Philosophy of Art and Time

This chapter defines temporal art as separate from other forms of art, considering some common objections. It examines how art represents time, focusing on the most-discussed artistic medium, cinema. The chapter considers two specific objections to philosophical theories of time. One is that the nature of music purports to undermine four-dimensionalism , a contemporary philosophical view of time. The other is based on Bergson’s philosophy of time, which inspired some filmmakers in their thinking about cinema. The art theorist Lessing classically divides art into two kinds—an art of space and an art of time . Perhaps what differentiates temporal artwork from spatial artwork is not the reality of what they represent. It is the possibility or imaginability of what they represent. According to Kant, aesthetic judgement involves the “free play” of the imagination. To arrive at how cinema may be a preferable form of temporal art, consider an analogy with another kind of art: realist painting.