The Pleasure of Pictures: Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation 1138082147, 9781138082144

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation: A Puzzling Relation
Part I Appreciation of Artworks
1 Seeing the Light: Aesthetic Experience and Understanding Pictures
2 Pictures: Their Power in Practice
3 It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It: On the Differences Between Aesthetic Evaluation and Appreciation
Part II Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation
4 Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation: Wollheim Reassessed and Vindicated
5 Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity
6 Threefold Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Attitude
7 Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience
8 Inflection and Representation
9 Temporal Images: The Anamorphic Game and the Nature of Picture
10 Art Made for Pictures
Part III Cinematic Appreciation
11 Sculpting in Time: Temporally Inflected Experience of Cinema
12 Why to Watch a Film Twice
Part IV Aesthetic Appreciation, Agency and Facture
13 Pictures and Their Surfaces
14 Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture
15 Evidence of Facture and the Appreciative Relevance of Artistic Activity
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The Pleasure of Pictures

The general aim of this volume is to investigate the nature of the relation between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation. In particular, it is concerned with the character and intimacy of this relationship: is there a mere causal connection between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation, or are the two relata constitutively associated with one another? The essays in the book’s first section investigate important conceptual issues related to the pictorial experience of paintings. In Section II, the essays discuss the notion of styles, techniques, agency, and facture, and also take into account the experience of photographic and cinematic pictures. The Pleasure of Pictures goes substantially beyond current debates in the philosophy of depiction to launch a new area of reflection in philosophical aesthetics. Jérôme Pelletier is a Full Member at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, France Alberto Voltolini is Professor in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Turin, Italy

Routledge Research in Aesthetics

Michael Fried and Philosophy Modernism, Intention and Theatricality Edited by Mathew Abbott The Aesthetics of Videogames Edited by Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature A Philosophical Perspective Richard Gaskin The Pleasure of Pictures Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation Edited by Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini

The Pleasure of Pictures Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation Edited by Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini

First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pelletier, Jâerãome, editor. Title: The pleasure of pictures : pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation / edited by Jâerãome Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Taylor & Francis, 2018. | Series: Routledge research in aesthetics ; 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018019694 | ISBN 9781138082144 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Aesthetics—Psychological aspects. | Pleasure. | Experience. | Aesthetics. | Art—Philosophy. Classification: LCC BH301.P78 P54 2018 | DDC 701/.17—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019694 ISBN: 978-1-138-08214-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-11264-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii

Introduction: Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation: A Puzzling Relation

1

JÉRÔME PELLETIER AND ALBERTO VOLTOLINI

PART I

Appreciation of Artworks19   1 Seeing the Light: Aesthetic Experience and Understanding Pictures

21

ELISABETH SCHELLEKENS

  2 Pictures: Their Power in Practice

36

DOMINIC MCIVER LOPES

 3 It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It: On the Differences Between Aesthetic Evaluation and Appreciation

52

CLOTILDE CALABI, WOLFGANG HUEMER AND MARCO SANTAMBROGIO

PART II

Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation73   4 Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation: Wollheim Reassessed and Vindicated

75

ALBERTO VOLTOLINI

  5 Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity JOHN ZEIMBEKIS

93

vi  Contents   6 Threefold Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Attitude

107

REGINA-NINO MION

  7 Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience

125

KATERINA BANTINAKI

  8 Inflection and Representation

145

JÉRÔME PELLETIER

  9 Temporal Images: The Anamorphic Game and the Nature of Picture

162

PAOLO SPINICCI

10 Art Made for Pictures

182

JOHN KULVICKI AND BENCE NANAY

PART III

Cinematic Appreciation199 11 Sculpting in Time: Temporally Inflected Experience of Cinema

201

ROBERT HOPKINS

12 Why to Watch a Film Twice

224

ENRICO TERRONE

PART IV

Aesthetic Appreciation, Agency and Facture247 13 Pictures and Their Surfaces

249

GREG CURRIE

14 Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture

270

GEORGES ROQUE

15 Evidence of Facture and the Appreciative Relevance of Artistic Activity

286

DAVID DAVIES

Contributors303 Index306

Acknowledgments

This volume traces back to two workshops that were almost simultaneously organized by the two editors in Paris and Turin respectively, “Painting, Facture and Emotion”, May 20, 2014, project “Visual Art and Emotion” ANR-10-CREA-005, Collège de France, Paris (ANR10-LABX-0087 IEC and ANR-10-IDEX-0001–02 PSL) and “Images, Pictures and Mind”, June 4–5, 2014, project “Realism and Objectivity” PRIN 2010–11, 20107738C5_002, Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences, University of Turin. As the workshops shared some participants and topics, it was rather natural to join forces and plan a volume that, following the workshops’ aims, focused on two themes that have already been often dealt with yet separately, pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation. The idea of explorating the connections, as well as the differences, between these themes is indeed the main novelty of this volume. We are indebted to two anonymous readers for Routledge for many excellent suggestions for improvements. We are also most grateful to Greg Currie, who, by having taken part in both workshops, strongly favored the idea of making a volume out of them, a volume which involves many other people who are experts in such themes. Moreover, we want to thank Eleni Palaiologou, who has helped us with the preparation of the present work. Eleni read the whole text in its penultimate draft and saved us from errors previously unnoticed. Finally, we express our gratitude to Andrew Weckenmann and Alexandra Simmons, who, on behalf of Routledge, have strongly supported the volume’s creation by duly sending us answers, comments and overall feedback.

Introduction Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation: A Puzzling Relation Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini

On various occasions (19802, 1987, 1998), Richard Wollheim famously said that pictures depict by getting us to see things in them, where seeingin is a distinctive visual capacity not possessed by every creature with vision. Some birds take evasive action when shown outline drawings of predators; their visual systems are responsive to the drawing in the way they are to the thing drawn. But their evasive forms of behavior show exactly that they do not see anything in the picture; rather, they are mistaking such pictures for their subjects (as happens to us in those very rare cases in which we are deceived by genuine trompe l’oeils). Seeing-in indeed requires recognition that, in some sense at least, one is not really seeing the thing represented face to face. Of course, it is quite controversial whether resorting to seeing-in provides not only the right theory of depiction, but also the right account of pictorial experience (for a discussion, cf., e.g., Gombrich 1960; Schier 1986; Lopes 1996; Hopkins 1998; Kulvicki 2013; Voltolini 2015a). Yet appealing to seeing-in allows us to introduce the main theme of this book; namely, the admittedly complex relationship that holds between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation of pictures. From an evolutionary point of view, for instance, it is clear that the two things, seeing-in and aesthetic appreciation, must be kept apart. Indeed, to begin with, unlike other animals, some nonhuman primates are capable of seeing things in pictures, as their systematic sorting behavior indicates; presumably, however, they have no aesthetic appreciation of pictures. By contrast, humans both see things in pictures and respond aesthetically to them. Are they like the picture sorting apes, with the addition of an aesthetic sense, or is there some deeper connection, for humans, between recognition of figurative content and the overall appreciation of the picture? Moreover, it also seems that the two things are distinct not only empirically, but also conceptually. For even if we stick to humans, who ex hypothesi are able both to experience pictures and to appreciate them, prima facie at least our experiencing pictures has nothing to do with appreciating their aesthetic qualities. For, one might commonsensically remark, one’s experiencing a picture is conceptually prior to one’s

2  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini ascribing it an aesthetic value. As a matter of fact, both our experiencing one of the great masterpieces of our artistic tradition such as Leonardo’s La Gioconda and our experiencing one of the humblest snapshots taken with our cell phone count as experiencing pictures. Yet our aesthetic assessment of those pictures is radically different. In the latter case, we may even fail (and often do fail) to aesthetically evaluate the picture. As a matter of fact, ascribing a certain aesthetic value to a picture seems to merely depend on our preliminary experience of it as a picture. Clearly enough, although there may theoretically be other forms of pictorial appreciation (say, by testimony), one cannot undergo an aesthetic appreciation of a picture if one did not experience such a picture. In actual fact, as Scruton (1981) originally pointed out for photographs, a mere statement of a picture’s content is never grounds for an aesthetic assessment of it (it would sound rather bizarre to say “It’s a fine picture because it is a picture of a fine man”). Yet recognizing what is depicted in a picture may not be separable from recognizing in an aesthetically relevant sense how that thing is depicted, at least for some pictures. We recognize a picture as depicting a man even when there are just a few impressionist strokes of the pen on the surface. And in these cases at least, it seems that our pictorial appreciation is not disjoint from our pictorial experience. In this respect, consider first of all ‘aspect dawning’ pictures or puzzle pictures more generally, i.e., pictures in which all of a sudden one experiences their figurative import after having experienced them for a long while as mere two-dimensional surfaces. Taken as a whole, the surface marks of a puzzle picture may not reveal the figurative import of that picture; one must take such marks in a particular way in order for one to grasp such an import. In this respect, revelation of the figurative import of such a picture goes hand in hand with its aesthetic appreciation. For one appreciates the subtlety of the pictorial author in letting one grasp with effort the reading of what one is facing as a pictorial item. (Just as, with a punny ambiguous expression, we have fun in grasping the comical lectio difficilior of that expression, which reverses the trivial interpretation one provides in its lectio facilior.) Moreover, puzzle pictures show in a global way what anamorphosis shows merely locally. Anamorphosis is the phenomenon according to which a distorted projection or perspective from which the depictive scene is given requires the picture’s viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to grasp the figurative import (or at least the right figurative import) of what she is facing. Now, as to this phenomenon, it seems that in order for one to experience the figurative import of the picture standing in front of her, one must at the same time appreciate the pictorial artist’s cleverness in hiddenly showing in the pictorial marks what she intends to depict. So, in anamorphosis as well, pictorial experience and aesthetic experience are intrinsically intertwined. In this respect, one may go on the same line by putting

Introduction 3 in the same basket caricatures, pattern poems, stylized pictures. ... Thus, for many pictures at least, the very act of pictorial recognition may be an aesthetic experience, involving (possibly among other things) a mental simulation of the action that produced the marks on the surface. By going along this direction, one may go on to say that the very structuring of pictorial marks that enables one to discern a figurative import in such marks is also responsible for the fact that one has an aesthetically relevant experience of such marks. One might then say that the picture’s author draws such marks in such a way that pictorially experiencing them already counts as experiencing them in an aesthetically relevant way. In this respect, an element of aesthetic appreciation may further consist in recognizing not only the author’s cleverness and mastery in drawing pictorial marks, but also the author’s actions themselves in producing such marks. Grasping facture—the particular way in which such marks were produced- by focusing, e.g., on brushstrokes or on how color drops have been made to fall on the canvas, precisely enables such a recognition for aesthetic purposes. For this is a route to aesthetic appreciation that is available also in other artistic fields not necessarily related to pictorial representation—for example, not only when we appreciate nondepictive images, but also and more importantly when we appreciate sculptural and even architectural configurations, or even the dancers’ movements in a ballet. However, it is clear enough that not all cases of pictures involve this facture element. Cinematic pictures, for instance, are such that they enable one, in virtue of the disposition of marks—typically, colors and shapes—on a screen (or a monitor) to see a certain scene in it. Such a disposition is clearly visible and yet, typically at least, the director’s hand, or anyone else’s hand for that matter, is not grasped as lying behind that disposition. Here Wollheim reenters the stage. For a possible way to account for both tendencies—pictorial understanding is prior to an aesthetic appreciation of a picture; pictorial understanding suffices for aesthetic appreciation—is to split pictorial understanding in different kinds of mental states of seeing-in: a representational yet attentional state and a representational yet nonattentional state, by then linking aesthetic appreciation only to the former kind of state. As Wollheim (1980,2 1987, 1998) said, seeing-in is a twofold mental experience that results out of the combination of two experiential moments, or folds: 1) the configurational fold, the moment of that experience that grasps the physical basis of a picture, i.e., the picture’s vehicle; 2) the recognitional fold, the moment of that experience that grasps what the picture presents, which for Wollheim further tends to collapse onto the picture’s subject, i.e., what the picture is about (a controversial thesis that, as we will see in the book, many people following Husserl (2006) disagree with). Now, for Wollheim such folds are both imbued with attention: in them, we respectively (and simultaneously) attend to the picture’s vehicle and to the picture’s subject (this is the strong reading of

4  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini the twofoldness thesis, Lopes 1996). Insofar as this form of attention is mobilized, we not only experience the picture, but we also appreciate it. Yet it may well be the case that in a mental state of seeing-in, attention is not so mobilized. Because, on the one hand, in such folds we have a mere phenomenal awareness of either the vehicle or the subject, which at most allows for the possibility of attending to them (this is the so-called weak reading of the twofoldness thesis, Lopes 1996); typically, in so-called naturalistic pictures, either painterly pictures or even holograms, photographs and snapshots. And, on the other hand, even more radically, because in such folds we have a mere nonexperiential grasping of either the vehicle or the subject, insofar as the figurative import of the picture is grasped utterly unconsciously, as some experiments with heminegligent subjects or neurologically impaired patients have shown (Voltolini 2015a, 2015b). In the last two cases, twofoldness does not entail aesthetic appreciation of a picture. By keeping these two nonattentive cases together, for Nanay (2005, 2010, 2011, 2016), it is one thing to have a mere representation of the picture’s figurative import, quite another thing to have an attentive experience of it, as prompted by the author’s drawing activities with that picture. For, while the former representational state is devoid of any aesthetic import, the latter experience suffices for one in order to aesthetically appreciate the picture. To be sure, by itself this may sound a controversial thesis. It may well be the case that with most instances of naturalistic pictures, in particular, the simplest examples of transparent pictures, those whose representational content is fixed causally (Walton 1984)—typically (but not exclusively) photographs, whether static or dynamic—we fail to appreciate them, for (in their configurational fold) we fail to attend to their vehicle. But would attention to that vehicle suffice in order for aesthetic appreciation to arise? To take an example from Nanay (2011: 473), it may well be the case that, in watching a football match on TV, we fail to notice that the TV device presents the rectangular penalty area by means of trapezoid lines momentarily displayed on the TV screen. But if we instead noticed that the screen instantiates a trapezoid shape, would we start aesthetically appreciating that cinematic picture? Defenders of the link between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation may bite the bullet and reply that, properly speaking, aesthetic appreciation occurs also whenever transparent pictures are attentively experienced. Aesthetic value definitely overrides beauty. Thus, even contemplating a humble selfie on a smartphone may lead one to assess that matters of ingenuity, for instance, are involved in generally planning how to pictorially reproduce an outer scene in such a small photographic device. Yet one may still wonder whether this is the kind of aesthetic appreciation that arises out of attentively experiencing a picture’s vehicle, as when one focuses on the richness of details scattered across a

Introduction 5 naturalistic painting’s vehicle, as, e.g., in Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, that allow that vehicle to depict a naturalistic scene. To be sure, Nanay himself stresses that it is not attention per se to both the picture’s vehicle and the picture’s subject that prompts the aesthetic appreciation of a picture, but rather the attention to the relationship between aspects of the vehicle and aspects of the subject that grasps how such aspects are intertwined. Properly speaking, for Nanay (2010, 2016) the attention that is involved in aesthetic appreciation captures designscene properties, where a design-scene property is a relational property that must be characterized by reference to both the picture’s design and to what the picture presents. This paradigmatically happens in prototypical cases of inflected seeing-in (Podro 1998), where the picture’s subject is seen as having properties whose characterization traces back to the properties of the picture’s vehicle (basically, colors and shapes) that are responsible for the fact that such a subject is seen in that picture (Hopkins 2010): the so-called design properties of a vehicle (Lopes 2005). In Masaccio’s Crucixifion, the gold color ascribed to the scene background refers back to the gold tempera that is spread on the canvas in order to depict it. Yet for some (cf., e.g., Hopkins 2010), although clearly enough whenever inflection is involved in one’s experience of a picture there also is aesthetic appreciation of it, inflection has a narrower scope than what Nanay presumes. Thus, inflection is clearly nonnecessary for such an appreciation. By contrast, for some others (cf., e.g., Voltolini 2015b) inflection is a more general phenomenon that occurs whenever seeing-in is involved, for it mobilizes a form of attention necessary to grasp the figurative import of a picture; hence, it is not even sufficient for such an appreciation. Be that as it may, insofar as it shows that a subject is depicted by ascribing to it properties that inexorably refer back to the vehicle’s design properties, inflection shows that matters of depictive style are important in order to simultaneously entertain pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation. Indeed, whenever matters of style are concerned, it seems hard to experientially tell the what of a picture, its figurative content, from the how of a picture, the way in which such a content is presented to an experiencer of that picture by means of the particular arrangement of the pictorial marks made by the picture’s author in her drawing. The picture’s how may even account for emotional involvement with pictures; especially as to moving pictures, pictures that prompt their viewers to respond emotively, how the content is technically presented to an experiencer may indeed explain that such an experiencer is caught by the presented scene. Clearly enough, this distinction between the what of a picture and the how of it goes back to Wollheim’s (2003b) distinction between the what of the picture, its figurative content, and the three hows of the picture, the Material, the Presentational and the Representational How. Yet Wollheim’s distinction is rather elusive. First of all, on the one

6  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini hand, the Representational How is linked to the what of the picture (one might take it as determining a sort of Fregean content for the picture, along the lines of Hyman 2012). Yet on the other hand, the Presentational How is said by Wollheim both to relate to how the what of the picture is represented, just as design properties are, and yet not to qualify that what at all (2003b: 143), which is what inflection would undermine. As to the Material How, moreover, one may wonder whether it can be really distinguished from the Presentational How. Cracks in a picture may sometimes be exploited in order to present the figurative content in a proper way (consider, e.g., Alberto Burri’s Crettoes). Now, the above reflections show all in all that, whether in pictorial experience one’s focusing on the way pictorial marks are drawn is just a sufficient or also a necessary condition for an aesthetic experience of the picture, there definitely is a connection between that focusing and one’s grasping something like the pictorial author’s activity, as shown by the way pictorial marks are drawn on the picture’s surface. So, if this is correct, one may say that, at least in the cases of nontransparent pictures, the overall appreciation of a picture is also based on something one may call an agential experience of the picture, the experience in which one takes a picture as a trace of its author’s (possibly nonintentional) actions by grasping its marks in such a way that they display those very actions. Thus, the overall appreciation of the picture as a picture has not so much to do with the content it presents, but rather with the way it presents such content, as also possibly depending on the way in which its author has drawn the picture’s marks. As a result, in all those cases at least, pictorial experience would be strictly intertwined with the agential experience that would then be a further condition in order for the picture to be aesthetically appreciated. In any case, to whatever extent picture recognition itself involves an aesthetic response, overall appreciation must go beyond recognition; once we recognize what is depicted, there is often much more to be discovered about and experienced in a picture that contributes to its aesthetic value. What we have just said in the previous paragraph prompts us to ask again, in what ways and to what extent does all this depend on our sense of the artist’s compositional activity? In what ways does it depend on a recognition of the mechanisms exploited in the acts of depiction—mechanisms which differ widely between painting and drawing, on the one hand, and photographic and cinematographic modes of depiction, on the other? These remarks on agentiality lead us to a final consideration. What about the overall appreciation of nondepictive pictures? Are they more heavily dependent on our sense of the agent’s physical act of making? Research certainly suggests that strong “resonance responses” are felt by people facing Jackson Pollock’s canvases, though Piet Mondrian’s actioneffacing pictures may draw quite different responses which recapitulate

Introduction 7 reflective cognitive acts of composition rather than bodily movements. Now, as Wollheim himself underlined (1987, 2001), the divide between nondepictive and depictive pictures is orthogonal to the distinction between abstract and nonabstract pictures. For, he says, even an abstract picture may elicit a seeing-in experience, insofar as one still sees in it a scene whose elements are such that some come to the front while some others are left in the background (2003a). Thus, it is even more plausible that apprehension mechanisms leading to overall pictorial appreciation activated by the how of a picture are also activated when nondepictive pictures are at stake. The present volume is divided into four parts, corresponding to the four primary emphases displayed by the essays brought together here. The essays in Part One, focusing on the general rationale of the aesthetic appreciation of pictures, are those by Elisabeth Schellekens, Dominic Lopes and Clotilde Calabi with Wolfgang Huemer and Marco Santambrogio. The essays in Part Two, whose emphasis is the connection between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation, are those of Alberto Voltolini, John Zeimbekis, Regina-Nino Mion, Katerina Bantinaki, Jérôme Pelletier, Paolo Spinicci and Bence Nanay with John Kulvicki. The essays in Part Three bring cinematic pictures into the discussion with Robert Hopkins and Enrico Terrone. Finally, the essays in Part Four by Greg Currie, Georges Roque and David Davies examine how pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation relate, if they do, to the gestures of the artist when she made the picture. In the remaining parts of this introduction, we retrace in general terms the approach of each contribution to this volume and present a selective bibliography. Elisabeth Schellekens’s strategy is to start from an analysis of the phenomenology of aesthetic appreciation of pictures of works of conceptual art in order to draw conclusions on the nature of pictorial experience of most works of art, at least most works of visual art. By analyzing our aesthetic engagement with pictures of conceptual works of art, this examination leads her to propose a new model of what it is to perceptually experience a work of art. This new model constitutes a motivation to reinterpret the so-called Perceptual Requirement, which is, according to Schellekens, one pillar or quasi-axiom in analytic aesthetics. It is certainly true that, in philosophical aesthetics, ‘experience’ in ‘pictorial experience’ and ‘aesthetic experience’ most often means ‘perceptual experience’. This understanding of ‘experience’ is explicit in Wollheim’s so-called Acquaintance Principle, which states that judgments of aesthetic value must be based on first-hand experience of their objects (19802: 233). In Schellekens’s terminology, this ‘Perceptual Requirement’ deserves a new defense; this new defense should start from an analysis of our aesthetic engagement with pictures of works of conceptual art.

8  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini Such an analysis imposes, according to Schellekens, to drastically broaden the notion of perception at the core of the ‘Perceptual Requirement’. What Schellekens finds in our aesthetic appreciation of pictures of works of conceptual art is the engagement of the ‘perceptual imagination’. Through a detailed analysis of the phenomenology of the aesthetic experience of pictures (photographs) of various works of conceptual art, Schellekens shows how our engagement with nonperceptual art is a form of perceptual engagement that amalgamates sensory and contemplative features, that is, an engagement of the ‘perceptual imagination’. On that basis, Schellekens suggests that the ‘Perceptual Requirement’ should be revised in order to integrate the ‘perceptual imagination’. In the end, Schellekens shows that her claim that the first-hand experiences to which the ‘Perceptual Requirement’ refers cannot be said to be perceptual in a strict and narrow sense is not limited to works of nonconceptual art. Schellekens finds in Wollheim’s discussion of the various components of seeing-in another motivation for her own revised model of perception, a model that includes contemplative and sensory features. If, following Wollheim, one understands pictorial experience as an experience in which we are simultaneously visually aware of both the marks on the picture’s surface and its depictum, one has a criterion of what makes it the case that an experience is a pictorial experience. The criterion is that it is an experience with a special content relating a surface, the marks on this surface and a scene. Now a different task is to give a criterion of pictorial appreciation. What makes it the case that an appreciation of a picture is a pictorial appreciation? According to Dominic Lopes, two conditions are necessary for an appreciation of a picture to be a pictorial appreciation. The first condition is that it involves a surface-scene experience; the second condition is that the appreciation depends (counterfactually) on an attribution of a pictorial value to the picture. So, in Lopes’s anti-psychologist analysis of pictorial appreciation, pictorial value plays the first part. Lopes’s chapter is a defense of a value-first analysis of pictorial appreciation. This defense proceeds via an analysis of the pictorial merits of a picture as a depictive merit property. But since being a depictive merit property is always the property of a value relative to a cultural, social or artistic context, Lopes distinguishes a pictorial merit of a picture tout court and a depictive merit property in a certain context. Only the latter condition explains what makes it the case that an appreciation is specifically a pictorial appreciation. On Lopes’s view, pictorial appreciation goes beyond the obtaining of a pleasing or good pictorial experience or surface-scene experience. Pictorial appreciation is not reducible to a valuable state of mind concomitant with a pictorial experience: it is the representation of a value conceived independently of the appreciative episode, on the basis of existing norms in a community, historical tradition or artistic practise, what art critics and historians sometimes describe as ‘regimes’.

Introduction 9 In their paper, Clotilde Calabi, Wolfgang Huemer and Marco Santambrogio deepen this point by claiming that a distinction is needed between aesthetic evaluation and aesthetic appreciation. For them, aesthetic evaluation has to do primarily with the assessment of something as an artwork, but it may also be applied to items that are not such—we say that something is a fine portrait in the very same sense as we say that someone is a fine friend. Following Danto (2013), they claim that an artwork is something endowed with meaning (in a very broad sense of the notion). That meaning determines the category to which the artwork belongs. Once this category is settled, the aesthetic evaluation of an artwork consists in the fact that it bears a certain similarity to the prototypical representatives of that category. For example, Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is a fine portrait for it bears a certain similarity to Mona Lisa, clearly a prototypical instance of portraits. This should allow for groundbreaking items that only apparently belong to a certain category to be positively evaluated, insofar as given their meaning, they are taken to belong to a different category and are therefore to be compared to prototypical items of that category. Yet while aesthetic evaluation, so conceived, concerns objective matters of assessment, aesthetic appreciation concerns just subjective matters. This difference between aesthetic evaluation and aesthetic appreciation enables one to explain why judgments of the kind “This is a rather poor artwork, but it moves me deeply”, or others of the opposite structure, are perfectly meaningful. In its turn, aesthetic appreciation is basically a form of cognitive feeling concerning the artist’s ability of solving a problem through her artwork. In Part Two of the volume, papers are focused on some of the reasons why pictorial experience goes hand in hand with aesthetic appreciation. These reasons have to do with matters of depictive style and of the perspective from which pictures are seen. In the first three papers of the section, Alberto Voltolini, John Zeimbekis and Regina-Nino Mion respectively try to reevaluate two of the main theories that have made room for understanding the connection between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation. Alberto Voltolini starts by amending Wollheim’s theory of pictorial experience as a sui generis twofold perception of seeing-in. He gives a new proposal as to how the two folds of such perception, the configurational and the recognitional fold, must be reconceived in order for it to be an integrated experience whose folds interpenetrate, so that they no longer coincide with the corresponding experiences of the picture’s vehicle and the picture’s subject taken in isolation. In this reconstruction, the picture’s vehicle, i.e., the physical basis of the picture, is seen in the configurational fold as having an enriched content, whose additional factor consists in the vehicle’s grouping properties, the properties of its elements to be arranged in a certain directional order along a certain dimension. Such properties play the emerging role that enables the picture’s subject, what the picture presents (which sometimes, in the case of what he called correct

10  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini seeing-in, for Wollheim coincides with what the picture is about), to be seen in the other fold of the seeing-in experience, the recognitional fold. In virtue of such an emergence, the recognitional fold amounts to an illusory perception known as such of the picture’s subject. On the basis of such a reconception, Voltolini is able not only to show against Wollheim’s unsympathetic critics how seeing-in is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for pictorial experience, but also how, on the basis of such an experience, a picture may be appreciated. Such an appreciation is articulated in two main options. Either one acknowledges the role of grouping properties in letting the picture’s subject be recognizable in the picture, even if the subject is presented in the vehicle by few or distorting mere design properties (design properties are the vehicle’s surface properties in virtue of which a subject is seen in a picture, Lopes 2005). Or one acknowledges that, appearances notwithstanding, the subject is so presented by a huge number of such design properties, when they resemble corresponding properties of that subject. John Zeimbekis’s contribution focuses on the relation between pictorial experience and perceptual activity. He emphasizes that most picture perceptions require no perceptual activity and are instances of “visually driven picture perceptions”, that is, instances of perceptual experiences taking place without agentive contribution. Picture perception without perceptual activity is a kind of perception in which vision itself generates effortlessly 3D contents from the 2D surface. On that basis, Zeimbekis draws the conclusion that seeing-in accounts of picture perception are false. The targets of Zeimbekis’s argument are philosophical explanations of picture perception according to which a viewer is said to see how a picture’s surface supports visual impressions of volume and depth. For Zeimbekis, most picture perceptions proceed without paying attention to how their surfaces support their contents. Still seeing-in accounts of pictorial experience have a restricted validity limited to instances of “cognitively driven picture perceptions”, that is, to picture perceptions in which the viewer generates and sustains agentively 3D contents from the 2D picture surface. Finally, the seeing-in thesis, understood as a thesis on aesthetic appreciation of pictures, remains true for both types of picture perception, for visually and cognitively driven picture perceptions. Regina-Nino Mion approaches pictorial experience by revaluating Husserl’s theory of pictorial experience. According to Husserl (2006), as far as a picture is concerned, three layers must be involved: i) the picture’s vehicle, ii) the image-object, i.e., what the picture presents, iii) the imagesubject, i.e., what the picture is about. As we can see, in distinguishing between ii) and iii), Husserl splits what Wollheim tended to keep together. This is mirrored in a tripartition of pictorial experience, or image consciousness in Husserl’s terms: in Husserl’s account, not only the imageobject, but also the image-subject is somehow experienced. Following Husserl, this tripartition enables Mion to provide a new account for the

Introduction 11 connection between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation. In aesthetic contemplation, we are interested in how the image-subject is presented by the image-object. The image-object plays this presenting role, by exploiting both its analogizing and its nonanalogizing moments. While the former moment merely enables one to recognize the imagesubject in the image-object, the latter moment explains one’s aesthetic interest toward the picture. Since this amounts to saying that aesthetic appreciation of a picture has to do, not with the image-subject per se, but just with how it is presented by the image-object, this allows Mion to draw a further comparison between Husserl’s and Wollheim’s account of pictures. Wollheim (2003b) holds that one must distinguish between the what of a picture, its pictorial content, and the how of the picture, how that content is presented. In its turn, this ‘how’ must be split into three factors: the Representational How, which has to do with how pictorial content is given (something like a Fregean mode of presentation, say), the Material How, which has to do with the material aspects of the picture’s vehicle (similar to what Lopes 2005 calls the merely surface properties of the vehicle), and the Presentational How, which, without affecting the pictorial content, has to do with how the vehicle displays that content and thereby attracts our aesthetic interest. Undoubtedly, there is a certain family resemblance between Husserl’s nonanalogizing moments of the image-object and Wollheim’s Presentational How. As far as aesthetic appreciation is concerned, the relationship between the how and the what of a picture is focused again in Katerina Bantinaki’s paper. The analogy between Husserl’s nonanalogizing moments of the image-object and Wollheim’s Presentational How notwithstanding, one may wonder whether in the case of pictures where stylistic deformity is displayed (paradigmatically but not exclusively, in caricatures and stick figures), the relevant formally deviant features must be located either in what one sees in a picture and possibly also in what is correctly to be seen in the picture, even if they did not figure in the picture’s pictorial content, or in nondepictive properties of its vehicle. Bantinaki tries to find a third way over and above these two options. For her, there is a way for formally deviant figures not to be configurational features, but rather to have to do not only with what is seen in the picture, but also with what must be seen in it. This happens when they are not only formally deviant but also expressive properties, to be perceived as such. Insofar as this is the case, such properties do not elicit any separation between what is seen in the picture and what its pictorial content amounts to. For qua expressive properties, they can belong to the pictorial content of the picture. To come back to an example Wollheim himself (2003b) relies on, in Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck, one sees a female figure with an elongated neck, insofar as that elongation expresses the Madonna’s gracefulness. Being such an expressive property, this formally deviant feature is part of the pictorial content of the picture.

12  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini The subtle distortions seen in The Madonna with the Long Neck by Parmigianino, the unexpected composition of René Magritte’s painting Le Blanc-Seing, are pictorial features easily noticed. Due to these pictorial features, the perception of these paintings tends to elicit intense arousing seeing-in or imaginative experiences. These distortions and unexpected composition are the stylistic signatures of an artistic agency. Their occurrences raise the philosophical question of the interaction of matters of style and matters of content in our pictorial experience. In his chapter, Jérôme Pelletier formulates this philosophical question in the following terms: “Do we engage in these seeing-in or imaginative experiences somehow off-line, for the sake of enjoying these experiences, or do we engage in these experiences on-line, as a means of delivering the representational content of these paintings?” To this question, philosophers of art such as Wollheim and Walton tend to reply with a view Pelletier labels “Style Separatism”. According to Style Separatism, style and content do not mingle. Pelletier sees important limits in Style Separatism. He shows that certain paintings aim at triggering pictorial experiences that connect features of style and of content inseparably. These paintings have distinctive features which make one see in them (or imagines seeing) objects or scenes that amalgamate pictorial and non-pictorial properties. These paintings are conceived by Pelletier as meriting inflected pictorial experiences and as abiding by the rules of a view he labels “Style Inflectionism”. Distortion and its role in aesthetic appreciation come back again in Paolo Spinicci’s account of anamorphosis. Perspectival anamorphic images, as Spinicci calls them, such as, e.g., Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, are a particular kind of picture, for they present a riddle that their viewers must solve; namely, the fact that one must change one’s perspective in order to grasp the figurative import of a certain part of a picture. This makes such images essentially temporal images, for their understanding involves two steps the second of which necessarily follows the first. In appreciating this sequence, the viewer plays the metaiconic game the artist wants her to play, i.e., a game that concerns the fact that the viewer must discover not only what is depicted, but also how it is depicted, insofar as it may be grasped only under a certain perspective. Now, the fact that the what of the picture is not detachable from the how of the picture makes such images paradigmatic cases of pictures involving inflection, i.e., the fact that the properties that are ascribed to the picture’s subject essentially make reference to the design properties of the picture’s vehicle, conceived in their design role of letting something be seen in the picture (Hopkins 2010). This should elicit such pictures to paradigmatically involve a twofold seeing-in experience. Yet for Spinicci this is not the case. For in anamorphoses, one does grasp the vehicle marks of the picture, but just its figurative ones, which already belong to the content of the picture. One would be tempted to reply that the elements that enable one to see in an anamorphic image what is depicted

Introduction 13 from a certain vantage point are features of the vehicle, not of its subject. But Spinicci retorts that, in these cases, vehicle marks can act as figurative marks—vehicle’s lines are captured as subject’s contours, for example. Thus, pace Wollheim, aesthetic appreciation of paintings does not rest on the visual awareness of (the content of) a configurational fold. Anamorphosis, or, more generally, the problem of seeing a picture under a certain perspective, comes back again in John Kulvicki’s and Bence Nanay’s paper. As is well known, it is quite rare to find genuine trompe-l’oeils, i.e., paintings that really deceive their viewers by inducing such viewers to mistake them for their subjects. At most, there are paintings that so deceive their viewers just when they are seen under a certain perspective. (Nikola Čuljić’s drawings (www.boredpanda.com/ nikola-culjic-art/) are a paradigmatic example of this situation.) Now, even street art trompe l’oeils are hardly genuine trompe-l’oeils, insofar as people well realize that they are just suitable modifications of the broader pavements on which they are sketched. Yet photographing them precisely manages to capture that very perspective from which street art trompe l’oeils are delusory. In seeing those photos, one does not seem to see a photo of a trompe-l’oeil endowed with a certain subject, but straightforwardly a photo of that very subject. In this respect, photos of such trompe l’oeils are transparent in the sense appealed to by Kulvicki himself (2006): in their being pictures that syntactically resemble the trompe l’oeils they are the pictures of, they straightforwardly count as pictures of those trompe l’oeils’ subjects. Granted, this situation may occur not only in this case; consider, e.g., Magritte’s cycle The Human Condition, which involves pictures nesting other pictures that are, however delusorily, grasped as pictures of the nested pictures’ subjects. Yet, Kulvicki and Nanay stress, photos of street art trompe l’oeils show one of the reasons why we appreciate such trompe l’oeils. This is to say, we appreciate them insofar as we take them as being made for being photographed, since the photos, not the trompe l’oeils themselves, reveal their delusory nature. The issue of transparency comes back again in Part Three, which is devoted to cinematic pictures, possibly the most engaging form nowadays of transparent pictures in the aforementioned sense of Walton (1984). Is cinema a window-like medium of representation, that is, a medium which, like windows, enables us to see objects and scenes through them? Robert Hopkins and Enrico Terrone offer in the volume different replies to this question. For Hopkins, film-like still pictures support seeing-in experiences. Since Hopkins (2010) shares the view that our experience of still pictures is sometimes ‘inflected’ by the awareness of properties of the picture’s surface, Hopkins is led to turn to the ‘inflection issue’ concerning our experience of moving images. This new discussion is crucial, since if it can be shown that our experience of a world seen in moving images is sometimes inflected, it may help us to understand why we value moving

14  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini images. Again, the connection between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation is the cornerstone of the philosophical discussion. In his chapter, Hopkins develops an argument to show that film might display inflection. And on the basis of an analysis of a famous sequence of Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Hopkins argues that film displays inflection. What kind of inflection? An inflection distinctively temporal in nature in which temporal features of the moving images, like duration of shot, inflect the story told. What is duration of shot? It is duration of the moving images in which we see the story told with a continuity of perspective. Hopkins discusses several reasons to conceive shots as windows, open for a limited duration, on the world they reveal, not as windows in that world. The upshot of that discussion is that, since shot duration and changes are experienced as features of the moving image, our experience of moving images may be temporally inflected. In the famous Leone’s sequence, the acceleration of ever shorter shot changes induces a fragmentation of time in such a way that time seems to slow. Somehow the events seen in the last parts of the sequence are experienced as more numerous than they are; they are “events multiplied by the momentary shots that present them”. Terrone’s chapter is focused on cinematic appreciation. Terrone understands aesthetic appreciation in hedonistic terms, as an experience of pleasure. There are two sources of pleasures in a film: the pleasure the viewer takes in the exploration of a world and the pleasure the viewer takes in the appreciation of the film as an artifact. Though being distinct pleasures, they are nonetheless connected. On that basis, Terrone presents his own thesis as to the nature of film experience in order to explain the distinctness of both pleasures and their connectedness. Inspired by Wollheim, Terrone claims that filmic experience has two folds that are to be understood as two distinct temporal series, which Terrone labels “Configurational Series” (C-series) and “Recognitional Series” (R-series). The pleasure the viewer takes in the exploration of a world primarily comes from the R-series: this is the R-pleasure. The pleasure we take in the appreciation of the film as an artefact primarily comes from the C-series and is dubbed the C-pleasure. Terrone’s analysis is mainly phenomenological. The core of the R-pleasure is the enjoyment from the outside of a series of perspectives on a world that is independent of the viewer’s body position in that world. By contrast, the C-pleasure is an experience from the inside of the functioning of the artifact itself and an appreciation of the artistic achievement that has caused the R-pleasure. Besides,Terrone introduces a distinction between two different kinds of nondiegetic features in film: perceptual nondiegetic features such as frames or film music that play a role in our perceptual experience of the world depicted and discursive nondiegetic features such as intertitles or voices over that play no role in our experience of film.

Introduction 15 Greg Currie’s paper is quite relevant in introducing a theme that also Georges Roque and David Davies deal with, namely the role of facture, hence of the artist’s own activity, as a further factor constituting the aesthetic appreciation of pictures. This is the theme of the fourth and last part of the volume. According to Currie, as far as aesthetic matters are concerned, a basic difference between so-called opaque pictures, those whose aboutness is fixed intentionally (by referring either to the author’s own intentions or to the society’s conventions), and transparent pictures, those whose aboutness is fixed causally (Newall 2011), is not that such pictures belong to different fundamental kinds, as Walton (1984) claimed, but rather that they elicit different kinds of aesthetic experiences. To begin with, unlike the former pictures, the latter pictures contain no marks that can be taken as traces of their own author’s activity. In the latter pictures, marks are just depictive marks, i.e., signs that ground one’s grasping what the picture depicts. (This is just a grounding relation, for one cannot read off from such marks what the picture represents. Indeed, two pictures may be perfectly alike in such marks and still represent different things.) Whereas in the former pictures, such marks are Janus-faced, insofar as they are not only depictive marks, but also and precisely traces of their drawer’s activity. Although it may support a twofold experience just as an opaque picture, the grain of a transparent picture fails to be a trace of such an activity, independently of whether it is co-incident or not in its features with the corresponding features ascribed to its subject. Moreover, this difference precisely justifies the aesthetically relevant difference between opaque and transparent pictures, the fact that in the latter case we scarcely attend to the depictive marks; in their case, as Currie says, the medium is recessive. In this sense, unlike our experience of opaque pictures, our experience of transparent pictures is transparent. The last two authors of this part of the volume use the word “facture” in their discussion. As a matter of fact, the French “facture” was translated into the same sounding English “facture”, the latter being defined in the OED as “the action or process of making (a thing)”. Painters and art critics, before philosophers, have discussed whether facture should be apparent or not and how perception of facture may relate to aesthetic appreciation. Thanks to George Roque’s chapter, the volume includes a detailed account of the thoughts of artists—Paul Signac, Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres—on facture and its possible connection with the painting’s content (figurative or expressive) and with aesthetic appreciation. This discussion between painters on facture is difficult to follow, because some painters emphasize the painting process in their argument, while other painters emphasize the output of this process. This is Roque’s explanation of their disagreement. Roque’s close examination of Signac’s essay From Eugène Delacroix to

16  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini Neo-Impressionism in which both Delacroix and Signac condemn the brushstroke and praise the touch led Roque to distinguish two kinds of factures: touch and brushstroke. While the touch is a minimal intervention, the fact of touching the canvas with the brush when painting, the brushstroke, instead, requires a movement of the hand, a gesture. For Delacroix, unlike the brushstroke, the touch is related to the painting’s subject matter, while brushstroke is said to be only the expression of the artist’s skill. Ingres puts things the other way around and claims that the illusion of the third dimension requires hiding the touch. Finally, Signac claims that, with the dots, and their homogeneous filling of the surface, the touch is impersonal, the same touch being used for the skin, the hair, for the trunk of a tree and its leaves. In the end, each facture—for Delacroix, the hatching, for the Impressionists, the comma-shaped stroke, and for the Neo-Impressionists, the divided touch—are said by Signac to be “three conventional methods, identical, but each accommodated to the particular requirements of a corresponding aesthetic”. After art critics and painters, cognitive scientists have been interested in studying the possible impact of facture perception on the aesthetic appreciation of a painting. Does the beholder’s pictorial experience of a canvas relate to the manner in which the marks on the surface came into being? How does pictorial experience relate, if it does, to the gestures of the artist when she puts the marks on the canvas? As soon as one formulates these questions this way, by mentioning our possible sensitivity to the manner in which the marks on the canvas came into being, one asks empirical questions which may possibly be answered by experiments. Not surprisingly, several cognitive scientists have attempted to conduct experiments in order to investigate how the registration by the beholder of the facture of a painting contributes—if it does—to his or her pictorial experience of the painting. So cognitive scientists have wondered whether our experiences of an artistically marked surface are not only perceptual experiences of visual marks but maybe also visuomotor experiences or mental simulations, maybe of the gestures or the kinds of gestures that, somehow, left these marks. In his chapter, David Davies discusses the results of the cognitive study of Ticini et al. (2014), and on the basis of this detailed discussion, investigates the limits of empirical aesthetics. His main point is that the question addressed by Ticini et al.’s cognitive study cannot be answered by showing that, in certain conditions, viewers manifest both a sensitivity to facture and an enhancement of aesthetic appreciation. For the underlying problem is normative in nature. It is not sufficient to show that there is a correlation between perception of facture and enhancement of aesthetic appreciation in certain conditions in order to show that facture perception is a precondition of aesthetic appreciation. The unaddressed normative question by Ticini et al.’s cognitive study is the question of the normative role of facture perception,

Introduction 17 i.e., the question whether facture perception has a normative connection to aesthetic appreciation. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such an analysis is conducted bottom-up: not from the armchair, but proceeding from a detailed reading of the scientific results themselves. Our hope is that cognitive scientists will pay this philosophical discussion the attention it deserves. As philosophers may certainly learn things about the nature of aesthetic experience from cognitive science, cognitive scientists may also learn about beauty from the works of the contributors of this volume. They may learn that only objects in the world may be said to be beautiful, not our psychological responses to these objects, even though how we respond psychologically to these objects is certainly relevant to aesthetics. Should aesthetics remain the private property of philosophers? We hope this volume devoted to apprehending the links between pictorial experience and aesthetic appreciation will help each reader to find his own individual response to this challenging question.

