I'd guess that his point was to "modernize" the philosophy. To make it compatible with the modern scientific world view.

I'd guess that his point was to "modernize" the philosophy. To make it compatible with the modern scientific world view. — waarala

Yes, and he was wrong. Science does not explain anything but purely physical movements.

A good point.

Pretty good summary of Kant. And I don't agree with Kant at all — Jackson

I dont agree with any philosophers, but I think they all have valid ideas. Put differently , I think the history of philosophy can be understood as a development (although not causally linear or cumulative) in which newer philosophies subsume the essence of earlier ones. And I think that this is true of all creative modalities. The philosophy , arts, literature , politics and sciences of an era are variations of a theme , a series of interconnected worldviews, and that theme evolves. It a not a question of a philosophy or worldview being right or wrong ( they are all ‘right’ initially to the extent that they are pragmatically useful, and then found to be ‘wrong’ when they are superseded by the next era of thinking). It was not just philosophers or art critics who embraced Kant, it was also artists , whether they read him or not.
In fact, I would argue that in for for an artist to express a more developed worldview in their art, they must pass through a ‘Kantian’ stage.

In fact, I would argue that in for for an artist to express a more developed worldview in their art, they must pass through a ‘Kantian’ stage. — Joshs

What is that exactly?

What is that exactly? — Jackson

Recognizing that thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. This is a realization you will not find in Descartes through Hume.

Recognizing that thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. This is a realization you will not find in Descartes through Hume. — Joshs

All thought is perception for Hume. And thus content.

From Mark Chatham:

“ The well-documented references to Immanuel Kant in the literature surrounding the advent and ongoing critical reception of Cubism are a paradigm of issues in word-image studies. Given that Kant's texts and ideas might seem an unlikely inspiration for artists and critics of a new art movement - even in his own lifetime, the Critiques, though not all his writings, were notorious for their technical difficulty, and the Critique of Judgment purposefully provides little direct commentary on the arts - how should we understand their remarkable influence within the visual arts generally and around Cubism especially? Kant's name was dropped1 with notable regularity in France during the formative years of Cubism. Many of the most prominent critics and art dealers of the time employed his terminology and concepts, putatively to explain what was widely perceived as a new and radical artform and certainly also to garner the authority any reference to the philosopher seemed to bestow on their views of Cubism.

Less often, Kant's name was invoked by artists to the same ends. But these references to Kant were not univocal and in fact divided contemporary commentators. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler - the most important dealer and historian of Cubism in the early part of this century, a man who represented in the broadest and most influential ways the work of Braque, Gris, and Picasso until the beginning of the First World War - encapsulated the power of the Kantian interpretive frame to which he was a convert when he claimed that Cubism's ‘new language has given painting an unprecedented freedom coloured planes, through their direction and relative position, can bring together the formal scheme without uniting in closed forms .... Instead of an analytical description, the painter can. ... also create in this way a synthesis of the object, or in the words of Kant, “put together the various conceptions and comprehend their variety in our perception”’ (1949, p. 12).2 Kahnweiler read Kant and Neo-Kantian texts by Wilhelm Wundt, Heinrich Rickert, and others in Bern from 1914 to 1920, during his exile from France because of his German patrimony (Gehlen, 1966).

For him, the analytic/synthetic distinction, the notions of the thing-in-itself and disinterestedness, and the formal autonomy of the work of art provided nothing less than a way of conceptualizing and justifying Cubism. Kant's ideas and terminology were also crucial for several of the central French critics who helped to define Cubism in its early years. Léonce Rosenberg, Pierre Reverdy, and especially Maurice Raynal used Kant to present and lend weight to their vision of Cubism as a breakthrough to essential reality as well as the paradigmatic art of autonomy, of personal as well as aesthetic freedom. These and other commentators used Kant recurrently to articulate what has come to be known as a ‘conceptualist’ or ‘idealist’ reading of Cubism, one that underlines its departure from the appearance of things and movement towards the comprehension of a supposedly more profound reality (Crowther, 1987; Nash, 1980). In 1912, the critic Olivier-Hourcade expressed a variant on this view - and the complexity of its provenance3 - by citing approvingly a well-known reference to Kant made by Schopenhauer: ‘The greatest service Kant ever rendered is the distinction between the phenomena and the thing in itself, between that which appears and that which is ... ’ (Fry, 1966, p. 74). On this interpretation, the Cubists present what they conceive, not what they see.“

No offense, but I never read stuff just because someone posts it quoting someone. Make an argument.

