Richard Wollheim 1923 – 2003
Richard Arthur Wollheim was a British philosopher of art, mind, and emotion and a long-serving Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London. After service in the Second World War and education at Oxford, he developed a distinctive interdisciplinary approach in which philosophical analysis is combined with the careful study of psychoanalysis and the visual arts. Art and Its Objects, Painting as an Art, and The Thread of Life articulated a philosophy of art as an enduringly human activity, of pictorial meaning as seeing-in, and of the self as constituted by the long narrative of an individual life.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Richard Wollheim:
“Art is one of the things human beings do with their lives.”
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Attributed to Richard Wollheim:
“Painting is a form of thought made visible.”
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Attributed to Richard Wollheim:
“Seeing-in is the fundamental capacity of pictorial experience.”
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Attributed to Richard Wollheim:
“Style is the cumulative imprint of the artist's personality.”
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Attributed to Richard Wollheim:
“The self is held together by the long narrative of a single life.”