Bibliography Danto, A.C. (2013). What Art Is. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gombrich, E. (1960). Art and Illusion. London: Phaidon. Hopkins, R. (1998). Picture, Image and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, R. (2010). “Inflected Pictorial Experience: Its Treatment and Significance”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 151–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Husserl, E. (2006). Phantasy, Image Consciousness, Memory. Dordrecht: Springer. Hyman, J. (2012). “Depiction”. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 71: 129–150. Kulvicki, J. (2006). On Images. Oxford: Blackwell. Kulvicki, J. (2013). Images. London: Routledge. Lopes, D. (1996). Understanding Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lopes, D. (2005). Sight and Sensibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nanay, B. (2005). “Is Twofoldness Necessary for Representational Seeing?” ­British Journal of Aesthetics 45: 262–273. Nanay, B. (2010). “Inflected and Uninflected Experience of Pictures”. In ­Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 181–207. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nanay, B. (2011). “Perceiving Pictures”. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10: 461–480. Nanay, B. (2016). Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception. Oxford: Oxford ­University Press. Newall, M. (2011). What is a Picture? Basingstoke: Palgrave. Podro, M. (1998). Depiction. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.

18  Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini Schier, F. (1986). Deeper into Pictures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scruton, R. (1981). “Photography and Representation”. Critical Inquiry 7: 577–603. Ticini, L.F., L. Rachman, J. Pelletier and S. Dubal. (2014). “Enhancing Aesthetic Appreciation by Priming Canvases with Actions that Match the Artist’s Painting Style”. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 3: 1–6. Voltolini, A. (2015a). A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Voltolini, A. (2015b). “Why, as Responsible for Figurativity, Seeing-in Can Only Be Inflected Seeing-in”. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14: 651–667. Walton, K. (1984). “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism”. Critical Inquiry 11: 246–277. Wollheim, R. (1980)2. “Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation”. In Art and Its Objects, 205–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wollheim, R. (1987). Painting as an Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wollheim, R. (1998). “On Pictorial Representation”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56: 217–226. Wollheim, R. (2001). “On Formalism and Pictorial Organization”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59: 127–137. Wollheim, R. (2003a). “In Defense of Seeing-in”. In Looking into Pictures, edited by H. Hecht, R. Schwartz and M. Atherton, 3–15. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Wollheim, R. (2003b). “What Makes Representational Painting Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 77: 131–147.

Part I

Appreciation of Artworks

1 Seeing the Light Aesthetic Experience and Understanding Pictures Elisabeth Schellekens

I The cornerstone of philosophical aesthetics, conceived as an area primarily concerned with aesthetic and artistic experience, has long been its connection with perception. Already at the very inception of the modern discipline in the mid-eighteenth century, aesthetics took that which pertains to sense-perception as its subject-matter. For Meier and Baumgarten, aesthetics was nothing less than the science of perception and, in a similar vein, Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment is built on the claim that first-hand perceptual experience is a sine qua non for assessing beauty or aesthetic value (Kant 1790). Maintaining this inheritance, twentiethcentury analytic aesthetics continued to rely on the precept that aesthetics is inherently perceptual. To use Frank Sibley’s words, “aesthetics deals with a kind of perception” (Sibley 1965: 137). By the same token, Philip Pettit argues that “[a]esthetic characterisations are essentially perceptual”, which is to say that “the putatively cognitive state one is in when, perceiving a work of art, one sincerely assents to a given aesthetic characterisation, is not a state to which one can have non-perceptual access” (Pettit 1983: 25). The claim that aesthetics is essentially bound up with perception takes at least two philosophical expressions. The first is a metaphysical one: aesthetic properties are only (fully) manifested or realized in our perceptual experience. That is to say, aesthetic properties can be genuinely instantiated only by objects which are, to use Beardsley’s phrase, “perceptual objects”, or “object[s] some of whose qualities, at least, are open to direct sensory awareness” (Beardsley 1981: 31). From the essentially perceptual nature of aesthetic properties it is typically taken to follow that such properties are necessarily dependent on our responses.1 The doctrine of response-dependence thus encapsulates the aesthetic case in the statement that “to have aesthetic value is to be disposed to bring about a particular response for a particular audience under suitable conditions” (Watins & Shelley 2012: 338). The second aspect, which will be the primary focus of our discussion, is chiefly epistemological in character and tends to be articulated by the

22  Elisabeth Schellekens claim that bona fide aesthetic judgments can be formed only on the basis of first-hand perception. According to Sibley, to entertain the belief “that one can make aesthetic judgments without aesthetic perception . . . is to misunderstand aesthetic judgement” (Sibley 1965: 34). To put it differently, the perceptual nature of aesthetic properties entails that our ascriptions of or judgments about them can be founded only in our own subjective perceptual experience. Other sources—such as testimony from reliable informants or enumerative induction from past cases—which serve as commonplace sources of knowledge elsewhere are here inadmissible. In this spirit, Richard Wollheim advocates an ‘Acquaintance Principle’ according to which “judgments of aesthetic value . . . must be based on first-hand experience of their object” (Wollheim 1980: 233).2 Central to the most usual epistemological formulation of the perceptual claim, then, are issues to do with belief-formation, justification and knowledge. The almost axiomatic status of these two tenets in analytic aesthetics is apparent from the considerable influence they have exerted in our philosophical discussions of aesthetic experience, even earning them the name of ‘truisms’ (Livingston 2003). Lately, however, significant challenges have been mounted against the ‘Perceptual Requirement’ (hereafter PR) in aesthetic epistemology. These challenges fall, roughly, within two broad categories. First, there are what we may call ‘conceptual problems’ (CP), or the cluster of charges targeting our characterizations of the concepts central to PR (and the theories supporting it). (CP) PR is threatened because some of the concepts central to it have been understood in inappropriate or misleading ways. Amongst the first serious difficulties leveled against the idea that aesthetic judgments must be grounded in first-hand perceptual experience of the object of appreciation is the complaint that the notion of description (with which first-hand experience is contrasted) is generally understood in such basic terms that a meaningful comparison between the two cannot be upheld. This observation, originally raised by Paisley Livingston, suggests that the virtues of PR are exaggerated by the fact that our characterization of aesthetic or artistic description is generally too thin to stand a chance to fare well in an analogy with immediate perceptual experience (Livingston 2003).3 For Livingston, descriptions of artworks by well-trained critics, for example, can allow for a level of detail and sophistication such that it is not unreasonable for us to form an aesthetic opinion about the object described, or indeed its aesthetic merit. An aesthetic judgment based on a more fine-grained understanding of description may not always be possible nor indeed always reveal as accurate a reflection of an object’s aesthetic character. Nonetheless, until we specify what we mean by ‘description’ and flesh it out in more generous terms, the disanalogy does little philosophical work in a successful argument for PR (Livingston 2003: 266).

Seeing the Light 23 The concept which has come under most critical scrutiny of late is the notion of testimony. More specifically, several examinations of the alleged asymmetry between aesthetic testimony and other forms of testimony have led to a more skeptical stance toward the validity of this said discrepancy, or the assumption that testimony operates in fundamentally irregular ways in the aesthetic case. Whilst the reliability of aesthetic testimony remains a contentious issue, and even so-called optimists about aesthetic testimony hold that perception remains the canonical means for forming aesthetic judgment, Brian Laetz (2008) and Aaron Meskin (2004), for example, have argued that the presumed reasons for the asymmetry are unclear, and, as a result, the expectations of what aesthetic testimony might be able to deliver, are unrealistic. The root of the problem might well, Meskin argues, have more to do with our own psychology than the notion of aesthetic testimony itself. The recent focus on the notion of testimony in this context is largely to be explained by how the current debate about the relation between firsthand experience and aesthetic judgment has mainly been cast in terms of the Acquaintance Principle (Gorodeisky 2010; Hopkins 2011; Laetz 2008; Meskin 2004, 2006; Robson 2012), that is to say, as a matter of knowledge transfer and justified belief-formation. Yet, where does that leave the concept at the very heart of the requirement itself, namely perception? The critical point for our purposes here has to do with whether, in aesthetics, we have relied on an adequate understanding of this notion (or not)—or at least in relation to PR. Epistemologically speaking, and as we shall see, this worry has to do not only with the matter of direct experiential acquaintance with the object of appreciation, but also more fundamentally with the relation between acquaintance and perception. In terms of re-examining our concept of perception, then, it is interesting to note that in more general debates in the philosophy of perception (Shelley 2003), there has been a call to move from a fairly narrow set of senses—emphasizing the traditional modalities of touch, sight, smell, taste and sound—to a more inclusive list (capable of incorporating, for example, proprioception). What is more, on at least some accounts, we have seen a shift away from a conception of perception solely in terms of sense-perception in favor of a more epistemically complex understanding of that notion (French 2013; Schellenberg 2014). Let us return to this discussion shortly.4 A second point, strongly connected with the previous one, concerns the growing discussion of what we may refer to as ‘extension problems’ (EP) for PR. These are difficulties to do with the applicability of the requirement or, more specifically, the range of cases which can be explained or accounted for within its framework. (EP) PR is threatened because there seem to be non-perceptual objects or entities which (nonetheless) allow for aesthetic appreciation.

24  Elisabeth Schellekens On this line, potential objects of appreciation such as conceptual art, mathematical theorems, moral character, scientific proofs, and more, cast a shadow on the legitimacy of PR since our shared aesthetic practice suggests that it is, in fact, perfectly possible to ascribe aesthetic value or properties to such non-perceptual objects or entities. After all, [w]e speak of the elegance of a mathematical demonstration, the beauty of a chess move, and the ungainliness of a failed experiment. Similarly, we hear of the beautiful simplicity of a good explanation or solution, and the dynamism of a team effort. Again, we talk of the gracefulness of an argument and the balance or insipidness of a personality trait”. (Schellekens 2007: 85) In other words, if we can experience Pythagoras’s theorem, the Queen sacrifice in Lewitt vs. Marshall (Breslau International Chess Tournament, 1912), or Felix Gonzales-Torres’s 1991 work Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) in virtue of its aesthetic value—and make the ensuing aesthetic judgments based on that non-perceptual experience—then such works or entities serve as counter-examples to PR. As a result, the reach of the requirement seems significantly foreshortened. Assuming, then, that we can indeed refer to such experiences as aesthetic, PR might be capable of capturing only the more paradigmatic instances of aesthetic appreciation. In the light of these problems, two rough alternatives present themselves. On the one hand, we might reject PR as an epistemic requirement in aesthetics, that is to say, discard the requirement altogether. Such a radical solution would, of course, bring difficulties of its own—including accounting for our intuitions regarding aesthetic testimony and the general peculiarity of making aesthetic judgment about things we haven’t seen or heard—but may be worth the price considering a growing list of challenges. One might, then, be tempted to endorse, say, theories emphasizing the role of aesthetic experts (whose judgments may, at least under auspicious circumstances, be transmitted to us) or accounts of art primarily in terms of intellectual reflection. Then again, and perhaps less radically, we might opt to take the problems raised above as a call to revise PR substantially or, more minimally, to shape it into some more plausible version of itself. In order to do that, we need to take EP seriously, for only a more developed account of the notion of perception able to account for such counter-examples in relation to PR can meaningfully strengthen its epistemic force. The aim of the next section is to examine the notion of perception in the light of EP, taking the phenomenology of aesthetic experience as my starting point. I will begin by outlining two routes that a future discussion of PR can take. Having opted for one of those courses, I will explore two possible directions in which we might develop our concept

Seeing the Light 25 of perception. The upshot of our reflections will not only be to open up new possibilities for PR in a specific aesthetic or artistic context, but also to provide general insight into the relation between perception and the aesthetic experience of art.

II How, then, should we proceed in revising PR? Two principal options appear available. In a first instance, we can set out to limit the scope of the claim embedded in PR. That is to say, we can aim to reduce the remit of the requirement by insisting that it does not apply unequivocally across all aesthetic cases. PR then becomes a rule of thumb or a guide, instead of a principle, capable of doing some work in most paradigmatic circumstances. Arguably, such a strategy might make for a ‘quick fix’ of the more longstanding hypothesis with a fairly minimal effort. However, any such adjustment would most probably be at the expense of eliminating some of the most interesting and rewarding instances of aesthetic appreciation from our mainstream theories. What is more, it would not be able to address what might be considered the heart of the issue since the notion of perception would broadly remain the same and, as a result, the epistemic requirement would also, roughly, remain the same. Revising the boundaries of the requirement’s sphere of influence would not necessarily count as a sufficiently substantial revision of PR itself. A more promising approach, it seems, would be to heed the call to scrutinize the notion of perception itself in order not only to expand the reach of PR (so as to make room for non-perceptual art, for example), but also to reinforce its general explanatory power, that is to say, even for cases not affected by EP. Building on the work that has already been done in this area, at least two avenues are worth exploring in an attempt to develop the notion of aesthetic perception and, in that process, broaden PR’s remit. The remainder of this section will be taken up by a discussion of two directions which have the potential to advance our concept of aesthetic perception. The backdrop of our discussion, so to speak, will be a kind of picture which tends not to receive much attention in philosophical aesthetics, namely pictures provided first and foremost as documentation for non-perceptual art. What I have in mind here are conceptual pieces and the photographs used to report or record those works. Although we may not conceive of these pictures as the artworks themselves, they do serve as perceptual triggers for our aesthetic experience.5 As such, enhancing our understanding of how we tend to perceive them is also a matter of understanding how we can engage with non-perceptual art perceptually. As we will see, a PR revised with the help of a richer notion of perception— as a requirement for aesthetic experience—is best understood not solely as a requisite for aesthetic belief-formation in terms of ascribing specific

26  Elisabeth Schellekens aesthetic properties to objects of appreciation, but as an important feature of our aesthetic understanding of artworks. Could PR overcome some of the problems raised above if we allow that requirement to be met in terms of our imagination? If so, progress might be within reach. For if perceptually imagining a non-perceptual artwork can count as an instance of perception, then the applicability of PR must be re-assessed and its current explanatory power re-evaluated. A suggestion somewhat along these lines can be traced back to Rob Hopkins’s discussion of the idea that the use of sensory imagination in experiencing pictures may be conceived as one of the three ways in which a thing can be presented visually (in conjunction with seeing and seeing a picture). To use Hopkins’s words, “[i]f I can judge O’s beauty . . . in a picture of it, or in seeing it face-to-face, then why, one might wonder, should I not do so in visualizing it?” (Hopkins 2006: 93). Although we cannot expect an analogy at the level of appreciation, Hopkins argues, the matter of judging something’s aesthetic character or value on the basis of sensorily imagining that thing remains a possibility.6 That is to say, modifying the Acquaintance Principle—in virtue of capturing a standard for aesthetic belief-formation—by allowing that sensorily imagining the object the relevant aesthetic belief concerns might suffice to legitimize that belief. Although the idea remains too sketchy to assess fully in Hopkins’s formulation, it is well worth reflecting on the possibility that the concept of imagination may provide us with the necessary tools to revise PR successfully in an attempt not only to clarify the notion of perception itself (as we saw in relation to CP) but also to accommodate for at least some of the cases fuelling EP. So, what do we mean by perceptual imagining, and under what circumstances might such imagining help us to explain our experience of non-perceptual art? The first point to consider is that while it is one thing to suggest that visualizing a picture (which we have perhaps already seen but which is currently not immediately available to us) might occasionally serve as a bona fide ground for aesthetic belief-formation, it is quite another to try to account for the aesthetic beliefs or judgments we form of objects or entities which are incapable of affording ordinary perceptual encounters in the first place in terms of mere visualization. For while there might be a meaningful discrepancy between appreciation and belief-formation in the case of perceptual art such as painting or photography (where those pictures are uncontroversially the artworks themselves), that distinction becomes less clear-cut in non-perceptual art. To visually imagine a painting that I might have experienced first-hand previously seems to be a matter of mentally recreating a perceptual impression the origins of which can be traced back to a straightforward perceptual experience. To hold that such visualizing might well ground the ascription of an aesthetic property to a picture, say, does indeed seem distinct from the claim that an imaginative exercise

Seeing the Light 27 of that kind might also enable us to fully ‘savor’ (Hopkins 2006) a picture aesthetically in the same way as ordinary perceptual aesthetic experience allows. However, in the case of artworks that, due to their very ontology, simply cannot be savored in ordinary perceptual experience but can nonetheless still be experienced aesthetically, separating appreciation and belief-formation in this way seems less plausible. Let us reflect further with the help of an example. Walter de Maria’s 1977 Vertical Earth Kilometer is a kilometer-long brass rod, five centimeters in diameter, fully inserted into the ground at the Friedrichplatz Park in Kassel (Germany). A sandstone square surrounds the rod’s circular top, framing it so to speak. The boring of the shaft took seventy-nine days to accomplish and goes through six different geological layers. The rod is built from bonding together similar rods of separate lengths, each measuring 167 meters. The sandstone square is at the crossing-point of two paths which run across the site of the international contemporary art exhibition Documenta. The only visible part of this artwork is the surface of the very top of the metal rod. In an important way, therefore, our seeing what is in effect a small, flat brass disc can hardly count as a perceptual experience of the artwork in its entirety. Indeed, arguably, a more appropriate appreciation of De Maria’s artwork would consist of perceptually imagining the almost impossibly long brass rod being inserted into the ground. The artwork, now ‘confining its existence to the trusting mind of the viewer’, must be engaged with by imagining the pressure exerted on the soil and the many different layers as the rod was inserted, the hard metal against the more or less soft earth, the darkness of the space into which it was introduced, the sound of the materials grinding against each other, the distance travelled by the lower end of the rod, the growing separation not only from the light and the city, but from the very people supposed to perceive it and so on. It is this kind of imaginative activity, rather than mere visualization, which the work solicits. Now, clearly, and generally speaking, whether PR is capable of overcoming EP is not simply a matter of exploring whether the applicability of the requirement can be extended so as to include seemingly problematic cases of this kind. It is also a question of developing a more adequate account of the way in which non-perceptual art actively invites us to engage with it. The art picture we have access to, in this case the photograph documenting the only visible part of the work, can serve as a prompt or trigger for our aesthetic experience of the piece if we perceptually imagine that event itself. By that, I mean not only that we visualize the act or the current location of the metal rod, but that we engage fully in a cross-modal perceptual imagining, including different kinds of sense-impressions. The perceptual imagination required of any meaningful engagement with a piece such as Vertical Earth Kilometer is, then, an imaginative act which relies not only on the full gamut of our sense modalities (and the numerous possible interactions between them even in

28  Elisabeth Schellekens our imagination) but also on the invitation to entertain an idea which, if it doesn’t qualify as a proposition, can perhaps be described as a certain kind of hypothetical philosophical attitude. An imaginative act of this kind thus pushes the boundaries between perceptual and non-perceptual in this way too, pressing us to engage with the sensory and the contemplative simultaneously. That is to say, the perceptual imagining—if we are to be able to call it that—might well feed off our cognitive imagining of that which a particular piece of non-perceptual art is about, the idea it sets out to express or examine, the thought-process which solicits our attention. While the broadly sensory character of perceptual imagining is likely to explain the distinctly aesthetic character of the experience we are investigating, then, this kind of imagining may well be guided or otherwise led by other (non-perceptual) imaginative acts. Either way, a richer understanding of perceptual imagining along these lines presents us with the only genuine possibility of engaging appropriately with non-perceptual artworks. For how could merely visualizing the insertion of the rod, perhaps as if one simply bore witness to the actual event, count as being genuinely acquainted with that work? Although several threads remain to be explored and many details to be developed, the point tentatively explored here in the rather limited context of a specific kind of art picture, namely that documenting non-perceptual art, is also of interest to more straightforward cases. For it seems reasonable to suggest that the form of acquaintance which we are seeking in our discussions of aesthetic epistemology is, at least at times, more complex than we have been inclined to admit, or at least than a fairly narrow conception of perception can allow. The acquaintance in question is not merely first-hand experience of, say, a picture’s surface or superficial properties. Let’s round up this part of our discussion. How, then, are we to explain our aesthetic experiences of non-perceptual art, and in what sense might engaging with such art by perceptually imagining it help us revise PR? To put it briefly: if the notion of perception can be broadened and said to include perceptual imagination in something like the sense sketched above, then (a revised) PR might still be said to hold when we engage with non-perceptual artworks. On the whole, reflecting on our aesthetic experiences of pieces such as Vertical Earth Kilometer can also help bring out aspects of our experiences of more mainstream cases which we might not have considered before. After all, what is it, really, to have a firsthand visual encounter with an object of aesthetic appreciation such as a painting? To return to a question raised by Hopkins, “[p]ictorial experience differs radically from face-to-face experience . . . . But in what sense, then, is it true to describe our experience of a picture of O as a form of experience of O?”(Hopkins 2006: 92). Even in fairly straightforward cases, to see a painting, say, is not merely to lay eyes on it. This point leads us to the second direction in which we might develop our notion of perception in order to account for the kind of artworks we

Seeing the Light 29 just discussed. This further aspect of our engagement with art relates to the susceptibility or sensitivity crucial to our engagement with at least some artworks. Putting it simply, to what extent does perceiving an artwork (in the sense required for an aesthetic experience to be in the offing) rely—or not—on our ability to ‘align’ with the content, qualities, meaning or references of that picture? And, crucial to our purposes, to what extent can this be understood as part of our perceptual involvement with an artwork? As we just heard, simply laying eyes on a particular painting, say, is surely too thin a notion of perception to lead to the kind of engagement most of us tend to expect from artistic experience. To be able to grasp all the qualities relevant to our aesthetic judgment in first-hand experience, we also need to be receptive to the object of appreciation and its features, to be susceptible to them in sense-experience. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the kind of case fuelling EP. To flesh out this idea, let’s consider the following example. In 1988, conceptual artists Marina Abramovic and her partner Ulay undertook the piece now known as The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk. The work consisted of both artists starting to walk the Great Wall of China, one from the East end and the other from the West end, and meeting in the middle. Originally, the intention had been for the artists to marry at the meeting point. However, by the time the artwork was performed, the relationship had deteriorated and, instead, the artists ended their relationship with an embrace at the meeting point after three months of walking. This piece calls not only for a richer perceptual imagining along the lines sketched above, possibly including some interaction with an imaginative engagement with the work’s semantic content or meaning. It also seems to require that we adjust or coordinate our perception by tuning in to the frame of reference and artistic goals of this particular piece. That is to say, not only ought we to engage imaginatively with the artistic process and all its many aspects, including the considerable length of the journey and its physically arduous character. We must also be sensitive to how this imaginative act urges us to align our attention to the work’s meaning. Only then can we grasp its full aesthetic worth. Perhaps, then, the common expression of “tuning in” to someone or something’s “wavelength” is more than merely metaphorical. This susceptibility to experience objects of appreciation aesthetically, which we might think of as part and parcel of exercising our aesthetic sensibility, is possibly best captured by the idea of coming into a kind of alignment with a work’s aesthetic value. A notion which might be of some help here is attunement.7 This is not attunement conceived as the task of art or a task set (by us) for art in order to fine-tune us as appreciators of art to other (non-artistic) aspects of reality. Instead, we might think of attunement to art as a kind of perceptual adjustment which is at least at times a requisite for aesthetic experience. In this vein, literary theorist Rita Felski has suggested that to attune to an artwork is “to enter into a responsive

30  Elisabeth Schellekens relationship, to experience an affinity that is not fully conscious or deliberate”.8 On this line, in order to be attuned, each sense must coordinate and align, and this attunement captures the ways in which aesthetic perceivers play an active part in aesthetic appreciation. Perhaps, then, rather in the way that falling in love enables the lover to see certain qualities that weren’t perceptually accessible to her before, attuning to an artwork can unlock that work’s aesthetic properties in such a way that aesthetic judgment becomes possible. A final example helps us to consider how such attunement may be part of our perceptual experience of art. Felix Gonzales-Torres’s Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is an interesting case to discuss in this context, since it is a conceptual work the aesthetic appreciation of which actually requires us to adjust our attunement rather abruptly to the work after an initial perceptual impression. In material terms, the piece consists of 175 pounds of vividly colored individually wrapped candy poured into a pile in the corner of a gallery. Visitors are invited to take a piece of candy from the pile and eat it. On first contact, then, the work is colorful, fun and tasty. Subsequently, however, it becomes clear to the visitor that, in fact, the specific weight of the pile of candy corresponds to the artist’s now deceased boyfriend’s ideal body weight, and the act of depleting the pile of candy represents Ross’s weight loss as he lay dying of AIDS. The work thus highlights the gradual yet inevitable physical ruin caused by the disease. By involving the audience in this demolition, the work conveys both a particularity (be it of the artist’s boyfriend or ourselves) and a generality (in terms of our wider society, its taboos, and how we can contribute or overcome to them). Gonzalez-Torres has been described as “transforming the everyday into profound meditations on love and loss” by this work of “uncompromising beauty and simplicity”. At the very least, attuning to an artwork such as this is a matter of recalibrating our senses so as to be able to tap into what the work has to offer aesthetically. It involves re-organizing the roles attributed to particular perceptual impressions and possibly setting some aside in favor of others—the garish colors of the candy wraps become less prominent in our perception than, say, the empty space of the gaping hole in the middle of the pile. It can also involve activating a certain sense-modality which hadn’t previously been stimulated. And again, it would seem that such a perceptual re-adjustment, or fine-tuning, goes hand in hand with an attunement to, in this case, the plight of AIDS sufferers. What we have, in other words, is an attunement to what the work is about and how it manages to express that it in a given artistic context. How far, then, can we stretch the boundaries of our working notion of perception in aesthetic experience? In this section, I have discussed two ways which might be explored fruitfully in an attempt to answer this question. My starting point has been art pictures which record works of non-perceptual art, and the ways in which they can trigger aesthetic

Seeing the Light 31 experiences of those works. Reflecting on those cases is important not merely in relation to PR and EP but also for how we conceive of the aesthetic experience of pictures more broadly. In the next section I will develop this point.

III Our chosen strategy in this paper consists of exploring how our notion of perception could be enriched so as to revise PR in an attempt to save it as a general aesthetic requirement. Perhaps the main danger we face, then, is that if we broaden the notion of perception as far as we have done, we risk stretching it beyond breaking point. Would such a notion even still count as perception in aesthetics? Although the question must be asked, it admits of no simple answer. If we expand the notion of perception underlying PR to include aspects of our experience possibly thought far removed from ordinary sense-perception, we might dilute it or transform it beyond recognition. If, however, we fail to review our concept, it is possible that PR will eventually be discarded and the deep connection between aesthetics and perception will be, if not completely severed, then irreversibly damaged. One aspect of aesthetic experience which existing versions of PR have tended to overlook is the great diversity we find within the category of experience we might loosely refer to as aesthetic appreciation. Such appreciation can vary enormously from case to case, and not just, as is well-acknowledged by now, from artform to artform. While an artwork’s ontology surely affects our appreciation, there are also significant differences with regard to that which a work invites us to look at and engage with. Even if we restrict our discussion to pictures, some instances of aesthetic appreciation are more contemplative than sensory in nature and, as a result, the first-hand experience required for aesthetic appreciation cannot always be strictly visual or perceptual. Broadly speaking, a perceiving subject may be highly discriminating when it comes to the kind of seeing appropriate to landscape paintings, but usually draws a blank when looking at still-life paintings. This, arguably, is not merely a matter of preference or taste—that the subject happens to like landscapes but not still-life paintings—but extends to the level of detail and formal properties which the subject is able to perceive in the painting. To perceive an artwork appropriately is first and foremost to understand it on its own terms. If those terms involve some kind of aesthetic contemplation, then that is precisely what will be required in order to fully “perceive” the artwork in question. This is one of the important lessons we can draw from reflecting on what we, as aesthetic perceivers, are supposed to do with the perhaps rather meagre art pictures documenting non-perceptual art. Simply put, the first-hand perceptual experience we seek to secure in order to be able to appreciate something aesthetically,

32  Elisabeth Schellekens as we try to do by stipulating PR, has to be able to reveal a significant amount of the qualities relevant to aesthetic assessment, and this, or so I have argued, cannot be done on the basis of a thin notion of perception. Although our discussion took as its starting point cases which, at the very outset, make higher demands on its perceivers than some straightforwardly perceptual artworks, the suggestion has wider ramifications. In recent work on expression in pictures, Jenefer Robinson examines the ways in which a picture can express an emotional attitude (Robinson 2017). Using Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa as one of her main examples, Robinson argues that the artist organizes his picture precisely so as to express his overarching emotional attitude toward the situation he is representing. In this picture, then, “the victims of the shipwreck are depicted as desperate and terror-stricken and the sea as malignant because the painter takes an emotional attitude of horror and indignation to the events depicted” (Robinson 2017: 264). How do we see this? In other words, how—and in what sense—do we perceive what we need to perceive in order to grasp the qualities relevant to an appropriate aesthetic experience of this work? For Robinson, Géricault paints from a perspective of horror and indignation and that is the reason why the figures are depicted as desperate and the sea as malignant. But this is not to say that in our aesthetic encounters with the picture we first experience Géricault’s overarching attitude of horror and indignation . . . On the contrary, we probably first notice the raft, the sea, and the figures and how they are depicted, and then, on that basis, begin to understand the overall emotional perspective of the picture. (Robinson 2017: 264) Although Robinson’s overt subject here is the notion of expression, it is an entirely pertinent question to ask at what point in this process does perception cease and, say, interpretation begin. For once we have grasped the emotional attitude which, as Robinson argues at any rate, is not only expressed in the painting, but also performs a formal function in organizing the pictorial techniques used, then the attitude becomes something we simply perceive in the painting. What we see, in other words, is not something that can be abstracted from the horror and indignation which the painting is about. To perceive the painting properly simply involves seeing precisely this aspect of it. While Robinson, then, in this example is concerned with the idea of expression, she arguably succeeds in illustrating very precisely how the expressive content of a work of art becomes an object of perception. That is to say, it becomes an object of the kind of perception appropriate to just the work of art the subject is currently looking at. In an important sense, to not see the expressive attitude amounts to simply failing (being

Seeing the Light 33 unable) to perceive the painting in question. But while Robinson refrains from invoking the concept of perception explicitly here, one of the most influential if brief accounts of the kind of perception appropriate to pictorial representations is entirely open on just this point. This is the account proposed by Richard Wollheim in his article “Seeing-as, Seeingin” (Wollheim 1980: 205–226). Here, Wollheim argues, a key component of “seeing-in”, or the kind of seeing appropriate to paintings, involves being able to ascribe the content of complex sentential clauses to what is represented in the painting (Wollheim 1980: 210). While the perceptual process of seeing-as is limited to features that can be denoted by names or simple descriptions, Wollheim contends that the model of seeing-in, by contrast, allows us to enter much more deeply into an apprehension of any mental state or expressive attitude which is part of the painting. Thus, in following Wollheim’s example of a woman reading a love-letter, the simple perceptual model allows us to perceive a woman and a love-letter and leaves us to draw our own interpretative conclusions. But the revised model of perception, as deemed appropriate for the seeing of pictures, draws the sentential clause “that the woman is reading a loveletter” into the perceptual process. Just as with the more famous component of “twofoldedness”, it is important to understand the process cannot be separated into perception on the one hand (say, perceiving a woman) and an interpretation on the other (say, coming to understand that the depicted woman is moved because she is reading a love-letter). Rather, we perceive the woman as being moved by the letter she is reading, and the contemplative process which allows us to pick out this expressive property is firmly a part of what we must still call a process of coming to perceive what is in the painting. Setting aside the (rather tangled) issue of expression and seeing-in, what is clear from the cases discussed is that we cannot simply separate the perceptual from the contemplative when it comes to looking at pictures. Understanding a painting, then, is not the outcome or the end-result of perception, but is a part of that perception itself. What we understand the painting to be about, or to convey, is that which we perceive in the painting. In this sense, seeing a picture involves gaining an insight into what makes that particular picture itself. That insight need not be particularly complex propositionally or cognitively sophisticated. But it is captured by how, when we perceive something aesthetically, that perception can stay with us longer and even affect us more deeply in the long-term than the simple perceiving of that which is here and now before us.

Notes 1 Response-dependent theories of aesthetic value include Anderson (2000); Beardsley (1982); Budd (1985, 1995); Dickie (1988); Goldman (1990, 1995, 2004); Levinson (1996); Miller (1998); Stecker (1997).

34  Elisabeth Schellekens 2 Similarly, Tormey (1973: 39) argues that in art “we do not admit judgments in the absence of direct or immediate experience of the object of judgment”. 3 “[I]f we are to accept that someone else’s description of an object of aesthetic appreciation could never be good and sufficient grounds for an aesthetic judgement, it is imperative that we operate with a fair and accurate conception of what such descriptions can convey” (269). 4 While questions of this broader nature may not stop the workings of the requirement in its tracks, they do raise some doubts about quite how solid the foundations of PR really are. After all, what exactly do we mean by ‘aesthetic value’ (or ‘aesthetic properties’ for that matter—Livingston 2003: 262: problems with specification of central claim, “for example, which of an item’s qualities or values are aesthetic”) in the context of PR? As Malcom Budd has pointed out in relation to the Acquaintance Principle, ascriptions of aesthetic value might “be understood either as judgements of absolute or comparative overall aesthetic value or, perhaps, as judgements of inherent merit- or defectconstituting properties” (Budd 2003: 387). A lack of clarity on this issue might bear directly on how plausible the insistence on first-hand perceptual experience is in the making of aesthetic judgements since, for example, taking it on testimony that a work of art is garish might seem less controversial than endorsing a judgement about a work’s aesthetic character in comparison to another, perhaps in some respects similar work. 5 For the purposes of this paper, we will set aside questions to do with whether these pictures can be said to be artworks in their own right or not. 6 Hopkins is clear about the fact that sensory imagining cannot afford what he refers to as the “savoring” of an object of aesthetic appreciation. 7 See, for example, Wallrup (2015) and Clarke (2005). 8 This suggestion was developed by Rita Felski at a lecture at the Nordic Society of Aesthetics annual conference in Bergen in June 2017.

References Anderson, J. (2000). “Aesthetic Concepts of Art”. In Theories of Art Today, edited by N. Carroll, 65–92. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Beardsley, M. C. (1981). Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Beardsley, M. C. (1982). “The Aesthetic Point of View”. In The Aesthetic Point of View: Selected EssaysAesthetic, edited by M. J. Wreen abd D. M. Callen, 15–34. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Budd, M. (1985). Music and the Emotions: The Philosophical Theories. London: Routledge. Budd, M. (1995). Values of Art: Painting, Poetry and Music. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Budd, M. (2003). “The Acquaintance Principle”. British Journal of Aesthetics 43: 386–392. Clarke, E. (2005). Ways of Listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dickie, G. (1988). Evaluating Art. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. French, C. (2013). “Perceptual Experience and Seeing that P”. Synthese 190: 1735–1751. Goldman, A. (1990). “Aesthetic Qualities and Aesthetic Value”. The Journal of Philosophy 87: 23–37. Goldman, A. (1995). Aesthetic Value. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Seeing the Light 35 Goldman, A. (2004). “Evaluating Art”. In The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, edited by P. Kivy, 93–108. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Gorodeisky, K. (2010). “A New Look at Kant on Testimony”. British Journal of Aesthetics 50: 53–70. Hopkins, R. (2006). “How to Form Aesthetic Belief: Interpreting the Acquaintance Principle”. Postgraduate Journal of Philosophy 3: 85–99. Hopkins, R. (2011). “How to Be a Pessimist About Aesthetic Testimony”. Journal of Philosophy 108: 138–157. Kant, I. [1790] (2001). Critique of the Power of Judgment, translated by P. Guyer and E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laetz, B. (2008). “A Modest Defense of Aesthetic Testimony”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66: 355–363. Levinson, J. (1996). The Pleasures of Aesthetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Livingston, P. (2003). “On an Apparent Truism in Aesthetics”. British Journal of Aesthetics 43: 260–78. Meskin, A. (2004). “Aesthetic Testimony: What Can We Learn From Others About Beauty and Art?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69: 65–91. Meskin, A. (2006). “Solving the Puzzle of Aesthetic Testimony”. In Knowing Art: Essays in Aesthetics and Epistemology, edited by M. Kieran and D. Lopes, 109–125. Dordrecht: Springer. Miller, R. (1998). “Three Versions of Objectivity: Aesthetic, Moral and Scientific”. In Aesthetics and Ethics, edited by J. Levinson, 26–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pettit, P. (1983). “The Possibility of Aesthetic Realism”. In Pleasure, Preference and Value: Studies in Philosophical Aesthetics, edited by E. Schaper, 17–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, J. (2017). “The Missing Person Found. Part I: Expressing Emotions in Pictures”. British Journal of Aesthetics 57: 249–267. Robson, J. (2012). “Aesthetic Testimony”. Philosophy Compass 7: 1–10. Schellekens, E. (2007). “The Aesthetic Value of Ideas”. In Philosophy and Conceptual Art, edited by P. Goldie and E. Schellekens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schellenberg, S. (2014). “The Epistemic Force of Perceptual Experience”. Philosophical Studies 170: 87–100. Shelley, J. (2003). “The Problem of Non-Perceptual Art”. British Journal of Aesthetics 43: 363–78. Sibley, F. (1965). “Aesthetic and Non-Aesthetic”. The Philosophical Review 74: 135–159. Stecker, R. (1997). Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Value. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Tormey, A. (1973). “Critical Judgments”. Theoria 39: 35–49. Wallrup, E. (2015). Being Musically Attuned: The Act of Listening to Music. Aldershot: Ashgate. Watkins, M. and J. Shelley. (2012). “Response-Dependence About Aesthetic Value”. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93: 358–352. Wollheim, R. (1980). Art and Its Objects, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2 Pictures Their Power in Practice Dominic McIver Lopes

What are pictures good for? “Nothing” recurs as the apparently irrepressible reply of a motley collection iconophobes from Plato to the mediaeval iconoclasts, to parents concerned about comic books, to postmoderns in a lather over “scopic regimes”. In the aftermath of Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art (1976), philosophers doubled down on theories of depiction and pictorial experience, but they have not rushed to work on the value of pictures. Those few who have written about pictorial value have taken for granted an approach aptly dubbed “psychologism” (Wollheim 1987; Hopkins 1997; Lopes 2005). According to psychologism, we can understand pictorial value by appealing only to cognitive traits and capacities. Yet psychologism is enough out of step with studies of pictures outside philosophy that it dampens philosophy’s impact on the very scholars who could most use a defense of pictorial value. Here is a thesis: psychologism is false. Here is its payoff: an alternative to psychologism better suits the work of scholars outside philosophy.

The Psychologist Program Immediate answers to the pictorial value question list some values that pictures can realize, making reference to specific images whose value cannot be denied. While immediate answers are useful, they cannot stand alone, for they invite iconophobic spin doctoring. The spin doctors grant that some pictures have impressive value, but their value never accrues from any of the features that constitute them as pictures. Obviously, the value of some pictures is exhausted by the value of the precious stones laid into their surfaces, by their association with bits of history, or by their simple rarity. The spin doctors generalize: while granting that some pictures are valuable, they insist that none has value “as a picture”. In reply, deep answers to the pictorial value question build upon theories of pictorial value, theories that state what it is for a picture to have value as a picture. Psychologism opens up some avenues toward deep answers to the pictorial value question but closes off others. The filtering work is done via two assumptions that link value to appreciation.

Pictures 37 The first assumption puts appreciation first. Values are properties of pictures, and they are represented in episodes of appreciation. On valuefirst approaches, appreciative episodes are episodes that represent pictorial values, independently conceived. To understand appreciation, we must first understand the values that are appreciated. Appreciation-first approaches reverse the order of explanation, placing appreciation prior to value. A work’s value is determined by the value that lies in appreciating it. Since appreciation is an episode in the life of a person, whereas a value is a property of a picture, psychologism naturally puts appreciation first. Second, appreciation is a psychological phenomenon in the sense that what makes an episode appreciative is nothing but psychological traits and capacities of appreciators. Causal explanations of episodes of appreciation might include facts about pictures as well as facts about the social context. No matter what goes into the causal backstory, appreciation is, constitutively, psychological. These two assumptions close a gap in the psychologist program. How can we understand pictorial value just by appealing to cognitive traits and capacities, when values are properties of pictures, which have no cognitive traits or capacities? Answer: pictorial values are determined by the value that lies in appreciation, which is a psychological phenomenon. For it to work, the psychologist program also requires a distinction between appreciation and evaluation. An evaluation is any mental episode that represents an item’s value. Having consulted the folks at Lonely Planet, Nick believes that there is a Poussin worth looking at in the National Gallery. His belief is an evaluation. However, he does not appreciate the painting. He has never seen it. Likewise, strolling through the gallery, Peg recognizes that a photograph is a Tacita Dean, and she infers by induction that it is worth looking at. Her inferred belief is an evaluation. However, she does not appreciate the painting. Not yet. She only begins to appreciate it. That a state merely represents a value can tell psychologists nothing about the value. After all, what makes a V-representing state the state that it is must be cashed out in terms of its content, V. But cashing the state out in terms of its content puts value first, and psychologism puts the mental state first. Hence the state in question must be more than evaluation. Since episodes of appreciation represent values, appreciation is one species of evaluation, but not all evaluation is appreciation. There is more to appreciation than mere evaluation. What more? Cutting across the distinction between evaluation and appreciation is a further set of distinctions between different varieties of value: aesthetic, epistemic, moral, prudential and so on. Nick’s belief that the Poussin is worth looking is an evaluation, and it might be aesthetic, epistemic, moral, or an evaluation of some other kind. When Peg does get on with

38  Dominic McIver Lopes appreciating the Dean, her appreciation might be aesthetic, epistemic, moral, or an appreciation of some other kind. Robert Hopkins (1997) represents a commonly held view that aesthetic appreciation is aesthetic evaluation plus savoring (an alternative is Lopes 2019, ch. 9). In savoring, affective sensibilities are engaged in experiencing the details of a picture, so as to make the experience a pleasure. What about epistemic appreciation? Believing that a Rembrandt self-portrait opens our eyes to the rigors of self-scrutiny is not the same as having an experience in which we mirror Rembrandt’s self-scrutiny, turning it on ourselves (Lopes 2005, ch. 4). Time to take stock. The task is to answer the pictorial value question: what is it for a picture to have value as a picture? A deep answer builds upon a theory of pictorial value, which states what it is for a picture to have value as a picture. Since the psychologist program is to understand pictorial value by appeal to the value of appreciation, it follows that our target is pictorial appreciation—that is, appreciation of a picture as a picture. Given the appreciation-first assumption, specifically pictorial values are determined by the value of episodes of pictorial appreciation. Given the assumption that appreciation is a psychological phenomenon, a theory of pictorial appreciation makes reference only to psychological traits and capacities implicated in engaging with pictures. Since pictorial appreciation is more than mere evaluation, the psychological traits and capacities must be those that equip us to have pictorial experiences in which a picture is savored or more richly engaged in some other way. What traits and capacities are the ones whose exercise constitutes episodes of pictorial appreciation? The logic is this. To appreciate a picture as a picture, we must have a particular kind of experience of it, a pictorial experience; hence, a theory of pictorial experience figures in a theory of picture appreciation, which yields a theory of pictorial value. Philosophers have had much to say about the nature of pictorial experience, and a chart of positions would be too intricate to sketch here (some landmarks are Wollheim 1987; Hopkins 1998; Lopes 2005, ch. 1; Nanay 2005, 2017). For present purposes, we may abstract from the intricacies. Pictures are, at the very least, two-dimensional, configured surfaces that depict scenes (by stipulation, pure abstractions are not pictures). As a result, experiences of pictures as pictures are experiences that stand surface and scene in some relation to one another. Monists hold that there is one relation in which pictorial experiences stand surface and scene (e.g., Wollheim 1987; Hopkins 1998). Pluralists admit many such relations (e.g., Lopes 2005, ch. 1). Philosophers also disagree about whether the relation obtains between experiences or between their contents or between targets of awareness (e.g., Hopkins 1998 vs. Nanay 2005, 2017). Finally, the experiences need not be visual; they can be tactile (Kennedy 1993; Lopes 1997). Let nothing in what follows hinge on the intricacies. Pictorial experiences are those that relate

Pictures 39 picture surfaces and depicted scenes in the right way: they are surfacescene experiences. In sum, the psychologist program delivers the following principles. To begin with, V is a pictorial merit of P = a pictorial appreciation of P for being V is good. Appreciation comes first. Moreover, pictorial appreciation lies in having a pictorial experience: an appreciation of P is pictorial = it is an appreciation of P by means of having a pictorial experience. Together these two principles imply that V is a pictorial merit of P = a pictorial experience of P as V is good. Few of those who have signed onto the psychologist program would stop at this point. Without some restriction on which pictorial experiences are good, pictures turn out to have many, many more merits than we imagine. The fix is to inject a dose of normativity: (M) V is a pictorial merit of P in C = there is type of pictorial experience, E, such that it is a norm in C to have pictorial experiences of type E, and a type E pictorial experience of P as V is good. The context could be that of a taste community, a historical tradition, or an aesthetic or artistic practice. The normativity of pictorial values reduces to the quality of surface-scene experiences as prescribed in the relevant context. We get an answer to the deep question about pictorial value that roots it in facts about psychological episodes of appreciation.

