Painting as an Art  

"Thus, for Wollheim (1987, Painting as an Art), Ingres' history paintings, Bellotto's landscapes with buildings, and Poussin's landscapes with water are as substantially imbued with sexuality as Goya's Naked Maja or Titian's Venus of Urbino." --Jerrold Levinson, "What Is Erotic Art?" (1998)

"Sight, it has been known for centuries, is a construction of the mind. We all see the large nearby as floating above its shadow but that perception is incorrect: the two forms are on the same plane. Although we know there is no actual shadow our conscious knowledge of that cannot overrule the ingrained habit of the neurons which determine sight. Even our certainty that the Earth orbits the sun is daily contradicted by the sun’s path across the sky." --incipit