Distributed Cognition and the Phenomenology of Modernist Painting and Poetry (Rilke and Cézanne)
Distributed Cognition and the Phenomenology of Modernist Painting and Poetry (Rilke and Cézanne)
Contemporary views of consciousness, long anticipated by phenomenology, suggest that cognition includes a distribution across motoric and perceptual experience and is in important ways interwoven with the surrounding environment. This paper takes up implications for aesthetics, demonstrating how such an understanding of consciousness is expressed in analogous ways in modern poetry and painting, particularly in works that have been the object of phenomenological study. An aesthetics of embodied cognition can illuminate the common resources of vital human intentionality in artworks across different media, including Cézanne’s painting and Rilke’s poetry and poetics, and both can be conceived not only as aesthetic but as cognitive artefacts. Merleau-Ponty’s claim that philosophy, visual art, and poetry share a common aim and the poetic inspiration Rilke took from Cézanne and other visual artists can be better understood by considering art and literature from a cognitive standpoint.
Keywords: Poetry, Painting, Rilke, Cézanne, Phenomenology, Distributed cognition, Embodiment, Aesthetics
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