Pictures have always fascinated artists, historians, and philosophers. While artists like Vincent van Gogh and art historians like Neil MacGregor might focus on a picture’s content, background, or various interpretations, philosophers tend to ask more general questions. For example, ‘How can a two-dimensional (flat) surface with marks on it represent three-dimensional objects?’ In other words, how do images come into existence? A second related question is: ‘How can a picture, which doesn’t have a mind, convey emotions (which require a mind)?’ Or, more simply, ‘What makes a picture sad?’

In this talk, I’ll introduce the main rival theories that attempt to explain what makes a picture sad, using the shorthand ‘Feelists’ and ‘Lookists’. Feelists believe that a picture is sad if it makes you feel sad. On the other hand, Lookists argue that we can recognize a sad picture without necessarily feeling sad ourselves; for them, what matters is that the picture LOOKS sad. Both are problematic. Feelists get the location of the emotion wrong (in YOU rather than in the picture). Lookists seem to kick the can down the road or back to those working on the first question ‘How do flat surfaces come to look like things we can see face to face?’ So, who should we believe? I’ll explore Feelism and Lookism using Patrice Moor’s moving collection ‘The Presence of Absence’. And I’ll conclude by revealing which one I believe is most credible and how a nuanced understanding of it helps us appreciate aspects of Moor’s work that might otherwise remain inexplicable.