I. Title of Reading
Art as Make-Believe: Kendall Watson II. Key Ideas and Issues Presented 1. Art, and the appreciation of it, are likened by Kendall Watson to the activity of “various games that involved pretending” (240). a. As kids make up these “principles of generation” (244) that transforms otherwise ordinary objects into “props” (243), and from these come “fictional truths” (243) that they let themselves “imagine” (245) and find pleasure in experiencing this alternate world, so is the process that undergoes when experiencing art. 2. A “fictional truth” is a proposition that is “true in some fictional world or the other” (243). a. A fictional truth is different from an “imagining” (244) in such a way that these fictional truths are “true” in the fictional world that one subjects himself to, whether or not he imagines them to be “true” (244). b. A proposition is then said to be “fictional” if it holds as real in the make-believe world. 3. A “fictional truth” is conjured from a prop and the principle of generation. a. The principle of generation is the “certain convention, understanding, [and] agreement in the game of make-believe” (244), which turn objects into props, “generators of fictional truths, that which make propositions fictional” (244). 4. Props are established by principles of generation, regardless of the observer’s active imagining of them as something else in make-believe. That which prompts imagination, moreover, may not be a prop as there exists no principle that establishes them as a prop (245). 5. Works of art are representations, meaning, they are made “specifically for the purpose of being used as props in games of certain kinds” (249). a. Being props, the principles “are likely to seem natural, to be accepted automatically, to be internalized, and the prescribed imaginings are likely to occur spontaneously” (250). b. Even when art is not figurative, that which does not seem to prompt any imagination of any likeness to any distinct model in reality, are representations, such that “imaginings [that are] prescribe[d] are about parts of the work itself” (252). III. Conclusion and Possible Further Research Questions
The activity of make-believe has quite a number of benefits in a man’s life: “objectivity, control, the possibility of joint participation, spontaneity, all on top of a certain freedom from the cares of the real world” (253).
1. How then can art be objectively weighed in terms of value, when much of the value depends on the level of imagination that the observer can have? Also on the culture and era which the observer comes from? Can art then be misinterpreted?