Merleau-Ponty Through the Arts: Session 4 - Picasso, Cubism, & the Intertwining

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a key figure in phenomenology, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of perception, embodiment, and lived experience.

In The World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty expounds upon at least two core premises. First, while not denying the utility of the scientific method, he posits that there is more to understand and appreciate about life that is not easily pinned down by science. Second, he draws contrasts between what he refers to as "the classical world", which for him communicates a perfect and final view of things, and "the modern world", which is messy, unfinished, and disquieting, yet ultimately more consistent with the ambiguity of life as it is. One of his vehicles for illustrating these two core premises is the arts. In fact, he admonishes us that we might "rehabilitate our perception" through considering the differences between classical art and contemporary art.

In this meetup series, we will take up Merleau-Ponty's invitation to understand perception - and life as it is lived - through contemporary arts. Each session has an assigned reading, and then we will watch a film related to the arts and then discuss the film - and the art medium - with respect to the article and Merleau-Ponty's ideas (and related phenomenologists).

If you are new to Merleau-Ponty, you can find The World of Perception here. It is a very accessible series of public lectures transcribed into a book. You may find this useful background reading for this series.

http://timothyquigley.net/cont/mp-wp.pdf

Meetup Rules: this is a hands-raised meetup, prioritizing people who have actually done the reading. You are welcome to attend if you have not done the reading, but comments will be reserved for those who have read ahead of time. Dialogue is meant to be respectful and cordial, with a zero-tolerance policy for anything otherwise.

Session 4: Picasso, Cubism, and the Intertwining

In the World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty takes significant time to present the case that modern painters such as Cezanne more accurately represent embodied vision, as opposed to the "view from nowhere" in classical art. In The Visible and the Invisible, his concept of “intertwining" (entrelacs) or the "chiasm," describes a fundamental, ontological connection between the perceiving body and the world. Building on the idea of "the flesh" (la chair) that we discussed in the previous session, he challenges dualism, proposing that the seer and the seen are intertwined in this single "flesh" of the world.

In this 1.5 hour meetup, we will explore how Cubism, and specifically the work of Picasso, draws out and exemplifies some of Merleau-Ponty's ideas about visual perception, such that the viewer is drawn into a lived experience of the art rather than being a dispassionate and detached observer.

Attendees are asked to do the reading ahead of time. In the meetup, we will first watch the documentary Braque & Picasso: A Collaboration. In the remaining time, we will discuss the film alongside the following paper:

"The Intertwining - The Chiasm" by Merleau-Ponty
http://timothyquigley.net/cont/mp-chiasm.pdf