Truth Cannot Exist - Part 1

Truth cannot exist. If I pursue a truth on my canvas I can paint a hundred canvases with the same truth, which one, then, is the truth? And what is truth - the thing that acts as my model, or what I am painting? (Pablo Picasso)

In Book X of Plato`s The Republic it is argued that painting is merely `an imitation of a phantasm` and that `the mimetic art is far removed from the truth` as it attempts to replicate `the appearance of form, but not the reality and the truth`. Plato thus implies that painting is a relatively lowly, mimetic art form that can only represent one, extremely superficial level of existence. Painters would consequently be banned from his republic. In contrast, Aristotle propounds in The Poetics that imitation is `natural to man` and is `one of his advantages over the lower animals`. He claims that although `the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them in art` because it is a fact that `to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures [.] the reason of the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time learning-gathering the meaning of things`. Hence, despite Plato and Aristotle`s holding artists and paintings at a very different worth, both assume that the fundamental purpose of a piece of artwork - regardless of whether or not it actually succeeds - is to imitate at least one aspect of the external world. This attitude towards painting is prevalent from antiquity to the present day. In his Introduction to The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat, for example, Martin Kemp explains that the premise of his book is dependant upon the belief that an essential component of art is `the direct study of nature through the faculty of vision`. That said, Kemp later also claims that all the paintings considered in his book `stand broadly speaking within a representational tradition`, which `means that the artist`s choice of colour is not free.` Thus the lingering implication is that a painting must accurately accord with that which is conventionally accepted as visual reality in order to qualify as the aforementioned `direct study of nature through the faculty of vision`, which is in turn necessary `if the rules underlying the structure of the world [is] to be understood`. To Kemp `trees need to be greenish and most flesh pinkish` in a painting in order for it to qualify as `representational`. Although this is by no means the focus of Kemp`s book, or indeed even an argument that he explicitly puts forth, it nevertheless reveals a common assumption in Western thought. Statements such `cubism is different to realistic paintings` (Mary E. Sterling in The Twentieth Century) and descri ptions of cubism as a `revolt against the sentimental and realistic painting of the Impressionists` (Uta Grosenick, Cubism Basic Art) reveal the wide spread nature of such attitudes. Alternatively, the very paintings that Kemp would no doubt class as being non-representational, and Sterling and Grosenick as unrealistic, are often presented as being, in the words of David Cottingham, `too realistic` (Cubism and Its Histories). For, as Picasso professed, one of cubisms `tangible goals` is `expressing what we perceive with the eye and the spirit`. Rather than imitating the literal appearance of a person, landscape or object at any one specific time, the cubists - for instance - sought to capture the experience of looking at a subject from all perspectives and angles, rather than limiting themselves to a singular moment in time, they wished to reveal its essence. Ultimately, however, all great painters - whatever their style - have the same goal: to represent that which Plato claimed was impossible, `the reality and the truth` of existence. Therefore the paintings that are consistently considered to be the most powerful are those that contain the most truth. The reasoning in The Republic is that a couch may `appear` to `differ from itself according as you view it from the side or the front or any other way`, but that actually it `differs not at all`. It is as a consequence of this that Plato considers painting as an imitation of the `appearance of form` only, and not reality or truth itself. A cubist painting of said couch would, however, encompass all angles. Picasso`s Portrait of a Woman, for example, shows a woman`s face pointing in several different directions simultaneously. Her nose and one eye is facing to the right, whilst the other eye, her chin and her lips are turned in the opposite direction, whilst her hair line and scalp suggest that she is being painted head on. In the above quotation, Picasso worries that he can paint a hundred canvases with the same truth` and wonders which one is `the truth`. His solution to this is to paint hundreds of truths upon one canvas. Jacques Rivière wrote in 1912 that `sight is a successive sense` and so `we have to combine many of its perceptions before we can know a single object well`. He hence argues that `perspective must be eliminated` because it is a sign `of a particular position in space` and indicates not the situation of objects but the situation of a spectator`, it is a depiction of an `instance when a certain man is at a certain point`. Alternatively, cubism is the static representation of several successive appearances fused into a single image. The result of this approach, however, is that often the subject or object is barely recognisable, as in the case of George Braque`s Mandora and Robert Delaunay`s Simultaneous Windows on the City. The cubist paintings that have become iconic are actually those that have the most in common with the similarly celebrated, `representational`, figurative paintings of the European Renaissance: both contain a degree of ambiguity. In Picasso`s Guernica, for example, the confusion of lines in the centre of the painting makes it difficult to understand precisely what is happening in the picture, adding to chaos and terror that the work conveys. Likewise, it is impossible to decipher the direction in which the figure in the bottom, right-hand corner of his Les Demoiselles d`Avignon is facing. The positioning of the body suggests the person has their back to the viewer, but if this is the case the head is turned round to an impossible angle. Alternatively, the curved shape at the bottom of the face could be a hand, implying that the figure is turned towards the front. The gender of the subject is likewise unclear - the curve underneath the armpit may be a hint of breast, or part of the woman standing behind. The painting is so engaging, not because it provokes uncertainty, but because it contains an abundance of certainties. It invites numerous interpretations, all equally valid. In his Inner Vision Semir Zeki claims that paintings gain profundity by faithfully representing `many different, and essential, conditions, each of which is equal to others`, all expressed in a single work. In this way, Zeki argues that painting is in fact an extension of the visual brain, which is constantly searching for constancies and knowledge in an ever-changing world. What artists such as Henri Matisse have known for years - that seeing is not a passive process, as is often presumed, but `a creative operation, one that demands an effort` Zeki supports with science. As he explains, the `only knowledge that is worth acquiring is knowledge about the enduring and characteristic properties of the world` and so `the brain is consequently only interested in the constant, non-changing, permanent and characteristic properties of objects and surfaces in the external world, those characteristics which enable it to categorise objects.` However, as the information reaching the brain is in a constant state of flux, vision must be an active process that discounts the continual changes and extracts only that which is necessary for it to categorise objects. The brain can recognise a leaf as green, for example, despite the fact that the wavelength composition of the light reflected from it frequently changes. Art too must distil from the ever-shifting external world only that which is important to represent the permanent, essential characteristics of objects and subjects. In the words of Matisse, underlying the `succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of things and beings, and which is continually modifying and transforming them, one can search for a truer, more essential character, which the artist will seize so that he may give reality a more lasting interpretation.` It thus follows that the artworks that the brain finds most satisfying are those that contain the highest number of constant truths possible. The cubists` approach to this is perhaps the most explicit of any art movement, however, paintings in other styles can be just as successful at achieving such an aim. Leonardo Di Vinci`s Mona Lisa is such an iconic piece of art - considered by some to be `the world`s most famous painting` (Donald Sassoon) - because of the notoriously enigmatic nature of Mona Lisa`s smile, which continues to intrigue and fascinate. It has provoked a vast array of reactions, ranging from Jeremy Laurance`s claiming the face of the sitter has a `strangely sinister quality` (and speculating that the portrait is actually a self-portrait of the painter himself, but as a woman) to Sigmund Freud's insistence that it expresses a `devoted tenderness and sensuality` that is at once `ruthlessly demanding`. Robert L. Solso`s asserts in Cognition and the Visual Arts that `since high-order perception is determined by our past knowledge (a kind of personal "cerebral encyclopedia"), your view of Mona`s smile is probably different from mine.` Although this statement is no doubt correct, Solso fails to realise that the painting`s mystery stems from the fact that the painting offers numerous, divergent interpretations to each individual.