Appreciation in Context The psychologist program makes a big ask. Any psychologist answer to the deep question says what makes some values of pictures specifically pictorial values. At the same time, it must appeal only to cognitive traits and capacities. To deliver on both fronts, (M) identifies facts about pictorial values with facts about the surface-scene experiences that pictures characteristically afford. A look at cases of pictorial appreciation in two historical contexts suggests that the bar is sometimes higher on pictorial appreciation than on pictorial experience. In his book Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, Michael Baxandall introduced the concept of the period eye, which consists in the

40  Dominic McIver Lopes packet of skills implicated in perceiving pictures in a social context. Some skills are geared specifically toward perceiving pictures—for example, skills in detecting traces of the artist’s efforts. However, many visual skills that beholders bring to paintings have their home in everyday perception. As Baxandall explains, each “must use on the painting such visual skills as he has, very few of which are normally special to painting, and he is likely to use those skills his society esteems highly. The painter responds to this: his public’s visual capacities must be his medium” (1972: 40). The result is a self-fulfilling loop, where artists exploit the skills of their target audience, with the result that their audience is more likely to use and cultivate the same skills. Baxandall observes how few skills are specific to perceiving pictures, and the observation is momentous. We appreciate quattrocento painting. Insofar as quattrocento painting demands of its target audience picturespecific skills, we acquire the same skills as part of learning the tradition. By contrast, we acquire few of the perceptual skills that were uniquely adapted to fifteenth-century social life, religious practice and business affairs. Baxandall’s most delightful example is the aptitude for commercial gauging in the target audience for quattrocento pictures. In a time before standardized measures, anyone involved in business learned geometrical methods for gauging quantities. Baxandall quotes a contemporary textbook: There is a barrel, each of its ends being 2 bracci in diameter; the diameter at its bung is 2 1/4 bracci and halfway between bung and end it is 2 2/9 bracci. The barrel is 2 bracci long. What is its cubic measure? This is like a pair of truncated cones. Square the diameter at the ends: 2 × 2 = 4. Then square the median diameter 2 2/9 × 2 2/9 = 4 76/81. Add them together: 8 76/81. Multiply 2 × 2 2/9 = 4 4/9. Add this to 8 76/81 = 13 31/81. Divide by 3 = 4 112/243 . . . Now square 2 1/4 = 2 1/4 × 2 1/4 = 5 1/16. Add it to the square of the median diameter: 15 5/16 + 4 76/81 = 10 1/129. Divide by 3: 5 1/3888. Add it t the first result: 4 112/243 + 5 1/3888 = 9 1792/3888. Multiply this by 11 and then divide by 14: the final result is 7 23600/54432. Baxandall dryly adds, “it is a special intellectual world” (1972: 86). What is special is not only the dizzying arithmetic but also what precedes it, the analysis of a complex form into a combination of regular geometrical solids. Quattrocento Italians brought their geometer’s skill to looking at pictures that were made to be looked at with the same trained eye. We no longer have this training. So what? Baxandall makes a good case that the rigmarole makes an aesthetic difference. A quattrocento viewer of Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto (fig. 1) would analyze the tent-like structure into a compound of a cylinder and a cone, thereby appreciating the picture as

Pictures 41 vivid and concrete (1972: 91). Lacking the quattrocento viewer’s analytic skills, we cannot appreciate the picture in the same way. Hundreds of years later and several notches closer to us in culture, the demands on picture-users are no less onerous. Michael Fried tells how a painting in eighteenth-century France “had to call to someone, bring him to a halt in front of itself, and hold him there as if spellbound and unable to move” (1980: 92). Meeting the demand put the spectator in an impossible situation. The minute that they recognize the means by which the picture holds them, they become aware of the picture as addressing them, and the spell is broken. They must therefore maintain the fiction that they are not being addressed, though the enterprise is unstable and bound to fail. An early ploy is to depict figures as utterly absorbed in some activity, hence unaware of the spectator, as in Chardin’s Soap Bubbles (fig. 2). The ploy worked for a while and then wore off. In a series of books, Fried shows how much of the history of European pictorial art

Figure 2.1  Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto, after 1457

42  Dominic McIver Lopes

Figure 2.2  Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Soap Bubbles, 1733–35

can be explained as a series of attempts to recover the eighteenth-century appreciative ideal, and he contends that some recent photography carries the tradition up to the present (Fried 2008). Even today, if Fried is right, we sometimes work hard, when we appreciate pictures, to lose ourselves. Episodes of appreciation such as these clearly involve more than evaluation. Just having read the above, you might believe that Soap Bubbles is absorptive, but your belief falls far short of an appreciation. On psychologist principles, appreciation lies in having a good surface-scene experience. However, Baxandall’s and Fried’s cases of appreciation are so demanding that they require more than having good surface-scene experiences. The worry can be expressed the other way around. On psychologist principles, having a good surface-scene experience suffices for undergoing an episode of pictorial appreciation that makes a picture good as a picture. In fact, though, one can have a good surface-scene experience that represents a value in a picture without appreciating the picture in the very way that is required to make it good as a picture. Now that you

Pictures 43 know Baxandall’s story, you come to experience the Piero as vivid and concrete when you see the scene in its surface. Your knowledge penetrates your experience (Stokes 2014, 2018). Why not add that your experience is good, or could be? Yet you do not, because you cannot, appreciate it in the same way as did its target audience. To bring the worry into sharper focus, consider (M) V is a pictorial merit of P in C = there is type of pictorial experience, E, such that it is a norm in C to have pictorial experiences of type E, and a type E pictorial experience of P as V is good. In the context of quattrocento painting, vividness is a merit of the Piero. Turning to the right hand side of (M), there is a norm to have a given type of surface-scene experience when looking at quattrocento paintings. Suppose that you have such an experience, one representing the appearance of the tent in relation to the surface properties of the painting. In addition, your background knowledge, acquired from reading Baxandall, penetrates the experience, so that it represents the painting as vivid. Why not add that the experience is good to undergo? Maybe it is pleasing, for instance. Nevertheless, your appreciation of the painting is not the kind of appreciation that Baxandall describes and that makes it the case that the painting is vivid. The trouble is that there is more to pictorial appreciation than having a good V-representing surface-scene experience. The trouble arises because it is only surface-scene experiences that are distinctively pictorial, and surface-scene experiences are what they are no matter how they come about. One and the same surface-scene experience can result from looking at a picture with a background in commercial gauging, or it can result from cognitive penetration of some historical knowledge. The experience is a state that simply represents surface properties, tent properties and the value property of being vivid. Perhaps the deeper trouble is that appreciation is an activity, where the steps of the process matter, whereas experiences are fully typed by their contents (Van Der Berg 2018). Does this diagnosis suggest a defense of (M)? The defense is that what makes the vividness a merit in the Piero is that it be appreciated in the right way, where appreciating the Piero in the right way requires having a pictorial experience that is good in the right way. What distinguishes your appreciation from that of Piero’s contemporaries is not the type of surface-scene experience that is involved, but rather the type of goodness that is involved. This defense gets us nowhere. Either the goodness is intrinsic to the surface-scene experience, or it is not. If it is intrinsic to the experience, then anyone who has the experience gains the goodness, no matter how the experience arose. In that case, (M) is in trouble: what makes the vividness a merit in the Piero is an experience that is too easy to come by. You have it when your experience is penetrated by your historical knowledge. But if its goodness is not intrinsic to the experience, then (M) does

44  Dominic McIver Lopes not answer the deep question. We want to know what makes a merit pictorial. The idea behind (M) is to point to psychological traits and capacities that are specifically implicated in our encounters with pictures. How is the experience good in a specifically pictorial way, apart from being a surface-scene experience? Either way, (M) and the psychologist approach it represents need rethinking. Psychologism assumes that pictorial values are those realized in episodes of appreciation, which are psychological phenomena. Hence (M) analyzes pictorial values as represented in good pictorial experiences. Yet not all good pictorial experiences are value-constituting episodes of pictorial appreciation. Baxandall and Fried make the point dramatically by describing super-demanding regimes of appreciation. The drama is inessential. There is a gap between value-constituting appreciations and those good pictorial experiences that do not constitute pictorial values.

Value First Psychologism reverses standard operating procedure in philosophy, which is to understand psychological states with reference to what they represent. Why hesitate to follow standard operation procedure and put pictorial value first, explaining pictorial appreciation as representing pictorial value? Part of the answer lies in the intuitive appeal of a form of hedonism, according to which, when it comes to art, what has fundamental value are finally valuable states of mind (e.g., Lewis 1946; Beardsley 1979; Mothersill 1984; Levinson 1992; Walton 1993; Budd 1995; Iseminger 2004, ch. 3; Goldman 2006; Stecker 2006). Hesitation might also stem from widespread queasiness about moral realism. However, concerns that favor anti-realism with respect to moral value need not drive us into the arms of a general anti-realism about value. What metaphysical scruples or internalist intuitions compel us to spurn such properties as being good as a can opener and being a good beefsteak tomato? Why not try out putting pictorial value first? Putting value first is not the complete opposite of putting appreciation first. Putting appreciation first assumes that an item’s value is determined by the value that lies in appreciating it. Episodes of appreciation must be special, not merely evaluations, since there is more to what it is for an item to have a value than the fact that a state represents the value. Appreciation-first approaches bank on our having an independent grip on a privileged class of evaluations, namely episodes of appreciation. Once we invert the order of explanation and put value first, we no longer need to privilege appreciation. Episodes of appreciation deserve to be explained, and an explanation of them will appeal to their representing value, but non-appreciative evaluations also need to be explained by appeal to the values they represent. Appreciation occupies no privileged location in our explanatory scheme.

Pictures 45 Adapting a framework laid out by Judith Jarvis Thomson (2008), Beyond Art proposes a way to think about each of the arts as realizing characteristic values (Lopes 2014, chs 7–8). The claim is that each art has a medium that is a value kind. In general, K is a value kind = there is a property of being good qua K, or being good-modified for a K, or being good qua K* for a K. If the medium of pictures is depiction, then the specific claim is that depiction is a value kind. There is a property of being good qua depiction, or being good-modified for a depiction, or of being good qua K* for a depiction. When there is a property of being good qua K, then what it is to be a K sets a standard a K has to meet for it to be good qua K. Thus, being a good can opener consists in having a sharp blade that opens cans without effort, and being good qua seeing eye dog consists in flawlessly assisting people to navigate their environment. Can openers and seeing eye dogs are functional kinds: what it is to be a member of the kind is to have a certain function. Hence, to be good qua member of a functional kind is to meet the standard set by the relevant function. However, there can be a property of being good qua K even though K is not a functional kind. Thomson’s example is beefsteak tomatoes. Beefsteak tomatoes do not make up a functional kind, for “there is nothing they do about which it could be asked whether or not they do it well”, yet tomatoes that are “large at maturity while nevertheless tasting good” are good qua beefsteak tomatoes (Thomson 2008: 20). What it is to be a beefsteak tomato sets a standard met by good instances of the kind. Not all kinds set a standard of goodness. The fact that a pebble is a small stone smoothed by erosion sets no standard for a pebble to meet to be good qua pebble; there is nothing it is for an item to be good qua pebble. Of course, a pebble might still be good in some respect. A pebble might be good at alleviating thirst, though the nature of pebbles does not set a standard of goodness in respect of quenching thirst. Being good at alleviating thirst is a way of being “good-modified”. Likewise, a passage of text might be being good to use teaching logic, and a body might be good to look at. Sometimes an item is good-modified for a K. To see this, contrast being good-modified and a K with the property of being good-modified for a K. Being good to look at and also an athlete is not the same as being good to look at for an athlete. Since athletes are on average very good to look at, calling someone good to look at for an athlete is higher praise than merely conjoining the observations that he is an athlete and that he is good to look at. A six-year-old who is good at doing crossword puzzles is a crossword prodigy, since six-year-olds are not known for their crossword prowess. However, saying that she is good at doing

46  Dominic McIver Lopes crossword puzzles for a six-year-old child does not imply that she is a prodigy. She might fall below the average for crossword-solving ability. Finally, an item might be good qua K for a K*, where there is nothing it is to be good qua K*. An Apple II might be a good computer for a computer made in 1980, and a boy might be a good composer for a six-year-old child. The kinds computers and composers set a standard of goodness on their instances, but not the kinds that are comprised of things made in 1980 and six-year-old children. Again, properties of being good qua K for a K* are not compound properties like those of being a good computer and being made in 1980 (not just a classic of its era, but as good as one of any era), or being a good composer and being a six-year-old child (therefore a musical prodigy). If depiction is a value kind, then there is a property of being good qua depiction, or being good-modified for a depiction, or of being good qua K* for a depiction. Maybe what it is to be a depiction sets a standard to be met by good depictions. Maybe an item can be aesthetically or epistemically or morally good for a depiction—that is, in a way that takes account of its being a depiction. Maybe an item can be good as an instance of some other kind in a way that takes account of its being a depiction. In the aftermath of Goodman, philosophers have had much to say about depiction, and the landscape of positions is too extensive to sketch here (some landmarks are Wollheim 1987; Lopes 1996; Hopkins 1998; Kulvicki 2010, 2014; Voltolini 2015). Abstracting from the intricacies, let us suppose that pictures are, at the very least, two-dimensional, configured surfaces that represent scenes in a distinctive manner. The distinctive way that two-dimensional, configured surfaces represent scenes might be cashed out in terms of the experiences they afford, but it need not be. Everyone nonetheless agrees that depiction stands a two-dimensional, configured surface in relation to a scene in some special way. That depiction is the medium of pictures, where depiction is a value kind, partially answers the deep question of what makes a value pictorial. The proposal is that any pictorial merit is a determinate of a determinable in virtue of which depiction is a value kind. That is, V is a pictorial merit of P only if V is a determinate of a property of being good qua depiction, or being good-modified for a depiction, or being good qua K* for a depiction. To save on words, express this claim by saying that V is a pictorial merit of P only if it is a “depictive merit property”. Note how the proposal accommodates the values that Baxandall and Fried attribute to the Piero and the Chardin. The Piero’s being vivid is a pictorial merit in it only if it is a way of (1) meeting a standard set by the nature of depiction, or (2) being good-modified where its being a depiction is a factor, or (3) meeting a standard set by the nature of some non-depictive

Pictures 47 kind, but where its being a depiction is a factor. Set aside (3). What about (1)? Arguably, depiction is a functional kind whose instances are good insofar as they perform an information-imparting function. Even so, the Piero’s being vivid involves more than its being informative. In accordance with (2), its being vivid is a way of being aesthetically good-modified, where how vivid it is reflects the fact that it is a depiction. Similarly, the Chardin’s being spellbinding is a pictorial merit in part because it is a way of being aesthetically good, where how spellbinding it is takes into account its being a two-dimensional surface that represents a scene. Examples like these also indicate why there must be more to V’s being a pictorial merit in P than V’s being a depictive merit property. Art critics and historians talk of quattrocento painting and the tradition of absorptive painting as “regimes”. Soap Bubbles is not spellbinding for a picture; it is spellbinding for an eighteenth-century French picture. The Madonna del Parto is not vivid for a picture; it is vivid for a quattrocento picture. In general, being a pictorial merit of P in C is not the same as being pictorial merit of P tout court. In our short form jargon, V is a pictorial merit of P in C = V is depictive merit property in C. So the question arises, what goes into a depictive merit property to make it a depictive merit property in C? Pictorial regimes give us different kinds of pictures. Quattrocento painting is one kind of picture and eighteenth-century absorptive painting is another. Moreover, these are different value kinds, because a painting might be good-modified for a quattrocento painting or it might be good-modified for an absorptive painting, and these are not the same properties. Yet both value kinds nest within the depictive value kind: they are different ways of realizing depictive values. Running with this thought, Beyond Art proposes that specific arts and sub-genres are social practices constituted by norms centered on media (Lopes 2014, ch. 8). Social practices are patterns of action where members of a practice conform to some rules on condition that other members do so too. Some social practices yield value kinds. For example, the Shetland sheepdog is a value kind. Pretty for a sheltie is prettier than pretty for a pug, and “cute ugly” for a sheltie would hardly cut it as “cute ugly” for a pug. What makes this the case is a combination of facts about the “medium” breeders have to work with, namely Canis lupus familiaris, plus facts about rules constitutive of the breeding practice that its members follow on condition that others do too. A published “breed standard” stipulates that shelties should have eyes of “medium size obliquely set, almondshaped, dark brown except in the case of merles, where one or both may be blue or blue flecked” (Kennel Club 2010). The norm sets the standard for being good qua Shetland sheepdog, and the kind is also a factor in what it is to be good-modified for a Shetland sheepdog.

48  Dominic McIver Lopes Obviously, the norms that constitute picture-making practices are rarely published, or even made explicit (until they are later described by historians). Nonetheless, picture-users do converge on norms that constitute different kinds of pictures. Some norms are epistemic, as are those that dictate how to make scientific illustrations (Lopes 2009). Other norms are artistic, as we see in the history of regimes or practices of photographic art, for example (Lopes 2016). Since liveliness in a NASA Cassini image is different from liveliness in a Jeff Wall tableau, each belongs to a different pictorial value kind. In general, V is a pictorial merit of P in C = V is a determinate of a property of being good qua K, or being good-modified for a K, or being good qua K* for a K, where K is the pictorial value kind, situated in C, to which P belongs. A pictorial value kind is a social practice centered on the medium of depiction: its constitutive norms have the effect of selecting from or inflecting depictive merit properties. Any picture can be vivid or spellbinding for a depiction. The Piero is vivid for a quattrocento picture and the Chardin is spellbinding for an eighteenth-century French picture. Such tastes for metaphysical austerity as inhibit some from taking moral values to be fundamental need not turn us against pictorial values. Pictorial values are as well founded as being a good can opener, being good at solving crosswords, being a good example of a Shetland sheepdog, being a good investment, and being a good side of the road to drive on around here. What about hedonist intuitions that what is fundamentally good, when it comes to the arts, is finally valuable states of mind? How does putting value first shed light on appreciation?

Appreciation Second Histories of appreciation in social context compromise philosophers’ intuitions about appreciation. If episodes of pictorial appreciation are finally valuable responses to pictures, and the point is to have finally valuable experiences, then why would anyone go to so much trouble to trick themselves into being spellbound by a picture, for example? Suppose that appreciation is not a phenomenon whose nature is revealed in philosophers’ intuitions. The alternative is to treat appreciation as what is conceptualized in the best hypotheses and explanations of historical and critical studies, such as those of Baxandall and Fried (Lopes 2018). The proposal is not to lift a theory of pictorial appreciation directly from the observations of historians. We have no reason to assume that appreciation just is what it is understood to be in a historical setting. The method is more subtle. In order to explain the features pictures have in a context, and in order to explain how they were used in a context,

Pictures 49 historians generate hypotheses about the doings and capacities of agents in their social settings. Implicit in some of their hypotheses is a conception of appreciation as an activity undertaken by agents that explains facts about the pictures the agents interact with. A theory of pictorial appreciation is a theory of appreciation as it is conceived in these hypotheses. For Baxandall and Fried, pictures have the features they have in a social context because spectators in that context have work to do. Their task is to undertake a specific activity, as demanded in the social context. The Piero’s spectator must use their gauging skills on the picture. The Chardin’s spectator must engage in a pretense that results in its striking them that they have caught a glimpse of a scene that has not been prepared for them to see. In neither case does it suffice that they have a correct, good surface-scene experience that also represents the value of the picture. To discharge their office, they must live up to the far more demanding expectations that Baxandall and Fried describe. A core expectation is that they act in a way that is consistent with and indeed guided by a correct evaluation of the picture (Lopes 2019, ch. 2). The Piero’s spectator is guided by an experience that represents it as vividly concrete, while the Chardin’s is guided by an experience that represents it as spellbinding. This core expectation yields an answer to the question of what makes an appreciation a specifically pictorial one. An episode is a pictorial appreciation only if it depends counterfactually on the content of a pictorial value attribution. In other words, how the appreciation unfolds over time would be different were the appreciator to experience the picture as indistinct or posturing rather than vivid or spellbinding. In sum, a value in a picture is a pictorial value just when it is a determinate of a value property that accrues to a picture within a social practice centered on depictive value properties. An appreciation is pictorial only when it depends counterfactually on an attribution of a pictorial value. No doubt a second condition should be added: an appreciation is pictorial only if it involves a surface-scene experience. A full account adds to these two necessary conditions, but they adequately characterize how some appreciations are specifically pictorial. Evaluations are correct or incorrect. Sometimes they are good to make. Insofar as they involve evaluations, appreciations are also correct or incorrect. At least sometimes they are good or bad to undergo. No doubt their value is sometimes a final value—they have hedonic tone. Is it constitutive of appreciation that episodes of appreciation have final value? Putting value first relieves us of answering the question. So what if episodes have final value only contingently? Any final value they might have is not what confers value on pictures. The argument for putting value first is that it better accommodates empirical art studies, where values are seen as intimately embedded in social structures, while at the same time delivering an account of what

50  Dominic McIver Lopes makes some appreciations specifically pictorial. Despite the power of the social construction meme, taking sociality seriously is compatible with taking value seriously too. Perhaps, in aesthetics, a social turn and a turn to value are most deftly executed together.

References Baxandall, M. (1972). Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beardsley, M. C. (1979). “In Defense of Aesthetic Value”. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 53: 723–749. Budd, M. (1995). Values of Art: Painting, Poetry, and Music. London: Penguin. Fried, M. (1980). Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fried, M. (2008). Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. New Haven: Yale University Press. Goldman, A. H. (2006). “The Experiential Account of Aesthetic Value”. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64: 333–342. Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett. Hopkins, R. (1997). “Pictures and Beauty”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97: 177–194. Hopkins, R. (1998). Picture, Image, and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Iseminger, G. (2004). The Aesthetic Function of Art. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kennedy, J. M. (1993). Drawing and the Blind: Pictures to Touch. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kennel Club. (2010). Shetland Sheepdog Breed Standard. . Kulvicki, J. (2010). On Images: Their Structure and Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kulvicki, J. (2014). Images. New York: Routledge. Levinson, J. (1992). “Pleasure and the Value of Works of Art”. British Journal of Aesthetics 32: 295–306. Lewis, C. I. (1946). An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. La Salle: Open Court. Lopes, D. (1996). Understanding Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lopes, D. (1997). “Art Media and the Sense Modalities: Tactile Pictures”. Philosophical Quarterly 47: 425–440. Lopes, D. (2005). Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lopes, D. (2009). “Drawing in a Social Science: Lithic Illustration”. Perspectives on Science 17: 5–25. Lopes, D. (2014). Beyond Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lopes, D. (2016). Four Arts of Photography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Pictures 51 Lopes, D. (2018). Aesthetics on the Edge: Where Philosophy Meets the Human Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lopes, D. (2019). Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mothersill, M. (1984). Beauty Restored. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nanay, B. (2005). “Is Twofoldness Necessary for Representational Seeing?” British Journal of Aesthetics 45: 248–257. Nanay, B. (2017). “Threefoldness”. Philosophical Studies 175: 163–182. Stecker, R. (2006). “Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Value”. Philosophy Compass 1: 1–10. Stokes, D. (2014). “Cognitive Penetration and the Perception of Art”. Dialectica 68: 1–34. Stokes, D. (2018). “Rich Perceptual Content and Aesthetic Properties”. Evaluative Perception, edited by A. Bergqvist and R. Cowan, 19–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomson, J. J. (2008). Normativity. Chicago: Open Court. Van Der Berg, S. (2018). Appraising Appreciation. Doctoral Dissertation. Vancouver: University of British Columbia. Voltolini, A. (2015). A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction. London: Palgrave-Macmillan. Walton, K. (1993). “How Marvelous! Towards a Theory of Aesthetic Value”. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51: 499–510. Wollheim, R. (1987). Painting as an Art. London and New York: Thames and Hudson.

3  It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It On the Differences Between Aesthetic Evaluation and Appreciation Clotilde Calabi, Wolfgang Huemer and Marco Santambrogio In attempting to clarify the notion of aesthetic appreciation, it clearly is a nonstarter—pace Kant and other philosophers—to suppose that it has anything in particular to do with beauty, except, of course, in case the adjective beautiful is taken as a synonym of artistically valuable or something closely equivalent to it.1 This was so even before Dadaists abused beauty in the early decades of the last century.2 It is easy to point to instances of artworks that have passed the test of centuries of aesthetic appreciation and are considered classics and yet are positively unpleasant or even ugly. There is no sense in which crucified men, weeping old women, horses dying on the battle field can be said to be beautiful. Of course, the subject of a painting or a statue is not the same thing as the painting or the statue itself, and it is quite possible for a sublime artwork to depict an ugly or even revolting subject in such a way that we take great pleasure in looking at it. We may say that the artwork itself is beautiful, but this is merely to repeat that it is a sublime artwork. In any case, contemporary art has made it clear that beauty has little chance to play any explanatory role as far as aesthetic appreciation is concerned. Duchamp’s Fountain is not beautiful. Neither is Guernica. Nor Brillo Box.3 The hypothesis that next comes to mind is that aesthetic appreciation is essentially tied to a special category of objects that have no particular function to perform.4 Call it the Special Category Theory. Paintings and sculptures always belonged to that special category, which the past century considerably enlarged. Furthermore, one can think that aesthetic appreciation is appreciation of a special kind differing, e.g., from economic appreciation, which can also consider objects belonging to that special category albeit in a different way. Aesthetic appreciation—the thought is—is based on perception of a special kind or an attitude of a special kind, the aesthetic one, that detects special properties, namely the aesthetic ones. Adjectives such as beautiful, sublime and also mediocre, flat, etc., apply to paintings, sculptures and the rest—not to the subjects

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  53 they depict—insofar as aesthetic perception detects such aesthetic properties in them. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, when it comes to state what exactly that category, that perception, and those properties are, we seem to be at a loss. Nowhere are aesthetic properties, as distinct from all other properties, to be found. When we judge that a painting, for instance, is sublime, the properties making it such are the ordinary ones that ordinary perception can detect, such as colors and shapes, or the second order ones such as what Piero della Francesca termed commensuratio and his pupil, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, proportion, which are also directly perceived.5 Another seeming minor problem for this hypothesis is that, in the category of objects and events that are to be aesthetically appreciated, together with those that are produced by the fine arts, we find other rather prosaic entities that have little in common with the artistic ones. If we are to trust the English language, friends, words, gold and much more belong to that category, since phrases such as a fine friend, fine words, fine gold, etc., are perfectly appropriate. This is no quirk of the English language: in Italian un bell’amico, un bel guaio, un bell’idiota are of daily use, even though friends, troubles and idiots have no truck with belle arti; and similarly in German, where we find idiomatic expressions like “schöne Bescherung” or “schön blöd”. This is only the tip of an iceberg. The category of entities that admit of aesthetic appreciation is very large indeed. The days when color-coated canvasses and tablets, and chunks of marble, bronze, or wood were its only inhabitants are long past. The last century was quite successful in showing that material, inanimate objects portraying other objects, natural or artificial, are not alone in being the products of the visual arts. Events such as performances, living bodies, objets trouvés, non-artifacts (as in land art) and much else are perfectly kosher denizens of the aesthetic category. Later on, we shall capitalize on the fact that even mathematical theorems, games of chess and philosophy papers can be said to be elegant (or nondescript) and are, thus, subject to aesthetic appreciation. It is now dawning on us that, perhaps, just about everything can be aesthetically appreciated. Far from pointing to a special category of entities, the adjective aesthetic merely qualifies the point of aesthetic evaluation. A major obstacle confronting the same hypothesis is the fact that aesthetic perception, whatever it might turn out to be, can only reveal properties belonging to objects and events that are to be aesthetically appreciated. However, it looks as though, most of the time, we evaluate artworks relative to some context or other. For instance, as a work of art, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain undoubtedly is a masterpiece, even though it goes unnoticed as a serviceable sanitary item. Brillo Box is both a mediocre piece of commercial art (by James Harvey, a second-generation Abstract Expressionist) and also a product of Andy Warhol’s genius. Of two portraits undistinguishable

54  Clotilde Calabi et al. to the naked eye, one could be a sixteenth century marvel, the other a piece of twentieth-century kitsch, or a copy of the former of no worth. Of Pietro Annigoni’s portraits, it was said that they would be remarkable had they been painted in the Renaissance but, as works of a twentieth-century artist, they have little aesthetic value. It is possible that the latter obstacle is not insurmountable. After all, the aforementioned statements, evaluating artworks relative to some context or other, can be challenged. Perhaps, they merely convey a fashionable, but in fact baseless, form of contemporary relativism. In any case, we shall not discuss the Special Category Theory any further. Instead, we shall sketch an alternative theory of aesthetic appraisal that, on the one hand, can better cope with the problems noted so far and with the novelties of contemporary art, and on the other, gives pride of place to the attitudes of the naive observer. We shall argue that aesthetic appraisal consists of two distinct and largely autonomous attitudes we can take toward artworks, though they can be in many ways intertwined with one another.

§1 If it is indeed true that we always evaluate artworks relative to some context or other, then the most straightforward way of accounting for this fact is to conjecture that the basic form of judgments of aesthetic evaluation is the following: Thesis 1 (Positive Aesthetic Evaluation): Item x is to be positively aesthetically evaluated if and only if, for some category y, x fully meets all the requirements implicit in our intuitive understanding of y and closely resembles the prototypical instances of y. This will be the first tenet of our provisional theory. Consider, for example, a Gothic church—say, Strasburg cathedral. What does it take for it to be a fine Gothic church? A number of criteria can be stated verbally. For instance, a Gothic cathedral has to date from a certain period in the Middle Ages and was laid out in a cruciform shape, was based on a logical skeleton of clustered columns, pointed ribbed vaults and flying buttresses arranged in a system of diagonal arches and arches enclosing the vault field that allows the outward thrust exerted by the groin vaults to be channeled from the walls and into specific points on a supporting mass. The result of this curvature in the vaults and arches of the church was the casting of indeterminable localized thrust that architects learned to counter with an opposing thrust in the form of the flying buttress and application of calculated weight via the pinnacle”.6

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  55 And so on. Note, however, that it is perfectly conceivable that some Gothic cathedral exists that meets all these requirements, and possibly others that can be stated verbally, and yet is not a fine Gothic cathedral. As we all know, some students, not only in the academies of fine arts, conscientiously follow all the rules and precepts they have been taught but, for some reason, their works are dull and definitely not beautiful. What is it that they are missing? As every good teacher knows, verbal directions are never enough: one has to give examples for the students to follow.7 Only when a student has come sufficiently close in her works to the examples she was exposed to, can we say she is good. This teaches us the general lesson: an artwork is to be evaluated as good only when it comes sufficiently close to the prototypical instances of the relevant category. What is a prototype is a matter of considerable complexity. Extensive work has been done in the past on this subject, notably by Eleanor Rosch and her associates (cf., for example, Rosch and Mervis 1975 and Rosch 1978). More recently, the subject was revisited in connection with the issue of vagueness by Paul Egré and others (cf., for example, Verheyen and Egré, forthcoming). Establishing whether an item belongs to a given category obviously is a kind of evaluation. Aesthetic appreciation is of a piece with it but more demanding. It amounts to considering not only whether a given item falls within the relevant category but also how close it comes to the prototypical or paradigmatic instances of the category. The closer to those instances, the better for the item to pass the appreciation test with flying colors. So, to go back to our example, when is a Gothic church bestowed the title of a fine Gothic church? The answer is, if it resembles at least one of the great cathedrals of Reims, Beauvais, Monreale, Glasgow, etc. Some worries immediately come to mind concerning Thesis 1. One might point out that those paradigmatic instances of Gothic cathedral are so diverse that in order to resemble any one of them an item must widely diverge from most of the rest. This raises some doubt concerning the use of considering such a wide category as that of Gothic cathedrals as such. Would it not much more useful to have subcategories corresponding, e.g., to the local varieties of the Gothic style? We shall take up this issue later on. As to the paradigmatic instances themselves, it is doubtful that it makes much sense to ask whether they are fine examples of their respective categories. It sounds rather silly to ask: Is the Reims cathedral a fine Gothic church? Is Mona Lisa a fine portrait? Is Myron’s Discobolus a fine work of sculpture? They are the paragons, they set the standards and, as such, they are in some sense beyond aesthetic evaluation. This raises a further worry. We pointed out that it is not sufficient for an artwork to meet all the requirements implicit in our ordinary

56  Clotilde Calabi et al. understanding of a category in order to amount to a fine specimen of that category. Closeness to the outstanding examples—we surmise—is also required. However, one might object that every artwork that marks a decisive turning point in the history of an artistic discipline is bound to depart considerably from all the existing examples. After all, this is precisely what a turning point amounts to. Thus, closeness to extant examples is not necessary for excellence in any category and any theory based on Thesis 1—this is the objection one can raise—is exceedingly conservative, insofar as it lacks the tools for appreciating radically new artworks. The answer to this objection must wait until we have introduced the second of the two theses on which the theory is based. We shall not further expand here on the thesis of Positive Aesthetic Appreciation and its consequences. Kendall Walton’s seminal paper Categories of Art presents in detail a theory of aesthetic appreciation that comes very close to our first thesis—except that it does not acknowledge the important role of stereotypes, which were brought to the philosopher’s attention especially by Hilary Putnam at the end of the sixties.8 There is also reason for dissenting from Walton’s theory insofar as it claims that for every artwork—usually, even though this is not always so—there exists a unique category to which it objectively belongs (cf. Walton 1970: 354ff). Most of the time, aesthetic judgments are therefore absolute, according to it. In a minute, we shall see that contemporary art has made it mandatory to abandon that claim.

§2 The need for our second thesis becomes apparent as soon as one considers that the condition for being positively appreciated is all too easily met for any item, no matter how ugly or insignificant—at least, if it makes sense to call a prototypical instance of a category a fine specimen of that category. For, if this is so, of course for every x there is some category y such that x not only belongs to y but is an absolutely central instance of y: it is the quite trivial category to which only x belongs.9 Clearly, categories are not all on a par and the relevant ones are to be singled out somehow. But even apart from such trivial cases, the astounding innovations of modern art and the fact that artworks exist now that are quite unlike anything that belonged to the categories that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century shows that the notion of a category is to be carefully examined. To which category does Brillo Box belong? Walton would answer that, undeniably, it is a piece of sculpture and, every artwork normally belonging to one and only one category, sculpture is the category relative to which it has to be absolutely evaluated. However, that category is so large and so diverse, that no definite judgment concerning Brillo Box and

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  57 its aesthetic quality relative to it is forthcoming. Or, perhaps, if the Elgin marbles, Michelangelo’s David, Giacometti’s and Brancusi’s works are taken to be the paradigmatic exemplars of that category, then Brillo Box, being so radically different from any one of them, will turn out to be a very poor aesthetic work. But, intuitively and in the opinion of most art critics, it is not at all a poor work. Therefore, a suitable category has to be found, such that Brillo Box will turn out to resemble the paradigmatic representatives of it very closely. Clearly, we have to turn to art critics to be directed to the right categories. What do art critics say about Brillo Box? Arthur Danto has written extensively on this. commercial art through its ordinariness was in some way what Warhol’s art was about. He had a view of the ordinary world as aesthetically beautiful, and admired greatly the things Harvey and his Abstract Expressionist heroes would have ignored or condemned. Andy loved the surfaces of daily life, the nutritiousness and predictability of canned goods, the poetics of the commonplace. Roy Lichtenstein once said in my presence, “Isn’t this a wonderful world?”, adding that it was something Andy said all the time. [. . .] Warhol’s boxes were a reaction to Abstract Expressionism, but mainly with respect to honoring what Abstract Expressionism despised. (Danto 2013: 43) In so explaining what Warhol had in mind, Danto takes himself to be giving the meaning of Brillo Box or, equivalently, what it is about. In my first book on the philosophy of art, I thought that works of art are about something, and I decided that works of art accordingly have meaning. We infer meanings, we grasp meanings, but meanings are not at all material. (Danto 2013: 37) Danto is here using some notions taken from the philosophy of language— meaning, aboutness, denotation—but it is not so important for us to be clear about these notions and their relations, even though Danto takes them as crucial in giving the essence of art: “An embodied meaning is what makes an object a work of art” (Danto 2013: 39). Thus, contrary to almost every other contemporary philosopher, he does not take art to be an open concept, for there exists something—an essence—that is common to all and only artworks: “When philosophers supposed that there is no property that artworks share, they were looking only at visible properties. It is the invisible properties [meanings] that make something art”. (Danto 2013: 40).

58  Clotilde Calabi et al. In so explaining what Brillo Box is about, Danto is telling us what relevant art category it belongs to. (As a matter of fact, it is likely to belong to more than one category. However, most of them are either trivial or at any rate uninteresting—e.g., because they are too broad.) Very roughly speaking, it is the category of ready-made, of which Duchamp’s Fountain and In Advance of the Broken Arm are early and prototypical representatives. Brillo Box resembles them not in shape but insofar as it makes it clear that a common artifact that is often met with in daily life is in fact valuable and deserves to be exhibited in museums. Other instances of the same category are Warhol’s Campbell Soup, Claes Oldenburg’s Sandwich, Giant BLT and so on. Now and then, in the history of art criticism, the claim surfaces that everything that is needed in order to aesthetically appreciate an artwork must be plainly in sight in the work itself. No information that the art critic can mine by painstakingly researching the production of the work, the personality and the intentions of the artist and the context in which it is placed, can really be relevant. What has not been clearly appreciated so far, in our opinion, is that the contribution made by the art critic, who points to the invisible properties—the meaning—of artworks and in so doing helps us in appreciating them, consists in picking the right categories to which they belong and relative to which they are to be evaluated. Thesis 2: The meaning of an artwork (Danto’s understanding of the term—i.e., what the artwork is about) determines the relevant category, relative to which the artwork is to be aesthetically evaluated by comparing it with the prototypical representatives. We are now in a position to begin, at least, answering the charge of conservatism mentioned above. The charge was that, insofar as similarity to the extant, paradigmatic exemplars of the category is a necessarily condition for excellence in any art category, new works departing considerably from the tradition and its standards could never achieve a high status, according to the theory. But, as a matter of fact, sometimes they do. Thus, the theory does not have the resources for accounting for this phenomenon. Here is the beginning of an answer. Note, first of all, that it is a fact that every genuine revolution in art has to face considerable difficulties before it makes it into art galleries and museums and private collections. If any revolution ever occurred in art, impressionism was one such. We all know to what an extent the founding fathers of impressionism had to cope with the hostility of the establishment of the artworld in the early days, precisely because it seemed at the time that nothing similar to their paintings had ever been produced before. Thus, impressionist paintings compared unfavorably to all the extant paradigmatic examples of the

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  59 art of painting and it is not to be wondered that they were constantly refused. It was only after a considerable lapse of time that critics could find new categories—such as the en plein air—where they could fit in. Critics were also able to point at some similarities of impressionist paintings with some works of past masters who were not entirely foreign to bright colors, heavy strokes and even apparent carelessness in drawing.10 A few years later, other categories were found, such as that of the socalled primitive art, that helped critics to make sense of the impressionist way of painting. The story told by Danto concerning Brillo Box and other works by Warhol and pop artists in general, precisely exemplifies what art critics have to do in order to make sense—i.e., bring out the intended meaning—of truly revolutionary artworks. In so doing, they identify the main category (or categories, in the plural) to which they belong and relative to which artworks are to be evaluated, and the most conspicuous examples to compare them to. Our theory correctly accounts, therefore, both for the initial caution, if not utter hostility, of the artworld vis-à-vis innovation in general, and for the process of wearily accepting them after a while and acknowledging their worth by finding a proper location for them among the extant examples of newly invented artistic categories. Note that, clearly, new categories can encompass old works. This is what is most thrilling in the business of the creative art critic: showing that one can look at old and familiar masterpieces in a way that was never imagined before. Contemporary art, among other things, can bring about fresh and surprising viewpoints from which one can look at old things and the art critic makes it possible. This is not the end of the story, though, as a great deal remains to be accounted for. For one thing, why do art critics make an effort to identify new categories, unforeseen so far, to make sense of revolutionary artworks, instead of simply decreeing that they are poor exemplars of the old categories, as most laymen not steeped in matters artistic, as a first reaction, take them to be? No account for this interesting phenomenon is to be found in the two theses considered so far. Thus, those two theses are to be supplemented somehow.

