Richard Pumphrey Art In The Dark Analysis

This week the senior class at Lynchburg College was treated to a lecture by art professor Richard Pumphrey (2016), a wonderfully enthusiastic character rarely seen outside of his studio in Dillard. His lecture was entitled Art in the dark, which while being intentionally provocative was also an accurate description of what was presented. Pumphrey (2016), the skilled sculptor, began on discussing the history of LC’s of Hall Campus Center, shocking many by recalling the jogging track where the financial offices now stand. He quickly moved on to his main focus, art, and in order to engage his audience he did as the title suggested and dimmed the lights in the ballroom. The works he discussed were strikingly well developed, deeply personal, and

He worried that having several layers of displacement between him and the original form of the man would lend a certain disingenuousness to the piece. On page 302 of Plato’s (2004) Republic Socrates agrees with this line of thinking. He states, when talking on the ability of a poet to accurately describe the natural world, that anyone who reads a description by a poet and treats that exposure as if they themselves actually experienced it is mistaken. “We should consider, then, weather those who tell us this have been deceived by their encounters with these imitators and do not realize, when they see their works that they are three removes from what is…For they produce illusions, not things that are” (Plato 2004). According to Plato’s (2004) Socrates, if a poet were to use the work of another poet as inspiration for a piece then the product would be basing an illusion on an illusion, they would be trying to represent something that has only been vicariously experienced. Plato’s (2004) Socrates makes it clear that these works are inherently less worthy of consideration due to their vast separation from their original