Studies in the Real in Cultural and Visual Representation

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The purpose of this study is to elucidate the significance and function of the Real not only in the genres of art in which the visual conspicuously dominates but in adjacent fields, on the basis of the semiotic method developed in Japan, Anglo-America, France and Russia (Soviet Union). The members of this study group consist of the teaching staff of the Faculty of Literature & Social Sciences at Yamagata University, who currently study and teach arts, cultural representation and visual arts. To realize our objective, each member of this joint-research project pursues their own subject, exchanging information about the result of their studies.ABE Koji analyzed theoretically the problem of the "unrepresentable" and the notion of the "Real" in documentary cinema. NAKAMURA Miharu studied the problem of the representation of the "Real" in fictional cinema. OKOCHI Sho discussed the problem of the "Real" in picturesque aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain. KIYOZUKA Kunihiko studied the "Real", focusing on Walton's philosophical analysis. ABE Shigeki dealt with the presentation of the "Real" in neo-classical pictures, such as David's "Marat Assassinated". Finally, NAKAMURA Tadashi discussed the question of the "Real" in comics employing cutting edge theory.The most fruitful outcome of this joint study (which synthesized various approaches to the "Rea1" based on different disciplines) is having opened up the possibility of interdisciplinary study in the field of cultural representation. By referring both to purely theoretical issues and to historical documents of art history, we succeeded in refining method for our approach. Through this study, however, another problem emerged-the problem of the incompatibility between the Platonic notion of the "Real" which posits its existence beyond the representable and the pragmatic approach to the "Real" which problematizes the ideology or the theatricality of the visible. This problem will be pursued in our next joint study.