§3 That the theory presented so far is still unsatisfactory can also be seen from the following considerations. Theses 1 and 2 represent in a highly condensed form what the business of the art critic consists in. The critic aims at giving “objective” value judgments based on well-researched comparisons between artworks in the relevant categories. This is not at all the same thing as accounting for the subjective reactions, emotional or otherwise, of those who look at the artworks, for the first or for the

60  Clotilde Calabi et al. nth time. In principle, it is quite possible that the two things are closely related, as Jerry Levinson conjectures: The idea that the value of an art work is closely related to the pleasure that a perceiver derives from it has surely too much initial plausibility and is of a too long standing, to be wholly without basis. (Levinson 1992: 295) But it would clearly be unwise to expect too close an agreement, if only because statements such as the following make perfectly good sense and there is every reason to suppose that they are true most of the time: 1. There is no doubt that such and such an item is a great work of art, but it leaves me completely indifferent, 2. This is a rather poor artwork, but it moves me deeply. Laymen, more than art critics, are likely to utter such statements. Whereas the art critic aims at giving somewhat “objective” judgments that his colleagues can share, based on comparing the artwork at hand with similar artworks, contemporary or not, and with the prototypes of the relevant category, the layman may know nothing of the history of art, and even in case he compares a given artwork with others, his putting a poor copy of it next to his bed or in front of his desk, has little to do with that comparison. He simply loves it—as he might put it himself, if questioned. Thus, a distinction seems to be forced upon us between the professional evaluation of the art critic and the subjective reactions of the layman (and, possibly, of the critic too) whose appraisal of artworks has little, if anything, to do with their place within the relevant categories. Let the former be called aesthetic evaluation, the latter aesthetic appreciation. Beside the critic, Christie’s and Sotheby’s consumed art dealers are also essentially interested in aesthetic evaluation. (Of course, we are not claiming that critics are unable to aesthetically appreciate artworks.) The layman, on the other hand, is obviously entitled to her own uninformed judgments, if only because they do not claim any objective validity and are only meant to report what the layman feels. How could he possibly go wrong? What is even more important, artworks are usually meant by their authors to be appreciated not only by insiders and professionals, but by the public at large. The layman’s uninformed reaction is sometimes what an artist is most likely to care about and to cherish. This goes a long way toward explaining what is right about a much celebrated, as well as much ridiculed, theory. Nelson Goodman was especially effective in deriding the Tingle-Immersion theory, as it is called: the aesthetic properties of a picture include not only those found by looking at it but also those that determine how it is to be looked

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  61 at. This rather obvious fact would hardly have needed underlining but for the prevalence of the time-honored Tingle-Immersion theory, which tells us that the proper behavior on encountering a work of art is to strip ourselves of all the vestments of knowledge and experience (since they might blunt the immediacy of our enjoyment), then submerge ourselves completely and gauge the aesthetic potency of the work by the intensity and duration of the resulting tingle. The theory is absurd on the face of it and useless for dealing with any of the important problems of aesthetics, but it has become part of the fabric of our common nonsense. (Goodman 1968: 111f) However, it is a mistake, in our opinion, to take the theory as recommending ignorance and stripping ourselves of all that we know. The theory merely acknowledges that the layman, whatever his level of connoisseurship, is perfectly entitled to judge what the merits of artworks are or at least what his own emotional reactions to artworks are. After all, what right does the art critic have of prescribing what anybody’s emotional reactions ought to be? Clearly, none. Incidentally, the art critic had better be reminded that what she knows about a work is always a fragment of what there is to know about it. What is even more important, it is a great merit of the theory that it reminds us that, even for a complete ignorant who is totally unaware of what art critics and historians know, there can remain something in the most valuable artworks that directly speaks to her heart and is to be appreciated. In other words, the theory acknowledges the possible truth of judgments like (1) and (2) above. (We conjecture that Goodman’s reaction toward the Tingle-Immersion theory is a remnant, or a side-effect, of the cleavage that came to exist between the avant-gardes and the public at large right after the impressionist revolution. By definition, both in politics and in art, avant-gardes are far ahead of the rank and file, whose naive, unilluminated judgment is not to be taken seriously.11) Our theory merely acknowledges that the layman’s uninformed emotional reactions are distinct from the art critic’s judgments, and perfectly legitimate in their own right. In the eyes of most artists—at least, before the twentieth century—it is possible that they are even more important than the critics’ illuminated reactions. We do not have much to add to the two theses above concerning aesthetic evaluation, except for noting that, sometimes, critics are driven to reallocate a single artwork or, more likely, a whole school or movement, inventing new categories for them to belong to, by the favorable appreciation they have already received. The art establishment is often slow in realizing that a revolution is under way. For instance, the establishment rejected the impressionist revolution at first and, when it came to terms with it, it was forced to do so by the considerable success the impressionists were already enjoying in some,

62  Clotilde Calabi et al. admittedly restricted albeit influential, circles. Impressionists captured something that was “in the air” and the immediate reactions to them in literary milieu, for instance, were far ahead of the artworld. Revolutions in art, thus, are not carried out by an individual artist or a group of artists, they do not take place in a small studio, they rather involve broader dynamics that concern the entire artworld. It is now time to probe a little deeper into what the reactions of the perceiver to an artwork that we called aesthetic appreciation, consists in. Some philosophers claim that it is a kind of emotion. In the quotation above, we saw that according to Levinson, “the value of an artwork is closely related to the pleasure that a perceiver derives from it”. Thus, pleasure being a kind of emotion, a strict relation between aesthetic appreciation and emotion is clearly established. Jessie Prinz goes further as he claims that the business of emotions in general precisely is to reveal value. In this paper we do not take any stance concerning either emotions generally or aesthetic pleasure in particular. Without excluding that emotions are involved, we intend to argue that cognitive feelings (not a kind of emotion) often are the most important component of aesthetic appreciation. A simple argument supports this claim. Affective states come in different kinds, and traditionally they have been classified as emotions, moods and feelings. Feelings are “datable states of consciousness” (Alston 1969; Arango-Muñoz and Michaelian 2014). There are emotional feelings, e.g., feeling scared, angry, surprised, corresponding to the felt quality of emotions; feelings of bodily conditions, e.g., feeling hungry, sleepy; mood feelings, e.g., feeling annoyed, gloomy; and cognitive or noetic feelings. Cognitive feelings, which are the object of our concern, are about the subject’s own mental capacities and processes. They are neither directed to our bodily states, nor to the actions we perform, but are rather directed to our epistemic states and skills.12 The feeling of understanding, which amounts—if we are to believe Descartes—to that of seeing clearly and distinctly, obviously is cognitive. It has the experience of understanding itself as its object. Some theorists working on cognitive feelings also call this experience, which can occur even prior to full understanding, Ah ha feeling. Of course, the feeling can be erroneous, much as one can hallucinate an oasis in the distance and feel one is clearly seeing it. Now, it is generally agreed that, beside paintings, symphonies, baroque churches and other artifacts that belong to the overarching category of artworks, we sometimes appreciate mathematical proofs, chess games and philosophical essays aesthetically. Some mathematical theorems are elegant, simple and intellectually satisfying. Some sequences of moves in a chess games are bold, astute and surprising. Some papers in philosophy are simple, highly original and immediately convincing. Gettier’s groundbreaking article on knowledge is a case in point. Quine’s “Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes” is another.

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  63 Note that we are simply assuming, even before conjecturing what aesthetic appreciation is, but in complete agreement with common sense, that the appreciation mathematicians have for Cantor’s Theorem, chess players of the famous Karpov vs. Spassky 1974 and philosophers of Gettier’s paper, resembles the appreciation every music lover gives to Bach’s cantata Jesus bleibet meine Freude (BWV 147). In other words, we assume that appreciation can address, beside objects and events that are presented as artworks, also some other products of human ingenuity. From this, we shall be able to draw some consequences pertaining to the nature of aesthetic appreciation. Let us consider a mathematical proof that is generally taken as quite an elegant one. What kind of experience do we undergo as we consider it as an instance of mathematical elegance? A proof—any mathematical proof—is a sequence of propositions that are so arranged as to make us understand that all of them, and in particular the last one, are true. By means of the proof, we both understand that a given proposition is true and why it is. What does an elegant proof effect, as opposed to a proof of no special elegance? Without attempting a detailed and general account of what mathematical elegance consists in, it is safe to conjecture that an elegant proof has to be sufficiently compact and well organized (even though it can be composed of many steps) that all of its steps and their truth can be grasped at a glance. An elegant proof is especially effective in making us see that the proposition of the theorem is true. Somehow, it is as if we were actually perceiving the state of affairs the theorem depicts. (Mathematical realists often claim that some kind of intellectual perception is involved in exploring mathematical reality.) The cognitive feeling produced by an elegant mathematical proof is the feeling of seeing clearly that the theorem is true, and therefore of understanding it. A philosophical essay usually manifests a form of complexity quite different from that of mathematical proofs. It sometimes aims at making us see that some given propositions are true, or false, but philosophers have a variety of possible objectives. Stating a puzzle, illustrating the difficulties of a theory and defining a concept are all legitimate goals a philosopher can set for herself. But philosophers always give arguments. The elegance of a philosophical essay consists—we feel—more or less in giving us the same kind of experience we enjoy when considering an elegant proof in mathematics: it makes us grasp clearly that the arguments presented in the essay are convincing and make their conclusion likely to be true. Again, the feeling of the reader who can appreciate the aesthetic quality of the paper is one of understanding. Chess is not about the truth of any propositions. Still, in an elegant game the strategy of the winner can be seen clearly and, if we consider it carefully, we see that it leaves little room for maneuvering to the opponent. The development of the game has some kind of inescapability. Thus, beauty and elegance, as far as mathematics, philosophy and chess playing

64  Clotilde Calabi et al. are concerned, are related to what we called a feeling of understanding, i.e., of seeing clearly what the state of affairs is that is depicted by a mathematical theorem or by the arguments supporting a philosophical claim. And how irresistible a chess strategy is. The same kind of experience is sometimes involved when we look at contemporary artworks that engage our intelligence more than they do our senses. Take, for instance, Piero Manzoni’s Socle du monde. This rather large wooden box on which one can read Socle du monde (Pedestal of the world) topsy-turvy makes you see that there exists a very unusual, but perfectly appropriate, way of looking at familiar things— e.g., you can see that the whole world rests on a box, instead of the other way around. This is comparable to a good joke. (Some jokes come very close to belonging to the realm of art.) Other familiar examples of brainy artworks are Fountain by Marcel Duchamp and Ceci n’est pas une pipe by René Magritte. This shows that our attitude vis-à-vis some artworks involves the same intellectual resources and produces the same kind of cognitive feeling as we experience when considering mathematical theorems, chess games and philosophy essays from the point of view of elegance and sheer beauty. Or, for that matter, when we find solutions to problems of any kind. This does not mean that emotions are not involved. After all, one naturally enjoys finding solutions, especially to hard problems, and pleasure is an emotion, if anything is. But we want to know what kind of emotions are involved in those reactions of the perceiver to an artwork that we called aesthetic appreciation. It is of no great help to be told that they are pleasures, or the lack thereof. What kind of pleasures are involved? Now we are in a position to answer that, sometimes but, by no means in every case, it is the pleasure given to us by some cognitive feelings—e.g., the feeling of understanding or seeing clearly. It might be thought that this holds only for those artworks, typically contemporary, which are more “conceptual” than descriptive. However, trompe-l’oeil and works depicting so-called impossible objects clearly run against this claim. Consider trompe l’œil. They are not created with the intention of deceiving the viewer. Rather, they are meant to give her a feeling of amazement, after she has seen clearly what was only dimly seen before: Although the paintings of Jacopo de’ Barbari or Cornelius Gijsbrechts do not make us believe that what is simply painted is real, and are interpreted from the outset as depictions, nevertheless they engage us in a game that deals with the illusory character of depiction: precisely because the trompe l’œil image conceals the elements that reveal its character as an image, the viewer is encouraged to reveal the distinction that separates the image from reality. The trompe l’œil does not deceive us, but the illusory character of the image becomes so cogent

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  65 that we are forced to solve the riddle . . . the trompe l’œil demands from the viewer an attitude of reception in the form of a game—a game that allows us to free ourselves from a deception that we were aware of from the outset. (Spinicci 2012: 150) Escher’s drawings and Piranesi’s Prisons engage the same resources in the observer. We appreciate them in the same way as we appreciate, for example, Jane Austen’s charades and Sterne’s The Life and Opinion of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. As William Hogarth stated, It is a pleasing labour of the mind to solve the most difficult problems; allegories and riddles, trifling as they are, afford the mind amusement: and with what delight does it follow the well-connected thread of a play, or novel, which ever increases as the plot thickens, and ends most pleased, when that is most distinctly unravelled? The eye hath this sort of enjoyment in winding walks, and serpentine rivers, and all sorts of objects, whose forms, as we shall see hereafter are composed principally of what I call the waving and serpentine lines. Intricacy in form, therefore, I shall define to be that peculiarity in the lines, which compose it, that leads the eye a wanton kind of chase, and from the pleasure that gives the mind, entitles it to the name of beautiful: and it may be justly said, that the cause of the idea of grace more immediately resides in this principle, than in the other five, except variety; which indeed includes this, and all the others.  . . . This single example might be sufficient to explain what I mean by the beauty of a composed intricacy of form, and how it may be said, with propriety, to lead the eye a kind of chase. (Hogarth 1753, ch. V) Of course, many works of art do not contain riddles of any kind. However, are we quite sure that our attitude in appreciating a contemporary artwork radically differs from that we experience while enjoying the color, the light, the organization of space, harmony and order that are so evident in classical masterpieces? A few decades ago, it was not rare for art historians and philosophers alike to draw a parallel between artworks and artifacts in general (such as bridges, towers, cars, etc.) insofar as they all amount to more or less intelligent solutions to some problems that their makers set for themselves to solve. Michael Baxandall wrote: The maker of a picture or other historical artifact is a man addressing a problem of which his product is a finished and concrete solution. To understand it, we try to reconstruct both the specific problem it was designed to solve and the specific circumstances out of which he

66  Clotilde Calabi et al. was addressing it. This reconstruction is not identical with what he internally experienced: it will be simplified and limited to the conceptualisable, though it will also be operating in a reciprocal relation with the picture itself, which contributes, among other things, modes of perceiving and feeling. What we are going to be dealing with are relations—relations of problems to solutions, of both to circumstances, of our conceptualized constructs to a picture covered by a description, and of a description to a picture”. (Baxandall 1985: 14f) If this is so, clearly, the naïve viewer who is told by the art historian, e.g., that the sense of order and harmony displayed by Andrea del Sarto’s Pietà is the result of the solutions he found to the challenges addressed by Renaissance painters, will come to feel that she understands the work, that she sees that everything—the colors, the organization of the space, etc.—is just about right. That peculiar feeling will not be any different from that imparted by Manzoni’s Socle du Monde. And in both cases the viewer will indulge in looking at the artworks, as much as we indulge in reading over and over the same poem. It might be objected that Baxandall’s account gives too intellectualist an account of the process of artistic creation—unless the notion of problem is given a rather etiolated reading. What interesting problem could a sixteenth-century painter set to himself when painting a portrait of some Venetian gentleman, over and above that of drawing and coloring it the best he could, following the examples of the most celebrated masters of the century? Of course, the painter normally intends to please his customer in many ways, e.g., by making it clear somehow what his social position is and how respectable he is. If this is to count as a problem in Baxandall’s sense, then, perhaps, art historians and critics reconstructing a problem are basically engaged in the same kind of task that Danto ascribes to them in general, namely of bringing out the meaning of the portrait, i.e., what it is about the sitter (and the painter) that the portrait is meant to convey. If this is so, then of course we have no objection to Baxandall’s account and it is also evident that some kind of cognitive feeling is involved at least in aesthetic evaluation. But is it invariably involved in aesthetic appreciation? This is a far more difficult claim to establish. It may happen, especially with sixteenth-century portraits, that what fascinates us are, among other things, the silvery clouds against the cobalt blue sky in the landscape in the background, the steep mountains, the towering trees, etc.—not because they amount to any clever solution to some difficult problem but, possibly, because they simply remind us of what some clear days in early spring feel like. Of course, surfacing memories can give us most pleasing cognitive feelings, but it is not quite clear that our appreciation of the painting and the pleasure it gives us are exhausted by those feelings.

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  67

§4 The perspective we are proposing here is that judgments of aesthetic evaluation—the kind of judgments art critics, auctioneers and professional dealers are most likely to utter concerning artworks—are about the position a given item occupies within a selected category. Ideally, a judgment of aesthetic evaluation ought to be more or less favorable to the item according to how close it comes to the prototypical examples of the category in the relevant respects. Since such statements as 1. There is no doubt that such and such an item is a great work of art, but it leaves me completely indifferent, 2. This is a rather poor artwork, but it moves me deeply, make perfectly good sense, aesthetic evaluation is sharply to be distinguished from aesthetics appreciation, which is far more subjective and, we surmise, only imperfectly understood (even though some progress can be made by examining which kinds of emotions are involved in our immediate, possibly uninformed, judgments concerning categories other than artistic ones.) The art critic’s crucial contribution to the acceptance (or otherwise) that artworks receive in the artworld consists in identifying the proper categories where they belong. Once a proper category has been identified, there is nothing pertaining to aesthetic evaluation that is peculiar to artworks. For every category, it is perfectly appropriate to examine how close any given item comes to resemble its most conspicuous examples. An item that comes very close to the relevant examples, whatever the category, counts as a fine example of the category: a fine friend resembles Euryalus and Nisus in the relevant respects, a fine horse resembles Bucephalus, etc. (It is no coincidence that the same adjective is employed here as in the phrase fine arts: it shows that the item is being aesthetically evaluated.) Above, we gave several examples of artifacts, belonging to very different categories, that can be evaluated aesthetically. In general, it is perfectly in order, even though useless most of the time, to evaluate aesthetically every entity, whatever the category it belongs to. This is not to say that no dividing line exists between artworks and non-artworks. Even the fact that the twentieth century considerably enriched the ontological range of possible works in the visual arts (which had encompassed paintings and sculptures almost exclusively before) has no tendency to show that everything whatsoever actually belongs in the overarching category of artworks. Even though there is no reason to suppose that any given kind of entity will be excluded from it forever, at any given moment only a few artifacts are bestowed the honor of being admitted to museums, art galleries, walls and other places where artworks are usually exhibited. Let us now add a few remarks about the selection process of art categories.

68  Clotilde Calabi et al. A widespread view in analytic aesthetics (which we endorse) states that there is no intrinsic property of an object, body or event that eternally, so to speak, assigns it to the overarching category of a work of art. Pace Danto, there is no essence to artworks. They are chosen by their relational and intentional properties (cf. e.g., Lamarque 2010). Whether an object is an artwork depends on whether it exemplifies properties that are considered relevant within a wider community—the artworld. Only within such a community can there be criteria that determine whether a certain object x belongs to a given category Y—and which instances of Y are prototypical. We have noted above that the question of how exactly these categories are determined (and distinguished from others) and whether they are (and continue to be) adequate, presents a series of challenges which cannot be addressed here. For our purposes, it suffices to say that we take it to be the task of art critics—ideally, in a process that builds on a rational debate on the criteria in question—to determine the exact boundaries of the relevant categories. However, they have to make sure that the categories so identified are neither too extravagant, nor too narrow, nor too wide. The categories ought to be appropriate, in the sense that they ought to match, to some extent at least, the intuitive judgments of appreciation given by the wider public. As we noted above, the restricted community of cognoscenti can occasionally, even for rather long periods, insulate itself and pass judgments that are askew with respect to those of the layman. But it is hard to imagine that such a cleavage could continue indefinitely, if only because, in the end, artworks are to be sold and bought, lest the species of their authors gets extinct. The art market, whatever its shortcomings, is there to remind the critics that extravagance and non-conformism have a useful function to perform—within limits. Let us mention only one further aspect that is especially relevant to our understanding of the interplay between aesthetic appreciation and evaluation. Artworks are historical objects; they have a beginning and an end—and their end often does not coincide with the physical destruction of the objects of which they are made. A painting or a poem might cease to be an artwork long before the paper on which it is made is destroyed. An object might begin or cease to be an artwork because the category to which it belongs comes into existences or ceases to exist.13 In our view, categories are constitutive of artworks, not vice versa. The relevant categories do not come out of nothing, though, nor are they eternal or supernatural, abstract entities. Rather, they are the result of the relevant practices that are in place in our community. Let us then consider again the more fine-grained categories within the overarching category of artworks. We are generally quite good not only at distinguishing artworks from regular objects, but also at determining which works are to be taken as Renaissance portraits, as works of conceptual art, or as specimens of

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  69 socialist realism. Along with determining category membership, generally, we also have quite a robust idea of the aesthetic qualities of the relevant objects. Of course, some of us are better than others in this respect, and we call them cognoscenti, connoisseurs or experts. When we find ourselves in disagreement with the rest of our community, we tend to reconsider our judgments and ask for arguments. Exchanges with other members of our community help us in calibrating our own aesthetic evaluation. Many authors think that opinions about the aesthetic quality of artworks are entirely subjective and highly controversial. To the contrary, we want to suggest that this is a wrong impression, due to the fact that, generally, our heated debates are about a relatively small number of works, typically of recent production. The full stockrooms of the world greatest museums are there to testify that we tend to agree on our criteria concerning aesthetic qualities. Aesthetic evaluation is much less subjective than is supposed. Of course, criteria change in the course of history. Socialist realism, for instance, is much less appealing today that it used be. But we never were in doubt, even in its heydays, (nor are we in doubt now) as to what the best examples of it were. The cases of disagreement and the process of comparing our evaluations with that of others and calibrating our own is interesting for two reasons. First, it tends to produce some kind of agreement within our community. We do not reach any general agreement on how to evaluate particular works, but we do tend to agree as to the general criteria to be applied. The second reason is, in our opinion, of greater significance. The process of comparing evaluations makes it easier for substantial innovations to be accepted and to become influential in their turn in the community at large. Art—at least, contemporary Western art—is a creative process. Younger generations of artists experiment with new techniques, new materials and unprecedented styles that the older generations find unacceptable. Without a sustained debate on how some artwork are to be evaluated, it would be too easy to condemn substantially new artworks as definitely not fitting into the well-established categories. A wellarticulated debate concerning the categories themselves and the criteria for category-membership might bring about—first among cognoscenti and experts, later on among a larger audience—a more tolerant view of innovation and deviance, precisely because the categories involved in aesthetic evaluation are subject to continuous revision and the cognitive feeling that is constitutive of aesthetic appreciation plays a central role in the process. It would be unintelligible how this might come about, if aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic evaluation were not two distinct and largely independent attitudes we can take toward artworks. If only one of them were involved in accepting or rejecting a given artwork or a given style, how could simply discussing categories and criteria change our

70  Clotilde Calabi et al. attitudes? However, new categories can be introduced that make us see older works in a new light, and appreciation can be educated in the light of novel examples and similes. For instance, it is hard to appreciate Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror and Duchamp’s Fountain without some substantial background knowledge. However, when we are told how they meant to enlarge the range of accepted art categories, we realize how clever they are. Much food is given to our thought and when, finally, we understand the intellectual workings of their authors, the cognitive feeling gives us great pleasure and our aesthetic evaluation can change dramatically.

Notes 1 “In the eighteenth century, when aesthetics was invented or discovered, the thought was that art contributed beauty, hence gave pleasure to those with taste. Beauty, pleasure, and taste were an attractive triad, taken seriously by Kant in the early pages of his masterpiece, The Critique of Judgment” (Danto 2013: x). 2 As Marcel Duchamp did in his L.H.O.O.Q. 3 “That something could be art but not beautiful is one of the great philosophical contributions of the twentieth century” (Danto 2013: 28). See also de Kooning’s claim: “Beauty becomes petulant to me. I like the grotesque. It’s more joyous” (Kooning, cited on: www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/ willem-de-kooning-woman-i-1950-52-2, consulted on 21 December 2017). 4 A point that has influentially been argued by Kant (2000). 5 Cf. Baxandall (1972: 135ff). 6 We have taken this characterization from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Gothic_architecture, consulted on 26 December 2017). 7 See Polanyi (1966). 8 See, for example, Putnam (1975). 9 We go beyond Walton’s theory here, who claims that almost every artwork objectively belongs to one non-trivial category at most. See immediately below in the main text for the reasons of our disagreement with Walton. 10 Philosophers and critics, such as John Ruskin, already had a theory at hand that could help in making sense—i.e., giving the meaning, i.e., finding the relevant category—of impressionist art, namely the innocent eye theory. For a clear statement of the theory, as well as a harsh criticism of it, see E. Gombrich (1960). 11 The Tingle-Immersion theory goes hand in hand with the theory of the innocent eye, which advises the artist to strip herself of all the vestments of knowledge and experience in order to recover a state of visual innocence. This theory has been harshly criticized too. See, e.g., Baxandall (1985), Ernst Gombrich (1960). 12 Here is a list of cognitive feelings (Dokic 2012): feelings of knowing/not knowing, feelings of certainty/uncertainty, feelings of familiarity, feelings of “déjà vu”, feelings of rightness, feeling of understanding. 13 Cf. Lamarque (2010).

It’s a Great Work but I Don’t Like It  71

References of works cited Alston, W.P. (1969). “Feelings”. Philosophical Review 78: 3–34. Arango-Muñoz, S. and K. Michaelian. (2014). “Epistemic Feelings, Epistemic Emotions: Review and Introduction to the Focus Section”. Philosophical Inquiries 2: 97–122. Baxandall, M. (1972). Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baxandall, M. (1985). Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures. New Heaven: Yale University Press. Danto, A. C. (2013). What Art Is. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dokic, J. (2012). “Seeds of Self-Knowledge: Noetic Feelings and Metacognition”. In Foundations of Metacognition, edited by M.J. Beran, J.L. Brandl, J. Perner and J. Proust, 302–321. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gombrich, E. (1960). Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaïdon Press. Goodman, N. (1968). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Hogarth, W. (1753). The Analysis of Beauty. Written with a view of fixing the fluctuating Ideas of Taste, printed by John Reeves for the Author, in http:// archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/volltexte/2010/1217/. Kant, I. (2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment, edited by P. Guyer and translated by P. Guyer and E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lamarque, P. (2010). Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. Levinson, J. (1992). “Pleasure and the Value of Works of Art”. The British Journal of Aesthetics 32: 295–306. Polanyi, M. (1966). The Tacit Dimension. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Putnam, H. (1975). “The Meaning of ‘Meaning”. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7: 131–193. Rosch, E. (1978). “Principles of Categorization”. In Cognition and Categorization, edited by E. Rosch and B. Lloyd, 27–48. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Rosch, E. and C. Mervis. (1975). “Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories”. Cognitive Psychology 7: 573–605. Spinicci, P. (2012). “Trompe l’œil and the Nature of Pictures”. In Perceptual Illusions, Philosophical and Psychological Essays, edited by C. Calabi, 145–163. London: Palgrave McMillan. Verheyen, S. and P. Egré. (forthcoming). “Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives”, manuscript under review. Walton, K.L. (1970). “Categories of Art”. The Philosophical Review 79: 334–367.

Part II

Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation

4 Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation:Wollheim Reassessed and Vindicated Alberto Voltolini Notoriously, Richard Wollheim has claimed that seeing-in is a distinctive twofold perceptual experience a) that constitutes our experience of pictures and b) whose shareable entertainment on the part of suitable perceivers provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a picture’s having a certain figurative value. In this paper, first, I will focus on the question of whether Wollheim’s first claim, which obviously is a precondition of his second claim, is correct, in spite of the several critiques it received. Sympathetic critiques admit that seeing-in is the pictorial experience, yet they say that it must be cashed out in terms altogether different from Wollheim’s admittedly elusive ones, possibly by denying twofoldness a psychological reality. The unsympathetic critiques instead say that seeingin does not provide either necessary or sufficient conditions of pictorial experience. By suitably reconceptualizing it, I will try to rescue Wollheim’s claim from both kinds of critiques. In a nutshell, seeing-in is a distinctive twofold perceptual experience only insofar as i) in its configurational fold (CF) one grasps suitably enriched design properties of the picture’s vehicle; namely, properties including the vehicle’s grouping properties, the ways for the vehicle’s elements to be arranged along a certain direction in a certain dimension; ii) this enrichment allows the recognitional fold (RF) of that experience to be the knowingly illusory seeing the vehicle as another thing, namely, the seen-in three-dimensional scene. Second, I will try to show that once seeing-in is so reconceived, one may explain how is it that on its basis one may aesthetically appreciate a picture. For there are different ways of appreciating a picture depending on which design properties—the vehicle’s properties that are responsible for the fact that a certain scene is seen in the picture—are selected by means of attention while already being overall phenomenally aware of the picture’s vehicle in the CF. Such properties are either mere design properties, i.e., properties that are merely responsible for the fact that a certain three-dimensional scene is seen in the picture, insofar as they present the corresponding properties that in the RF are ascribed to the protagonists of that scene. Typically, mere design properties are the vehicle’s colors and shapes. Or they are extradesign properties, i.e., properties that

76  Alberto Voltolini are also responsible for the fact that such a scene emerges in the picture, hence can be recognized in it: the vehicle’s grouping properties again. Indeed, a certain kind of pictorial appreciation depends on attentionally selecting extradesign properties, insofar as they enable one to recognize such a scene’s protagonists independently of whether they are (correctly) presented in the relevant picture. Another kind of pictorial appreciation instead depends on attentionally selecting mere design properties, insofar as their instantiation in the picture’s vehicle is intentionally produced in order to conceal their presentational role, so as to let one primarily focus on the properties ascribed (in the RF) to the scene’s protagonists that in actual fact are, however, presented by those mere design properties.

1.  Wollheim’s Seeing-In For Wollheim (19802, 1987, 1998), the figurative value of pictures, i.e., what distinguishes pictures from other kinds of representations, can be captured in terms of the particular kind of experience that affects all and only them. This is the distinctive pictorial perception that he labels seeing-in. Seeing-in is the experience of seeing something—the picture’s subject, a certain three-dimensional scene that the picture presents—in something else—the picture’s vehicle, the physical basis of a picture.1 In order for this experience to be such, it must be shareable: seeing-in is the mark of figurativity just in case not only the picture’s creator but also her audience may have a certain experience of that kind with respect to the picture involved. Actually, for Wollheim also some nonpictures may have a figurative value: primarily, fortuitous images (Cutting and Massironi 1998), those natural items in which we spontaneously see something else (e.g., faces in rocks, battles in marble cracks, animals in clouds). Seeingin indeed is for Wollheim the outcome of a natural human capacity that pictorial creators exploit—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—in order for us to see what they want us to see in a picture’s vehicle. As I hinted at before, Wollheim stresses that seeing-in is a sui generis perceptual experience having a distinctive phenomenology. For him, the distinctive phenomenal character seeing-in possesses depends on the fact that seeing-in is a twofold perceptual experience, i.e., an experience constituted by two folds. In its first fold, the configurational fold (CF), the experiencer is aware of the picture’s vehicle, i.e., the physical base of a picture, while in its second fold, the recognitional fold (RF), the experiencer is precisely aware of what is seen in that picture, or more in particular presented by that picture’s vehicle; namely, a scene constituted by three-dimensional items of given kinds. Yet what does this twofoldness really amount to? Wollheim limits himself to saying that the seeing-in folds are inseparable, in that neither are identical to the experiences in isolation one would have of the vehicle and of the scene respectively. One may add (Hopkins 2008) that the second fold depends on the first one,

Pictorial Experience 77 for one would not be aware of the picture’s subject if one were not also aware of the picture’s vehicle.2

2.  How to Spell Out What Seeing-In Really Consists In As many people sympathetic with Wollheim have pointed out, however, if one limits oneself to sticking to Wollheim’s remarks, it is hard to understand how seeing-in can be articulated as a genuinely twofold experience. In this respect, two main problems arise. First, the compatibility problem: how can such an experience have two folds whose content taken altogether has incompatible features? In the CF, one grasps two-dimensional marks having certain colors and shapes. By contrast in the RF, one grasps three-dimensional items often having different colors and shapes. How can one hold these two incompatible contents together in one and the same experience? (Hopkins 2010, 2012; Chasid 2014; Nanay 2016). Second, the perception problem: how can that experience be a perceptual one, as Wollheim wishes? To be sure, its first fold may be the perception of the picture’s vehicle, which is out there in front of the experiencer, yet how can its second fold be a perception of what is (normally at least) not out there, the scene seen in the picture (Hopkins 2010, 2012)? Starting with the compatibility problem, a Wollheimian may give an answer to it if she is able to show that the RF with its own content flows, so to speak, out of the CF with its own content. In other terms, there must be an integration between those two contents that shows that not only the two folds are inseparable, but the second also depends on the first. In order to do so, the Wollheimian must suitably enrich the content of the configurational fold of a seeing-in experience. What is a two-dimensional item—the vehicle—must have an appearance in the CF that would not have if it were perceived in isolation. More precisely, the vehicle must appear to be three-dimensional, in order for it to match the three-dimensional scene grasped in the RF. Let us see how this enrichment may work. To begin with, the picture’s vehicle has two kinds of perceptually relevant surface properties: the merely visible surface properties, typically the surface properties that just serve to characterize the vehicle’s material features, and the design properties, the properties that are responsible for the fact that one sees something in that picture. The vehicle’s colors and shapes are prototypical cases of design properties (Lopes 2005). Granted, if one limits oneself to ascribing to the content of the CF only the above properties, the compatibility problem arises: the colors and shapes of the two-dimensional item grasped in the CF, the vehicle, are often not the same as the colors and the shapes of the three-dimensional item grasped in the RF, the scene. Yet there are other design properties that are figuratively relevant; namely, the vehicle’s grouping properties, the ways for the vehicle’s elements to be arranged along a certain direction

78  Alberto Voltolini in a certain dimension.3 Such properties are at stake even in nonpictorial cases. If I see a famous ambiguous figure (but not a picture) such as the Mach figure either as a diamond or as a tilted square, this visual duplicity depends on the fact that I see the figure’s lines either as arranged in the first two dimensions along certain directions (a north-south and an eastwest direction) or as arranged in those dimensions along other directions (a north-east/south-west and a north-west/south-east direction). To show that grouping properties are design properties, consider first a perceptually ambiguous picture, namely, a picture in which different items—different subjects, i.e., different scenes—can be seen according to whether one sees the picture one way or another (e.g., the duck-rabbit picture, the Necker’s cube, the Rubin’s vase). Now, different grouping properties, i.e., different ways of suitably arranging the pictorial vehicle’s elements, are precisely responsible for those different ways to see the picture. Different CFs actually occur in the different seeing-in experiences that affect a perceptually ambiguous picture. They differ precisely for they grasp different ways of grouping the very same colors and shapes (to stick to the first of the above examples, in a duckish or in a rabbitish way). In point of fact, the vehicle’s colors and shapes do not bear such a responsibility. For in the respective CFs, they precisely remain the same independently of how one sees the picture. Thus, those different grouping properties are responsible for the fact that different subjects are seen in the picture. Indeed, two different RFs where such different subjects are presented (say, a duck on a background vs. a rabbit on a background) correspond to those different CFs. Hence, grouping properties are among the vehicle’s design properties. Thus, they enrich the content of the relevant CF; a perceptually ambiguous picture indeed mobilizes two such CFs, hence two such enriched contents. Moreover, grouping properties are extradesign properties, for they are responsible not only for the fact that a certain subject is seen in a picture, but also for the fact that the former emerges in the latter. In this respect, consider ‘aspect-dawning’ pictures, such as, e.g., the famous picture of a Dalmatian. Suppose one perceptually arranges certain elements of such a picture along depth in a foreground-background direction, i.e., by surrounding them as standing in front of other elements of the same picture. As a result, not only one has a CF whose content is enriched by certain grouping properties, but also one is immediately able to see, in the RF of that experience, a three-dimensional scene whose protagonists are threedimensional items (a Dalmatian on a background, in this example).4 Finally, on the basis of both perceptually ambiguous and ‘aspect dawning’ pictures, one may easily see how the content of the CF may be integrated with the content of the RF. As ‘aspect dawning’ pictures precisely show, among grouping properties, the most relevant for pictorial purposes are those properties that account for the 3D figure-ground segmentation of the elements of a picture’s vehicle. By inducing a 3D segmentation in a

Pictorial Experience 79 2D item, the grouping operation that grasps such properties relies on an illusory transformation of that item into an item made of 3D silhouettes. Once a certain CF arises by grasping such properties, another RF arises as well by grasping a three-dimensional scene whose structure matches the three-dimensional appearance of the vehicle so grouped (to stick to the previous example, a Dalmatian on a background matches the apparently 3D Dalmatianish silhouette that appears by suitably grouping the black and white spots scattered over the picture’s vehicle). Thus, suitably enriching the content of the CF lets the RF immediately occur with its own proper yet matching content. Yet at this point the compatibility problem arises again yet in a different form (Hopkins 2012). The RF takes a certain three-dimensional scene as real, i.e., as both actual and present out there. Yet, however enriched, the CF involves that what is real is not such a scene, but a certain array of marks even suitably grouped. Thus, in the respective folds the scene in question is given as real and as unreal. Content incompatibility across folds comes therefore back from the rear door. However, a Wollheimian may reply that, rather than unwelcome, this incompatibility is how things in the seeing-in experience must be.5 For the RF must be further spelled out as a sort of illusory experience. More in detail, in its having a content that emerges in virtue of suitably grouping the vehicle’s elements in the CF, the RF is a form of illusory seeing-as in which one nonveridically sees the picture’s vehicle as a certain threedimensional scene, thereby having an experience as of that scene. Once things are put this way, the seeing-in experience turns out to be made first of all by a veridical experience of the picture’s vehicle in CF—the vehicle is really out there; namely, it lies precisely where it is seen. Yet this veridical character of the CF forces the RF to be a nonveridical experience of a certain scene—that scene is not out there where it is seen; it would be out there if things stood as one experiences them in the RF. Yet since the RF has therefore an illusory character, in it the scene is taken to be there, hence to be real, even if it is not. In that illusion, the scene is nonveridically experienced as having a three-dimensional location that originates exactly where the vehicle is veridically experienced to be located. Furthermore, the RF is a knowingly illusory experience. One is not under the delusion that the vehicle is the scene in question, as one would be if one faced a genuine trompe-l’oeil; for one knows that the vehicle is not the scene. Finally, unlike standard knowingly illusory experiences, such as those entertained in so-called optical illusions (e.g., the Müller-Lyer illusion), one must not appeal to other sensory modalities in order to have such a knowledge. For one knows that such an experience of the scene is illusory precisely because one knows that one is veridically seeing the picture’s vehicle.6 Once things are put this way, moreover, also the perception problem finds a solution. To recall, how can seeing-in have a perceptual character,

80  Alberto Voltolini if its CF is a perception of the picture’s vehicle, which is out there, while its RF is a perception of the scene that is seen in the picture, which is not out there? The answer is that the RF precisely is a knowingly illusory perception of such a scene, i.e., a perception whose nonveridicality is known by its experiencer. Besides, since its nonveridicality is known because the CF is also known to be a veridical perception, the two folds do not exactly coincide in their specific contribution to the seeing-in overall phenomenal character. The CF not only veridically grasps, in its content, the picture’s vehicle to be out there, but it also goes along with a feeling of that vehicle’s presence; like any other standard perceptual experience, the mode of the CF is affected by that feeling. By contrast, in its mode the RF does not go along with a feeling of presence concerning the scene that constitutes its content, precisely because it is known to be illusory since the CF is known to be veridical (Matthen 2005; Dokic 2012; Ferretti 2018). This admittedly complex situation manages to explain why seeing-in as a whole is a sui generis perceptual experience, as Wollheim precisely claimed.

3. How Seeing-In May Provide Both Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Pictorial Experience Armed with those considerations, a Wollheimian may face unsympathetic critiques. First of all, many people (Lopes 1996; Hyman 2006; Newall 2011; Martin 2012) think that Wollheim’s seeing-in is not a necessary condition of pictorial experience. For there are pictures that are not affected by that experience. In this respect, consider genuine trompe l’oeils, naturalistic pictures (from ordinary snapshots to (hyper)realistic paintings), holograms, stick figures: none of them, those people say, are affected by such an experience, yet they definitely have a figurative value. In response, a Wollheimian may pursue the following, differently oriented, strategy. Either she manages to show that appearances notwithstanding, the putative counterexamples have no figurative value, hence the fact that they are affected by no seeing-in does not undermine the fact that seeing-in is the pictorial experience. Or she manages to show that appearances notwithstanding, the putative counterexamples are affected by seeing-in experiences. The former is the case with genuine trompe l’oeils, as Wollheim himself (1987: 62) already said. Insofar as they really deceive those who experience them, they have no figurative value. This is not an ad hoc move, as it may immediately seem. For genuine trompe l’oeils are just things that are mistaken for other things (i.e., their putative subjects), and a thing that is mistaken for another thing is not a picture of it. A rope that is mistaken as a snake has no figurative value; nor has such a value a genuine trompe l’oeil of a snake. Granted, a trompe l’oeil acquires that value only once it is recognized as such. Yet this means: only once it is affected by

Pictorial Experience 81 a proper seeing-in experience in which mistaking it for its subject turns into a knowingly illusory experience as of that subject, i.e., the RF of that seeing-in experience, which is known as illusory precisely because the trompe l’oeil’s vehicle simultaneously is knowingly perceived in the now accompanying CF of that experience. The latter is the case with naturalistic pictures, holograms and stick figures. As for naturalistic pictures, first of all, one is aware not only of their merely visible surface properties, as anyone acknowledges, but also of some of their design properties at least, primarily their grouping properties. Hence as for them, one has not only an experience as of their subjects, but also a full experience of their vehicles. Granted, most of such design properties are not attended (Nanay 2011, 2016). Yet the fact that they are unattended does not show that one has no awareness of them, at least in the sense of being phenomenally aware of them (Block 1995).7 Suppose that, all of a sudden, the vehicle of a naturalistic picture turned out to be deteriorated in its colors and shapes. It would be unfair to describe the experiential change that a perceiver would undergo in facing it by saying that all of a sudden, the vehicle enters in the perceiver’s visual field. Rather, it must have been already in that field in order for that deterioration to be perceived as such in her experience. Moreover, the same goes with holograms. Not only are they genuine physical entities—they are objective distributions of light in a certain portion of space8—but they also present certain perceptual properties of their subjects (their colors, their shapes) by instantiating them. Thus, once again, one not only has an experience as of their subjects, but also has a full phenomenal awareness of their vehicles, therefore having a proper seeing-in experience. Finally, appearances notwithstanding, one experiences a stick figure not as a single item, but as a three-dimensional scene in which a certain item stands out of a background. This time, such a scene is the content of the RF that flanks the CF in which the stick figure’s vehicle is grasped along with its grouping properties, which enable that scene to emerge. By contrast, some other people, moreover, hold that seeing-in actually provides no sufficient conditions of pictorial experience. For it is indistinguishable from an experience of a nonpictorial something, as is an experience in which, while perceiving a certain thing, one hallucinates another thing (Casati 2010). Yet this criticism shows only that, in order for seeing-in to provide sufficient conditions of pictorial experience, it must not be a ‘floating free’ imaginative-like, or even hallucinatory-like, experience, like a perception-based hallucination, but it must be anchored in some properties of the picture’s vehicle. Once again, grouping properties are such properties. For as we saw before, unlike a perceptually based hallucination, once one grasps such properties in the CF of the seeing-in experience, the RF of that experience arises as well with its emerging content made out of a seen-in scene. Indeed, unlike again a perceptually based hallucination,

82  Alberto Voltolini the dependence between the seeing-in folds is (at least) existential, not causal: if there were no CF, there would be no RF either. Some other unsympathetic people, finally, are more radical in their critique of Wollheim. For they claim that seeing-in is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of pictorial experience. For it is not the kind of experience one has when facing a picture. In an old version, the one ascribable to Gombrich (1960), this objection can be easily faced by the Wollheimian. According to Gombrich, first of all, pictorial experience is a seeing-as experience—an experience of seeing a picture as its subject—that alternates itself with the experience of the picture’s vehicle per se. Thus, one cannot simultaneously see both the picture and the vehicle. Yet Wollheim would have acknowledged that, as for pictures, there are alternating experiences; namely, the experience as seeing a picture as its mere vehicle, that is, as one physical object among other such objects, and the experience of seeing the picture as a picture (19802: 226). Yet the latter experience is precisely the properly pictorial experience in which, on the one hand (in the CF), one experiences the vehicle in an enriched way, that is, along with its grouping properties, and, on the other hand (in the RF), one experiences that vehicle as a certain three-dimensional scene. But these experiences are not alternating, since they are precisely the two simultaneous folds of a seeing-in experience. Once seeing-in is so reconceived, moreover, Gombrich’s idea that the seeing-as experience relevant for pictorial experience is incompatible with Wollheim’s seeing-in is no longer worrisome. For, as we saw above, seeing a picture as its subject amounts to the one of the folds, the RF, in which pictorial experience consists. A more recent version of this criticism instead says that a pictorial experience is just the experience of the picture’s vehicle as consisting just of blurred properties of the depicted scene that in virtue of that blurriness are also experienced yet as indeterminate ones (Chasid 2014). Yet, first, this way of putting things fails to capture the phenomenology of pictorial experience. From the phenomenological point of view, the vehicle does not work as a blurring intermediary between the experiencer and the properties of the depicted scene, as it would be if it were, say, a plaster partially covering another thing. Second, if in pictorial experience there were such an intermediary (e.g., if in facing a picture one wore dirty lenses), it would affect the grasping both of the vehicle’s properties and of the depicted scene’s properties: both would turn out to be blurred. Yet this is further evidence that an experience simultaneously concerning both the picture’s vehicle and the presented scene, as seeing-in is, is the proper pictorial experience. According to a further new version of this criticism, a pictorial experience is just onefold, not twofold. For a pictorial experience is just a nonstereoptical perception of a scenario that is grasped as being characterized

Pictorial Experience 83 by a merely relative, not absolute, depth, as already proved in cognitive science (Vishwanath 2014). As a matter of fact, if in facing a picture one by chance reproduced the conditions of a stereoptical perception, as is the case when one sees a picture from a peephole, one would again perceive absolute, not relative, distances (Briscoe 2017; see also Zeimbekis 2015). Yet such reproduced conditions are the same as those that are active in grasping a genuine trompe l’oeil, that is, those in which one is deceived by the picture by mistaking it for something else. Now, as we saw before, these are precisely conditions in which there is no pictorial experience. In order for that experience to be gained, one must perceive its vehicle over and above its subject, thereby having a twofold seeing-in experience (Ferretti 2018). The fact that, unlike the trompe-l’oeil-like cases, one perceives that vehicle makes it the case that one also grasps a certain scenario just in terms of a relative, not absolute, depth. Or, to put it more radically, the reason why in a pictorial experience one so sees that scenario is precisely that such a scenario is not the three-dimensional scene presented by the picture. Instead, that scenario amounts to what is grasped by an enriched experience of the picture’s vehicle as having a three-dimensional appearance, by whose virtue that experience is immediately flanked by a further experience of that scene. Since those two experiences are respectively the CF and the RF of a seeing-in experience, what one eventually entertains in pictorial perception is precisely a twofold seeing-in experience.

