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language(Cambridge, 2007), andWittgenstein and the Tractatus(Routledge, 2008).