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Portrait painting: its nature and function / by Herbert Furst; illustrated with 166 reproductions of portraits

We have been taught to believe that art is dependent on the fulfilment of aesthetic laws. But who defines these laws? People seem to have an innate compulsion to categorise artificial and natural, for example, we assume that "art" has a positive evaluation connotation that "craft" lacks(Markowitz, 1994); we also assume that "art" has a positive evaluation meaning that "artificial intelligence" lacks. But, in this paper, I argue that we should routinely group them together. Because, "Representation in art is not the result of only automatic imitation of Nature, not on the other hand of an entirely conscious selection of objective facts, but also, and much more perhaps, an activity of the associative and synthetic energies of the mind over which the artist has partial but not entire control: in other threadbare words: Poeta nascitur non-fit." (Furst, 1927, p.3) According to the concept of "implicit memory" and "explicit memory" proposed by Graf and Schacter (1985, p.501), I note that both conscious selections of objective facts and activity of the associative and synthetic energies of the mind all are the contents of memory. Therefore, this research will examine what portraiture evidence there is for the characteristic of the memory.  I will attempt here to deal only with the subject under three headings, viz. Consciousness, Time, and Emotions.

Paul Klee: hand puppets 

The age of collage 2

Mann über Bord

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