I recently realized that, when I look at art I don’t have a fiction category. I suppose if I was looking at an illustration—subcategory of art—I might think of it as fictional but that is still tied tightly to its associated literature and not to the art itself.
I recently realized that, when I look at art I don’t have a fiction category. I suppose if I was looking at an illustration—subcategory of art—I might think of it as fictional but that is still tied tightly to its associated literature and not to the art itself.
There are some broad categories of literature which inform how we read individual works. I’m thinking particularly, at the moment, of fiction and non-fiction.
If a work is categorized as non-fiction my attention is put on the data the work presents. In this case historical detail, factual reliability, and/or logical cohesiveness become the basis for judging the value of the work.
With works of non-fiction however I’m focused more heavily on the meta-data. Overall structure, metaphorical proportion, and plot cohesiveness.
So, when I look at a painting, I don’t automatically look for the persona that the artist has developed. I assume that personality visualized is the artists own. This seems, in many cases, to be a mistaken conclusion.
Is this lack of a fiction category (which I, perhaps mistakenly assume to be common) simply the result of western thought? Is it just that aestheticians for years have spoken of truth and beauty together? Or is there something unique to visual art that assumes some level of representation?