4.  Aesthetic Appreciation of Pictures Once things are put this way as far as pictorial experience is concerned, there is a way to understand how there may be different forms of aesthetic appreciation of pictures, which depend on the role design properties respectively play in seeing-in. First of all, as Nanay (2005, 2010, 2011, 2016, 2018) has rightly underlined, aesthetic appreciation of pictures is basically a matter of attention. Such an attention, moreover, must be primarily addressed to the design properties grasped in the CF of a seeing-in experience, in order for a picture to be appreciated qua picture and not because it has an aesthetically relevant figurative content. As we have already implicitly seen, this content roughly coincides with the content of the RF of a seeing-in experience (Voltolini 2015).9 As Scruton (1981) originally stressed, an appreciation of a picture as beautiful has to do not with the fact that it has a beautiful figurative content; in other terms, the picture is not appreciated because the three-dimensional scene it presents (and that is grasped in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience) is beautiful. Rather, the picture is appreciated because that scene is presented in such a way that it turns out to be beautiful.10 As we know, design properties of the picture’s vehicle are responsible for the fact that

84  Alberto Voltolini a certain scene is seen in a picture, or, which is the same, in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience. Yet, as we saw before, mere design properties limit themselves to being responsible for the fact that a certain subject is seen in the picture, while grouping properties are also responsible for the fact that such a subject emerges in the picture. Thus, in order to account for aesthetic appreciation of pictures, we must consider the different roles the different design properties grasped in the CF of the seeing-in experience respectively play. To begin with, in terms of aesthetic appreciation of a picture, let me consider grouping properties again. Attending to such properties is aesthetically relevant whenever we cannot count on mere design properties for that appreciation. This may basically happen for two reasons. In general, mere design properties are manners of presentation of the perceptual properties that the picture’s subject is ascribed (in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience).11 When grouping properties are relevant for aesthetic appreciation, the manners of presentation that mere design properties amount to are impaired in either of the following ways. Either the picture’s vehicle contains just a few mere design properties, which thereby scarcely present the scene grasped in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience, so that the picture has a poor figurative content. Or, because the vehicle contains just unfaithful mere design properties, which thereby present the scene grasped in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience as having properties that the protagonists of that scene do not actually have, so that the picture has a distorted figurative content. In both cases, people appreciate the creator’s ability to let the subject emerge in the picture, and hence be recognizable in it, in virtue of exploiting the vehicle’s grouping properties despite the fact that its mere design properties are few or unfaithful. These features of the latter properties notwithstanding, the recognition is indeed grounded in the other fact that the subject roughly shares with the vehicle such grouping properties. In other, more pompous, terms, it has the same Gestalt (Voltolini 2015).12 The first case is prototypically represented by stylized pictures, rough sketches above all.13 Some creators are very good in just depicting with few marks a subject that is recognizable in the picture, for it roughly shares the same grouping properties as that picture’s vehicle. Thus, in virtue of attending to such grouping properties in that vehicle as make that subject recognizable in the picture, despite the fact that few mere design properties figure in the vehicle itself, people appreciate the picture by admiring this painterly ability. I contend that any of the famous paradoxical drawings by Saul Steinberg clearly illustrates what I have in mind. A continuous line becomes the picture of someone, a painter, who traces that very line. Few traits make such a painter recognizable in the picture, for they share the same Gestalt as an adult human male.

Pictorial Experience 85

Figure 4.1  Steinberg, Saul. Retrieved from http://library.artstor.org/asset/SS7731863_7731863_12415441

The second case is prototypically represented by caricatures.14 People are able to recognize a subject in a caricature, despite the fact that in it, that subject is presented in a distorted way, for its vehicle’s design properties, partially at least, present corresponding perceptual properties

86  Alberto Voltolini (typically, shapes) that the subject does not actually possess. The recognition depends again on the fact that the vehicle and the subject share the same grouping properties. Yet the appreciation has to do with people’s being impressed by the fact that the picture’s creator manages to let the picture’s subject be recognizable in virtue of its sharing a certain Gestalt with the picture’s vehicle, despite the fact that the subject, taken as a scene composed of items of certain kinds, is presented in that vehicle by its mere design properties in a distorted way. Put alternatively, caricatures are an admirable way of stretching our recognitional abilities up to the max. They show us up to what extent we are able to recognize a certain subject, i.e., items of certain kinds, in their vehicle, although the perceptual properties actually featuring such items are scarcely similar with the mere design properties figuring in that vehicle.15 For we are still able to grasp the grouping properties that the subject nonetheless shares with that vehicle. We appreciate the creator’s ability in making that stretch, just as we appreciate a distorted way of writing a letter of the alphabet, for we recognize that letter’s pattern notwithstanding the fact that it is written in such a distorted way.16 Let me now consider mere design properties, still with an aesthetic purpose in mind. As Nanay (2011, 2016, 2018) rightly stresses, passing on attending to these properties is a source of aesthetic appreciation. For by means of this attentional shift we manage to appreciate the creator’s ability to make it the case that, unnoticeably yet correctly, the picture presents its subject in virtue of an abundance of such properties in its vehicle that match that subject’s corresponding perceptual properties. Since there is such a matching, the fact that the subject was so presented went unnoticed for a long while, due to the creator’s ability to conceal that presentation: one was phenomenally aware of the mere design properties, but one was not aware of them qua design properties. Put alternatively, shifting our attention from the subject grasped in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience to the vehicle’s mere design properties grasped in the CF of that experience is a way of appreciating how the picture’s creator manages to make the picture aesthetically relevant not because its subject is such, but because the picture presents it as such in virtue of this matching between those mere design properties of its vehicle and its subject’s corresponding perceptual properties. Incidentally, matters of recognition are of course still at play here, yet they are not under focus, for although there still is a similarity between the vehicle’s and the subject’s grouping properties, there is no need to make the subject emerge in the picture in virtue of that similarity. For rather, in virtue of such an abundance of matching mere design properties, it is immediately evident which kind of subject the picture presents. In this case, painterly naturalistic pictures are the case in point. Normally, as Nanay rightly observes (2011: 473), as to mere naturalistic pictures we do not attend to the vehicle’s mere design properties. In

Pictorial Experience 87 watching a football match on TV, we focus, e.g., on the properties of the match field—e.g., the rectangular penalty area—by leaving aside the fact that it is presented on the TV’s screen by means of a trapezoid area. Yet as to painterly naturalistic pictures, things change. This change makes the painterly naturalistic picture aesthetically appreciated, unlike mere naturalistic pictures. For we pass on focusing on how it is actually in virtue of the mere design properties that the corresponding properties of the subject are presented, with a degree of accuracy that leaves us astonished and admired. If I see Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, a paradigmatic case of a painterly naturalistic picture, I appreciate it qua picture as soon as I start focusing on the fact that, e.g., the severe look of the husband it presents depends on the way that look is presented by the abundant corresponding colors and shapes in that picture’s vehicle.17 Finally, there are also cases in which both grouping properties and mere design properties are relevant for pictorial aesthetic appreciation. For in such a case, they are both attended to in their respectively recognitional and (no longer cleverly disguised) presentational role. In this respect, prototypical cases of pictures affected by inflected seeing-in (Podro 1998) are paradigmatic. For Hopkins (2010: 158), seeing-in is inflected iff the properties by means of which a certain subject is seen in a picture are such that their characterization refers to the design properties (conceived as such) of the picture’s vehicle. From an aesthetical point of view, on the one hand, this means that the matching between mere design properties and the perceptual properties ascribed to the picture’s subject is increased by the fact that the latter properties are characterized as the properties they are in virtue of their depending on the corresponding mere design properties. In this case, mere design properties are no longer concealed by the creator in their presentational role. On the other hand, since prototypical cases of inflected seeing-in are also characterized by the fact that, by means of the above role of mere design properties, the picture’s subject itself is presented in a distorted way, by ascribing it properties that it definitely fails to possess,18 grouping properties are again appealed to, for they allow that subject to be recognized despite that distortion.19

Notes 1 For the purposes of this paper, in talking about the picture’s subject I do not draw a distinction between what a picture presents and what a picture is about. Actually, I think that (unlike Wollheim) the two things must come apart as belonging to different pictorial levels, the first posing just a constraint upon the second: what the picture is about specifies what the picture presents. Cf. Voltolini (2015), (2018). Husserl (2006) has maintained a similar theory. He ascribes to a picture three different layers: the vehicle, what the picture presents (an image-object, in his terminology) and what the picture is about, thereby splitting Wollheim’s picture’s subject in two different layers. 2 For a similar idea in Husserl (2006), cf. Eldridge (2017).

88  Alberto Voltolini 3 In Voltolini (2015, ch. 6) I have tried to argue that grouping properties are objective properties, i.e., properties of the object of the experience, and not subjective properties, i.e., properties of the experience itself. However, this objectual construal does not prevent them from being weakly mind-dependent properties, i.e., properties depending on minds in general for their existence, but not for their individuation. 4 Lopes (2005: 41–44) denies that grouping properties are design properties. For, he says, it is only when one sees a subject in a picture that one grasps those properties. See also Nanay (2016: 53–54). First of all, however, this is incorrect, for it reverses the order of the explanation. It is in virtue of grouping the vehicle’s elements in a certain way that we see a certain subject in a picture. Knowing that such a subject may be so seen is merely a way for triggering that grouping operation (it is a form of weak cognitive penetration, in Macpherson [2012] terms). Moreover, by appealing to the case of perceptually ambiguous pictures, I have already shown that grouping properties are design properties. Only such properties are responsible for the fact that different subjects are seen in such pictures. 5 This Wollheimian way of putting things is utterly in agreement with what Husserl (2006) said on this matter. On this, cf. Eldridge (2017). 6 Dorsch (2016) puts forward a theory of pictorial experience, the Aspect View, which bears many similarities with the present theory. For Dorsch, pictorial experience is a twofold experience, in whose CF one sees the picture’s vehicle as a mere two-dimensional item, while in its RF one grasps an organizational aspect amounting to a three-dimensional illusory appearance of the picture’s subject. Thus, Dorsch locates—erroneously, to my mind—the outcome of the relevant grouping operation in what is grasped in the RF. Not only this move does not solve the content problem, since for the Aspect View the vehicle that is experienced in the CF remains a mere two-dimensional item that does not match the three-dimensional item grasped in the CF. This tension is particularly evident in the case of perceptually ambiguous pictures, where different contents in the respective RFs of the two different seeing-in experiences correspond to one and the same content of what remains an identical CF (ib, 230). But also, it does not properly account for the illusory element in the RF. As we saw before, this illusory element has not to do with the fact that the subject appears three-dimensional, but rather with the fact that it appears to be out there, i.e., where also the vehicle is. Indeed as we saw in the text, the illusion of three-dimensionality must rather be located in the enriched content of the CF, where in virtue of the grouping operation the two-dimensional vehicle is experienced as having a three-dimensional structure. This is clearly shown by sculptorial seeing-in, which contains no element of three-dimensional illusoriety, for the sculpture’s vehicle is a three-dimensional item, yet which retains the very same illusion of outthereness as pictorial seeing-in. For, like the picture’s subject, the sculpture’s subject is seen out there, i.e., where the sculpture’s vehicle is. For sculptorial seeing-in, see originally Wollheim himself (1987: 47–48). For arguments to the effect that sculptorial seeing-in is structurally the same as pictorial seeing-in, cf. my Voltolini (2015, ch. 7). 7 One may say with Zeimbekis (2018) that, since naturalistic pictures do not involve a perceptual activity that enables one to discern a voluminous subject out of the vehicle’s lines and shapes, they do not involve a Wollheimian form of seeing-in. Yet insofar as also naturalistic pictures involve 3D grouping operations with respect to those lines and shapes, they require the same kind of perceptual work as to their vehicle that ‘aspect dawning’ pictures involve, thereby mobilizing in their pictorial experience the same kind of CF having an enriched content that the latter pictures mobilize. Simply, unlike

Pictorial Experience 89 such pictures, that work is not endogeneously driven. Thus again, they are no genuine counterexamples to a Wollheimian seeing-in. 8 Pace Martin (2012), the fact that holograms are visibilia does not make them phenomenal entities. 9 In Voltolini (2015) I distinguish the figurative content of a picture from its pictorial content. The former amounts to what the picture presents (and that is grasped in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience), the latter amounts to what the picture represents, i.e., what it is about (cf. fn. 1). The latter is merely constrained by the former. For the purposes of this paper, however, I do not dwell on this distinction. 10 See also Hopkins: “Pictures are distinctive in letting us judge represented beauty on the basis of other represented properties” (1997: 179). To be sure, suppose that pictorial experience were threefold, thereby respectively capturing three different layers of a picture à la Husserl (2006): its vehicle, what it presents, and what it is about, thereby splitting Wollheim’s picture subject in two different levels (cf. fn. 1). Nanay (2016, 2018) maintains this supposition by giving it an overall perceptual flavor, while Husserl himself (2006) seems to maintain it but refraining from properly ascribing the third fold such a perceptual flavor. In that case, one might suggest with Husserl (2006) that, since what the picture presents further presents what the picture is about, grasping the aesthetic relevance of what the picture presents has an impact on the aesthetic appreciation of that picture. Yet since I believe, with Wollheim, that pictorial experience is twofold and not threefold (see my Voltolini 2018), I refrain from endorsing this suggestion. 11 Mere design properties are manners of presentation of the perceptual properties that are ascribed to the picture’s subject (in the RF of the relevant seeing-in experience) in the same sense as in ordinary perceptual experiences, features of such experiences are manners of presentation of the perceptual properties that are ascribed to the objects of such experiences. Cf. on this Voltolini (2017). In this role, they can be considered to be a form of what Wollheim (2003: 143) qualifies as the Presentational how of a picture. For, on the one hand, for Wollheim the Presentational how relates to “how [the what of representation: its figurative content, in my terms] is represented”; yet, on the other hand, “the Presentational how does not qualify the what of a representation at all”. 12 For how the notion of a Gestalt is mobilized in object recognition, cf. Jagnow (2015). 13 Prototypically but not exclusively. Mere ‘aspect dawning’ pictures like the picture of a Dalmatian are other examples of this case. In them, recognition of the picture’s subject is not immediate, for the available traits of the picture’s vehicle that may enable one to see that subject in it are quite a few. 14 Prototypically but not exclusively. Anamorphic pictures are a sort of ‘aspect dawning’ pictures that also fall into this category. They fascinatingly invite us to recognize a certain subject despite the fact that the presentation of that subject is highly distorted, since we must look for a certain eccentric vantage point in order for one to appropriately group the vehicle’s traits so that the picture’s subject emerges in it. 15 This recognitional stretch is compatible with the fact that, as Paolo Spinicci made me note, in caricatures we are able to recognize their (more) specific subjects faster than in other kinds of paintings. We must preliminarily see a caricature of Mick Jagger as a picture of a human being in order to see a Jagger-like item in it. Once this is the case, we may see a Jagger-like item in the caricature even faster than we recognize Jagger-like individuals in such other paintings.

90  Alberto Voltolini 16 The two alternatives are not exclusive. We appreciate paintings such as Henry Matisse’s The Green Stripe for in it we recognize (the Gestalt of) Matisse’s wife notwithstanding the fact that she is depicted in its vehicle via few traits some of which are also unfaifthful (the green line, precisely). One might even add, at least in partial agreement with Bantinaki (2018), that those traits are design properties that, in distortedly presenting in the CF of the relevant seeing-in experience certain corresponding low-level perceptual properties of the subject, superbly present some of its high-level perceptual properties (e.g., its expressive properties) in the RF of the same experience, thereby ascribing a further aesthetic value to the picture similar to the one inflected seeing-in involves (see later in the text). 17 Trompe l’oeils that are recognized as such are other typical examples of this category. As one may say with Nanay and Kulvicki (2018), all trompe l’oeils are made with the intention of being appreciated for the reasons the text indicates. 18 As Hopkins (2018) says à propos of an ink sketch by Rembrandt that depicts the pastor Jan Cornelisz Sylvius, “[Sylvius’s left] hand itself seems to be both body part and rising splash of ink”. 19 I thank Katerina Bantinaki and Paolo Spinicci for their comments on preliminary versions of this paper.

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92  Alberto Voltolini Wollheim, R. (2003). “What Makes Representational Painting Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 77: 131–147. Zeimbekis, J. (2015). “Seeing, Visualizing, and Believing. Pictures and Cognitive Penetration”. In The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception: New Philosophical Perspectives, edited by A. Raftopoulos and J. Zeimbekis, 298–325. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zeimbekis, J. (2018). “Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity”. (This volume).

5 Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity John Zeimbekis

1.  Perceptual Activity Two kinds of perceptual activity can be distinguished, depending on whether they affect sensory phenomenology and the processes that generate low-level perceptual content. The first kind is described by Thomas Crowther (2010). Crowther argues that activities such as listening, looking, visually searching or covertly attending are things we do and have a distinctive agentive phenomenology, distinct from the sensory phenomenology which necessarily accompanies them in the framework of perception. For example, looking involves the “agential maintenance of conscious perceptual contact” (Crowther 2010: 236). The perceptual activity involves putting oneself in a position to have certain stimuli and then lets perception process those stimuli: it does not alter the sensory phenomenology, and thus presumably does not directly affect any sensory processes on which that phenomenology depends. In some cases, such as “successful visual searches or successful attempts to spot things”, the perceptual activity has the structure of an action (it is telic; Crowther 2010: 234). Telic perceptual activities include cases in which we direct attention consciously, for example, because we’re looking out for an object to appear at a location or scanning a scene for a feature (I might watch out for something yellow when I look for a taxi in New York; the example is from Carrasco 2011). As long as such conscious attention-controlling activities do not interfere with or contribute to factors (processes, mechanisms, states) on which sensory phenomenology depends, they fit Crowther’s description of perceptual activities that add an agentive phenomenology to perception without affecting its sensory phenomenology. They are also consistent with claims made by users of the “attentionshift argument” who deny that sensory processes can come under agentive, personal-level control (Fodor 1988; see also Churchland 1988). But there seems to be a second, more intrusive, kind of mental activity in which we can engage in the framework of perception. Acts of visualizing and mental rotations, unlike looking (or attending, as restricted above), affect sensory phenomenology, perhaps by directly co-opting some of the visual processes on which it supervenes. In discussions of

94  John Zeimbekis mental imagery there is a consensus that such activities occur in late vision (Tye 1991; Kosslyn 1994; Pylyshyn 2003): they are agentive and deliberate, so they cannot be driven only by the sub-personal processes constituting early vision, which occur whether the subject likes it or not. Nevertheless, they cannot be restricted to late vision. They are stimulus-dependent, and all sides of the imagery debate hold that they mobilize the same parts of the brain that visual perception uses. Tye (1991) argues that even stimulus independent mental imagery activates visual circuits in the brain: when we solve certain tasks by using mental maps, the time we need is proportional to the time we would need to solve the tasks perceptually with an external map. Reisberg (1996) has found that the same applies to mental (visualized) rotations of perceived objects. Introspectively, there is a phenomenology of agency involved in acts of visualizing (we sustain them consciously by expending considerable mental effort), but it is not one that is just added to a pre-existing sensory phenomenology without altering it. To illustrate this, consider a mental rotation of Mach’s diamond: Mach’s figure produces a visual experience of a diamond, but if we visualize that we perceive the figure from the side, we generate a visual experience of a square. So, the mental rotation determines which perceptual experience, and which egocentric scenario content, is generated from the stimulus.1 For a fixed set of stimuli, the character and content of visual experience depend counterfactually on perceptual activity. Now to an example that involves assigning volumetric shape: Figure 5.2 can be seen as concave with light from the right, or convex with light from the left. Whether my initial visual experience is of

Figure 5.1 

Figure 5.2 

Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity 95 a concavity or a convexity, that experience could be generated by nonagentive processes: spatial attention could happen to focus on the figure in such a way that vision generates a convexity (Block 2014; Pylyshyn 2003), or unconscious causal influence from recognitional templates could help to settle shape assignment without my knowing it (Peterson 2005). But even if the initial visual interpretation is generated sub-personally, revising the visual interpretation of the scene is something I can do. If my visual system settled on seeing a concavity in the first place, I can now use the (semantic, conceptual) information “convex with light from the left” to visualize the scene as convex; in that case I end up having a different visual experience. In ordinary object perception, we perform such perceptual activities to disambiguate visual scenes when volume and depth cues are weak; for example, when binocular disparity and parallax are diminished by ­distance, or we are looking through an aperture, or lighting is poor, or we face clutters of overlapping objects, or objects in new orientations, or new kinds of objects. This second form of perceptual activity affects sensory phenomenology: which volumetric shapes we assign to objects depends counterfactually on our performing the perceptual activity.

2.  Visually vs. Cognitively Driven Picture Perceptions The second form of perceptual activity, which affects sensory phenomenology, is presupposed by practically all accounts of picture perception in aesthetics. In that literature, picture perception is usually described as “seeing-in” and seeing-in is meant to be seeing how a picture’s surface supports visual impressions of volume and depth. (By “seeing-in” I shall refer to just this, without committing the term to the idea that we visually represent both the surface and the content of pictures simultaneously— see §4.) At the same time, appreciation of pictures is described as appreciation of how the picture surface supports visual impressions of volume and depth. Such accounts require subjects to have visual experiences of the picture’s surface as well as visual experiences of volume and depth (whether apart or together). That the seeing-in accounts presuppose the second form of perceptual activity takes some explaining, which is the task of this section and the next (§§2–3). But the explanation has dividends. First, it shows that we are able to engage in the relevant perceptual activities with any kind of picture, even if we don’t usually do so. This can be used to defend the aesthetic accounts of appreciation of pictures against the objection that most pictures are used without paying any attention to how their surfaces support their contents. Second, the fact that most picture perceptions require no perceptual activity shows that seeing-in accounts of picture perception are false because they falsely entail that perceptual activity is part of picture perception generally.

96  John Zeimbekis The presence or absence of perceptual activity from a picture perception allows us to split picture perception into two kinds of state which are mutually exclusive. In one, we generate egocentrically represented 3D contents from the 2D picture surface agentively. In the other, vision generates the 3D contents from the 2D picture surface and the agent does nothing. The first state is agentive, cognitive and does not occur in early vision; the second is passive, perceptual and occurs already in early vision. Visually Driven Picture Perceptions For most picture perceptions today, by the time we reach personal-level awareness and the ability to think about the picture, the picture has already caused a visual experience egocentrically representing a scene with depth relations and volumetric shapes. In such cases, picture perception is not the result of any mental effort but occurs naturally, that is, it is driven by sub-personal processes which have evolved for object perception. A quick sketch follows of the principles of visually driven picture perceptions; a fleshed out account can be found in Zeimbekis (2015). In object perception, processes that construct egocentric representations of volume and depth subserve and precede conscious object recognition. There are three main approaches to object recognition: Marr’s, Biedermann’s structural approach, and the viewpoint-relative approach by Ullman, Tarr, Bulthoff and others. All three approaches are consistent with Marr’s hypothesis (Marr and Nishihara 1978; Marr 1982) about how vision initially constructs 3D representations (more precisely, 2½D representations in Marr’s sense, or egocentic 3D representations) from unconscious 2D maps of light distribution. According to Marr, vision achieves this by using two different kinds of processes. One is calculation of depth by steropsis and parallax. The other is the construction, through geometric projection algorithms, of volumetric representations from two-dimensional visual representations of edges. The two-dimensional visual representations contain monocular cues (ones that work without binocular disparity) correlated with volumetric shapes through the projection algorithms (Marr 1982: 215–239). Exploiting monocular cues is an essential resource for visual object perception. It suffices to construct depth and volume in many circumstances and is our only resource when objects are too distant for binocular disparity to be useful, when we can see only through one eye, and when the brain is unable to calculate binocular disparity or translate it into a phenomenal experience of depth (see Sacks 2010). Apart from the cases that vision evolved to deal with, namely threedimensional scenes and objects, monocular cues for volume and depth can accidentally be present when the scene is a flat surface—in the cases Cutting and Massironi (1998) aptly call “fortuitous pictures” (and which

Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity 97 Leonardo memorably recommended for exercising the visual imagination). The sense in which these are accidents can be grasped if one thinks that for vision to evolve algorithms to deal with the cues, the cues had in fact to be correlated with such volumetric features as convexities, concavities, angles and degrees of curvature—to which the cues are not correlated when they are “accidental”. When the cues occur accidentally, they are usually isolated and not backed up by other consistent cues which allow vision to effortlessly generate a representation of egocentric 3D contents. But when cues occur by design on a surface—when the surface is a picture, and the technique sufficiently advanced—the surface causes a two-dimensional map of the distribution of light from which vision effortlessly generates representations of volumes and depth relations. These processes precede and subserve object recognition, so we have already formed representations of volume and depth, which are accessible to phenomenal awareness, before we think about the stimulus (see Block 1990, 1997, 2005; Lamme 2000, 2003; Raftopoulos 2009). Beyond this, as we consciously attend to the picture, we can instantly recognize discrete objects of recognizable kinds because vision, backed by pictorial technique, has prepared the ground for object recognition: it has generated depth and volume representations before we apply recognitional concepts. So when we look at the picture there is no need to engage in perceptual activities (of the second kind described in §1) as a requisite for figuring out volumetric shapes and depth relations. Such picture perceptions are visually driven. Cognitively Driven Picture Perceptions When we cannot visually experience depth and volume in a picture without first engaging in perceptual activities of the kind that affect sensory phenomenology, the picture perception is cognitively driven. This happens when the picture has poor monocular cues: then vision naturally detects a planar surface, and if we want to have an experience of depth relations and volumetric shape, we have to engage in perceptual activities which alter the naturally caused visual experience of a planar surface— activities which do affect sensory phenomenology. The more fluently the surface causes a visual experience of a planar surface, the greater the mental effort required to achieve a stimulus-dependent visual experience of depth and volume, and the more cognitively driven the picture perception. The objects which support such picture perceptions can be fortuitous pictures or deliberately designed pictures which obscure depth cues, whether for artistic reasons or for want of technique. Activities sustained by the objects include forms of visualizing (such as cognitively driven completions), shifting attention to blind oneself to certain stimuli and focus on others, and consciously matching shapes to semantic or conceptual information. Figures 5.3–5.5 illustrate some of

Figure 5.3 

Figure 5.4 

Figure 5.5 

Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity 99 these activities. In Figure 5.3 (a wall-painting from the House of the Centenary in Pompeii), the shape at the center initially looks like a mound next to the human figure: In fact, the shape represents Vesuvius (Sider 2005: 12). Once we know this or figure it out from certain details, we can try to visualize Vesuvius as being much further away than the human figure. We can cognitively complete (see Briscoe 2011; Kanizsa and Gerbino 1982; Nanay 2010) the foreshortened space between it and the human figure’s feet and imagine the space sweeping far into the distance toward the mountain. We can also consciously direct endogenous attention away from the white foreground, on which the mountain seems to be sitting, making it look like a mound. The cognitive completion and the manipulation of spatial attention involve considerable mental effort which is required for us to form a visual representation of the picture’s contents. The contents are not visually robust; they do not persist on their own but are sustained by the mental effort. In Figure 5.4, vision detects neither occlusion nor surface orientation discontinuity (a depth cue and a volumetric cue respectively, described by Marr 1982: 215–233), so it yields a veridical visual experience of a roughly plane irregularly stained surface. But if asked to, we can visualize the figure as a convexity lit from the left. In that case, visualizing generates a visual representation of shape different to the one generated by early vision and delivered to phenomenal awareness. Figure 5.5 more easily supports an experience of the lower and upper halves as foreground and background. But if we have trouble performing this segregation, it helps to apply concepts; for example, we can easily bring our visual experience into line with a description such as “field with stalks against a gray sky”. In all three cases, perceptual activities affect sensory phenomenology: the object perception of the picture is a visually driven state whose sensory phenomenology is of a flat surface; the sensory phenomenology of the cognitively driven state is of volume and depth, and it is a pictureperception. The change in sensory phenomenology may reflect an influence of personal-level states on the visual shape assignment processes on which the phenomenology depends. If some of the processes used to generate visual shape representations sub-personally are also used when we perform acts of visualizing, then it seems that visualizing co-opts those processes and they come under cognitive influence. This looks like a case of cognitive penetration (of visual shape assignment processes by visualizing, a personal-level state). What supports this interpretation is that visualizing is stimulus-dependent, and therefore performed on inputs from early vision—yet it evidently affects how those inputs are processed by the time they can yield a modal experience. However, here, I won’t pursue the question of whether this counts as a case of cognitive penetration. (On whether some cases of picture perception involve cognitive penetration, and on the epistemological consequences of such penetration for perceptual warrant,

100  John Zeimbekis see Zeimbekis 2015. Voltolini 2015: 156–159, holds that all picture perception is cognitively penetrated.)

3.  Picture Perception and Seeing-In What does the distinction between visually and cognitively driven picture perceptions show about descriptions of picture perception as seeing-in? On those accounts, both picture perception and the appreciation of pictures involve seeing how a picture’s surface supports visual impressions of volume and depth. Both theses require subjects to have visual experiences of the picture’s surface as well as visual experiences of volume and depth (whether apart or together). In cognitively driven picture perceptions, we can represent picture contents only if we generate them consciously with mental actions from features of the picture’s surface (as illustrated by Figures 5.3–5.5). The surface’s features are represented visually as the contents of object perceptions, which naturally represent the object as a flat surface. The picture content is represented as a result of perceptual activities which affect sensory phenomenology, yielding visual impressions of volume and depth (instead of impressions of flatness). So both ingredients of seeing-in are present in cognitively driven picture perceptions. But in what sense are they both present in the same perception? (a) The perceptual activities which affect sensory phenomenology are telic in Crowther’s (2010) sense: they are attempts which can end with accomplishments because their point is to construct 3D representations. This allows us to define the temporal extent of the perceptual activity in a way that includes both sets of visual experiences—those caused naturally by object perception, and those sustained by mental actions: in the cases described in §2, the subject begins from a 2D representation and succeeds in constructing a 3D representation. Within the time-frame of the activity in other words, the subject has the set of experiences required for seeingin: visual experiences of the picture’s surface as well as visual experiences of volume and depth. (b) The picture content emerges at the expense of the content of object perception. For example, to visually experience a convexity in Figure 5.4, we need to visualize it at a location where vision places a plane surface. To see a figure-ground segregation in Figure 5.5, we need to visualize it where vision sees a continuous stained surface. In both cases, in order to experience volume or depth, we have to eliminate the experience of the figure as planar. Therefore, the subject does not have the two visual experiences—of the surface, and of volume and depth—simultaneously. She has them apart within the time-frame definable by the telic activity. Therefore, seeing-in—but not of the simultaneous variety—is true of cognitively driven picture perceptions. The distinct seeing-in thesis about appreciation follows from this: if there is a form of appreciation that

Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity 101 involves seeing how a picture’s surface supports visual impressions of volume and depth, then it is always present in cognitively driven picture perceptions. On the other hand, visually driven picture perceptions automatically form representations and experiences of the picture’s content; we don’t consciously construct or visualize the content by using the picture surface as a prop. The volumetric shape representations are “robust”: they persist even when we think of the picture as planar. If we were to engage in perceptual activities which alter this visual phenomenology, it could only be to eliminate the impression of depth that we already have. Since we grasp the picture’s content without having to represent the picture surface as flat, visually driven picture perceptions involve no seeing-in. Therefore, seeing-in as a general account of picture perception is false. However, the naturalistic pictures which support visually driven picture perceptions can be used to engage in perceptual activities which (by affecting visual phenomenology) enable the subject to see how the surface supports visual impressions of volume and depth. This point is important for the seeing-in thesis about appreciation. Consider a figure used by Marr to illustrate precisely the kind of hard-wired visual process that subserves natural picture perceptions: The enclosed line junction in Figure 5.6 is a monocular cue for assigning volumetric shape; it indicates a discontinuity in the orientation of a three-dimensional object’s surfaces. Accordingly, vision interprets the figure to yield a 3D representation of a cube. Marr’s writes: “If the occluding contour shown with thick lines is present on its own, one perceives a hexagon. The interior lines change it into a cube, since they suggest that the occluding contour is not planar” (Marr 1982: 221). Because the visual system is hard-wired to output such volumetric interpretations, the contents of visually driven picture perceptions are robust and persist into personal-level awareness, even though we know that the object is planar. But, as philosophers working on depiction have long claimed, it is possible to visually represent such a figure as planar (Peacocke 1987: 394; Schier 1986: 9; Lopes 1996: 40; Walton 1990: 293–304; Wollheim 1987: 46; Gibson 1986: 282; Gombrich 1960: 224; Cutting and Massironi

Figure 5.6 

102  John Zeimbekis 1998). If attention is focused away from the enclosed line junction and toward the perimeter, or the enclosed lines are seen as radii, the visual experience of a hexagon emerges. The effect lasts only as long as it is agentively sustained by controlling endogenous attention. Once the mental effort of distributing spatial attention ceases, the robust volumetric contents re-emerge. So perceptual activity which affects visual phenomenology can be used to eliminate visual impressions of volume caused by visually driven picture perceptions (just like it sustains impressions of volume in cognitively driven cases). Adjusting for the fact that the natural visual interpretation is now the volumetric one, what applied to the cognitively driven cases applies here too. Eliminating the visual impression of volume is a telic activity with a beginning (having a volumetric representation) and an accomplishment (seeing the figure as planar); in the activity’s time-frame, we experience the picture both as having volumetric shape and as being planar. We have the experiences in succession, not simultaneously, because in order to experience the figure as planar, we first need to engage in activity which eliminates the volumetric representation of the figure. Points about succession and simultaneity aside, this perceptual activity is what makes it possible to “marvel endlessly at the way in which line or brush stroke or expanse of color is exploited to render effects or establish analogies that can only be identified representationally” (Wollheim 1980: 216). The stronger the depth cues, the harder it is to do this. In many cases, if we want to appreciate how the work on the surface renders picture contents, we have to perceive small parts of the surface at a time from a small distance, which magnifies the surface’s features while leaving parts of the surface’s region that bear the depth cues on the periphery of our visual field, so that they fail to perform their natural visual effect. Thus, we often step back and forth when we stand in front of a painting in order to alternate between object perceptions of the brushstrokes and picture perceptions of volume and depth. Therefore, the seeing-in thesis about appreciation is true: both types of pictures can be appreciated by using seeing-in (seeing how the picture’s surface supports visual impressions of volume and depth). But as we saw, not all picture perceptions involve seeing-in. The relevant appreciative activity is something we can always engage in but it is not part of picture perception generally; it is only part of cognitively driven picture perceptions.

4.  Perceptual Activity and Twofoldness I have argued that the time-frame of a mental action, which is stimulusdependent and is therefore performed in the framework of a perception, allows us to include both experiences, of surface and content, in what

Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity 103 counts as a single perceptual episode. The structure of the action allows us to separate the experiences temporally: one experience is prior to the action’s accomplishment, the other is the action’s accomplishment. This precludes “twofoldness” or “simultaneity”, the thesis that we visually experience both the surface and the content at once. Wollheim writes that in the visual experience of pictures the viewer “remains visually aware not only of what is represented but also of the surface qualities of the representation” and describes the relevant experience as “twofold attention” (1980: 216, my emphasis). Awareness (sensory phenomenology) and attention cannot be simultaneous in the framework of the perceptual activities in which we assess how a picture’s surface supports impressions of volume and depth. This is illustrated by all the figures used above. Take Marr’s drawing (Figure 5.6). When attention is focused away from the intersection of the enclosed lines and toward the perimeter, not only do we not attend to what would be the corner of a cube, we actively suppress it attentionally. So attention to surface and content features is not simultaneous. Awareness of the features is not simultaneous either, because the attention-shift suppresses the visual phenomenology of a cube in favor of the visual phenomenology of a hexagon. In the framework of the perceptual activity, the two attendings and the two experiences are separated temporally and by a mental effort. In addition to the structure of the mental action, something else separates the planar representations from the volumetric ones. The visual system yields spatially consistent interpretations (Waltz 1975; Pylyshyn 2003: 99–107; Cutting and Massironi 1998 also give several illustrations of this visual assumption in their discussion of line interpretation). When vision cannot do this, as with the devil’s pitchfork or Escher’s drawings, visual experience and content remain unresolved; we can only settle visually on part of the figure at a time and cannot visually represent the entire picture’s content. Similarly, the assumptions built into visual systems which assign volumetric shape mean that we cannot visually experience the surface and the volumetric shape simultaneously. For instance, for simultaneity to apply to Figure 5.6, we would have to simultaneously visually experience the hexagon’s radii as being on the surface (for a hexagon) and as extending away from us (for a cube). Visually this is no more feasible than it is to visually represent the entire contents of “impossible drawings” like Escher’s or like Greg’s pitchfork. In fact, the striking differences in the visual phenomenology of those pictures and other pictures shows that when we see-in, we are not trying to visually experience anything spatially inconsistent, which would be the case if we tried to experience the surface and content simultaneously. Voltolini (2015) has recently defended Wollheim’s thesis that the visual experience of pictures is twofold. If I understand his defense of twofoldness correctly, Voltolini enriches the content of visual experiences of the picture surface until that content is no longer inconsistent with

104  John Zeimbekis the picture’s representational content. (In Wollheim’s terminology: the “configurational fold” of the experience is no longer inconsistent with its “recognitional fold”.) In theory, one way to do this is to build up perceptual configurations of the surface’s features until those configurations correspond to the entities individuated by descriptions of the content. To take an example of Voltolini’s, if the content of Jastrow’s figure is a rabbit, then the experience of the picture’s surface represents a set of features that supports rabbit-like contents (2015: 113). This strategy gains plausibility from the fact that it complies with the broad outlines of a psychological account of how picture contents are caused, building gradually up from surface features to representational contents. Some story has to be told in this respect, and it is likely to involve configurations of features—for instance, the three enclosed lines in Marr’s drawing (Figure 5.6) together form a configuration of features where vision is concerned, because together they function as a monocular cue. The question is whether this empirical story favors Wollheim’s claims about visual experiences. I think it doesn’t, so let me try to construct a destructive dilemma against Voltolini’s defense of twofoldness, starting from what is most fundamental to pictures: the way we construct three-dimensional contents from two-dimensional distributions of light (colors). The enriched visual experience of the picture surface that Voltolini describes has either a 3D content or a 2D content. If it has a 2D content, then it is still not consistent with picture contents and twofoldness faces the kinds of objections formulated above (§3). If on the other hand the enriched experience of the surface has a 3D content, then it is consistent with the picture’s representational content. But in that case, the question classically attributed to Wollheim remains unsolved: we still need to know whether we can visually experience pictures as planar surfaces, and if so, whether we can visually experience the picture’s representational content simultaneously. If the replies I outlined to those questions are accurate, the position adopted by Gombrich (1960: 224) and by Cutting and Massironi (1998) is correct: we cannot experience both the surface and the content of pictures at once. But we can experience them in the framework of a single perceptual activity, even when the picture is naturalistic. This goes some way to explaining how we “marvel endlessly” at the ways in which picture surfaces are used to support visual experiences of their representational contents.

Note 1 Macpherson (2006) has argued that such differences are in the character of experience, not its content. But visual content is egocentric, and the mental rotation does cause a new egocentric scenario content, so the relevant content is affected as well as the phenomenology.

Pictorial Experience and Perceptual Activity 105

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106  John Zeimbekis Peterson, M. (2005). “Object Perception”. In Blackwell Handbook of Sensation and Perception, edited by B. Goldstein, 168–203. Oxford: Blackwell. Pylyshyn, Z. (2003). Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Raftopoulos, A. (2009). Cognition and Perception. How Do Psychology and Neural Science Inform Philosophy? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reisberg, D. (1996). “The Non-Ambiguity of Mental Images”. In Stretching the Imagination: Representation and Transformation of Mental Imagery, edited by C. Cornoldi et al., 127–131. New York: Oxford University Press. Sacks, O. (2010). The Mind’s Eye. New York: Knopf. Schier, F. (1986). Deeper into Pictures: An Essay on Pictorial Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sider, D. (2005). The Library of the Villa Dei Papiri at Herculaneum. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. Tye, M. (1991). The Imagery Debate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Voltolini, A. (2015). A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction. Palgrave: Basingstoke. Walton, K. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Waltz, D. (1975). “Understanding Line Drawings of Scenes with Shadows”. In The Psychology of Computer Vision, edited by P.H. Winston, 19–91. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wollheim, R. (1980). Art and Its Objects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wollheim, R. (1987). Painting as an Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zeimbekis, J. (2015). “Seeing, Visualizing and Believing”. In The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception: New Philosophical Perspectives, edited by J. Zeimbekis and A. Raftopoulos, 298–327. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6 Threefold Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Attitude Regina-Nino Mion

The paper discusses Edmund Husserl’s threefold pictorial experience and the threefold aesthetic experience of pictures accordingly. It aims to show what the advantages are of the threefold account of pictorial experience, in contrast to the twofold account, to explain aesthetic experience. More specifically, it explains the role of the image object’s fold in aesthetic experience. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part explains and defends Husserl’s theory of threefold pictorial experience, which is an experience of seeing-in or, in Husserl’s terminology, image consciousness. A comparison will be made with other seeing-in theories, especially with Bence Nanay’s threefold account of picture perception. The second part explains the relationship between the second and the third fold, namely the resemblance and difference between the image object and the image subject. The focus is on explaining the terms of analogizing and non-analogizing moments of the image object. The third part of the paper discusses Husserl’s theory of the threefold aesthetic experience of pictures. It will be shown that aesthetic attitude is turned toward the how of representation, instead of the what of representation. Also, a comparison between Husserl and Richard Wollheim’s theories of representation is made. More specifically, the paper will show that Richard Wollheim’s different hows of representation are similar to Husserl’s view on analogizing and non-analogizing moments of the image object.

