The Question of Painting

Reviews / Votes

Andrews' book -- like a compelling piece of music or a film -- demands repeated encounters; it demands to be read again so that the details of each individual argument can be savored anew, appreciated within the context of a fully-expanded expression (one that could be realized only at the end) ... An ambitious, erudite undertaking. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews * This meticulously researched book highlights the questioning mode of Merleau-Ponty's thought, outlining the philosopher's interrogations in the realms of the perceptual world and language. Taking a chronological but non-linear approach to Merleau-Ponty's writings, Jorella Andrews elegantly brings the philosopher's non-dualistic, inter-corporeal and open understanding of reality into conversation with modern and contemporary art. The Question of Painting shows that Merleau-Ponty's aim to 'rethink thought' is still relevant to painting today and to the ways in which art itself can change the world in which we live. * Ariane Mildenberg, Senior Lecturer in Modernism, University of Kent, UK * This important study offers a compelling rethinking of how and why art matters. Andrews develops her case by way of an exceptionally fine exposition of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological understanding of painting as the deeply engaged apprehending of the world and the fabric of our shared existence within it. The refreshingly generous analysis makes newly apparent the value of such an approach for illuminating the ongoing ethical and intellectual significance of sustained artistic commitment to the visual broadly understood. * Alex Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan, USA * With an agile multidisciplinary method, Jorella Andrews navigates the classic paintings of art history and the worlds of cutting edge, inter-cultural contemporary painting. Her deep scholarship articulates the intricacies of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetic thinking and nondualistic ontology, with breathtaking range and freshness, forwarding it into our times. The Question of Painting is a tour de force of unanticipated juxtapositions of texts and images that show the power of painting, visual art, and philosophy to arrest and re-shape the social and political landscape. I have enjoyed it and learned very much from it. * Galen A. Johnson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Rhode Island, USA *