The story of the third object

ABSTRACT

I will begin by presenting the philosophical justification for my practice-based research, drawing on Graham Harman’s take on spectatorship found in his Object Oriented Ontology, and the resultant methodology I use for writing fiction as part of my research. This brief outline is followed by a piece of fiction: a narrative set in the world of the ‘third object’ that is formed when I encounter ‘The Battle of San Romano’ (the Uccello painting of 1440).

KEYWORDS:

• Object oriented ontology
• ekphrasis
• fine art
• creative writing
• Graham Harman
• painting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michael Lawton is an artist and writer, born in Sheffield in 1980 he currently lives and works in Barcelona. He is in the final year of a PhD in Fine Art at the University of Kent. He has previously studied at Chelsea College of Art & Design, the University of Huddersfield and Leeds Metropolitan University. Examples of his paintings and writing can be viewed at http://mlawton.co.uk.

Notes

1 Harman’s position on spectatorship is therefore somewhere between both Michael Fried’s as outlined in ‘Art and Objecthood’, and the theatricality (as Fried saw it) that he was writing against (Fried 1967).