1.  Threefold Pictorial Experience There is a wide range of literature on the pictorial experience of ‘seeing-in.’ Most discussions refer back to Richard Wollheim’s and Ernst Gombrich’s twofold account of pictorial experience. Edmund Husserl’s theory of threefold pictorial experience has received comparatively little attention.1 Husserl developed in his early writings (ca. 1895–1905) a theory of “image consciousness” [Bildbewusstsein] in order to describe the experience of pictures in which what is depicted is represented by an image.2 He takes the experience of pictures in the narrow sense of depiction: “non-representational images as well as ‘imagistic’ visual formations fall outside the

108  Regina-Nino Mion scope of this heading” (de Warren 2010: 308). Thus, image consciousness does not involve visual imagination; in other words: “To ‘mean’ the real features of what is depicted [. . .], is not to imagine or intuit them in separate acts of phantasy or memory”3 (Brough 2012: 558). Husserl’s theory can then be rightfully called a theory of seeing-in. In fact, Husserl himself uses the German verb “hineinshauen” or “hineinblicken” in his manuscripts.4 Richard Wollheim famously calls seeing-in a special kind of experience that is marked by a duality called twofoldness. We see: 1) the marked surface and 2) something in the surface (Wollheim 1998: 21). According to Edmund Husserl’s theory of depictive image consciousness, the experience of seeing something in a picture is a threefold pictorial experience. It involves three objects: 1) the physical image [das physische Bild], 2) the image object [Bildobjekt] and 3) the image subject [Bildsujet]. To quote Husserl: We have three objects: 1) the physical image, the physical thing made from canvas, marble, and so on; 2) the representing or depicting object; and 3) the represented or depicted object. For the latter, we prefer to say simply “image subject”; for the first object, we prefer “physical image”; for the second, “representing image” or “image object.” (Husserl 2005: 21) These three objects or objectivities (Husserl 2005: 30) can also be called three folds or three different constitutive moments (Rozzoni 2016: 299).5 Because of the three folds, some Husserl scholars have suggested that there is more than one kind of seeing-in in Husserl’s image consciousness. For instance, John Brough finds that to see something in the image’s physical support is the first kind of seeing-in and to see the subject in the image is the second level of seeing-in (Brough 2012: 551).6 According to Brough, Wollheim’s seeing-in would correspond only to the first kind of seeing-in (ibid.). In short, Brough’s explanation of the threefoldness account of Husserl’s theory is the following: That there are two senses of seeing-in suggests that we should speak of ‘threefoldness’ rather than ‘twofoldness’ in image consciousness: on one level I am aware of the surface of the physical support; on another I see something in it, giving me the image; and on the third I see the subject in the image. (Brough 2012: 552) Bence Nanay has also defended a threefoldness account of pictorial experience that in some respect has similarities with Husserl’s account. Nanay claims that our picture perception involves three entities: 1) the

Threefold Pictorial Experience 109 two-dimensional picture surface (A), 2) the three-dimensional object the picture surface visually encodes (B), and 3) the three-dimensional depicted object (C).7 In the following sections I will discuss the three folds of Husserl’s image consciousness in more detail and make further comparisons with Nanay’s and Wollheim’s theory. 1.1.  The Physical Image In Husserl’s manuscripts, the threefold experience of pictures is also called physical imagination [die physische Imagination] or physical image presentation [die physisch-bildliche Vorstellung, physische Bildvorstellung] or perceptual imagining [die perzeptive Imagination].8 These point to the peculiar character of image consciousness, which is an experience of image presentation based on perception. The physical image—the first fold—is perceived; it is a perceptual object made from canvas, marble, paper or some other physical material. In his early texts, Husserl claims that pictorialization can occur even without the physical image, involving only an image and a subject. But this is only to say that image and subject are the necessary folds in all kinds of pictorializations, including phantasy. The physical image is definitely needed for pictorial experience to occur.9 It seems to be an uncontroversial claim that our pictorial experience involves the perception of a physical image. However, opinions differ among picture theorists with respect to the scope of the role that the physical object plays for the pictorial experience to occur. Christian Lotz, for example, criticizes Husserl’s theory by saying that “Husserl fails to consider the fact that pictures are ultimately made by human beings, and that what we ‘see’ in pictures is ultimately our own shaping power [Bildungskraft]” (Lotz 2007: 172). Other theorists, on the contrary, attribute a much bigger role to the visible properties of physical thing by advocating a “transparency thesis,”10 for instance. Differences also occur with respect to what parts of the physical thing are involved in pictorial experience. For example, Dominic Lopes points out that only some of the physical properties of the picture are design properties “by means of which pictures represent their subjects” (Lopes 1996: 3). Or, take Nanay’s note that “the surface’s temperature or its chemical composition does not count as a ‘surface property’,” for only visually salient properties count as surface properties (Nanay 2016: 94). Husserl does not say much about the necessary parts or properties of the physical image, although he does mention that a picture’s frame exercises no re-presentational function (Husserl 2005: 134). Husserl’s main focus is on the image object and the subject. The only important thing to say about the physical image is that it exercises the function of awakening the image object: “The physical image awakens [weckt] the mental image and this in turn presents something else, the

110  Regina-Nino Mion subject” (Husserl 2005: 30). He also writes that the physical image is the image substrate [Bildsubstrat] (Husserl 2005: 587) or that the physical image is the appropriate instigator of the appearance of image object. To quote Husserl: In the case of the physical image presentation, a real object belonging to perception’s field of regard—namely, the physical image— functions as the instigator [Erreger] of the pictorial apprehension; its perception is the starting point and transit point for the development of the pictorial presentation. (Husserl 2005: 135) 1.2.  The Image Object Husserl states that the image object is the only object that directly and genuinely appears in the image consciousness.11 Now, this does not mean that the physical image cannot appear to us; it only means that in normal contemplation of the picture we focus our attention on the image object appearance (Husserl 2005: 48). The picture can appear to us as a physical thing, when, for instance, we focus our attention on the “thing hanging on the wall” (ibid); or when a conservator tries to fix a crack in the canvas of a painting, focusing thereby on the physical material of the painting. In his early texts, Husserl believed that a perceptual object appears to us when sensations (apprehension contents) are apprehended or interpreted; and the theory was called the content-­ apprehensionschema [Inhalt-Auffassung-Schema] (Husserl 2005: 323). When it comes to image consciousness, the theory states that the same visual sensations are apprehended as a physical image and as an image object. However, the two apprehensions, and accordingly the two appearances, cannot take place at the same time; we cannot focus on the physical image appearance and on the image object appearance simultaneously. To quote Husserl: The image object and the physical image surely do not have separate and different apprehension contents; on the contrary, their contents are identically the same. The same visual sensations are interpreted as points and lines on paper and as appearing plastic form. The same sensations are interpreted as a physical thing made from plaster and as a white human form. And in spite of the identity of their sensory foundation, the two apprehensions certainly cannot exist at once: they cannot make two appearances stand out simultaneously. By turns, indeed, and therefore separately, but certainly not at once. (Husserl 2005: 48–49)

Threefold Pictorial Experience 111 In normal pictorial experience, “[t]he image object does triumph [siegt], insofar as it comes to appearance” (Husserl 2005: 50). As Brough explains it, for the image object to appear its physical basis must disappear, even though we are still emptily conscious of the physical image (Brough 2001: 9–10). To be aware of the physical support in its “invisible presence” is needed, otherwise we would succumb to hallucination (ibid). Thus, there is a continuous tension and even conflict between the image object and the physical image. Although the appearance of the image object is based on visual sensations, we do not perceive the image object according to Husserl. Why? Husserl writes that the image object appearance, indeed, has the character of a perceptual appearance, but it is not a normal and full perception [keine normale und volle Wahrnehmung] (Husserl 2005: 43). What appears is not taken to be actually present: “It appears as present [gegenwärtig], but it is not taken to be actual [wirklich]” (ibid). The image object is a nullity [Nichtig]; it appears but is nothing (Husserl 2005: 51). This is why the image object is not perceived but quasi-perceived for it is perceived without the belief in the existence. To highlight the difference, Husserl calls the experience of the physical thing Wahrnehmung, which is an ordinary perceptual experience that involves belief in empirical reality, and experience of the image object Perzeption, which is a unique kind of perception that occurs in the experience of an image.12 To quote Husserl: The image-object appearance is perceptual [perzeptiv]: insofar as it has the sensation’s sensuousness, which undergoes apprehension. It is not, however, a perceptual appearance [wahrnehmungserscheinung]: It lacks “belief”; it lacks the characteristic of reality. (Husserl 2005: 584) Because of the visual sensations that are apprehended, it can be said that the image object’s appearance depends on the physical image: in a black and white photo, a figure (image object) appears in black and white colors; in a miniature size photo, the figure appears in miniature size (Husserl 2005: 20).13 On the other hand, Husserl believes that the image object appears three-dimensionally although the physical image is twodimensional: “The drawing is flat; the plastic form is three-dimensional” (Husserl 2005: 156).14 Another important characteristic of the image object is its depictive function. Husserl believes that it is the image object, and not the physical image, that has depictive function. As Husserl writes: “[. . .] if we say in criticism that the image fails, that it resembles the original only in this or that respect, or if we say that it resembles it perfectly, then naturally we do not mean the physical image, the thing that lies there on the table or hangs on the wall” (Husserl 2005: 20).15 However, the mere sensuous

112  Regina-Nino Mion appearance of the image object is not yet a depictive image object. At this stage, the image object does not depict the subject yet. To quote Husserl: With the constitution of this appearance [the appearing image], however, the relation to the image subject has not yet become constituted. With a simple apprehension, therefore, we would not yet have any image at all in the proper sense, but at most the object that subsequently functions as an image. (Husserl 2005: 24–25)16 What is needed is an additional apprehension, or a new apprehensioncharacteristic (Husserl 2005: 31) that yields the seeing of the subject in the image. In other words, this new apprehension founded in the image apprehension “imprints a new character on the image apprehension and gives it a new object relation” (Husserl 2005: 25). Thus, the image object is something that appears, based on sensations, and something that depicts the subject. In Nanay’s theory the second fold (B) does not have depictive function. B is only the three-dimensional object the picture surface visually encodes. According to Nanay, the depicted object C is presented by the mental imagery, but mental imagery is not the second fold (B). Husserl would probably say that the second fold B encompasses “mental imagery” as well. Accordingly, we would get the following threefold description of Nanay’s theory: 1) the two-dimensional picture surface (A), 2) the three-dimensional object the picture surface visually encodes (B) and the mental imagery of C, 3) the three-dimensional depicted object (C).17 1.3.  The Image Subject Husserl states that the image subject “is the object meant by the presentation” (Husserl 2005: 19)18 or that it is “the object genuinely meant [eigentlich gemeinte]” (Husserl 2005: 26). At the same time, he makes it clear that the depicted subject does not appear itself and that only the image object genuinely appears [eigentlich erscheinen]. In other words, the subject “does not appear in the proper sense” [das Sujet im eigentlichen Sinn nicht erscheint] (Husserl 2005: 22). See the following quotation in which Husserl compares perceptual presentation with image presentation: In perceptual presentation, the appearing object itself is meant, and consequently it presents its object as given to it, as grasped “itself.” In image presentation, on the other hand, it is not the appearing object that is meant but another object, for which the appearing object functions as a representant by means of its resemblance to it. The image

Threefold Pictorial Experience 113 presentation, therefore, has an indirect way of relating to its object. The image appears in it immediately, “in person”: It appears, but in the strict sense is not presented; rather, it only illustrates intuitively the presented object, which does not appear “itself.” (Husserl 2005: 150–151) Thus, despite the fact that the depicted object itself is meant in pictorial experience, the depicted object itself does not appear. The subject is intended but no appearance corresponds to it (Husserl 2005: 29). Only the image object appears in the strict sense.19 This is why the image subject is nonperceived (Husserl 2005: 27). For Husserl, the depicted subject can never be perceived or even quasi-perceived in the depicting consciousness, because a perceptual object must appear itself and be actually present [wirklich gegenwärtig] (Husserl 2005: 43) in person.20 The subject cannot be perceived, otherwise we would have perception and not image consciousness. It could be perceived only in a separate act of perception. In other words, perceiving the image subject would entail abandoning image consciousness.21 Having said this, Husserl still holds the view that we see the subject.22 How can it be? According to Husserl, the subject does not appear as a second thing in addition to the image, but it does appear in and with the image [in und mit dem Bild] (Husserl 2005: 29). There are essential connections between them (ibid). We see the image subject in the analogizing moments (or in the moments of resemblance) of the image object.23 Perhaps Eduard Marbach’s wording is even better here: “The tree as it appears in the picture y over there is only seen as it were” (Marbach 1993: 131). We see the subject only as it appears in the image object. To quote Marbach: “it is not as if I were seeing the represented x itself from a represented point of view. [. . .] I only see as it were x as it appears in the picture y, i.e. the pictorial object” (Marbach 1993: 131). This becomes clearer if we think that we do not actually see objects in reality as they appear in images,24 which, however, does not prevent us from seeing the depicted subject in images. Thus, one could say that Husserl advocates a resemblance theory, since the image must have some resemblance to the depicted subject. Even so, Husserl’s theory should not be accused of representing the Resemblance theory that Wollheim criticizes in one of his articles. Wollheim argues that the two terms between which the resemblance should hold, according to the Resemblance theory, are the “resembling term” and the “resembled term”. He thinks that the latter term is unproblematic since “[i]t is surely what the picture represents, or some part of it” (Wollheim 2003: 140). The difficulty lies in the first term, that is, the resembling term. To quote Wollheim: The consideration I have in mind is grounded in the fact that we readily say in front of representational pictures things like, ‘That

114  Regina-Nino Mion looks like Napoleon,’ or ‘That resembles a Deptford pink.’ [. . .] In ‘That looks like Napoleon,’ ‘That looks like a Deptford pink,’ the ‘that’ must be taken to refer, not, as we might initially suppose, and as a Resemblance theorist would want, to some part of the marked surface, but to the historical figure himself, to the very endangered plant. [. . .] Incidentally, if we do take the ‘that’ in that way, the next thing to note about ‘That looks like Napoleon’ and ‘That looks like a Deptford pink’ is that they turn out not to use the notion of resemblance at all. For, if both the first term and the second term now refer to what the picture represents, there are no longer two terms between which resemblance could hold. (Wollheim 2003: 140) Husserl’s answer to this problem would be quite simple. The ‘That looks like Napoleon’ refers neither to the historical figure himself nor to (some part of) the marked surface but to the appearing image object. Thus, Husserl would agree that we shall not find “a resemblance holding between its surface and what is represented” (Wollheim 2003: 141) because the resemblance can only occur between the image object and the image subject, and not between the physical image and the image subject. Also, it is not the case that the resembling term and the resembled term are equalized, since one is the image object and the other the image subject.

2.  Resemblance and Difference To describe the resemblance between the image object and the image subject, Husserl uses the term “analogue.” According to him, the appearing image object is taken to be an analogical representant [analogischer Repräsentant] (Husserl 2005: 26). In other words, imaging presentation is “presenting the object as the analogue of the object presented by the image presentation” (Husserl 2005: 158). However, not all moments in the image object function as the analogue. Image object involves both analogizing and non-analogizing moments, and only the analogizing moments have depictive function. Through the analogizing moments— also called moments of resemblance (Husserl 2005: 33) or moments of agreements (Husserl 2005: 186)—a consciousness of identity is given. To quote Husserl: We look into the image object, we look at that by means of which it is an image object, at these moments of resemblance. And the subject presents itself to us in them: through them we look into the subject. The consciousness of the subject extends throughout the consciousness of the image object with respect to aspects of the analogizing

Threefold Pictorial Experience 115 moments. As far as the moments reach, a consciousness of identity is given, such that we in fact see the subject in them. (Husserl 2005: 33) Non-analogizing moments have no depictive function. As Husserl writes: “They are there in the image, but they are not operative. We do not intuit the subject in them” (Husserl 2005: 54). These moments are functioning as stopgaps (Husserl 2005: 55), they deviate from and do not fit the subject and are also in conflict with the subject (Husserl 2005: 32). In a black and white photograph of a child, for instance, the child appearing photographically displays monochrome colors that conflict with the colors of a real child. The monochrome colors are thus non-analogizing moments. The plastic form of the photographically appearing child can still resemble a real child, and then the plastic form is an analogizing moment. In fact, Husserl believes that the color and size of the image object do not necessarily have to resemble the depicted subject, but the plastic form must. Husserl explains this in the following way: Although I see the image (the photograph) as grey, the subject does not appear as colored. In the image I do not become conscious of what the subject is with respect to color. On the other hand, I do “see” the plastic form in the image. What constitutes the difference? I see the shades of grey in their different levels of brightness as well as the differences in the “flat surface.” I sense grey and something flat and interpret the plastic appearance in them. (Husserl 2005: 156) For the plastic form to come forward, it is sometimes enough to draw the outline.25 To quote Husserl: “A drawing that suggests only outlines can give them in perfect resemblance, and thus with respect to this one moment furnish a perfect consciousness of internal imaging” (Husserl 2005: 61). As said previously, we see the subject in the analogizing moments. It also means that “the subject intentions and the image object intentions coincide [decken] with respect to the analogizing aspects” (Husserl 2005: 162). Now, the coinciding can be perfect or imperfect. In case of perfect coinciding, the subject appears in the image just as it actually is,26 and we say that the image consciousness is genuine or pure. In case of “impure” [“unreine”] image consciousness, the exhibiting [Dartsellung] of the subject in the image object is impure for there is only a partial coinciding of the two intentions (Husserl 2005: 164). It should also be pointed out that perfect and imperfect coinciding do not produce different image subjects: the same thing is meant (Husserl 2005: 164).

116  Regina-Nino Mion Husserl also mentions different degrees and levels of adequacy in the presentation of the image subject by the image object. We find the adequacy with respect to extensity [Extensität] and/or intensity [Intensität] (Husserl 2005: 61). It means that there can be different ranges of the depictive moments, e.g., “[t]he range is greater in the case of an oil painting or oleograph than in the case of an engraving or ink drawing” (Husserl 2005: 61). But the adequacy of the presentation can also differ with respect to the intensity. For instance, when the color print reproduces the color imperfectly: in this case the coloring is still taken to be the bearer of depiction although the presentation is certainly perceptibly inadequate (Husserl 2005: 61–62). Or when the inadequate color of grey that does not have analogizing function (the original is not grey) can still be intended to be an intention aimed at the original (that the original has “certain” colors) (Husserl 2005: 190). I believe that one can add here the possibility that the adequacy can change in time. When the bright colors of a painting become faded over time, the coloring becomes less intense. It can also happen that colors change so radically that they lose their depictive function, that is, the colors will no longer be analogizing moments. In that case, the extent or range of the analogizing moments diminishes. But it does not mean that the image subject changes. All that changes is the range of analogizing moments through which the subject is seen. In sum, the likeness or resemblance is only in analogizing moments and the difference or conflict is in non-analogizing moments.27 The image object as a whole encompasses all of them, it is “the blending of resembling moments with the non-analogized but co-intended moments accompanying them contiguously” (Husserl 2005: 161). How the moments of image object become relevant to aesthetic experience of pictures will be explained in the next chapter.

3.  Aesthetic Attitude Together with the theory of image consciousness Husserl develops a theory of aesthetic consciousness [ästhetisches Bewusstsein] (Husserl 2005: 459), which is also called the aesthetic contemplation of the image [ästhetische Bildbetrachtung] (Husserl 2005: 39) or the aesthetic attitude [ästhetische Einstellung] (Husserl 2005: 168). Aesthetic consciousness of depictive pictures has the same threefold structure as image consciousness. However, it does not mean that the experience of image consciousness is identical to that of aesthetic consciousness. What takes place is a shift of focus of our attention. More precisely, Husserl believes that in the normal image consciousness, that is, without any aesthetic attitude, our interest is directed toward the image subject, but in aesthetic consciousness, our interest is in the How of the image object’s depicting [Wie der Verbildlichung des Bildobjekts] (Husserl 2005: 39) or how the subject is depicted in image, that is, in the How of its presentedness [Wie der

Threefold Pictorial Experience 117 Dargestelltheit] (Husserl 2005: 704). We aim at how the image subject appears in the image object and we are not (exclusively) interested in what the picture depicts. At this point, I would like to refer to a parallelism between Wollheim’s and Husserl’s theories. In one of his articles, Richard Wollheim distinguishes the what and the how of representation, and finds that there are three different hows of representations. To quote Wollheim: There are three different contexts in which we may think of the how of representation. Two of these relate back to the what of representation, and how it is represented: the third relates to the representing surface, and how it is marked. I call these respectively the Representational how, the Presentational how, and the Material how. (Wollheim 2003: 143) In my view, the Material how resembles Husserl’s physical image (how the physical image appears), the Representational how resembles the analogizing moments of the image object, and the Presentational how resembles the non-analogizing moments of the image object. Moreover, I believe that these hows presented by Wollheim help us to understand Husserl’s theory of aesthetic experience of depictive pictures. I will explain this in more detail. To begin with, Husserl would agree that it is through the Material how that the other two hows are realized (Wollheim 2003: 143), for without the physical image we would not have depictive imaging appearance. Also, Wollheim’s description of how certain parts of the Material how affect what the spectator sees in the pictures and other parts affect how he sees, has similarities with Husserl’s idea that our sensations of the (physical) picture are apprehended as the appearing image object that has analogizing moments (through which we see what is depicted) and nonanalogizing moments (that contribute to how the image object depicts the subject). Since analogizing moments have depictive function, then to say that analogizing moments correspond to the depicted subject is similar to saying that “the Representational how corresponds to a property of the what of representation” (Wollheim 2003: 143). The same parallelism exists between non-analogizing moments that have no depictive function and the idea that “the Presentational how does not qualify the what at all” (Wollheim 2003: 143). For instance, the painted long neck of Parmigianino’s Madonna belongs to the Presentational how, since the represented Madonna does not have that property. Therefore, the “long neck” is a non-analogizing moment. Often a non-analogizing moment reflects, as Wollheim writes, “a range of things from the expressive vision of the artist, through the artistic pressures of the day, to the artist’s technical limitations” (Wollheim 2003: 143). In other words, we may focus on how the subject is depicted or on the style and techniques used by the artist to

118  Regina-Nino Mion make the depiction. Accordingly, the focus is either on analogizing, depictive moments, or on non-analogizing moments (although not exclusively). In the following sections, I will show that, according to Husserl, our aesthetic attitude is focused on the image object; which is why the threefoldness account of pictorial experience is needed, for it includes the fold of “image object”. I will also show that our aesthetic attitude is not turned exclusively on the non-analogizing moments (the Presentational how) but also on the analogizing moments (the Representational how). I agree with the common interpretation of Husserl’s theory of aesthetic experience of pictures according to which the non-analogizing moments bring forward the difference between image consciousness and aesthetic consciousness for they play a minor role in the first case and a substantial role in the latter case. As Brough puts it, these traits that analogize imperfectly (the nonanalogizing moments) certainly contribute essentially to the aesthetic value of a work of art (Brough 2012: 559). However, my aim is to point out that in addition to the emphasis on the non-analogizing moments, the emphasis on the analogizing moments, that is, how the depicted subject is presented in the analogizing moments, is also relevant to aesthetic consciousness. 3.1.  The How of the Image Object’s Depicting According to Husserl, “an interest in the form of aesthetic feeling, fastens on to the image object, and fastens on to it even with regard to its non-analogizing moments” (Husserl 2005: 55). He also seems to suggest that the fewer non-analogizing moments we find compared to depictive, analogizing moments, the less aesthetically “pure” the picture is. As Husserl writes in a letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal: The more of the existential world that resounds or is brought to attention, and the more the work of art demands an existential attitude of us out of itself (for instance a naturalistic sensuous appearance: the natural truth of photography), the less aesthetically pure the work is. (Husserl 2009) It should be noted, however, that nowhere is Husserl suggesting that aesthetic interest is directed exclusively to the non-analogizing moments of the image object. His aim is to emphasize that, whereas in normal pictorial experience we are directed to the depictive moments, for our aim is to recognize what is depicted in the picture, our aesthetic attitude encompasses all moments in the image object. In this sense, our “interest always returns [zurückkehrt] to the image object and attaches to it internally, finding satisfaction in the manner of its depicting” (Husserl 2005: 40). One could say that, in the process, we realize that non-analogizing moments are relevant too and, in fact, play an important role in aesthetic experience. Still, one might argue that if the focus is on the How of the image object’s depicting, then why do non-analogizing moments matter at all, for they do

Threefold Pictorial Experience 119 not depict the subject? Moreover, why are they “included” in the appearing image object in the first place? Christian Ferencz-Flats, for instance, has criticized Husserl’s idea that the non-analogizing moments, like brushworks and other materials, belong to the image object, exactly because the thick lines that compose the knight figure of the image object (seen as mere lines) do not belong to the same level of image consciousness as the apparition of the little grey knight figure, but rather to that of the real piece of paper, as does the thickness of the paint layer in a painting etc. (Ferencz-Flatz 2009: 489) Then he adds: “The layer of paint and the drawn line are perfectly real objects we perceive normally and by no means fictitious objects like the figures they help depict” (ibid.). Ferencz-Flats seems to suggest that nonanalogizing moments, like brushwork, belong to the Material how and not to the Presentational how. In response to the criticism, I would first like to refer to the contentapprehension-schema explained in the first part of the article: we have visual sensations of the painting that we apprehend either as a physical thing or as image object. It is true that to apprehend the thick lines as “mere lines” would correspond to the physical thing apprehension. However, these thick lines cannot be not apprehended as part of the appearing image object: we cannot not see them.28 In other words, together with analogizing moments we see the non-analogizing moments as belonging to the image object’s appearance. The non-analogizing moments are prescribed by the material object but can still be apprehended as part of the appearing image object. John Brough explains it in the following way: “The intertwining of the two [the image and its physical substratum] also means that aspects of the material support, such as passages of raw canvas in paintings or the grain of the wood from which a sculpture is made, can seep into the image, showing themselves in subtle ways and contributing to the image’s unique character and aesthetic effect” (Brough 2012: 548).29 3.2.  How the Image Subject Is Depicted In the previous section, it was said that our aesthetic attitude is turned toward the image object with the emphasis on the non-analogizing moments. However, in some passages Husserl suggests another possible direction of our aesthetic interest. In his lecture courses 1904/1905, he writes that “To mean the image object, to mean the image subject, and again to mean the image object as the image of the subject are different objectivating states” (Husserl 2005: 41). It should be noted that the image object as the image of the subject [das Bildobjekt als Bild des Sujets] is not a fourth fold in pictorial experience and the description does not change anything in the threefold structure of image (or aesthetic)

120  Regina-Nino Mion consciousness. My contention is that Husserl’s sole aim in giving these distinctions is to refer to the possibility that our aesthetic experience can also be focused on how the subject is depicted in image, and, therefore, when we are turned toward the image object in our aesthetic attitude, the emphasis can be on the analogizing moments as well. Now, one might argue that Husserl’s theory of aesthetic attention states that our attention is focused either on the image object or on the depicted subject. See, for instance, the passage from Ideas I: Let us suppose that we are considering Dürer’s engraving, “Knight, Death and the Devil.” In the first place, let us distinguish the normal perceiving, the correlate of which is the physical thing, “engraved print”, this print in the portfolio. In the second place, we distinguish the perceptive consciousness in which, within the black, colorless lines, there appear to us the figures of the “knight on his horse,” “death,” and the “devil.” We do not advert to these in aesthetic contemplation as Objects; we rather advert to the realities presented “in the picture”—more precisely stated, to the “depictured” realities, to the flesh and blood knight, etc. (Husserl 1983, 1: 261–262) However, I believe that this quotation in the Ideas I does not contradict what Husserl writes in the Husserliana XXIII. His statement in the Ideas I becomes clear if we remember that the subject itself does not appear in image, we do not and we cannot perceive the “flesh and blood knight.” We can only advert to the subject as it appears in the image object. And thus the aesthetic interest aims at the depicted object only “in the How of its presentedness” (Husserl 2005: 704). It means that in aesthetic contemplation, “we do not merely look at the subject in the image consciousness; rather, what interests us is how the subject presents itself there, what manner of appearing in image it displays, and perhaps how aesthetically pleasing the manner of appearing is” (Husserl 2005: 40). Also, the aesthetic experience of how the subject is depicted is a restricted experience, for we only advert to one particular appearance of the subject taken from other possible appearances of the subject the image could have re-presented as well. Aesthetically we are only interested in how the subject appears in this particular image we are looking at. This is why our aesthetic interest does not concern the depicted object “as an element of the actual world with respect to its objective properties, relations, and so on, but precisely the appearance alone” (Husserl 2005: 168). In a word, these are the analogizing moments through which we see the depicted subject and also the analogizing moments that restrict how we see the subject: Aesthetic delight therefore concerns what is presented only with respect to the moments (and the How of the moments) presented in

Threefold Pictorial Experience 121 the presenting depictive images, and it is concerned with these only to the extent to which and in the way in which they are presented. (Husserl 2005: 647)

Notes 1 Probably one of the reasons is that the collection of his manuscripts on image consciousness in Husserliana XXIII “Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory” was published quite recently: in German in 1980, and the English translation in 2005. 2 Given the limited scope of the paper, I will not discuss the parallelism between phantasy and image consciousness, the view that Husserl later abandoned. In his early writings, Husserl believed that phantasy has similar structure to image consciousness in which one can distinguish the “phantasy image” and the “image subject which is presented precisely by means of the image” (Husserl 2005: 25). In other words, he took both phantasy and image consciousness to be examples of “image presentation” (Bildlichkeitsvorstellung) (Marbach 2012: 229). 3 “To ‘mean’ the real features of what is depicted, it is important to note, is not to imagine or intuit them in separate acts of phantasy or memory. I could do that, of course, but then I would have left image consciousness behind and taken up residence in visual imagination, which is a different kind of experience and does not involve seeing-in” (Brough 2012: 558) 4 “Thus do we understand the image. In looking at it, we see into it” (Husserl 2005: 158). [So verstehen wir das Bild, wir schauen uns hinein]” (Husserl 1980: 140). 5 I have used the term “fold” (and “threefoldness”accordingly) since for Husserl the experience of image consciousness is a single, complex experience involving three moments or “aspects”, and not three experiences. It is similar to Wollheim’s understanding of twofoldness in Painting as an Art in which Wollheim states that the two things that happen when we look at a picture surface are two aspects of a single experience, and not two separate experiences (Wollheim 1998: 46). However, contrary to Wollheim, Husserl’s threefold visual experience cannot be called “threefold perception” (like Wollheim’s “twofold perception” (Wollheim 1980: 214)), since the image subject is not perceived. I come back to this later. 6 Note that another interpretation says that in Husserl’s theory we have 1) the seeing of a depicted image subject in the image object and 2) the seeing of an image-thing as an image object (de Warren 2009: 147–148). 7 He adds: “The novelty is the distinction between B and C, which have been treated interchangeably in the literature” (Nanay 2016: 48). 8 Husserl (2005: 17, 20, 47). 9 Husserl writes that “Three objectivities were interwoven in physical imaging; two were interwoven in phantasy” (Husserl 2005: 30). 10 “A picture’s content-bearing properties are the properties of a picture’s surface that play a role in determining its content. Changing a picture’s contentbearing properties in a visually discriminable way will thus change the content of the picture” (Newall 2011: 97–98). 11 “I see the subject in the image object; the latter is what directly and genuinely appears” (Husserl 2005: 48). [Ich schaue das Sujet in das Bildobjekt hinein, dieses ist das direkt und eigentlich Erscheinende (Husserl 1980: 44)].

122  Regina-Nino Mion 12 Both terms are often translated into English as “perception” (Brough 1992: 247). See also translator’s note on page 556 in (Husserl 2005). 13 This, in fact, corresponds to Nanay’s thesis that the two-dimensional picture surface (A) and the three-dimensional object the picture surface visually encodes (B) “occupy the very same region of our visual field” (Nanay 2016: 62). 14 There seems to be another parallelism to Nanay’s theory: A is two-dimensional and B three-dimensional. However, Husserl thinks that three-dimensional sculptures can also have depictive function and therefore the physical thing must not be two-dimensional (Husserl 2005: 180). 15 As Christian Lotz shows, the fact that Husserl does not take the physical image as grounds for the resemblance of what is depicted differentiates Husserl’s theory remarkably from other theories of depiction, especially from the linguistic theories of pictures. Lotz thinks that Nelson Goodman, for instance, conceives pictures as if they were only material signs, and if we follow this idea then we, of course, conclude that the word “table” has no similarity with real tables. But, as Lotz points out, “Goodman’s thesis is not convincing, insofar as—spoken in Husserlian language—he reduces pictures to what Husserl calls ‘picture things’, and in so doing Goodman overlooks the phenomenon of ‘seeing-in’ and therefore cannot account for the visuality in its own terms” (Lotz 2007: 177). 16 See also: “If I were to accept the image object just as it appears, I would not have an image object. I would consider the image object as some sensuous appearance [Schein] or other. As some appearing object, infected by a conflict” (Husserl 2005: 161). 17 Note that another reading of Nanay’s account is also possible. Since the mental imagery is not equated with either B or C, it is a separate fold, and what we get is the following fourfold account of pictorial experience: 1) the two-dimensional picture surface (A), 2) the three-dimensional object the picture surface visually encodes (B), 3) the mental imagery of C, and 4) the three-dimensional depicted object (C). 18 “In every instance of such presenting we distinguish image and subject [Bild und Sache]. The subject is the object meant by the presentation [Die Sache ist der von der Vorstellung gemeinte Gegenstand]” (Husserl 2005: 19). 19 “We have only one appearance, the appearance belonging to the image object” (Husserl 2005: 31). 20 Which is why I disagree with Patrick Eldridge that the consciousness of the Sujet (image subject) is quasi-perceptual (Eldridge 2017). He is right in saying that the image consciousness involves the “consciousness of how the original Sujet ought to appear if it were self-present, self-exhibiting” (Eldridge 2017: 576), but it does not follow that the Sujet is quasi-perceived therefore. 21 This shows that Husserl has much narrower understanding of perception than Nanay. To briefly summarize the differences in their theories: Nanay believes that the first two folds (A and B) are perceived and the third fold (C) is quasi-perceived; Husserl believes that only the first fold is perceived (Wahrnehmung), the second fold is quasi-perceived (Perzeption) and the third fold is not perceived. Throughout the article I follow Husserl’s content-apprehension-schema to define “perception”, “quasi-perception” and “non-perception”. Accordingly, perception and quasi-perception are both based on (visual) sensations [Empfindungen] (Husserl 2005: 81) that are apprehended. Sensations can be apprehended as a perceptual object (the physical image)

Threefold Pictorial Experience 123 or an appearing image (the image object). The latter is quasi-perceived because it involves sensations but lacks the belief consciousness (Husserl 2005: 43). There are no sensations or sensuous contents available for the apprehension of the subject (the subject apprehension is founded in the apprehension belonging to the image object) which is why the image subject is nonperceived. 22 “We see [schauen] the meant object in the image”. (Husserl 2005: 31) 23 See: “But this landscape does not appear as a second thing in addition to the image landscape” (Husserl 2005: 30), and also: “Yet this new presentation does not lie next to the presentation of the image object either; on the contrary, it coincides with it, permeates it, and in this permeation gives it the characteristic of the image object. The coinciding relates to the moments of resemblance” (Husserl 2005: 33). 24 “For I do just not believe ever actually to see the landscape as it appears in the picture” (Marbach 1993: 132). 25 Compare with Robert Hopkins’s “outline shape” (Hopkins 2009: 53). 26 Note that the perfect coinciding is actually an impossibility although theoretically thinkable. As Nicolas de Warren says, it is only as an ideal that we can speak of a complete overlap between the image object and the image subject: “If we could behold a perfect image, we would paradoxically no longer be conscious of a difference between image object and image subject, and consequently, we could no longer behold an image of something” (Warren 2010: 324). It means that both resemblance and difference must be involved in image consciousness. 27 Husserl sometimes seems to suggest that the subject is depicted in the nonanalogizing moments as well, but he does not have a good explanation for it. He writes: “Such characterless traits depict nothing, though it also remains indeterminate how the real object exhibits itself in them. In the way in which it is meant, it leaves open the determinations in question; the meaning or the attendant apprehension contains indeterminacies in this respect” (Husserl 2005: 32). 28 See some similarity with Robert Hopkins’s example: “what is seen in the Rembrandt’s ink-marked surface is not just a hand, but a hand itself composed of ink strokes” (Hopkins 2010: 158). 29 In this sense, “The physical support is not aesthetically neutral” (Brough 2012: 548).

References Brough, J. (1992). “Some Husserlian Comments on Depiction and Art”. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly LXVI 2: 241–259. Brough, J. (2001). “Art and Non-Art: A Millennial Puzzle”. In The Reach of Reflection: Issues for Phenomenology’s Second Century, edited by S. Crowell, L. Embree and S.J. Julian, 1–16. Florida Atlantic University; An Electron Press Original. Brough, J. (2012). “Something That Is Nothing but Can Be Anything: The Image and Our Consciousness of It”. In The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology, edited by D. Zahavi, 545–563. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Warren, N. (2009). Husserl and the Promise of Time: Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology. Modern European Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

124  Regina-Nino Mion de Warren, N. (2010). “Tamino’s Eyes, Pamina’s Gaze: Husserl’s Phenomenology of Image-Consciousness Refashioned”. In Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl, edited by C. Ierna, H. Jacobs and F. Mattens, 303–332. Dordrecht: Springer. Eldridge, P. (2017). “Depicting and Seeing-in. The ‘Sujet’ in Husserl’s Phenomenology of Images”. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 555–578. Ferencz-Flatz, C. (2009). “The Neutrality of Images and Husserlian Aesthetics”. Studia Phaenomenologica 9: 477–493. Hopkins, R. (2009). Picture, Image and Experience: A Philosophical Inquiry. Paperback re-issue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, R. (2010). “Inflected Pictorial Experience: Its Treatment and Significance”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 151–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Husserl, E. (1980). Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung: Zur Phänomenologie Der Anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen: Texte Aus Dem Nachlass (1898– 1925), edited by E. Marbach. The Hague; Boston; London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, translated by F. Kersten. Collected Works, Vol. 1. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Husserl, E. (2005). Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), translated by J. Brough. Collected Works, Vol. XI. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. (2009). “Letter to Hofmannstahl (1907)”., translated by S.O. Wallenstein. SITE, 2009. Lopes, D. (1996). Understanding Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lotz, C. (2007). “Depiction and Plastic Perception. A Critique of Husserl’s Theory of Picture Consciousness”. Continental Philosophy Review 40: 171–185. Marbach, E. (1993). Mental Representation and Consciousness: Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Representation and Reference. Contributions to Phenomenology 14. Springer Netherlands. Marbach, E. (2012). “Edmund Husserl: Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925)”. Husserl Studies 28: 225–237. Nanay, B. (2016). Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Newall, M. (2011). What Is a Picture?: Depiction, Realism, Abstraction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rozzoni, C. (2016). “Cinema Consciousness: Elements of a Husserlian Approach to Film Image”. Studia Phaenomenologica 16: 295–324. Wollheim, R. (1980). Art and Its Objects: Second Edition with Six Supplementary Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wollheim, R. (1998). Painting as an Art. London: Thames and Hudson. Wollheim, R. (2003). “What Makes Representational Painting Truly Visual?” Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 77: 131–147.

7 Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience Katerina Bantinaki

In one of his late writings on pictorial experience, Richard Wollheim (2003) raises, by means of an example, the issue of stylistic figurative distortion. Having introduced a set of distinctions regarding different dimensions of representational painting (the Material/ the Presentational/ the Representational how) he asks: “Where does this all leave the notion of what is to be seen in the picture?” and continues as follows: To answer this question, we must bear in mind that, though seeing-in is, in the first instance, a visual capacity open to all, it then, within the orbit of representational painting, is honed into a skill, upon which the sensibility and the knowledge of the right kind of spectator, who is attuned to the intentions of the artist, leave their mark. What this means is that the spectator learns how to let certain parts of the Material how affect what he sees in the picture, and other parts affect only how he sees it. What is to be seen in a picture embraces the Representational how, but the Presentational how is initially excluded, and then let in only to modify how the what is seen. The long neck of Parmigianino’s Madonna can be seen in his picture, but it cannot be correctly seen in it, and so it should be allowed only to bring about how the Madonna is perceived. (Wollheim 2003: 143) The long neck of Parmigianino’s Madonna, her overly elongated fingers and limbs, are figurative distortions characteristic of Parmigianino’s mannerist style. Purposeful figurative distortion will reach a high point in El Greco’s late works, while, with the advent of modernism, distortion rather than fidelity to the forms of nature will become the orthodoxy in figurative visual art: “L’Exactitude n’est pas la vérité”, Matisse pronounces, reflecting this artistic spirit. While a vast number of artists have seen the point of their visual work (the ‘truth’ about their subject that they aim to get across) to lie somehow in figurative distortion, theories of pictorial experience, as can be evidenced by the stance that Wollheim expresses above, have been quite reluctant to assign it any prominence:

126  Katerina Bantinaki it is generally assumed that, cases of misrepresentation aside, figurative distortion needs to be bracketed or in some way neutralized in our recognitional response, if our experience is to give us access to the picture’s content. Pictorial theorists, accordingly, mostly discuss stylistic figurative distortion in the context of correctives for appropriate pictorial seeing and interpretation; I find, however, that, to reach a comprehensive understanding of the nature of pictorial experience, we need to revisit, in a more focused manner, Wollheim’s question—to ask again “Where does this all leave the notion of what is to be seen in a picture?” In other words, we may all acknowledge the platitude that observers have to “compensate” for style in their recognitional response, as Carol Neander (1987: 221) argues, for instance, but how is this really to be cashed out in experiential terms? Does ‘compensation’ entail that the observer has to see the depicted subject as represented rather than as presented (i.e., inflected with the possibly deviant or eccentric properties that are an effect of its stylistic treatment), or both in consecutive acts, or rather ‘compensation’ entails some other sort of awareness, more complex than these experiential alternatives? Given that purposeful figurative distortion is as much a part of pictorial life as formal accuracy, a comprehensive grasp of the nature of pictorial seeing, as well as of its aesthetic significance, requires a reasoned stance on such issues. It is thus my aim here to illuminate how we experience stylistic deformity in the context of competent pictorial seeing. To meet this aim, I will proceed as follows. In the first section I will raise the correctness issue, i.e., the issue of whether it is correct to experience, rather than silence, the deviant figurative properties that the subject, as presented, can be seen to bear. To frame our understanding with regard to our theoretical options on this matter, I will juxtapose two relatively recent accounts of pictorial seeing that raise the issue of style, in general, but adopt a different stance on the correctness issue: Alon Chasid’s account, which seems to follow on Wollheim’s tracks, and John Brown’s analysis of separation seeingin, as an experience that pictures invite by provenance. As I will follow Brown in the positive stance that he adopts on the correctness issue, in the sections that follow I will try to take some distance from the idea of separation. Thus, in the second section, I will argue that, although we need to experience the deviant properties in our recognitional response, the correct way of experiencing them is not the way of separation seeingin. Then, in the third section, I will argue that when we experience the deviant properties as it is correct to experience them, the content of our seeing mirrors pictorial content, against the separation insight. Before I proceed, I need to make a note about the scope of my analysis: I have chosen to focus in this article on what I regard as the paradigmatic and, perhaps, the most challenging function of stylistic deformity—i.e., to express the emotion or character or thought of the

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 127 depicted subject—at the exclusion of other possible functions. There is no doubt that a comprehensive analysis of the way in which stylistic deformity figures in pictorial seeing would have to account for all its functions as these can be evidenced in pictorial art, but the limited space allowed here does not allow such comprehensiveness. Still, I aim the account to be developed here to have a wider application, although some modifications may be needed locally for its application to other functions, as I will note toward the end.

