Konrad Lange on ‘the Illusion of Materials’ in Painting and Visual Arts: Revisiting a Psychoaesthetic Theory of the Perception of Material Properties

Abstract

In the present article, I discuss the concept of ‘the illusion of materials’ (die Stoffillusion) as it was elaborated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the German aesthetician and art historian Konrad Lange (1855–1921). Here I intend to revisit a remarkable theory of the psychological mechanisms that underlie the aesthetic experience of mimesis in painting and, more generally speaking, in visual arts. First, I deal with the historical background of Lange’s contribution by saying a word about the German-speaking psychoaesthetic paradigm as it developed between the mid-19th century and WWI. Second, I discuss the basic tenets of Lange’s ‘illusionistic aesthetics’ (Illusionsästhetik), the view according to which the experience of the beautiful lies in a process of ‘conscious self-delusion’ (bewusste Selbsttäuschung) by which means the contemplating subject mentally oscillates between ‘semblance’ and ‘reality’. Third, I analyze Lange’s theoretical way of conceiving the illusion of materials by showing that he identified it as one of the seven chief categories of aesthetic illusions and by insisting on his distinction between the ‘subjective’ non-aesthetic illusion and the ‘objective’ aesthetic illusion of materials. Fourth, I show how Lange conceived the place of the illusion of materials in aesthetic experience in general and in the contemplation of painting and sculpture in particular. In a fifth, concluding part, I deal with the significance of Lange’s ideas on the illusion of materials today by highlighting their close relation to Daniel Arasse’s conception of painting contemplation as a dialectics of ‘the pictorial’ and ‘the iconic’, while also suggesting that they may be very fruitful within the context of current experimental psycho- and neuroaesthetic research.