Netzwerk Phänomenologische Metaphysik
174622

What drawings draws on

the relevance of current vision research

Patrick Maynard

pp. 9-29

Fifty years ago Ernst Gombrich’s Art and Illusion revolutionized philosophical and scientific study of visual representation by thoughtful -application of research from the modern vision sciences. Since then those sciences – recently including neuroscience – have greatly developed, and it is now common to attempt direct translation of their findings to depiction, even treating its perception as a branch of visual perception.Unfortunately, rather than advancing Gombrich’s project, many of these applications – often reductive in nature – involve elementary logical fallacies. These fallacies are mostly due to overlooking Gombrich’s main idea, that image makers – like other technologists – use natural principles for their own purposes, and that their first purpose is to make artifacts, which are perceived as such. With better context, it should be possible to find more constructive directions for recent cognitive research, related to drawing.

Publication details

DOI: 10.4000/estetica.1939

Full citation:

Maynard, P. (2011). What drawings draws on: the relevance of current vision research. Rivista di estetica 47, pp. 9-29.

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