JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

The work of art293Does the work of art as aesthetic object have an ethereal or abstractontological status in Sartre’s philosophy? It is not spatio-temporally located.It is not identical with its material vehicle. It is not an image in theconsciousness of the artist or the audience. It is unreal. Despite all this, thework of art exists. What is it then? Sartre’s answer in What is Literature?dispels any Platonic construal: ‘the aesthetic object is properly the world inso far as it is aimed at through the imaginary’ (p. 42).If the world is what is, then in watching a play or looking at a painting, weare grasping what is in a new way. The work of art does not exist in its ownworld. We are imaginatively presented with a transformed world.THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE IMAGINATIONThe work of artIt is not our intention to deal here with the problem of the work of art in its entirety.Closely related as this problem is to the question of the Imaginary, its treatment callsfor a special work in itself. But it is time we drew some conclusions from the longinvestigations in which we used a statue or the portrait of Charles VIII or a novel as anexample. The following comments will be concerned essentially with the existentialcategory of the work of art. And we can at once formulate the law that the work of artis an unreality.This appeared to us clearly from the moment we took for our example, in anentirely different connection, the portrait of Charles VIII. We understood at the veryoutset that this Charles VIII was an object. But obviously this is not the same objectas is the painting, the canvas, which are the real objects of which the painting iscomposed. As long as we observe the canvas and the frame for themselves the aestheticobject “Charles VIII” will not appear. It is not that it is hidden by the picture, but thatit cannot present itself to a realizing consciousness. It will appear at the moment whenconsciousness, undergoing a radical change in which the world is negated, itself becomesimaginative. The situation here is like that of the cubes which can be seen at will to befive or six in number. It will not do to say that when they are seen as five it is becauseat that time the aspect of the drawing in which they are six is concealed. The intentionalact that apprehends them as five is complete in itself and exclusive of the act whichgrasps them as six. And so it is with the apprehension of Charles VIII as an imagewhich is depicted on the picture. This Charles VIII on the canvas is necessarily the