“Wollheim opens up a truism that we have not fully appreciated: the fact that a painter, as he paints, must face his canvas.”
“...the artist in failing to face his canvas has failed to face his audience.”
“...there is a necessary reciprocity in our relation to a work of art. Just as the artist must assume the role of his spectator, so the spectator is obliged to envisage the viewpoint of the artist, ….A reciprocal bond of intimacy is established, between work and viewer, when each side acknowledges fully the importance of the other’s viewpoint.”
“Acknowledging someone as a person, or an object as an artwork, involves a willingness to take up toward them the sort of attitude Peter Strawson has called ‘reactive’.... By contrast, to treat someone ‘non-judgementally’, or to see an object without feeling ready to respond to it with any reactive attitude, is to strip it of its humanity or arthood.”
[1] Schier, Flint. ‘Painting after Art?: Comments on Wollheim’ [1]. Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Eds. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. (1111-1116)