I. The Correctness Issue No theorist bound to assume a negative stance on the correctness issue could plausibly deny that an observer can see the pictorial subject inflected, as it were, with the eccentric or deviant figurative properties that are a function of its stylistic treatment—either due to wrong assumptions about the practices of depiction or in spite of correct assumptions, for instance, in the context of a playful engagement with a picture. The opposite is also true: no theorist bound to assume a positive stance on the correctness issue could plausibly deny that the observer can experience the depicted subject stripped from these properties, for instance, in some kind of imaginative or less attentive engagement with it. So the correctness issue concerns not how an observer can experience a depicted subject or scene—inflected with the eccentric stylistic properties or without—given how the surface is marked (and so what seeing-in experiences it can support) or given her personal aims; it rather concerns how the observer ought to experience the depicted subject or scene in appropriate pictorial seeing, i.e., in accordance with an operative standard of correctness. As is evident, to discuss the correctness issue, one needs to settle first the standard of correctness for pictorial seeing and, as is well known, there is no agreement on this matter: some pictorial theorists assume that the standard of correctness stems from the intentions of the artist (actual or hypothetical), provided that the intended seeing-in is among those that the picture allows; whereas others assume that the standard stems from the norms governing the practices of depiction. As this is not the place to settle the issue, I will here simply side with the first view—and this is not an arbitrary move: on the one hand, as I have argued elsewhere (Bantinaki 2008), I find that it is the correct view; on the other hand, I find that, especially in pictorial art, the interpretative recourse to the practices of depiction will by necessity implicate the artist in many different ways (in relation to style see Carroll 1995; Walton 1979); and last, but not least, I am concerned here with an aspect of style (understood as individual style) and style—when the term is used in its art-theoretical sense rather than casually—implicates agency: although not many theorists would go as far as to claim with Wollheim (1987, 1995) that individual style has

128  Katerina Bantinaki psychological reality, according to the standard conception of individual style this consists in the more or less constant or recognizable choices that an artist makes in her treatment of the subject and the medium, which choices—as all real choices—are made for certain reasons or to certain artistic ends, being thus expressive of her attitudes or thoughts on the subject and/or her art (see, e.g., Gombrich 1968: 130). Thus, to identify a certain property as stylistic in our recognitional or interpretative response, is to correlate it, at least hypothetically, with agency. From this perspective, to settle on the correctness issue with regard to the experience of stylistic deformity, we need to ascertain whether a picture (not only allows us but also) invites us by provenance to experience its subject with the deviant formal properties that are an effect of its stylistic treatment, rather than stripped from these properties. Although no account of pictorial seeing deals with stylistic deformity in a focused manner, still John Brown and Alon Chasid have both thematized the issue of style (including stylistic deformity) in relation to pictorial seeing, defending apparently contrasting positions; thus we can use these, more general, accounts in order to frame our understanding with regard to what a positive and a negative stance on the correctness issue would entail, when properly unpacked. The Contrasting Views In “Seeing Things in Pictures” John Brown (2010) embarked on a rather worthwhile project, which is to remedy the narrow focus of pictorial experience theories on the experience of the “proper subject”: the experience that mirrors accurately the set of commitments and non-commitments that a picture makes with regard to its subject (i.e., the properties that a picture represents its subject as having and those about which it remains silent), this being regarded as the merited experience. This rather ‘sober’ approach to pictorial experience unduly neglects, for Brown, other kinds of pictorial seeing that pictures allow, which are of great aesthetic significance and thus merited, despite the fact that they involve various eccentricities that are not meant to be transferred to the picture’s subject. To analyze these alternative pictorial experiences, Brown borrows and expands the notion of separation that Robert Hopkins (1998: 122–158) introduced in order to describe the divergence between the content of pictorial seeing and pictorial content that pictorial indeterminacy allows: according to Hopkins (124–5), it is true, for instance, that a stick-figure drawing of a person does not depict an oddly shaped person, but it is equally true that we can see in it a human figure of “an odd, very straggly shape”; so there is separation between the content of our experience and pictorial content, as the former is determinate in respects that the latter is not. Although Hopkins makes this claim from the perspective of his experienced resemblance account of depiction and refrains from taking a

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 129 clear stance on the issue of whether it is correct or merited that we do see such eccentric properties, Brown fully embraces and expands the separation insight to this end. According to Brown, pictures not only allow but actually invite by provenance a distinctive visual experience, separation seeing-in: an experience that is more rich and more directly visual than the alternative visual experience that pictures also invite, i.e., authorized seeing-in—the seeing of the authorized subject with whatever properties it is represented as having. Separation seeing-in is more rich than authorized seeing-in because it involves not just the properties that the picture is intended to ascribe to its subject, but also some eccentric formal properties, stemming from the way that the artist has treated her subject and her medium. And it is more directly visual than authorized seeing because the latter has to override some of the potentially depictive marks through the mediation of interpretative assumptions condoned by pictorial practices, being thus, phenomenally, a more ideational type of seeing (Brown 2010: 213). Bracketing Brown’s claims with regard to authorized seeing-in, it is clear from his analysis that the eccentric properties that he regards as part of separation seeing-in are stylistic effects: that is, the eccentric properties that he mentions in his numerous examples are identified as effects of the artist’s style which expert viewers know how to decipher and enjoy (Brown 2010: 216). Moreover, he argues that it is not contrary to the intention of the artist that we do see such properties and that such seeing is at the heart of aesthetic appreciation: meaning that it is something that artists typically tolerate, desire and exploit; that full and nuanced appreciation of the picture as a picture requires it, that art criticism could hardly proceed without implicitly recognizing it, and that much of the charm of pictures derives from such seeingsin being intended and taken up. (214) So, from Brown’s perspective, it is resolutely correct—even if only in the context of separation seeing-in—that we experience the picture’s subject inflected with the eccentric properties that are a function of its stylistic treatment, since, after all, the aesthetic significance and charm of pictures relies on this sort of experience. A rather different stance on pictorial seeing—right at the ‘sober’ end of the spectrum—is conveyed by Alon Chasid (2014a), in the context of his discussion of pictorial indeterminacy. Chasid’s line of thought can be traced in Wollheim’s claims regarding the appropriate experience of Parmigianino’s painting, which he indeed references. Although Wollheim did not unpack those claims in terms of his understanding of pictorial seeing as a twofold experience—i.e., as consisting of a configurational and a recognitional fold—Chasid rather does so. Acknowledging that pictorial

130  Katerina Bantinaki configurations can be determinate in ways that the depicted subjects are not, he claims that, if some of the determinate properties of a configuration (for instance, “the determinate and somewhat swiveled roundness” [Chasid 2014a: 408] that is featured in a sketch of a head) do not bear a depictive function—i.e., they are not properties of the depictum—it is not correct that they figure in our awareness of the picture’s subject, i.e., in the recognitional aspect of seeing-in; or, in experiential terms, that we do not visually represent them in an appropriate experience of the subject but rather treat them as mere noise, much like the blur in blurry vision. These properties of the marked surface are identified by Chasid accordingly as configurational non-depictive properties; but since he endorses a divisive account of pictorial seeing (see also Chasid 2014b), this entails for Chasid that they can figure in pictorial seeing but only in its configurational strand, which is distinct from its recognitional strand: their effect on the experience of the subject is accordingly supposed to be a mere phenomenological effect that lacks any representational support, but which still, Chasid acknowledges, can be significant in appreciating the picture’s expressiveness (Chasid 2014a: 409). Chasid, it has to be noted, identifies the configurational non-depictive properties as properties relevant to style and technique. Further, as I understand his analysis, the claim that all non-depictive properties are excluded from the recognitional strand of seeing-in is supposed to have a general application; i.e., to apply not only to all kinds of stylistic properties (those that are figurative, as well as those that are more directly material, e.g., hatching or visible brushstroke) but also to all kinds of pictures, regardless of their use. For lack of evidence to the contrary, I will proceed with this understanding, which is not necessarily the one that Chasid intended: at the very least Chasid’s account allows us to grasp what a negative stance on the correctness issue would entail when properly unpacked. Toward a Resolution If we try to frame our understanding regarding the proper experience of stylistic figurative distortion in terms of the above accounts, we are presented with two options: we can accept either that the deviant formal properties have to figure in our experience of the subject (i.e., in the— or one—recognitional fold of seeing-in), if our experience is to capture their intended effect; or that, since they are not depictive, they should be silenced or treated as configurational noise, which still allows them to have a non-intentional phenomenological effect that is aesthetically and expressively significant. How can we decide between these divergent lines of thought? A good place to start with is the insight, evidenced in both accounts, that stylistic properties, in general, have a certain function, which both theorists identify as expressive or, more widely, aesthetic. If valid, this

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 131 insight can be rather instructive for our purposes: presumably, the proper mode of awareness of stylistic figurative distortion is the mode that best serves its specific function. But what are the grounds of such an insight? It is generally acknowledged that style—understood especially as individual style—is not just a manner of picturing (‘style’, that is, is not co-extensive with ‘manner’): whereas a child’s drawing, for instance, has a manner (and it can be full of eccentricities) it doesn’t exhibit a style; and whereas a dictionary illustration also has a manner, again it doesn’t necessarily exhibit a style. Style is not just manner of picturing because, unlike manner, it involves a set of recognizable choices among alternative available ways of treating a subject pictorially (something that the child’s drawing lacks); and because, further, these are choices that are made for a reason, rather than simply or mainly in the course of applying ready-to-hand or convenient or standardized techniques (as in most dictionary illustrations). So, although all pictures, regardless of their provenance and use, have a manner, only a subset of those also exhibit an individual style; and for those that do, it is safe to assume that the recognizable aspects of their manner have a certain purpose or function (Lang 1987: 179; Ruckstuhl 1916; Harrison 2009; Danto 1981: 200).1 The function that is commonly associated with style is expression, i.e., style is “the means of expression” as Walton (1987: 94) notes. Although the expressive function of style concerns the artist (i.e., style is taken to express the artist’s view or thoughts about her subject and, even further, the world and/or her art), in paradigmatic cases—i.e., in its predominant use in pictorial art—the imparted expression directly concerns the subject: i.e., the subject, animate or inanimate, is infused with expressive properties as a function of its stylistic treatment. Focusing on the simpler and richer case where the subject is a human subject, style, that is, allows animation, i.e., the expression of emotion, character and thought with the limited means of the medium (Hyman 2006: 197, 205). Consider, for instance, El Greco’s mannerist expressionist style: in many of his late paintings that portray human subjects, most notably those that portray saints and martyrs, these appear with elongated and even tortuous bodies or limbs. As X-Ray scanning of such paintings revealed, in the underlying primary sketch on the canvas the bodies are drawn with normal shapes and proportions, so it can safely be concluded that the artist opted for the elongated body-forms in the final work for a reason and not because he lacked the technique to do otherwise or because of a supposed astigmatism that caused him to see objects that way (see, e.g., Laios et al. 2017). And this reason can be grasped through the actual effect of this kind of pictorial treatment of the human body: the portrayed subjects can be seen to emanate grace, fragility and spirituality, and, looking otherworldly, are somehow transposed in a realm beyond the earthly realm, in accordance with their religious identity—which is thus made visually manifest to some extent via their stylistic treatment.

132  Katerina Bantinaki If we want to acknowledge the expressive function commonly attributed to style, this has implications with regard to the awareness of style in correct pictorial seeing. The first such implication is that stylistic properties, in general, cannot be correctly treated as mere noise or nuisance—as, perhaps, phenomenally analogous properties could be treated when seen in a child’s drawing: to treat some visual input derived from the pictorial surface as mere noise is to not accord any function to it; if stylistic qualities have a function that we are expected to register in competent pictorial seeing, then they have to figure in the visual awareness of a competent observer and, moreover, they have to figure in precisely such a function. Now, figurative distortion is a particular manifestation of particular styles: as the El Greco example illustrates, its expressive function is, in paradigmatic cases at least, one that directly concerns the subject; and it is a function or artistic aim that is served figuratively, i.e., by means of specific figurative, albeit deviant, properties. This again entails that we should not treat such properties as mere noise in our recognitional response—we are not allowed to ignore them as we could freely ignore them in seeing a child’s drawing (which has no style although it is full of eccentricities): they are salient figurative properties and they have to be seen as such— i.e., as figurative rather than merely configurational properties—for us to grasp their specific expressive significance. Consider, for instance, Parmigianino’s painting discussed by Wollheim: the neck of the depicted Madonna, as well as her fingers or limbs, can be seen to have a rather elongated form, and the expressive function of this kind of treatment of the subject is to convey—to make visually manifest— the gracefulness of the Madonna. But then to experience the gracefulness of the Madonna, we have to experience her with such determinately long body-parts, as it is their determinate length that triggers the expressive effect: not any neck, alas, is graceful as a long neck is and to experience the subject’s neck as being of an indeterminate length—treating accordingly the relevant part of the Presentational ‘how’ as configurational noise— would prevent us from experiencing it as graceful. As is obvious, I cannot see how a bare configurational property, experienced as such, could generate the targeted effect (and, given the mild reservation that Chasid [2014a: 409] expresses regarding the Parmigianino example, probably he doesn’t either; but see also 415 n. 35): could any line of that determinate length on a piece of paper have this effect on us, unless implicitly correlated in our imagination with some form or other? Judging from my experience, the answer is negative: the determinate length of that part of the design wherein the Madonna’s neck can be seen can rather have this effect, I presume, because it is recognitionally correlated with the subject, i.e., it figures in our experience not merely as a configurational property but recognitionally (in a way to be qualified further in what follows) as the determinate length of the depicted neck. The fact, note, that Wollheim describes the part of the Presentational how that is eventually allowed

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 133 in pictorial seeing (in order to modify how the what is seen) as a ‘long neck’—i.e., in recognitional terms—suggests that he shared some such insight (in which case, however, his claim that it is not correct to see the long neck of the Madonna ought not to be read in the way that Chasid but also Brown [2010: 230, n. 30] suggest). I thus take it that we have a good reason to endorse a positive stance on the correctness issue, i.e., to acknowledge not only that the depicted subject can be seen as bearing the deviant formal properties that are a function of its stylistic treatment, but also that it has to be seen that way: such seeing allows us to capture some aspect of the picture’s overall ­content—representational and expressive. Note, however, that this claim is limited to stylistic deformity: I do not wish to suggest that the positive stance should generalize, without qualification, across different manifestations of style, i.e., different stylistic properties: how we should experience stylistic properties is for me bound to their specific function but not all stylistic properties have the same function and not all functions place stylistic properties squarely in the recognitional fold of seeing-in: some, I presume, may be expressive as mere configurational properties, for instance, by pointing to the artist’s actions in using her materials and tools, as some aspects of facture do. So my claim is much more modest than Brown’s, with whom I side on the correctness issue: Brown is concerned with experiences that pictures allow given how their surface has been marked, including those experiences that the artist merely tolerates but does not intend, so the operative standard of correctness in his account is much more permissive than the one that is operative in my analysis. The phenomena that Brown highlights are significant in relation to the overall charm of pictures, they are phenomena that a unitary understanding of pictorial seeing (which I share, as argued in Bantinaki 2010) anyway allows, but they are phenomena that exceed the focus of this article. Further, as it follows from my analysis, I believe that we cannot make a general claim about how we should experience pictures of all sorts: when the picture is a work of art that manifests a recognizable style, we should perhaps accord salience in our experience of the subject to eccentric properties that we could opt to silence or ignore if we were to see them (their phenomenal analogs) in a child’s drawing or in any other picture where it is not safe to assume that they serve some function. From my perspective, as is clear, pictorial experience is not shaped in a uniform way across the pictorial domain—Who did What, When and Why are always relevant questions to ask, if we want to ascertain how a given picture ought to be experienced, in order for us to grasp its point and significance. In what follows I will follow this insight in order to argue against the idea of separation with regard to stylistic figurative distortion, retaining my focus to its paradigmatic expressive use: stylistic distortion might need to figure in our experience of the subject, as both Brown and I accept, but the proper way of experiencing it, I will now argue, is not the way of

134  Katerina Bantinaki separation seeing-in and thus, as will be argued in the final section, it is not a way that supports a rigid separation between pictorial content and the content of pictorial seeing.

II. Against Separation Seeing-In Stylistic deformity, I have argued, needs to figure in the recognitional aspect of pictorial seeing, if the experience is to rightly capture its intended expressive function. Brown’s analysis conveys a parallel insight and on much the same grounds. However, Brown has a specific understanding of the way in which we have to be aware of stylistic deviant or eccentric properties of all sorts to capture their significance: endorsing Hopkins’s analysis of separation, he suggests that the eccentric properties should figure in our awareness (in the context of separation seeing-in) in full force, i.e., as if they were depictive—our experience (in this strand) being thus unaffected by our grasp of what the picture does and does not represent. Although I strongly agree with Brown on the correctness issue with regard to stylistic deformity, I do not agree that the correct way of experiencing it is the way of separation seeing-in: if the deviant formal properties figured in pictorial seeing (or one of its strands) in this—literal and straightforward—manner, our experience being entirely unaffected by our grasp of what the picture represents, the experience, I will argue, would not support or manifest the picture’s intended expressive significance. My disagreement, as is clear, concerns not whether we can experience the deviant formal properties in this manner (I agree that we can), but whether this is the correct way of experiencing them—i.e., the way that gives us visual access to their intended expressive significance. Consider Henri Matisse’s painting La musique (1939). The painting portrays two women, seated next to each other, one of them holding a guitar. Their bodies appear to have extremely long and voluminous limbs that are rather disproportionate to their depicted heads; their whole appearance is thus eccentric indeed, a far cry from normal human anatomy. And there is no doubt that, in response to the painting, we can engage with this eccentric appearance, as if the aim of the painting were to present us with odd or surreal music-loving creatures. Is this a correct experience of the painting, i.e., an experience that the painting not only allows but also invites, according to its provenance? Apparently not, according to Matisse, who comments: It is said of me: ‘The charmer who takes pleasure in charming monsters’. I never thought of my creations as charmed or charming monsters. I replied to someone who said I didn’t see women as I represented them: ‘If I met such women in the street, I should run away in terror.’ Above all I do not create a woman, I make a picture. (Flam 1995: 132)

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 135 The fact that some critic described Matisse’s subjects as ‘monsters’ confirms Brown’s thought that it is possible for viewers to experience the subjects as separation subjects, i.e., as bearing the deviant properties they are presented—but not represented—as having. Matisse’s comment, however, indicates not only that this is not the experience that he was after, but also that an experience of this sort, for instance, in face-to-face seeing, would have a negative affective impact on him—as to most of us indeed: the opposite impact from that which was intended and which we indeed can enjoy, I presume, in response to the painting, i.e., a sense of the grace, serenity, warmth and completeness that the depicted women, as presented, emanate. The positive character of the intended experience that, I take it, competent observers can have in response to the portrayed subjects suggests that the subjects are not experienced (and, as Matisse’s comment suggests, were also not meant to be experienced) by competent observers as separation subjects after all. Even if the observers that enjoy such an experience register the eccentric formal properties of the subjects, it seems that they do not take such properties at face value, seeing the women accordingly as monsters—in Noël Carroll’s sense of the word, as beings that are extreme deviations from the natural order (Carroll 1990); after all, monsters, as Carroll suggests, if not straightforwardly aversive or repulsive, tend to impress us, first and foremost, as uncanny and bizarre. This, however, may not be such a serious challenge to the separation view: we can assume, for instance, that the reason for which the deviant depicted creatures do not have a negative impact on us is that they are just that—depicted rather than real creatures, and their fictitiousness can relieve the negative hold that they would otherwise have on us, allowing us to savor, from a safe distance, all their deviant glory. And this is how Matisse’s last claim—“Above all . . . I make pictures”—can be read. A certain consideration, however, undercuts the viability of this response: even if this is what Matisse meant—i.e., that we should acknowledge the fictional character of his creatures in order to experience them in a favorable light—it is simply not true that fictitiousness by itself can do the trick. On the one hand, it is well noted in studies of the experience of horror fiction that the fictitiousness of the anomalous or deviant creatures that inhabit its universe does not block their negative affective impact on us—or else there would be no paradox of horror. On the other hand, Matisse’s picture could very well be used to depict (i.e., pictorially represent) women with gigantic limbs and, despite the acknowledged fictitiousness, it is doubtful that we would have a wholly positive experience of the presented eccentric subjects in this case, or at least an experience comparable—in its specific expressive, aesthetic, and affective dimensions—to the one that can be enjoyed in response to Matisse’s painting. And this is not a conjecture based simply on phenomenological introspection; a number of studies in the psychology of art report the

136  Katerina Bantinaki positive impact that art expertise (and, especially, the mastery of artistic styles) has on the aesthetic assessment and the overall aesthetic response to visual artworks, when these involve some degree of figurative distortion (or ‘abstraction’, in their idiom): if naively seeing the deviant formal properties—i.e., as if they were depictive—were indeed the experience that triggers their intended expressive and overall aesthetic effect, there should be no difference among the experiences of art novices and art experts along such dimensions (see, e.g., Belke et al. 2006; Leder et al. 2004; van Paasschen et al. 2015). This suggests that, for us to track their significance, the deviant formal properties with which the subject is being presented need to figure in our experience but they need to figure in a specific—controlled—way, rather than in the literal way that separation suggests; and, further, that they can only enter the experience the right way when the experience is actively informed and enformed by our grasp of what the picture represents and what not, through mediating assumptions about pictorial practices (a cognitive influence on experience that Brown acknowledges as operative only in authorized seeing). This, of course, is far from a novel insight: it has already been expounded theoretically (see, e.g., Robinson 1981) and tested experimentally. The crucial issue though is: What is the controlled way in which figurative distortion needs to enter our experience in correct pictorial seeing? A further comment by Matisse, which actually sheds light on his earlier comment, can be again instructive for our purposes: My models, human figures, are never just “extras” in an interior. They are the principal theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model, whom I observe at liberty, and then I decide on the pose which best suits her nature . . . My plastic signs probably express their souls (a word I dislike), which interests me subconsciously or what else is there? Their forms are not always perfect, but they are always expressive. (Flam 1995: 131) From the artist’s perspective, we now understand, an experience of the depicted women as monsters, as fantastic deviations from reality, would fail to have the intended effect because it would fail to capture something significant: the expressive function of their imperfect, deviant form. But then to experience the picture the right way, the picture needs to be treated as what it is: a ‘picture’ as Matisse notes in the first quote—and what that means, we now understand, is that it should be treated as an expressive representation of a subject (as all artistic representations are, according to Arthur Danto [1981]). It is only when the picture is approached with this mindset (and the host of interpretative assumptions that it includes), that the stylistic deformities can be experienced in the way that they were meant to be experienced: not, naively, as bare formal

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 137 anomalies, but as the outward signs of something more esoteric—i.e., the character or emotion or thought of the depicted subjects that the artist aims to convey formally. In other words, to perform their intended expressive function, the eccentric formal properties need to be seen in the light of a host of merited assumptions about the aims and processes of pictorial art (as well as those of the given artist); and when they are thus seen, we respond to them much like we respond to figurative language: while they are accorded salience in our experience of the subject, their literal or straightforward reading is side-stepped, allowing them to point— through association and affect—to some dimension or property of the subject that is inward or otherwise difficult to depict straightforwardly or depict with a similar affective force. So, to sum up, I have argued that stylistic figurative distortion bears a particular significance; and that it has to be accorded salience in our recognitional response for us to grasp that significance. As this stance is also allowed by Brown’s account, I have further argued, against the separation insight, that the intended significance of the deviant formal properties is only apparent when the viewer sees the properties in the light of mediating assumptions regarding what the relevant picture could be reasonably taken to represent; and, moreover, that these assumptions do not just lie at the background of our experience (as is the case, for instance, with iconographic symbols) but rather have an experiential effect: they actively modify the way in which we experience the deviant properties (i.e., as indications of something inward), and, accordingly, our overall experience of the subject (i.e., the properties that the subject is experienced as having). As is evident, I take the content of correct pictorial seeing in all relevant cases to be—both epistemically and experientially—a synthesis of the ‘what’ and the (stylistic) ‘how’ of pictorial representation; and quite possibly, this is also what Wollheim intended with the obscure modification function that he assigned to figurative distortion. An experience with such a complex content, note, does not fall easily in either of the two kinds of pictorial seeing that Brown acknowledges: it is more elaborate than separation seeing-in and more rich (as it accords visual salience in our recognitional response to distortion) than authorized seeing. But with regard to stylistic figurative distortion, it is, I take it, the only experience that pictures invite by provenance, an experience that can support, on its own, both levels of pictorial significance—representational and expressive.

III. Against Separation The upshot of the above analysis is that none of the two frameworks, modeled after the contrasting accounts of Chasid and Brown, is actually appropriate in relation to stylistic figurative distortion: on the one hand, to bracket the deviant formal properties in our experience of the

138  Katerina Bantinaki subject would be to miss some aspect of the picture’s overall content; on the other hand, to include them in our experience in the way of separation seeing-in would be to miss their targeted expressive significance. So, although there is something that needs to be bracketed to experience the depicted subject in the way it was meant to be experienced, this is not the deviant formal properties: what needs to be bracketed is their literal import—the one that they would bear in the case of misrepresentation for instance. From this perspective, it is true both that it is not correct to see the subject as bearing the deviant properties that are a function of its stylistic treatment and that it is correct to see these properties as salient properties of the subject: the two claims are consistent when we allow that the deviant properties have to figure in our awareness as salient properties of the subject, but as indicative of emotion, character or thought, rather than as just brute deformities. The case is much parallel with ordinary expressive perception—an insight that I will develop further in what follows: as (given the informational context of the perceptual act) we can see, for instance, a raised eyebrow as indicative of disapproval or arrogance rather than as a distortion in someone’s face (as it could be, as an effect of a bad botox or facial injury); so (given the informational context of the pictorial encounter) we can see, for instance, an unnaturally contorted limb as indicative of the subject’s inner torment, rather than as an anatomical anomaly (as it would be appropriate to see it in a different picture). In all relevant cases, it should be stressed, despite the salience accorded to distortion, there is no resultant separation between the content of pictorial seeing and pictorial content, as there would be if the deviant formal properties figured in our awareness as brute deformities: the expressive properties that are made visually manifest when we experience the deviant properties the right way are also part of the picture’s overall content, i.e., its representational and expressive content. It is part of the content of Matisse’s painting that the portrayed women enjoy a state of completeness (and not only that they are brown-haired, seated, etc.); it is part of the content of Parmigianino’s painting that the Madonna is graceful; and it is part of the content of El Greco paintings that the portrayed religious subjects are spiritual and fragile. Any reading of the paintings that excluded such expressive dimensions would miss their point entirely. Wollheim (1987: 52) captures well this thought when he says (echoing Goodman 1978) that “[t]here is within the representational task no line worth drawing between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’: each fresh how that is captured generates a new what”. Applied to stylistic deformity, this means that the identification of a deviant property can bring about—not just in our interpretation but also in our experience—some aspect of the picture’s overall content, when we respond to it in the way that we were meant to respond: when this condition is met, the content of pictorial experience mirrors pictorial content (see also Schier 1986: 206–207).

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 139 Perhaps, however, I am taking too much for granted in denying separation: the fact that a picture’s content includes expressive properties does not entail that these are also part of its pictorial content, i.e., the content that is conveyed depictively (or else, as a function of the way in which the surface is marked, given our recognitional capacities): a picture’s content, for instance, includes what is signified in terms of iconographic conventions, but what is thus signified is not part of pictorial content—it is not an aspect of the picture’s content that is conveyed depictively. Thus to support the claim that the content of pictorial seeing mirrors pictorial content in the case of stylistic deformity, it needs to be shown that, given the standard conditions of pictorial seeing—i.e., given how the surface is marked, our recognitional capacities and our knowledge of the practices of depiction,—the deviant formal properties can indeed figure in the visual awareness of a competent observer as they figure in her interpretation, i.e., as expressive of something or other rather than as brute formal anomalies. It needs to be shown, in other words, that (a) our recognitional capacities allow us, in general, to perceive formal properties as expressive and, moreover, (b) to perceive stylistic figurative distortion as expressive. I will say nothing here in support of the first horn, i.e., that, in general, we can perceive formal properties as expressive, for instance, that we can see the emotion or mood of a friend in her grimace or body-posture. Obviously, there is a certain, rather restrictive, understanding of perception that excludes such a capacity; but this same understanding—limiting perception to the low-level properties of a stimulus—would also exclude from the scope of perception a great part of what is normally included in pictorial content and pictorial seeing. The operative notion of perception in all accounts of pictorial seeing is, accordingly, one that includes highlevel properties (including mental or internal states) and this is the one that I here follow. With regard to internal states, in particular, I acknowledge that amongst our perceptual capacities is the capacity of expressive perception in response to both animate and inanimate objects, a capacity that has been studied empirically (whether described as expressive perception or as physiognomic perception), and which also has been operative in numerous discussions of expression in art at least since Alberti (see Alberti [1435] 1991, Book II, §41–42). I acknowledge here that we have this perceptual capacity not because it serves me to do so or because I take the relevant empirical research to be conclusive, but because I can only make sense of the human stance on the world through the affective relation to the world that this presumed capacity entails. As this issue far exceeds the purposes of this article, however, argumentation, in relation to the perception of art, will have to await a different occasion. As most pictorial theorists would agree that we can see expressive properties in pictures, the likely source of worry with regard to my claim that we can see figurative stylistic distortion as expressive, is not the very idea

140  Katerina Bantinaki of expressive or physiognomic perception: it is rather the idea that stylistic figurative distortion—being a distortion of natural form—can indeed support expressive perception. In other words, it may be true that we can see a worry in a frown or anguish in some twist of the body or compassion in our friend’s gaze, but are we able to see any such states in the rather unnatural deformities that pictures can present us with? Especially where such deformities far exceed the dimensions of formal variation along which expressive perception is exercised in our ordinary encounter with the world, how can we assume that they trigger this capacity? Perceptual accounts of depiction frame the obvious response to this challenge. Those accounts have made abundantly clear that depiction stretches our recognitional capacities: i.e., that, perhaps after some instruction or adjustment and up to a certain threshold, we can recognize objects in pictures even when these are presented along dimensions of variation that far exceed those of face-to-face seeing. As I cannot think of any grounds to deny for expressive perception what virtually all pictorial theorists accept for object perception, I find it is quite merited to further accept that depiction, and especially pictorial art, not only activates but also stretches our capacities of expressive perception: i.e., that, once our experience with pictorial art allows us to get a proper hang on the idea that form can be used purposefully as “the outer expression of the inner content” (Kandinsky 1984), we will be able to see not only the normal formal properties but also the abnormal formal properties of the subject—and especially those if, in their eccentricity, they function as super-stimuli—as being expressive. And we will be able to see them as such by activating the same resources that expressive perception in general activates (and up to the recognitional threshold that they set): the associations that a background of experience—of the world (including other human beings) and of our own selves—allows, as well as visceral affective responses to the stimulus. Thus, I conclude, the expressive properties that stylistic deformity is often employed to convey can be part of both pictorial content and the content of pictorial experience. At this point, it is pivotal to engage with an objection, to which, as hinted at the introduction, my selective focus naturally leads. My analysis has been framed around a particular expressive function of stylistic deformity, which I took as paradigmatic in pictorial art; it is thus far from evident that it can have a wider application. And it is especially its latter part, which concerns our recognitional capacities, that obviously resists an application to other possible functions and indeed would have to be modified to account for them on a case-by-case basis. But the fact that the account needs to be modified locally does not entail that it does not admit of a general application. Just to touch on how this is so, I will briefly consider another prominent case of stylistic deformity—prominent not for the extent of its use but for the radical distortion of form that it entails.

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 141 Such a radical distortion has been employed, as in certain cubist works, to overcome the limitation that the pictorial medium imposes to a singular point of view or to one static moment of an action—in other words, it has been used to capture the dynamic character of perceptual experience.2 Much of what has been claimed so far with respect to the paradigmatic case can be seen to apply in this case as well: the deformity again needs to figure and be accorded salience in our recognitional response for us to grasp its significance; further, since its aim is not to engage playfully our senses with surreal or fantastic beings but to formally exemplify how ordinary beings, still or in the course of an action, are experienced, it follows that the claim that the appropriate way of experiencing stylistic deformity is not the way of separation seeing-in also applies; finally, since what we are prone to see when we have accorded salience to figurative distortion in a controlled manner (guided by appropriate information) is also part of pictorial content, there is again no separation between the content of pictorial seeing and pictorial content, despite the salience accorded to deformity. However, our presumed capacity of expressive perception cannot be employed in support of this latter claim as we are not dealing with a case that falls within its scope. Are there any grounds to assume also here that we can visually experience or recognize the relevant part of the picture’s content, given how the surface has been marked, our recognitional capacities and our knowledge of the practices of depiction? This would require that perception has a recognitional capacity for itself, i.e., the capacity to recognize not merely other internal states but also its own (prereflective) content and character, both in the very act of perceiving but also in the transcription of that act in pictorial form. And unless an observer is a phenomenologist-turned-painter or a phenomenologist studying paintings, it is unlikely that she has this recognitional capacity ready-to-hand for the pictorial encounter. But this doesn’t entail that she lacks it altogether or that she cannot acquire it when suitably prompted by the picture: after some instruction as to how to direct her attention (to the picture and inwards), any self-reflective and probing observer would be able, I presume, to visually identify what traits the picture ascribes to perceptual experience, being guided by the picture itself; and she would further be able—turning her ‘eyes’ inwards,—to assess the picture’s fidelity to the perceptual act and thus its informational value. Maurice Merleau-Ponty expresses well this thought (taking his cue from impressionism but aiming at a wider application) in Cézanne’s Doubt: The artist is the one who arrests the spectacle in which most men take part without really seeing it and who makes it visible to the most “human” among them . . . It is not enough for a painter like Cézanne, an artist, or a philosopher, to create and express an idea; they must also awaken the experiences which will make their idea

142  Katerina Bantinaki take root in the consciousness of others. If a work is successful, it has the strange power of being self-teaching. The reader or spectator, by following the clues of the book or painting, by establishing the concurring points of internal evidence and being brought up short when straying too far to the left or right, guided by the confused clarity of style, will in the end find what was intended to be communicated. The painter can do no more than construct an image; he must wait for this image to come to life for other people. When it does, the work of art will . . . no longer exist . . . like a stubborn dream or a persistent delirium, nor will it exist only in space as a colored piece of canvas. It will dwell undivided in several minds, with a claim on every possible mind like a perennial acquisition. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 18–20, my italics) Taking, in turn, my cue from the words of Merleau-Ponty, I have argued in this article for the idea that stylistic deformity needs to be accorded salience in both our perceptual experience and in our theories of pictorial experience; and, further, that when accorded the salience that it merits, it neither leads to a ‘stubborn dream’ (the fantastic beings that it could be seen to enform) nor is it demoted to ‘a colored piece of canvas’ (to some bare marks on the pictorial surface). Let us be reminded of Matisse once again: “L’exactitude n’est pas la vérité”. The ‘truth’ that Matisse and a long line of artists have tried to convey or instill in our minds through purposeful figurative distortion is not a ‘truth’ that concerns form (i.e., the outward appearance of the object to be represented); but it is certainly a ‘truth’ that is conveyed or expressed through (distorted) form and which lies at the very core of their work. Our theories of pictorial experience need to make space both for this ‘truth’ and for the means of its visual expression: confirmation on whether that space should indeed be the one that I have tried to delineate can come—in philosophy as in art, as Merleau-Ponty reminds us—only ‘from the concurring points of internal evidence’.

Notes 1 As a quick look on the literature on artistic style would show, these are rather complex issues that I here oversimplify; however, this crude approach can direct our attention to what is of importance for our purposes. For an overview of the challenging issues that style raises see, e.g., Ross (2003). 2 John Hyman (2006: 88) cites, in relation to Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), the following exchange: when a New York dealer asked the artist “Is this a woman with one eye or three eyes a development of cubism?” he answered “Not at all. This double profile, as it is called, is only that I keep my eyes always open. Every painter should keep his eyes always open. And how does that arrive at seeing truthfully, one eye or two eyes, you may ask? It is simply the face of my sweetheart Dora Maar, when I kiss her”. I have in mind here some relevant dimensions of some cubist works, evidenced, for instance, also in Marchel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2 (1912).

Stylistic Deformity and Pictorial Experience 143

References Alberti, L. B. [1435] (1991). On Painting, translated by C. Grayson. London: Penguin Books. Bantinaki, K. (2008). “The Opticality of Pictorial Representation”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66: 183–192. Bantinaki, K. (2010). “Picture Perception as Twofold Experience”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 128–150. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Belke, B., H. Leder and M. D. Augustin. (2006). “Mastering Style”. Psychology Science 48: 115–134. Brown, J. (2010). “Seeing Things in Pictures”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 208–236. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carroll, N. (1990). The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. Carroll, N. (1995). “Danto, Style and Intention”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53: 251–257. Chasid, A. (2014a). “Pictorial Experience and Intentionalism”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72: 405–426. Chasid, A. (2014b). “Pictorial Experience: Not So Special After All”. Philosophical Studies 171: 471–491. Danto, A. (1981). The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Duchamp, M. (1912). Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Oil on canvas, 147x89 cm. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Flam, J. (ed.) (1995). Matisse on Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gombrich, E.H. (1968). “Style”. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by D.L. Sills, 352–361. New York: Macmillan. Goodman, N. (1978). “The Status of Style”. In Ways of Worldmaking. Indiana: Hackett Publishing. Harrison, A. (2009). “Style”. In A Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd ed., edited by S. Davies, K. M. Higgins, R. Hopkins, R. Stecker and D. Cooper, 544–547. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Hopkins, R. (1998). Picture, Image and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyman, J. (2006). The Objective Eye. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kandinsky, W. (1984). “The Problem of Form”. In Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, edited by Herschel B. Chipp, 155–158. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Translated by K. Lindsay from W. Kandinsky. (1912). “Über die Formfrage”. Der Blaue Reiter. Munich: R. Piper]. Laios, K., M. Moschos and G. Androutsos. (2017). “Human Anatomy in the Paintings of Dominicos Theotokopoulos”. Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology 122: 1–7. Lang, B. [1979] (1987). “Looking for the Styleme”. In The Concept of Style, edited by B. Lang, 174–182. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Leder, H., B. Belke, A. Oeberst and D. Augustin. (2004). “A Model of Aesthetic Appreciation and Aesthetic Judgments”. British Journal of Psychology 95: 489–508.

144  Katerina Bantinaki Marisse, H. (1939). La Musique. Oil on canvas, 115x115 cm. Buffalo, New York: Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). “Cézanne’s Doubt”. In Sense and Non Sense, translated by H. Dreyfus and P. Allen Dreyfus. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Neander, K. (1987). “Pictorial Representation: A Matter of Resemblance”. British Journal of Aesthetics 27: 213–226. Paasschen, J. van, F. Bacci and D. P. Melcher. (2015). “The Influence of Art Expertise and Training on Emotion and Preference Ratings for Representational and Abstract Artworks”. PLoS ONE 10(8): e0134241. Picasso, P. (1937). Portrait of Dora Maar. Oil on canvas, 92x65 cm. Paris: Musée Picasso. Robinson, J. (1981). “Style and Significance in Art History and Art Criticism”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40: 5–14. Ross, S. (2003). “Style in Art”. In The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, edited by J. Levinson, 228–244. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ruckstuhl, F.W. (1916). “Style and Manner in Art: A Definition”. The Art World 1(3): 172–176. Schier, F. (1986). Deeper into Pictures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walton, K. [1979] (1987). “Products and Processes of Art”. In The Concept of Style, edited by B. Lang, 72–103. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wollheim, R. [1979] (1987). “Pictorial Style: Two Views”. In The Concept of Style, edited by B. Lang, 183–202. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wollheim, R. (1987) Painting as an Art. London: Thames and Hudson. Wollheim, R. (1995). “Style in Painting”. In The Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts, edited by C. van Eck, J. McAllister and R. van de Vall, 37–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wollheim, R. (2003). “What Makes Representational Painting Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 77: 131–147.

8 Inflection and Representation Jérôme Pelletier

Some still figurative pictures apparently allow one to see in them objects or scenes whose properties belong to different realms. Some of these properties are ordinary properties like being a horse, properties of objects one may encounter “face-to-face”. “Face-to-face” means here “without the mediation of representational vehicles”, or “in the flesh”. Other properties are related somehow to the picture surface, like being painted with delicate strokes, that is, pictorial properties, properties of pictorial or representational vehicles. Thanks to these pictorial representational vehicles, objects and scenes bearing ordinary properties may be represented. “Inflection” refers to the moment when different ranges of properties— non-pictorial and pictorial—coalesce in pictorial experience and give rise to an experience of objects or scenes unseeable “face-to-face”.1 Among paintings, drawing and sketches—that is among still pictures with a surface marked either with paint samples, chalk, pen or ink—some are said to exhibit this feature and others apparently do not. And one may surmise that, if there really are inflected pictures, appreciating these pictures requires, on the side of the viewer, a minimal awareness of the dual nature of properties amalgamated in pictorial experience, while at the same time recognizing that this amalgamation is mandated. Two criteria of inflection emerge from the philosophical discussion on inflection (Podro 1998; Lopes 2005; Hopkins 2010; Nanay 2010). The first criterion “Coalescence” (C) refers to the amalgamation of surface and ordinary properties in objects or scenes seen in inflected pictures. And “Face-to-Face Unseeability” (FFU), the second criterion of inflection, refers to the kind of objects or scenes seen in inflected pictorial experiences. As it happens, (C) is an explanans of (FFU): the face-to-face unseeability of the object or scene seen in an inflected pictorial experience is explained by the coalescence of surface and ordinary properties in this object or scene. But what are we really saying when we say that (C) and (FFU) are realized in certain pictures? Are we saying that properties of a dual nature really belong to the objects or scenes seen in inflected pictures and that face-to-face unseeable objects are really seen in inflected pictorial experience?

146  Jérôme Pelletier Discussing, after Podro (1998: 16–17), a drawing by Rembrandt of Jan Cornelisz Sylvius, Hopkins uses the vocabulary of seeming to describe Sylvius’s hand: “the hand itself seems to be both body part and rising splash of ink” (2010: 161). I suggest using fictionalist sentences to describe (C). “It is fictional in Rembrandt’s drawing that the hand is both body part and rising splash of ink”. The advantage of using fictionalist sentences is that it allows to set aside the ontological worries elicited by ways of talking which mention objects or scenes of a dual ontological nature, while preserving talk of objects of a dual nature as a useful fiction. Fictionalist sentences are also apt to describe the second criterion of inflection (FFU), which says in this particular case: “It is fictional in Rembrandt’s drawing that a face-to-face unseeable hand is seen”. An extra motivation to use fictionalist sentences in the philosophical discussion on inflection is that a problem in the philosophy of fiction comes out again in philosophical discussions on inflection. This is the problem of the limitations on representational correspondence. Most philosophers of fiction accept that there are, in fiction, “limitations on representational correspondence” (Currie 2010: 58). While “Othello, bluff man of war, produces spontaneously poetic statements of surpassing beauty” (Walton 1990, sect 4.5.), it is acknowledged that: “[I]n the world of the story, Othello is not an outstanding poet: none of the characters in the play is, despite the fact that the words they utter actually constitute beautiful poetry” (Currie 2010: 59). In the same way, it is said by philosophers of pictures either that “when West Arnhem Land aborigines painted stick figures, they were not representing humans who were as thin as sticks”. (Wollheim 2003a: 143) or that While a black and white picture of Marlene Dietrich does in fact depict her (inter alia) as being black and white . . . we do not pay attention to this semantic ‘noise’; using common sense, we filter out the noise and heed only the obviously intended or accented bits of the picture. (Schier 1986: 172) It is often acknowledged that, due to (C) and to (FFU), inflected pictorial experience has no representational role. There is a Separation, in Hopkins’s vocabulary, between what is appropriately seen in a picture and what this picture depicts. I suggest to label this view “Style Separatism”. In his contribution to this volume, Hopkins claims: When our experience of pictures is inflected, we are presented with items that are very strange. What we see in the picture combines features of the non-pictorial world—the sorts of object and property that we might, at least in principle, see face-to-face—with features drawn from the surface in which it is seen. The result crosses levels,

Inflection and Representation 147 mingling the level of vehicle with that of content as nothing encountered beyond the pictorial realm could do. It is not very plausible that such strange objects are what these pictures depict. Rembrandt did not represent pastor Sylvius as a trans-level, impossible object. So, it is fortunate that we have the notion of Separation at our disposal. For all that the drawing depicts Sylvius as an ordinary, if impressive, man, what we see in it goes beyond that, in various interesting, indeed deeply exotic, ways. (Hopkins 2018, 207) Among the many pressing questions that arise concerning inflection, one would like to know why inflection should not contribute, if one endorses Wollheim’s claim on aborigenes’s stick figures or Hopkins’s claim on Sylvius’s drawing, to the representational power of pictures. In what follows, a case will be made for the representational power of inflection. In the course of the explanation, the view called “Style Separatism” is discussed. Since one faces in both domains—the philosophy of fiction and of inflection—particular versions of the same problem of representational correspondence, the use of the fiction vocabulary in the philosophy of inflection may help to see connections between both domains. In particular, if Style Separatism is a view inadequate in the philosophy of inflection, it may also be inappropriate in the philosophy of fiction.

