SOURCE: Crowther, Paul. “Merleau-Ponty: Perception into Art.” British Journal of Aesthetics 22, no. 2 (spring 1982): 138-49.

In the following essay, Crowther explores the significance of Merleau-Ponty's theories of phenomenology to the creation and study of art.

Since Heidegger's Being and Time, the fundamental intent of phenomenology has been to burrow beneath the edifices of abstract knowledge (such as science or traditional philosophy) with a view to expressing a more primordial contact with the world—a contact which is presupposed but ill understood by abstract reflection. In a sense, Merleau-Ponty gives us a paradigm for the application of such phenomenological method to art, since, for him, it is art which is most successful in giving expression to man's fundamental contact with being. Unfortunately, Merleau-Ponty never wrote any large systematic work upon the subject, and to grasp his thoughts as a single theory of art involves reference to most of his large...