No offense, but I never read stuff just because someone posts it quoting someone. Make an argument — Jackson

Here’s an argument. It is well documented that many dealers, critics and artists found strong consonances between Kant’s ideas and modern art, particularly Cubism. Why did they think this? Let’s begin with the question , what changes in philosophical worldview were required in order for visual artists to make the transition from realist pictorial representation to the various phases and modes of abstraction that began to proliferate in the 20th century? There certainly must have been a dawning realization that something intervenes between our experience of the world and the world itself, such that it became increasing important to capture this something rather than a photographic copy of reality.

I haven’t read much on Hume in relation to modern art , but so far I’m having no luck finding any writings connecting him to cubism
or any other trend toward abstraction in art. We could analyze why that might be.

There certainly must have been a dawning realization that something intervenes between our experience of the world and the world itself, such that it became increasing important to capture this something rather than a photographic copy of reality. — Joshs

Cubism came about in response to impressionism and the flattening out of the picture plane. Perspective was a deliberate construction of visual/optical perception of space--it originated in architecture around 1500.

Cubist paintings took the idea of frontal, optical perception and created a geometry of the picture plane. A cube is a spatial object--a die--that when looked at does not show its back. The idea was to paint an object from all perspectives.

So, cubism is about how the picture plane is presented.

I haven’t read much on Hume in relation to modern art , but so far I’m having no luck finding any writings connecting him to cubism
or any other trend toward abstraction in art. We could analyze why that might be. — Joshs

Hume believed continuity of physical objects is an illusion and our perceptions are really of discrete objects or events. He had a digital idea of perception much like today. Hume anticipated film, which is discrete images in motion.

He had a digital idea of perception much like today. — Jackson

Are you saying that all of the philosophy that came after Hume, as a critical reaction to his thinking and the era he belonged to, was wrong about him? That his thinking still stands at the cutting edge of contemporary ideas? Or are you arguing that only certain details of his thought are still relevant in this post-modern age?

Are you saying that all of the philosophy that came after Hume, as a critical reaction to his thinking and the era he belonged to, was wrong about him? — Joshs

What, specifically?

Cubist paintings took the idea of frontal, optical perception and created a geometry of the picture plane. A cube is a spatial object--a die--that when looked at does not show its back.

So, cubism is about how the picture plane is presented. — Jackson

You’ve explained what it is but not why it is. What changes in the way artists see and feel the world was it trying to convey? Significant movements in art are not about merely reshuffling old technical concepts but offering a new vision.

Significant movements in art are not about merely reshuffling old technical concepts but offering a new vision. — Joshs

Vision is a function of the technical. Nothing to do with "reshuffling." For example, Space in paintings was fairly flat. Not because they did not know how to paint a 'realistic' human form, but that the intention was more symbolic.

Vision is a function of the technical. Nothing to do with "reshuffling." — Jackson

The technical has to do with the applied, and the applied is a reshuffling within an extant theoretical edifice. Steve Jobs introduced brilliant technical innovations but added nothing to the existing scientific theory underlying
it. Great art isn’t just application of extant theory, it is the creation of new theory, a new vision.

Great art isn’t just application of extant theory, it is the creation of new theory, a new vision. — Joshs

Not sure what that means.

Recognizing that thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. This is a realization you will not find in Descartes through Hume. — Joshs

Thanks Joshs. Not sure I recognise the significance of these two ideas. Are you able to briefly describe how this Kantian stage actually plays out in art with an example?

The technical has to do with the applied, and the applied is a reshuffling within an extant theoretical edifice. Steve Jobs introduced brilliant technical innovations but added nothing to the existing scientific theory underlying
it. Great art isn’t just application of extant theory, it is the creation of new theory, a new vision. — Joshs

Starting from impressionism the progression was basically > post-impressionism > cubism. If you're saying there's a "new theory" behind each of these stages, what are they?

