Page 19 - Studio International - September 1973

On the logic do not 'learn from our mistakes'. For it is the history of the visual arts begins tentatively and
schematically; inadequate solutions to the
elimination of error by way of systematic
of artistic rational criticism which, according to Popper, problem of representing reality are then
accounts for the growth of our knowledge (in
modified and changed through a critical
discovery: the objective sense). If art can be said to feedback process of adjustment and error-
progress, therefore, I shall argue that it must
elimination.
be through some process other than the method Behind Gombrich's theory lurks the idea of
art as mimetic
of error-elimination, which Gombrich suggests a progressive 'fit', or match, between the
conjecture' to be the case. representation and its real counterpart in
Efforts to impose a scientific model of nature: we are not simply describing the world,
Suzi Gablik progress on art have not been infrequent; such we are getting our representations into shape.
efforts are usually limited, however, to specific For Gombrich, art proceeds by mimetic
periods when (it is alleged) artists were trying conjecture. The conjecture is then exposed to
to achieve scientific realism and accuracy of criticism to find out whether or not it is like
representation, e.g. Italian painting from the the real world.
beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of On this view, representational art (if not
the sixteenth century. Such is the view put modern art) is said to have progressed precisely
forward by Gombrich in 'Art and Illusion'. because it generated results, and asserted a
Elsewhere Gombrich has asserted that Greek world, in principle testable through a
and Renaissance art differ from other comparison with nature. 'With the descriptive
evolutions precisely because the sciences of function of human language,' Popper writes,
anatomy, projective geometry, and optics were `the regulative idea of truth emerges, that is, of
called in to hasten the experimentation a description which fits the facts'.6
towards recognizable images.2 He has claimed Within this reconstructed Popperian formula,
further that devices like perspective, or the I shall assert, art can only aim at increasing the
study of light and shade, developed in a verisimilitude of its representations. As a model
scientific manner precisely because they had a for the whole history of art, or for the criteria
`scientific ingredient', and because existing of its progress, it falls short of explaining how
solutions to the problem of representing reality constructs could have emerged which do not
were systematically criticized and tested for conform to the test of perceptual experience
their validity3, thus satisfying Popper's and are in fact not testable. It cannot serve as
criterion of testability. an explanatory thesis, since it does not say
The growth of scientific knowledge, anything about the actual mechanisms of
according to Popper, proceeds from old change. Gombrich is so enamoured of
problems to new problems by means of Popperianism, however, that he allows it to
conjectures and refutations, or the corrections infect his view of non-representational art,
and modifications of previous knowledge.4 The whose theories, he suggests, 'deserve to be
function of observation and experiment is to tested, sometimes even in laboratory
test our conjectures and hypotheses (or, in experiments, to see how far they can take us'.7
Gombrich's case, our representations) and to (Indeed, what he seems to hold against abstract
eliminate those which do not stand up to tests : art is that it is inaccessible to testing, and that
`Does a field make progress because it is a this is the logic of scientific (artistic) discovery. it is therefore hard to discuss the success of its
science, or is it a science because it makes Criticism is governed by the regulative idea of experiments in rational terms.)
progress?' truth, or of getting nearer to the truth, and it is Gombrich assumes that the term 'progress'
Thomas S. Kuhn the world (which is independent of our is in any case legitimate only within a context
knowledge) that determines what is true. of technical solutions, i.e. directionally, in
One way in which art differs from science is Artistic development is analogous to terms of means and ends. Such a notion is
that science is guided by more or less constant scientific discovery, in Gombrich's view, clearly without application, however, to the
aims and has a final commitment to objective insofar as it involves an active process of post-object art we have now - an art which
truth. Generally speaking, art has no such pre- hypothesis-formation, test, and confirmation often rejects visual norms altogether and does
engagement: it does not view the universe as or disconfirmation. Much of the concept of not depend on the creation of objects. The fact
an external object of study, nor does it only seek pictorial realism developed in 'Art and Illusion' remains that Gombrich raises important
truths about the physical world. Works of art derives from Popper's model of how science epistemological questions in 'Art and Illusion'
cannot be said to contradict each other, nor progresses: his 'conjectures and refutations' are and since my own answers to these questions
can styles be 'falsified', in the way that metamorphosed by Gombrich into a formula are not the same as his, a good deal of what
scientific theories can. of 'schema and correction'. Thus, the artist follows will take the form of a continuous
According to Karl Popper's falsifiability does not start from observations but from his discussion with him.
criterion, a theory is not scientific unless one conjectural idea in schematic form. The Just as scientific progress has been linked
can construct tests that could refute it. If we schema represents the first loose category with an increase in the truth-content of its
map Popper's 'logic of scientific discovery' onto which is gradually tightened to fit the form it is theories, progress in art has been inextricably
the history of art, and assert (as Gombrich does intended to reproduce. The artist adjusts this bound up with the notion of progress towards
in 'Art and Illusion') that representational art, schema by adding visual information until the visual truth. (Historians such as Vasari actually
at least, develops in the manner of empirical image resembles observed reality more closely. identified painting with the imitation of nature
science - that is, by building hypotheses and At all levels, the representational process and with the progress of skill - that superior or
testing them out—we find that on the whole proceeds by means of this activity, the pre-eminent workmanship which Vasari called
artistic modes of thought do not tend to fulfil rhythms of which Gombrich calls 'making and `disegno' .) Once seen as a history of skills,
Popper's main criterion for progress : in art, we matching'.5 Described in Popperian terms, the however, the growth of artistic knowledge
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