Richard Arthur Wollheim was a Britishphilosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting. Wollheim served as the president of the British Society of Aesthetics from 1992 onwards until his death in 2003.
Biography
Son of an actress and a theatreimpresario, Wollheim attended Westminster School, London, and Balliol College, Oxford, interrupted by active military service in World War II. In 1949 he obtained a congratulatory first in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and began teaching at University College London, where he became Grote Professor of Mind and Logic and Department Head from 1963 to 1982. He retired from that position to take up professorships, first, at Columbia University and then the University of California at Berkeley. He chaired the Department at UC Berkeley, 1998–2002. On retirement from Berkeley, he served briefly as a guest lecturer at Balliol College. Additionally, he held visiting positions at Harvard University,the University of Minnesota, Graduate Center, CUNY, the University of California at Davis, and elsewhere. Wollheim gave several distinguished lecture series, most notably the Andrew M. Mellon lectures in Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., published as Painting as an Art. In 1962, he published an article "A paradox in the theory of democracy", in which Wollheim argued that a supporter of democracy faces a contradiction when he votes. On the one hand he wants a particular party or candidate to win, but on the other hand he wants whoever wins the most votes to win. This has become known as Wollheim's paradox. His Art and its Objects was one of the twentieth century's most influential texts on philosophical aesthetics in English. In a 1965 essay, 'Minimal Art', he seems to have coined the phrase, although its meaning eventually drifted from his. As well as for his work on the philosophy of art, Wollheim was known for his philosophical treatments of depth psychology, especially Sigmund Freud's. His posthumously-published autobiography of youth, Germs: A Memoir of Childhood, with complementary essays, discloses a good deal about his family background and his life up to early manhood, providing valuable material for understanding his interests and sensibility.
Publications
For an extensive bibliography of Richard Wollheim's publications by a professional bibliographer, see Eddie Yeghiayan's UC-Irvine site. See also the 'Philweb' listing. Note: given his unique mind, personality, and distinctive writing styles, along with his curiosity and sociability, many of Richard Wollheim's publications are outside academic categories. Besides books, he published many articles, in journals and edited collections, book reviews, and gallery catalogues for shows. He also left writings in manuscript, letters and recordings of his talks. ;Books and separately published works
F. H. Bradley. Harmondsworth; Baltimore: Penguin, 1959. 2d edition, 1969.
. London: Fabian Society, 1961.
'On Drawing an Object'. London: University College, 1965. Repr. in On Art and the Mind.
Art and Its Objects: an Introduction to Aesthetics. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970. As Harper Torchbook, 1971.
Freud. London: Collins, 1971. Paperback, 1973. American and later Cambridge University Press eds. titled Sigmund Freud.
On Art and the Mind: essays and lectures. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,1972.
'The Good Self and the Bad Self: the Moral Psychology of British Idealism and the English School of Psychoanalysis Compared' —repr. in The Mind and Its Depths, 1993.
'The Sheep and the Ceremony' —repr. in The Mind and Its Depths, 1983.
The Thread of Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Painting as an Art. Andrew M. Mellon Lectures in Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.
The Mind and Its Depths. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993.