Thanks Joshs. Not sure I recognise the significance of these two ideas. Are you able to briefly describe how this Kantian stage actually plays out in art with an example? — Tom Storm

I remember reading a description by an art critic of a work
of abstract art that consisted of a series of geometric shapes. The critic argued that these shapes captured some sort of deep essence , some transcendental
truth , underlying sensory appearances. Why would the artist assume there would be such an underlying order?
Because Kant showed that whatever contingent causal
concatenation of sensations we experience in visual perception, we cannot assume that visual experience presents us with a direct truth. The renaissance artists seem to have had absolute faith in such a truth. This is why it was so important for them to render precisely and faithfully the perspectival facts of a painting. One could get close to the mind of God by disclosing the rational
logic of the visually appearing world.
But Kant told us that the only direct truths in a visual scene are the inborn categories of perception that puts the world together for us in terms of causality, space and time. So one could imagine the abstract painter
‘abstracting’ from the contingent details of a scene these underlying categories in the guise of geometrical
forms. The real , divine truth of a scene is in its deep categorical structure.

remember reading a description by an art critic of a work
of abstract art that consisted of a series of geometric shapes. The critic argued that these shapes captured some sort of deep essence , some transcendental
truth , underlying sensory appearances. Why would the artist assume there would be such an underlying order?
Because Kant showed that whatever contingent causal
concatenation of sensations we experience in visual perception, we cannot assume that visual experience presents us with a direct truth. The renaissance artists seem to have had absolute faith in such a truth. This is why it was so important for them to render precisely and faithfully the perspectival facts of a painting. One could get close to the mind of God by disclosing the rational
logic of the visually appearing world.
But Kant told us that the only direct truths in a visual scene are the inborn categories of perception that puts the world together for us in terms of causality, space and time. So one could imagine the abstract painter
‘abstracting’ from the contingent details of a scene these underlying categories in the guise of geometrical
forms. The real truth of a scene is in its deep categorical structure. — Joshs

Maybe. But, really, I don't agree with any of that. Art is about the sensual. Kant never understood that.

Art is about the sensual. — Jackson

How does the sensual appear in DaVinci’s Last Supper and why is the perspective such a spectacularly powerful element of the drama?

remember reading a description by an art critic of a work
of abstract art that consisted of a series of geometric shapes. The critic argued that these shapes captured some sort of deep essence , some transcendental
truth , underlying sensory appearances. Why would the artist assume there would be such an underlying order? — Joshs

If you can't remember the critic or artist it is hard to discuss this. The artist Frank Stella used to say, "What you see is what you see."

How does the sensual appear in DaVinci’s Last Supper and why is the perspective such a spectacularly powerful element of the drama? — Joshs

Because the geometry of a picture plane was new. Using the abstract math of architecture was a new thing.

Because the geometry of a picture plane was new. Using the abstract math of architecture was a new thing — Jackson

You sound more like an engineer than an artist. What philosophical and scientific innovation made it new? Could it have been Descartes’ , Galileo and Newton’s discoveries of a rational, clockwork universe, amenable to mathematical description?
What philosophical discoveries threatened Descartes’ and Newton’s vision of a rational machine-like universe directly apprehended by human reason?
And what movements within the art world expressed this critique of the clockwork universe?

You sound more like an engineer than an artist. — Joshs

I am, and have been, a painter. All about how we see. The sensations and what they make us think about.

What philosophical and scientific innovation made it new? — Joshs

For Leonardo, and the Renaissance, it was about the end of seeing the world--quite literally--as an expression of the Divine (God). As I said, perspective was an invention of Italian architects trying to figure out how to build a dome and place it on top of a building--and where someone would stand on the plaza viewing it.

And what movements within the art world expressed this critique of the clockwork universe? — Joshs

I honestly do not know about this. Please tell me.

Starting from impressionism the progression was basically > post-impressionism > cubism. If you're saying there's a "new theory" behind each of these stages, what are they? — praxis

Impressionism recognized the inter penetration of the elements of a visual scene. That’s what made their depiction of color so much more vibrant than the Romantics. They discovered that each colored space
is a mix of every color of the rainbow because of the way differently colored objects in a scene bleed their colors into each other. As Cezanne showed, the same is true of the way shapes that interact change and influence each other in our perception of them. So the impressionists were beginning to take seriously the contribution of the perceiver to what is perceived. With the ensuing waves of abstraction in art, these insights extended to include bodily positioning ( Degas) emotions and in general the full subjectivity of the perceiver(Van Gogh, Munch, Pollack, Rothko).