For
most people an illusion is merely a harmless visual trick. Seldom do they ever recognize that illusions
are something they perpetuate everyday which most often serve to help them
stabilize their understanding of the world.
A failure to realize this fact has produced a number of false beliefs
about the role of illusion in art.
Indeed, it would not be stretching the truth to say that many people
unknowingly suffer from the illusion that they know about illusions.
Illusion
in the visual arts is sometimes described as the lack of correspondence between
the perception of an object and the physical nature of that object. In other words an illusion is thought to be
some sort of visual mistake. The more
common examples of this type of ‘lack of correspondence’ are said to be
perspective drawings or paintings where three dimensions are represented on a
two-dimensional surface. Here we are
able to perceive depth where no depth actually exists as in this work by Andrew
Wyeth titled Christina’s World.
But recognizing the
representation of three dimensions on a two dimensional surface is a learned
ability; we have learned the convention that allows us to recognize perspective
in a painting or drawing. It is not an
illusion. Colour, light and shadow are
also used to depict depth and is probably best illustrated by the works of William
Michael Harnett:
Everyday objects such
as a cupboard door, a bugle hanging from a nail, a violin leaning against the
frame of the door, sheet music and books painted with an eye for detail and
using light and shadow give us the impression of the object in three
dimensions. Abstract artist also experimented
with color, light and shadow to give the impression of depth as with the work
of Tom Hrusa:
But again, we have
learned to read paintings of this type, no illusion exists. Still, there is another type of work called
Op Art where the design of the artist is said to create an optical illusion such
as this one by D.M. MacKay:
Perhaps a better description for such works is scintillating
art for what is taking place is not so much an illusion as an irritation of the
receptor cones in the eye causing a false image of pulsating lines over the fine
lines receding to the centre of the work. This brief critique of supposed
illusions in the visual arts is important to our understanding of the role of
illusion in art and in our daily lives for the art form that most relies on
illusion is theatre. But many theatre
historians also have a mistaken view of how an illusion comes about.
Imagine, an alien comes to you and asks you to explain what
an illusion is. How would you go about
it? No doubt you would want to tell him
that an illusion is something that is false.
You have heard the oft repeated phrase ‘the illusion of reality’ so you
might begin by telling him it is a false reality. But your alien friend is confused. ‘What is a reality?’, he asks. You then explain that a person’s reality
comes about as a result of those things they are able to realize about the
world. Your friend will not be put off.
‘What is a false reality? How will I know one when I see one?’
If you
have your wits about you, you will explain that a illusion is not a false
object or thing, rather it is a realization that is false. More correctly an illusion is a false
‘belief’ about reality. It is a
conviction that something is the case when it is not. Illusions are such things that exist only in
a person’s mind. Many years ago most
people believed that the sun revolved around the earth but we now know this to
be false. People who held this belief harboured
an illusion and remnants of this illusion are still with us. We often say the sun rises in the east,
crosses overhead and sets in the west merely because it looks that way. But of course it also looks as if the earth
is revolving around the sun. As an
illusion is a belief we cannot describe perspective drawings as illusion unless
we could show that someone was actually convinced the depth existed. Such a situation is highly improbable for
the depth could not be perceived unless someone were trained or had trained
themselves to do it. As children we
learn to read photographs and drawings much as we learn to read language.
The
pleonastic phrase ‘the illusion of reality’ can be found in countless books on
art and the theatre and serves to misdirect and confuse our understanding of
illusion. It is a self-evident that an
illusion is ‘a false belief about reality’.
We can show this by merely trying to deny it. When we do deny it we are left holding the
position that an illusion is a true belief about reality which is what we most
often call knowledge. Few of us would be
prepared to defend the thesis that knowledge is illusion.
In the
art form of theatre illusion is fundamental to our understanding of it. There can be no theatre without
illusion. Plato was the first to
recognize that patrons of the theatre believed in the characters they witnessed
in the theatre and he was so concerned that he would not allow actors to
participate in his ideal state. Most
theatre historians naively assume that illusion in the theatre came about with
the introduction of the perspective set designs of Sebastiano Serlio and his contemporaries
in the mid 1500s. But a perspective
painting on a backdrop is no more than what it is. A set may support the illusion in theatre but
it is not responsible for it. Illusion
in theatre can exist when no set is used as in the ancient Greek theatre
witnessed by Plato.
It is
the actors in the theatre that invoke the illusion and the audience must
participate in it if they are to enjoy what theatre offers. The audience must hold a false belief about
the reality of the situation they are witnessing. No doubt some people will reject the idea
that they must believe the characters in theatre. For these people such a belief would be
delusional but delusion is a form of paranoia.
Neither could such a belief be called a hallucination for a
hallucination is a perception without an external stimulus. Belief in the characters that exist in the
theatre is a harmless activity that offers us many rewards. As the philosopher A. P. Griffiths points
out, “People cannot be taken to believe things they have never heard of, or
could not think.”[i] It is also true that we can believe anything
we can think. Whether we ought to or not
is another matter.
However
true this argument may be your alien friend may still not be convinced. He may counter your explanation with the
retort: “Your neighbour Harry Blogs says
that’s codswallop. He says we don’t have
to believe in theatre. All we have to do
is suspend our disbelief.” What you
would have to explain is that the willing suspension of disbelief is a
grammatical red herring. It was
conjured up in the nineteenth century by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a
way of getting around the argument that we should only believe what is
true. Coleridge suggested he did not
believe poetry or the falsehoods of the stage to be true. In fact he disbelieved them but in order to
enjoy them he would willingly suspend his disbelief; he would not bring it into
play. Since, this has become the catch
phrase for many theatre goers.
But disbelief is a belief in the contrary proposition. There is no middle ground here. To insist that you can willingly suspend your
disbelief is much like saying that you promise not to read the previous
sentence. The willing suspension of
disbelief starts from the premise that what is seen is false (a category
mistake). For example, ‘it is a
falsehood that Hamlet is there’, therefore in order to maintain that we are
rational we will admit that we disbelieve that ‘Hamlet is there’. This means that we must either believe that
‘Hamlet is not there’ or ‘Hamlet is invisible’.
But if we do this we cannot enjoy the play so we must suspend our
disbelief! We ‘suspend’ the
possibilities that ‘Hamlet is not there’ or ‘Hamlet is invisible’. If we admit that we have seen the play the
only alternative open to us is to ‘believe’ ‘Hamlet is there’.
When we
go to the theatre we must be prepared to say ‘That is Hamlet’ or ‘There is
Hamlet’. We must hold the conviction
that this is a correct use of language else we must admit the production to be
a bad one or that we are attending the production ill prepared to accept
it. We need to hold a false belief about
the reality of Hamlet; we need to create the illusion in order to participate
in the hypothesis that is theatre.
Of
course your alien friend may still not be convinced. “What about Brecht?” he asks, “Brecht
enlisted the aid of his ‘alienation effect’ to destroy or rid the theatre of
illusion.” You would have to explain
that the situation is no different. Brecht was mistaken. Brecht’s theatre relied
on illusion as much as any. While Brecht
more often created role types rather than characters they had to be believed in
order to recognize the import of his message.
Launt Thompson
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=Launt+Thompson&url=search-alias%3Daps&x=16&y=9
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