FFU Subjects Without Inflection Let’s consider one of the two criteria of inflection: face-to-face unseeability (FFU). There is a variety of pictures which may be understood as presenting FFU objects or scenes in pictorial experience without satisfying the second criterion of inflection (C). Wollheim claims that two Manet paintings La Prune and Un Bar aux Folies Bergère let us see in them non-particular women. Since non-particular women cannot be seen face-to-face—“We cannot see face-to face women (. . .) of which we may not ask, Which woman?” (Wollheim 1998: 223)—these paintings may be said to satisfy the first criterion of inflection (FFU). In the explanation provided by Wollheim of the face-to-face unseeability of the women in the Manet paintings, (C)—the coalescence of surface and ordinary properties—plays no part. As a matter of fact, Wollheim does not mention the configurational features of the paintings, the marks left by Manet on the paintings’ surfaces to explain the face-toface unseeability of their subjects. As I understand Wollheim’s explanation, what matters is the fact that the perception of the paintings is not structured by the concept of the particularity of these women. And this is attested, according to Wollheim, by the fact that a natural report of our experience of both paintings would take the form of “I see merely

148  Jérôme Pelletier a woman in that picture” not the form of “I see a particular woman in that picture” (cf. Wollheim 2003b: 10–13). In my interpretation of Wollheim’s point, a relational sentence such as “I see a particular woman in that picture” would be misplaced to describe our experience of the Manet paintings. Our experiences of the Manet paintings have qualitative properties devoid of perceptual particularity. It does not seem to the paintings’ viewers that particular women are to be seen in them. One may go one step further in the explanation and distinguish the non-particularity of the women seen in the Manet paintings from their indeterminacy. This distinction matters since, some paintings—The Madonna with the Long Neck by Parmigianino—may be said to let us see particular indeterminate subjects in them. This is what may be inferred from Wollheim’s following claim: When Parmigianino painted the Madonna with a long neck, the Madonna whom he represented is not, despite the title given to his picture, a long-necked Madonna. (Wollheim 2003a: 143) In my interpretation of Wollheim’s point, the length of the Madonna’s neck in Parmigianino’s Madonna is intentionally left indeterminate. Due to the curious but intentional length of the Madonna, one ought not to see a long-necked Madonna in the painting but a Madonna with a neck of an unspecified length. It is not that the length of the Madonna is not represented at all in the painting or that the painting is incomplete: it is that it is represented as longer than it is. In that sense, the particular woman correctly seen in the painting2 is indeterminate with respect to her neck length. A correct pictorial experience of the painting is an experience of a Madonna with a neck of no determinate length. This is another instance of a pictorial experience of a FFU subject, this time of a particular indeterminate woman, an experience laden with referential thought contrary to the pictorial experiences of the Manet paintings mentioned above. The Manet and the Parmigianino paintings illustrate a variety of ways in which what can be seen in a painting is, according to Wollheim, not limited to what can be seen face-to-face. In my construal of Wollheim’s proposal, some determinate non-particular women are correctly seen in the Manet paintings. Each Manet painting let us see some determinate woman in it without letting us see a particular determinate woman to whom one would refer to as this particular determinate woman. By contrast, one correctly sees a particular indeterminate woman in the Parmigianino painting. In both explanations, Wollheim does not mention (C) as an explanans of the face-to-face unseeability either of the women seen in the Manet paintings or of the Madonna seen in the Parmigianino painting. Whatever one thinks of Wollheim’s explanation, one lesson to be drawn

Inflection and Representation 149 is that a painting’s power of representing FFU objects or scenes is not sufficient to elicit an inflected pictorial experience of these objects or scenes. A question arises. If paintings have a distinctive power to represent FFU objects or scenes, objects or scenes which possess special characteristics such as non-particularity or indeterminacy, why should paintings have no power to represent objects or scenes which amalgamate properties of a pictorial and non-pictorial nature? Once one accepts, with Wollheim, that FFU objects or scenes may be seen correctly in a marked surface, one may be tempted to go one step further and claim that objects or scenes endowed of pictorial and non-pictorial properties may be correctly seen in a marked surface. How to explain this limitation of the representational power of paintings?

FFU, Style Separatism and Style Inflectionism What may be called a Style Separatism is at work in Wollheim’s limitation of the representational power of the Parmigianino’s painting. The pictorial style of Parmigianino which is aesthetically relevant in a pictorial experience of the Parmigianino painting must be separated from what is representationally relevant in this painting. Though seeing the long neck of the Madonna in the painting contributes to an aesthetic appreciation of the painting, it is not part of a correct pictorial experience of the painting and does not contribute to the painting’s representational content. The long neck of Parmigianino’s Madonna can be seen in his picture, but it cannot be correctly seen in it, only so it should be allowed only to bring about how the Madonna is perceived. (Wollheim 2003a: 144) The Madonna’s long neck belongs to what Wollheim calls the “Presentational how” of the painting. After having distinguished the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of representation, Wollheim elucidates different ways of thinking of the how of representation which he calls the “Material how”, the “Representational how” and the “Presentational how”: The Material how “(. . .) relates to the representing surface, and how it is marked. (. . .) it is through it that the other two hows are realized (. . .) the Representational how corresponds to a property of the what of representation, possessed either permanently or transiently, whereas the Presentational how does not qualify the what at all. It may reflect a range of things from the expressive vision of the artist, through the artistic pressures of the day, to the artist’s technical limitations. (2003a: 143)

150  Jérôme Pelletier One may surmise, from what Wollheim says about the “Presentational how”, that in the Parmigianino painting, the Presentational how reflects the expressive vision of the artist. In this particular case, the abnormal proportions of the Madonna’s neck, fingers and shoulders, as well as of the Christ child are expressive of Parmigianino’s vision of these creatures as, maybe, unearthly creatures, not quite like us. The painter relies on the beholder’s capacity to perceive the painting as expressing his vision. But the expressive vision of the artist has no power to represent external objects, it does not qualify the what of representation, only how the beholder sees it. Wollheim mentions a skill that enables the right kind of spectator, by being attuned to the intentions of the artist, to shape and to control the content of his visual experience. How? The right kind of specatator lets: certain parts of the Material how affect what he sees in the picture, and other parts affect only how he sees it. What is to be seen in a picture embraces the Representational how, but the Presentational how is initially excluded, and then let in only to modify how the what is seen. (Ibid.: 144) As I understand this skill, it is a cognitive skill or a know-how which enables the spectator to separate “in thought” among the manifest features of the painting the subclass of features which affect what is to be seen in the painting. How may a spectator manage to do this selection? By being attuned to the artist’s intentions when he painted the canvas. In this particular case, the right kind of spectator understands that there is no requirement to see a woman with a long neck in the picture or to experience the long neck of the woman in the painting. The right kind of spectator sees in the painting a Madonna and a Christ child with body parts of indeterminate length whereas the naive or inappropriate spectator, not being attuned to Parmigianino’s creative intentions, would see in the painting a Madonna with a long neck and a Christ child with an elongated body. In other words, the naive spectator does not separate matters of style and matters of representation and lets the stylistic properties of the painting contaminate what is to be seen in the painting. Since stylistic properties are pictorial properties, the naive spectator sees in the painting inflected objects and scenes, that is objects and scenes which amalgamate pictorial properties like “having an elongated neck” and non-pictorial properties like “being a woman”. Appreciation of the painting includes the detection of both kinds of properties, but the mistake is to take one’s inflected experience of a Madonna with a Child Christ at truth value, that is to see in the painting a Madonna or a Christ child bearing pictorial or stylistic properties like having elongated body parts. By contrast, the right kind of spectator experiences the elongation of the neck as a property of the manner or style of representation chosen by the artist, not as a property of

Inflection and Representation 151 the Madonna. This is Style Separatism, a claim endorsed by Wollheim, a claim that could be summarized in the following words: “in many cases, stylistic properties are non-representational properties”. Once one endorses Style Separatism, one may conclude that what are represented and seen correctly in Parmigianino’s painting are non-stylistic particulars Madonna and Christ child, that is particulars with many indeterminate body parts sizes. The artistic choices made by Parmigianino when he made the Madonna with the Long Neck are such that many manifest features of the painting are not attributable to the objects and scenes represented, something that the right kind of spectator understands. A cognitive skill enables this spectator to be sensitive to the fact that the painting’s appearance has many differences with the objects and scenes represented and with the real appearances of these objects and scenes. As a consequence, the Parmigianino painting brings in the mind of the right kind of spectator a visual awareness of objects and scenes indeterminate in many respects. By contrast, a non-vigilant spectator would let the stylistic manifest features contaminate the objects and scenes represented. He will not be in a position to see in the painting indeterminate objects or scenes. The nonvigilant spectator will not resist a naive perceptual disposition to see in the Parmigianino painting objects and scenes endowed with properties some of which will match the manifest stylistic features of the paintings, objects which amalgamate properties of the pictorial style (elongation) with non-pictorial properties (neck). This is Style Inflectionism, a view rejected by Wollheim.

Walton’s Style Separatism Without FFU In a way different from Wollheim, Walton defends a form of Style Separatism. Walton and Wollheim agree that there is a prescribed manner of experiencing a painting. But they disagree on the nature of this experience: a perceptual experience for Wollheim and an imaginative experience for Walton. They also disagree on what supplies the criterion of correction of the pictorial experience: for Wollheim, the artist’s intentions (the thoughts, beliefs, memories, emotions and feelings that the artist had and caused him to paint as he did, cf. Wollheim 1988: 86); for Walton a priori principles: the Reality Principle and the Mutual Belief Principle (cf Walton 1990: 144). Walton (1990) conceives of representational artworks as prescribing particular imaginings about states of affairs. This is the reason why a work’s representational aspect is said, by Walton, to be related to its fictional aspect. Artworks, from many different genres, prescribe the imaginings of propositions. And the propositions to be imagined are the propositions fictional in a given work. These imaginative prescriptions are modulated by principles such as the Reality Principle on which fictional worlds are “as much like the real one as the core of primary

152  Jérôme Pelletier [i.e., explicitly stipulated] fictional truths permits” (1990: 144). We must assume that fictional worlds established by works of art are as much like the real world, except if it is explicit that it is not the case. This is why Walton’s “right kind of spectator”, by being sensitive to the Reality Principle, will not see in the Manet and Parmigianino paintings discussed above FFU objects and scenes. These paintings do not satisfy the FFU criterion of inflection. Walton’s “right kind of spectator” will imagine seeing perfectly ordinary real objects and scenes in these paintings. Commenting on La Prune by Manet Walton claims that: We imagine seeing a woman whom we imagine to be there . . . .  [T]he seeing that I merely imagine being engaged in is perfectly ordinary, face-to-face seeing, . . . There is no need to recognize a seeing of a special kind, directed on a peculiar and otherwise unseeable object? (2002: 28) But isn’t it the case that many paintings prescribe the imaginings of propositions which contravene the Reality Principle? What will a viewer of Leonardo da Vinci’s L’Ultima Cena imagine seeing? Will the viewer imagine seeing all the diners seated on one side of the table, a proposition which deviates from standard real-world assumptions? Walton believes that such questions are illegitimate and ‘silly’ since there are no answers to them in the fictional world established by the painting. The answer to this question lies outside the fictional world. For instance, one may say that the disciples are seated on the same side in order to let the viewer imagine seeing and knowing what the disciples faces look like (Walton 1990, sect 4.5.). An application of the Reality Principle enables the viewer to understand that this element of the stylistic composition of the painting has no representational role. This is a first example of Walton’s endorsement of Style Separatism. ‘Silly’ questions, in the Waltonian sense, may be asked concerning most works of art. Othello, bluff man of war, produces spontaneously poetic statements of surpassing beauty (Walton 1990, sect 4.5.). But in the world of the story, Othello is not an outstanding poet but rather rude of tongue. So how does Othello speak? In this case it is said in the play that Othello is rude of tongue. So there is an answer to this question in the fictional world of the play. The silly question to ask is “How come Othello seems to speak great verse?” Here again the only answer lies outside the fictional world established by the play. The poetry of Othello’s language is only part of the stylistic features of the work, not part of its representational features. This is a second example of Walton’s endorsement of Style Separatism. And the stylistic features of the play are here to please the spectators of the play, to let them appreciate it aesthetically, not to play a representational role. Walton’s Style Separatism led him to admit that there is a gap between the imaginings prescribed by a work and the propositions fictionally true in the work’s world. L’Ultima

Inflection and Representation 153 Cena and Othello are two works of art which lead to imagine certain propositions—that the diners are seated on the same side of the table, that Othello speaks great verse—which are not fictionally true in the worlds established by these works. Many artworks, from many different genres, prescribe the imaginings of propositions which are not fictional in the worlds established by these works (Walton 2013). Besides their important differences in their approach of pictorial experience, both Wollheim and Walton, in the end, seem to endorse a form of Style Separatism. Features of style have to be detached from the representational content of paintings: they are not representationally or semantically productive. And this stylistic detachment from the content requires a skill for Wollheim or the application of a priori principles for Walton. It follows for both philosophers that the representational content of a painting does not depend in a systematic way on the artist’s marks on its surface: there is no systematic correspondence between parts of the surface and parts of the painting’s semantic content, no semantic compositionality in painting, and this is explained by the presence of stylistic features. The first upshot of Style Separatism for Walton, as with Wollheim, is that the fictional worlds established by a painting or a play contain significant indeterminacies. It is indeterminate how exactly the diners are really seated in L’Ultima Cena and how Othello really speaks. It is fictional that there are diners and it is fictionally indeterminate how they are seated. It is fictional that Othello is speaking but it is fictionally indeterminate how he is speaking.3 Style Separatism creates for Walton, as for Wollheim, massive indeterminacies. And these indeterminacies are independent of whether objects and scenes seen in a painting are FFU objects or scenes or not since for Walton and pace Wollheim, no FFU objects or scenes are imagined being seen in works of art. Though the stylistic features of a painting or a play have no semantic productivity, they have for both philosophers of art an aesthetic productivity. And this is the second upshot of Style Separatism: the risk of endorsing a non-representationalist aesthetics. What explains the aesthetic appreciation of a painting or of a play, in a Style Separatism framework, would be a special sensitivity toward features of a work that do not themselves represent anything, a special sensitivity toward stylistic properties conceived as non-representational properties of the work. In the Waltonian framework, the stylistic features of the work are those which make the representation of the fictional world established by the work possible, they are vehicles of representation. There is the poetic Othello and the rude Othello. Walton’s Style Separatism is the claim that in the fictional world of the play, there is room only for one Othello, the rude one. The poetic Othello is only a vehicle to reach the rude Othello, and other poetic Othellos could have done the same work. In this respect, features of style appear only contingently associated with the work’s content.

154  Jérôme Pelletier

Style Inflectionism It is certainly intuitive that many marks on a painting’s surface have no representational function: many lines or hatchings or dots have a decorative or expressive function, not a representational one. And Style Separatism, in the manner of Wollheim or of Walton, is a way to generalize this intuition. But there is a risk of overgeneralization. Some paintings are made in such a way that they resist Style Separatism. The best candidates are paintings which meet the two criteria of inflection mentioned above. I see in Magritte’s painting entitled Le Blanc-Seing (1965) a candidate of this kind (Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1  Magritte, Le blanc-seing (1965). Source: Copyright général: © Adagp, Paris, [2018].

Inflection and Representation 155 If one tries to apply Style Separatism to Magritte’s painting Le BlancSeing, no stylistic features of the painting should affect what is represented and correctly seen in the painting by the “right kind of spectator”. In a description along Wollheim’s lines, for a spectator of the right kind, the scene correctly seen in the painting and represented by it will be of a non-particular woman riding a non-particular horse in a landscape in indeterminate ways. In this description of the pictorial experience of the right kind of spectator, a central element of the pictorial experience of a naive viewer of the Magritte painting is missing. A naive viewer of Magritte’s Le Blanc-Seing cannot but see in this painting a curved landscape. The pictorial experience of, e.g., the curvature of the space in front of the horse imposes itself on its naive viewer. In what way does this pictorial experience impose itself on a naive viewer? In the Magritte painting, the deformation of the greenish landscape passing from behind the horse to the front and then back again appears as a vertical stripe of landscape enveloping the horse. This stripe of greenish landscape may be compared to the vertical green line in Matisse’s Portrait of Mme Matisse (1905). Matisse’s portrait features a stroke of green on the face of Mme Matisse. Wollheim comments: When Matisse painted a stroke of green down his wife’s face, he was not representing a woman who had a green line down her face. (Wollheim 2003a: 143) Since Matisse painted a stroke of green on his wife’s face, Matisse was nonetheless somehow representing a green line. But he did that in such a way that the “right kind of spectator” understands that the woman had no green line on her face. The green line is part of Wollheim’s “Presentational how”. In the fictional idiom, Matisse’s painting mandates its viewer to imagine seeing a woman with a green line on her face; it is fictional in Matisse’s painting that there is a woman with a green line down her face without it be fictionally true in the painting’s world that there is a woman with a green line on her face. Is the curvature of the space in Magritte’s painting part of Wollheim’s “Presentational how”, thus representing, e.g., the expressive vision of the artist? Above all, the curvature of the landscape may be said to be a property of the “Representational how”, that is, a property of the what of representation. The viewer should be convinced that Magritte intended him to take what he sees in the painting, that is, an anomalous landscape, to be what is depicted by the painting. In the fictional idiom, the painting mandates its viewer to imagine seeing a curved landscape and it is fictionally true that there is a curved landscape in the world established by the painting. How to explain this difference between the pictorial experiences of these paintings? Why is the greenish landscape in front of the horse

156  Jérôme Pelletier part, in my construal, of Wollheim’s “Representational how”, while the green stripe on the woman’s face is only part of the “Presentational how”? My hypothesis is, whereas a naive pictorial experience of the Matisse portrait in which the green line is seen as a part of Madame Matisse’s face is incorrect or not merited, a naive pictorial experience of the Magritte painting in which the greenish landscape curves and envelopes the horse is correct and merited. And because the latter pictorial experience is a seeing-in experience for Wollheim or an imaginative experience for Walton that is merited or appropriate, it possesses a representational power which the former pictorial experience lacks. By ‘merited’, I mean that the very pictorial experience of a curved landscape is itself valuable or optimal. By ‘appropriate’, I mean that it is a pictorial experience in response to an artistic unique achievement. And by ‘representational power’, I mean that it is an experience of representational properties, such as ‘being a curved landscape’ or ‘being a landscape enveloping the horse’. Finally, I suggest that, while in the Matisse portrait, a correct pictorial experience of the painting is an experience whose content is reframed on the basis of an appeal to the artist’s intentions or to a Reality Principle, such a reframing would be misplaced with the Magritte painting. It would be misplaced because it would somehow block the pleasure and value of the pictorial experience itself. Somehow the only guide in our pictorial experience of the Magritte painting is a search of an optimal pictorial experience, not a search to avoid inconsistency, contradiction and paradox. It is because the painting has the representational properties it has: because it manages to represent the space as curved that the painting is valuable. Was it also part of Magritte’s artistic intentions in making Le BlancSeing to attempt to represent the space as curved? Probably, but the aim of a viewer’s pictorial experience of Magritte’s painting is not to retrieve Magritte’s creative intentions. The viewer’s aim is to optimize his pictorial experience by making the most of Magritte’s compositional achievement in representing the spatial relations between the horse and the landscape. The ‘artistic unique achievement’ of the Magritte painting mentioned above is related to the phenomenon of inflection. The face of Madame Matisse with its green line is not such that an inflected pictorial experience of her face would be a merited pictorial experience. By contrast, the landscape in the Magritte painting is represented in such a way that an inflected pictorial experience of this landscape is merited. A ‘merited’ pictorial experience of the Magritte painting will amalgamate stylistic compositional features of the painting with non-pictorial features in such a way that the space will curve in front of the horse. Viewing the Magritte painting, we are aware of its stylistic compositional properties. We see compositional discontinuities in the marks

Inflection and Representation 157 on the canvas that depict the horse; we see the horse’s shoulder and elbow as not painted in certain areas. And what we see in the painting is a mixt of pictorial properties like ‘being painted in certain parts’ and non-pictorial properties like ‘being a horse’. There is coalescence of properties of different kinds in our pictorial experience of a horse painted with missing parts. This coalescence makes it that we do not see in the painting a horse transparent in certain of its body parts but that we see in the painting a whole horse painted with missing pictorial body parts. And this pictorial inflected experience of the horse is part of a wider pictorial experience, a pictorial experience of a curved landscape which passes somehow in front of the horse body parts which are pictorially missing. The upshot is an optimal pictorial experience of the Magritte painting. This pictorial experience is optimal relatively to another possible pictorial experience of the same painting, a pictorial experience in which the horse would not be inflected and would be represented as being transparent. In that non-optimal pictorial experience, the landscape in this part of the painting would not curve and would remain at the background of the painting, behind the horse seen as transparent at the shoulder. Why is the latter pictorial experience less optimal than the former in which a whole non-transparent horse is seen in the painting? Because the pictorial experience of a transparent horse has a very limited local relevance: it cannot take into account the other parts of the painting in which no body parts of the horse are missing and the landscape is still curved. Only the pictorial experience in which the horse is not represented as transparent is a merited response to the overall artistic achievement of Magritte in this painting and to its unity. What I call the optimal pictorial experience of the Magritte painting represents a woman riding a horse in a curved landscape. This experience manages to absorb the compositional properties of the painting within its representational content. There is no Style Separatism in this pictorial experience. The composition of the painting, a stylistic feature of the painting, despite its incongruities, is integrated by the optimal viewer in his pictorial experience and representation in such a way that the painting will represent a woman riding a horse in a curved space. This is Style Inflectionism. A consequence of Style Inflectionism will be a reduction of indeterminacies. For a viewer of Magritte’s Le Blanc-Seing who endorses Style Separatism, the scene correctly seen in the painting and represented by it will be of a non-particular woman riding a non-particular horse in a landscape in indeterminate ways. Where this viewer will see indeterminacies, what I call the ‘optimal spectator’ will see determinate weird curvatures in the landscape. These differences will not prevent both spectators—the optimal and the separatist spectator of a Wollheimian kind—from both seeing FFU objects and scenes in the painting. But for

158  Jérôme Pelletier the optimal spectator, the FFU scene will be determinate in many respects while for the separatist spectator, the FFU scene will be indeterminate in some respects.

Conclusion The subtle distortions of Parmigianino’s painting, the unexpected composition of Magritte’s painting, are pictorial features noticed by nonexpert viewers because they disrupt their perceptual habits. Due to these pictorial features, the perception of these paintings tends to elicit intense arousing seeing-in experiences (Wollheim) or imaginative experiences (Walton). Do we engage in these seeing-in or imaginative experiences somehow off-line, for the sake of enjoying these experiences, or do we engage in these experiences on-line, as a means of delivering the representational content of these paintings? These distortions and unexpected compositions are the stylistic signatures of an artistic agency. Their occurrences raise the question of the interaction of matters of style and matters of content in our experience of art. To this question, philosophers of art such as Wollheim and Walton tend to reply with a view I label “Style Separatism”, according to which style and content should not mingle. What I suggest is that certain paintings aim at triggering pictorial experiences which connect features of style and of content inseparably. These paintings have distinctive features which make it that one sees in them (or imagines seeing) objects or scenes which amalgamate pictorial and non-pictorial properties. These paintings are said to merit inflected pictorial experiences and manifest a form of a view I label “Style Inflectionism”. These inflected pictorial experiences are said to be optimal experiences. There are no rules for optimality, as there are no rules for creating paintings which merit inflected pictorial experiences. Should Parmigianino’s painting merit an inflected pictorial experience? Should Parmigianino’s style interact with the painting’s content in such a way that, when the painting invites a viewer to imagine seeing a Madonna with a long neck, the painting should be said to depict a Madonna with a long neck? The elongation of the neck and of the body of Christ child, I suggest, merits an inflected pictorial experience which amalgamates this stylistic feature of elongation to the Madonna and Christ. This pictorial experience is merited in the sense that it is an appropriate response to the unity of the painting and to the achievement of the artist in this painting. Such a representational experience is not so much an experience of reverence toward the Madonna and Christ as an experience of reverence toward the artist’s compositional innovation, as it is the case with the proper pictorial experience of the Magritte painting discussed above. In both cases, with the Magritte’s painting and with the Parmigianino’s painting,

Inflection and Representation 159 inflected pictorial experiences are appropriate responses to the compositional structures of these works. One sees in the beginning of abstract painting a retreat of figurative elements, but not a hasty retreat, a slow and progressive one. At the same time the pictorial means of representation—the colors and lines—are foregrounded. This moment of balance between a figurative retreat and an exhibition of the means of representation is manifest in a painting such as Kandinsky Composition VI (1913). The painting’s experience is an experience of the coalescence of the pictorial and the figurative, an experience in which the viewer cannot tell whether, e.g., a snake is to be seen in some part of the surface or just colors and lines. The viewer’s interrogation is legitimate since both elements are to be seen in this part of the canvas and an inflected experience is a proper response to the compositional work of Kandinsky. Another example of Style Inflectionism is Fontana’s Concetto spaziale New York 10 (1962). Here, the viewer’s experience amalgamates the two-dimensional vertical perforations of the surface and, in the third dimension, the skyscrapers of New York. The skyscrapers are vertical lacerations, both buildings and jagged cuts in the metal. It is a consequence of this view that a given pictorial experience of a painting may be more or less right or wrong, more or less correct or incorrect. Since optimality does not follow logical laws, it is often left open to the viewer “to get” the painting one way or another. Many paintings elicit pictorial experiences which abide by the rules of Style Separatism. In the fictional idiom, these paintings invite their viewers to imagine propositions—that Madame Matisse has a green line on her face, that the diners are seated on the same side of the table—which are not fictionally true in the worlds established by these works. One may say that these imaginings make fictional certain propositions—that Madame Matisse has a green line on her face, that the diners are seated on the same side of the table—without making these propositions fictionally true in the work’s worlds. This way of speaking takes into account the representational role of these deviant imaginings. It is not the case that these imaginings, though mandated in order to appreciate the work, have no representational role. True, in one sense, they have no representational role insofar as they do not represent the worlds established by the works as being one way rather than another. In that sense, they are imaginings without representation. But in a more trivial sense, they have a representational role insofar as they represent stylistic features of the works. These imaginings render fictional certain propositions: that the diners are seated on the same side of the table or that Madame Matisse has a green line on her face. These imaginings have correction conditions: they can be shown to be correct or incorrect by holding them up against the stylistic properties of the work. But they can be shown to be incorrect by holding them against the world established by the work, they

160  Jérôme Pelletier misrepresent the world established by the work. Style Separatism, though being a view inadequate for inflected pictures, remains a view relevant for many non-inflected pictures. Vermeer’s blurred effects on the figures in his paintings should not let us conclude that the men and women represented by Vermeer’s paintings are soft and blurred. The blurred contours are configurational items which do not claim to be part of the painting’s content, Style Separatism is effective for Vermeer’s paintings. Nonetheless, the blurred quality of Vermeer’s brushstrokes are invitations for the viewer to imagine a world slightly out-of-focus in some of its parts. These imaginings without representation have a precious aesthetic value.

Notes 1 This is not to say that those objects and scenes are unseeable “tout court”. Somehow these objects or scenes are “seeable” since they belong to the visual content of the perceptual experiences of these paintings. 2 In my construal, Wollheim classifies Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck in the category of pictures of a particular woman. This is because what Wollheim says of Jupiter and Thetis applies to the The Madonna with the Long Neck. Wollheim claims “that we should put Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Jupiter and Thetis in the same category as Madame Brunet even though Jupiter and Thetis are not real persons” (Wollheim 2003b: 11). For Wollheim, there is no sense in asking “Which woman is represented?” in La Prune, whereas it matters to understand that the particular Jupiter is represented in the Ingres painting. The distinction is at the level of what is seen in these pictures. Both paintings are to be classified with Madame Brunet in the category of paintings of particular women. Ditto for The Madonna with the Long Neck. As for Madame Brunet, on the basis of the linguistic test mentioned above, when one asks about Manet’s Portrait of Madame Brunet “What woman is it of?”, since there is an answer to this question, Wollheim classifies Madame Brunet as a picture of a particular woman. 3 It remains fictionally indeterminate how Othello is really speaking, since we have only been told that he is rude of tongue.

References Currie, G. (2010). Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fontana, L. (1962). Concetto spaziale, New York 10 (Concept spatial, New York 10). Milan: Collection Fondazione Lucio Fontana. Hopkins, R. (2010). “Inflected Pictorial Experience: Its Treatment and Significance”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 151–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hopkins, R. (2018). “Sculpting in Time: Temporally Inflected Experience of Cinema”. In The Pleasure of Pictures: Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation, edited by J. Pelletier and A. Voltolini, 201–223. London: Routledge. Kandinsky, W. (1913) Composition VI, oil on canvas, 195 x 300 cm. Saint Petersburg, Russia: Hermitage Museum. Lopes, D. (2005). Sight and Sensibility. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Inflection and Representation 161 Magritte, R. (1965). Le blanc-seing, oil on canvas, 81,3 x 65, 1 cm. National Galery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.24. Copyright général: © Adagp, Paris, [2018] Matisse, H. (1905). Portrait of Madame Matisse, oil on canvas, 42,5 x 32,5 cm. Copenhague: Statens Museum for Kunst. Nanay, B. (2010). “Inflected and Uninflected Experience of Pictures”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 181– 207. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Podro, M. (1998). Depiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schier, F. (1986). Deeper Into Pictures: An Essay on Pictorial Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walton, K. (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Walton, K. (2002). “Depiction, Perception and Imagination: Responses to Richard Wollheim”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60: 27–35. Walton, K. (2013). “Fictionality and Imagination Reconsidered”. In Fictionalism to Realism: Fictional and Other Social Entities, edited by C. Barbero, M. Ferraris and A. Voltolini, 9–26. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Wollheim, R. (1988). Painting as an Art. Princeton, London: Princeton University Press, Thames and Hudson. Wollheim, R (1998). “On Pictorial Representation”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56(3): 217–226. Wollheim, R. (2003a). “What Makes Representational Painting Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 77: 131–147. Wollheim, R. (2003b). “In Defense of Seeing-In”. In Looking into Pictures: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Pictorial Space, edited by H. Hecht, R. Schwartz and M. Atherton, 3–16. Cambridge: MIT Press.

9 Temporal Images The Anamorphic Game and the Nature of Picture Paolo Spinicci

1 Anamorphoses are odd and intriguing images. They are fascinating: their pictorial content, albeit foreseen, is at first sight concealed and spectators are invited to solve a riddle, looking for the right vantage point on the depicted scene. And they are odd: anamorphoses are borderline images because they live on the threshold between the capacity spectators have to glimpse what it is concealed by the painting and the failure of their efforts, ending up in the perception of an intricacy of lines and unfamiliar shapes. Like pictures in trompe-l’oeil, which play on the divide between image and reality, anamorphoses are jokes between sign and design, between what the spectator grasps at first sight—some irregular shapes floating on the background—and what she succeeds in perceiving after a while by moving back and forth in front of the canvas. Anamorphoses belong therefore to the family of tricks: the point of their perception is the moment in which spectators seize what is hidden under the intricacy of the lines they are looking at and enjoy working out the puzzle by which they had been fooled. The tricky nature of anamorphic images keeps them at a distance from the seriousness of art and they rarely play a role in artistic paintings, with the exception of some few (and well known) examples. Notwithstanding this, in recent times art and literature historians, architects and, especially, artists like Abélanet, Hurwitz, Wenner (2011), Beever (2012) and many others have been attracted by these intriguing images and after Jurgis Baltrušaitis’s seminal work (Baltrušaitis 1977), there are many contributions on this subject (Pérez Gómez and Pelletier 1995); on the contrary, philosophers seem to be less sensitive to their allure. Paradoxical as it may sound, anamorphoses have been a subject of philosophical debate especially because they do not occur as often as we might think. It is a well-known fact, on which painters since the Renaissance and, later on, psychologists have called for attention, because it hints at a

Temporal Images 163 sort of paradox inherent to the nature of linear perspective. Perspective pictures are characterized by the uniqueness of their point of view: the observer’s position determines (and is pinpointed by) the perspective rendering of the objects being represented in a drawing and Renaissance painters were captivated by the possibility to define the point from which their paintings were to be observed. Yet, it is easy to realize that spectators can move in front of a picture without altering their perception of the scene depicted: significant perceptual distortions arise only when they look at the painting from an exceedingly wrong and unnatural perspective. Some mechanism of perceptual constancy seems to be at work here and philosophers are usually interested in anamorphoses as a failure of perceptual constancy, which, on its own, is appealing because it seems to offer an argument in favor of the twofold nature of pictorial experience.1 Wollheim is the authority philosophers appeal to in order to make the point. According to Wollheim, when looking at pictures spectators have a twofold experience: they see the configurational fold (the picture’s vehicle) and they have a pictorial experience of the recognitional fold (the picture’s object). It is precisely because spectators see the different positions they assume in relation to the vehicle that they can discount distortions of the configurational fold and grasp an identical recognitional fold. Perceptual constancy is therefore a consequence of twofoldness and an argument for its presence.2 In my opinion, Wollheim is far from being entirely convincing on this point,3 which is still waiting for an empirical answer, but—most importantly—I believe that anamorphoses are interesting on their own and that they can only help us disclose two important features of images if we get a deeper understanding of their phenomenology. Hence the nature of my paper: it puts aside the question of perceptual constancy and focuses on the phenomenology of anamorphic images. If a deeper understanding of their nature might have a say in the vexata quaestio of twofoldness is an issue we will try to settle at the end of the paper. In order to reach the goal I have anticipated, I make three points. First, I give a definition and a taxonomy of anamorphic images. I restrict my analysis to perspectival anamorphic images: mirror anamorphoses are not taken into account, for reasons that—I hope—will start to appear less and less arbitrary. Second, I focus on the pragmatic nature of anamorphic images and on the first of the two features I hinted at: there are performative and temporal images and anamorphoses belong to this family. Third, and finally, I spend a few words on what anamorphosis can teach us about the “inflected” nature of images and I hold that in order to appreciate from an aesthetic point of view the way an object is depicted

164  Paolo Spinicci spectators do not need to linger on the perception of the picture’s surface. Inflection belongs to the image as such and is perceived as a property of its figurative dimension—and this is the second feature I want to stress in this paper.

2 I begin with the first problem—with a definition of anamorphic images. According to a widespread, albeit controversial, thesis, anamorphoses are a sort of self-criticism of perspectival construction. Their function consists both in revealing the limits of the pretended objectivity of perspectival rendering and in reminding the spectator that representation is a subjective affair. It follows that perspectival foreshortening turns into anamorphosis as soon as it stops representing the object in a recognizable way, committing the spectator to an intricacy of lines in which she must recognize her disquieting presence.4 I see two ways in which this can happen and they both refer to the idea that anamorphosis is perspectival rendering at its utmost. It might be thought, at first sight, that anamorphic paintings are images that host one or more extremely foreshortened figures, like the dead soldier in Paolo Uccello’s Battle of San Romano or Christ’s corpse in Andrea Mantegna’s Cristo in scurto. Looking at these figures, spectators must seize, and be impressed by, the violence of these foreshortenings (Rathe 1938): they echo the cruelty of the gesture that makes corpses out of living bodies. Yet, it would be odd to label such paintings as anamorphic images. Art historians do not think that way—and they are right. Extremely foreshortened figures are exactly what we expect to see, if we look—for instance—at objects that are perpendicularly (or nearly perpendicularly) oriented with respect to the spectator. Certainly, it is difficult to grasp the objective form of extremely foreshortened objects, but there is nothing tricky in them: they are depicted exactly as they do appear when we see them from a perpendicular vantage point. There is no trick and there is no riddle to solve: spectators cannot help seizing the violence of the perspective renderings of the objects depicted in this way. Moreover, it is worth remembering that in almost every painting there is something which lies perpendicularly (or nearly perpendicularly) to the spectator and it would be odd to say that almost every painting is anamorphic in nature. A similar argument holds against the second way I hinted at— against the attempt to assimilate anamorphic paintings to images with heavy distortions due to the width of the angle of projection—of what Renaissance theorists call visual angle. It is true: sometimes, if the picture represents a broad vision and if we move away from the vantage point and look at a painting from a lateral position, we may be

Temporal Images 165 disturbed by the foreshortened shape of what is depicted at its edges, but this is not a good reason to conflate foreshortening and anamorphosis. Marginal distortions usually elude the spectator’s gaze, because they do not appear when viewed from the place the spectator usually occupies—the place in front of the painting. It follows that, notwithstanding the width of their visual angle, Piranesi’s etchings are not perceived as anamorphic images, though objects at the borders may look a bit strange if we gaze perpendicularly at them. There is no trick and no riddle to solve: at worst, moving around the picture, the onlooker realizes that foreshortening and distortion are ingredients of perspective drawing.5 At the roots of these two attempts at defining anamorphic pictures there is the same error—they both confuse anamorphoses with perspective distortions—and the same theoretical insight: they both realize that perspective drawings do not only represent objects in a fairly realistic way but compel spectators to take into account the weight of perspective distortions. Foreshortening does not go unnoticed. It is not just an invisible means for achieving the perception of depth; on the contrary, onlookers are more or less aware of its presence. The first step to understand anamorphic images consists in realizing that perspective drawing is not only a technique for representing depth on a flat surface: it is also a means for calling the onlooker’s attention to the phenomenal texture of perspective distortions. Perspectival drawing discloses the phenomenal relevance of vantage points in perception, although there is no reason to glimpse in this simple fact the glimmer of some philosophical truth concerning the interpretive and subjective nature of every representation. The second step consists in realizing that images themselves are objects of perception and are, therefore, subject to perspective foreshortening. This step was taken by Piero della Francesca—at least in Western tradition. In his De prospectiva pingendi, he realized that the apparent diameter of columns drawn on a plane parallel to the pictorial plane increases with their increasing distance from the onlooker. Amateurs may be bewildered by this apparent denial of the first law of perspective drawing (objects look smaller as their distance from the observer increases), but according to Piero there is no reason to blame perspective for that and to attenuate its strict laws. Assuming that the point of projection is in front of the middle of the arcade, columns at the end of the row must be drawn larger and larger but, because they subtend an increasing smaller visual angle, they will look smaller and smaller when observed from the right vantage point (Piero della Francesca 2016: 186–187). Drawings of foreshortened columns are, on their own, visual objects: their perspective renderings look foreshortened, when viewed from the image’s vantage point (Figure 9.1).

166  Paolo Spinicci

Figure 9.1 

AB = EF > CD α=γδ. Upshot: time seems to slow (the later δ periods dilate, to accommodate more temporal content). Leone: a constant Scene period (of duration δ′) is on each repetition occupied by component events (twitches, glances, etc.) that are experienced as of constant duration but increasing number-multipliedby-momentariness-of-shot. The result is a mismatch between our sense of the period as δ′ and our sense of its component events, filtered through the fragmentary shots, as summing to >δ′. Upshot: Scene time seems to be slowed by the shortening shots through which it is presented. A rather different worry about this description is that it is simply not true to our experience of the film. At times I share this doubt myself. However, even if that is right, the example can still serve some purpose. It gives us a sense of what, in concrete terms, cinematic inflection would be like. Perhaps the Leone sequence does not fall out as my description suggests, but at least we now have a better (because less abstract) sense of what it would be for some film sequence to do so. 4.2  Why Temporal Inflection Matters Perhaps it will seem eccentric to have spent so long marking out the space for inflection in cinema, if there is uncertainty even in my mind about whether my central example occupies that space. I close with two responses to that charge. First, it is worthwhile asking whether there is temporal inflection in cinema because, were it to occur, that would be of some significance for the art form. As noted at the outset, inflection falls under the general category of interesting relations between form and content, relations that are a central source of interest and value in the arts. Moreover, the particular form of inflection I have in mind would in all likelihood be the special preserve of cinema. Only the pictorial and sculptural arts involve inflection in any form, and among them only cinema is an art of time.10

222  Robert Hopkins Thus temporal inflection promises to be a phenomenon of paradigmatic artistic interest that is unique to film. Second, there is independent reason to think that cinema does stand in some distinctive relation to time, a relation the notion of temporal inflection might at least in part capture. This is a connection that has drawn various theorists and practitioners. Among them was the great Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky, from whose artistic autobiography (1987) I take my title. I do not pretend that Tarkovsky would have recognized his thoughts in the position offered here. He did, however, consider film’s connection to time to be central to its artistic interest. And, if only by happy accident, his title does provide an apt slogan for the idea of temporal inflection. For there can be inflection wherever there is seeing-in, and we certainly see things in sculpture.11 I suspect that if we are persuaded that cinematic inflection ever occurs, we will then begin to find the phenomenon more widely. And I would hope that some of the examples would be more striking still than the Leone. For sometimes an entire movie seems to engage our sense of time’s passage, in ways that might be illuminated by bringing the idea of inflection to bear. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1972) is one example. And some of the films of Tarkovsky himself (I am thinking in particular of Andrey Rublev) might be others. If these are indeed examples, inflection is integral to some of the greatest masterpieces of cinema. Arguing for that, however, would be a task for another day.12

Notes 1 For further discussion of Separation, and other examples, see Hopkins (1998, ch. 6)—or below, section 2. 2 I take the idea of inflection from Michael Podro (1998) and Dominic Lopes (2006), though the account given here differs from, and in my view clarifies, the formulations they offer. The Rembrandt example to follow is also Podro’s—though the description of it is my own. For more on the phenomenon and the literature on it, see Hopkins (2010a). 3 Of course, the ink isn’t really moving, and we don’t see it as (literally) doing so. We might take talk of movement literally, in which case it is a property the ink is only imagined to have. Or we might take it as a metaphorical or elliptical description of some property the ink really possesses, and which is seen as before me. 4 True, perhaps the black marks could have been, say, blue, without altering what we see in Figure 11.1. But had some of the black marks been white, that would certainly have affected Scene. 5 So not all of what the film represents is seen in it. This is not Separation. Separation involves a gap between what we see in a picture and what it depicts. Here the gap is instead between what is depicted by the movie (and seen in it), and what it represents in other ways. 6 This is taken for granted in some film theory. See, for instance, Prammagiore and Wallis (2008: 134). 7 There may be other exceptions. Consider the sweeping ‘fly-arounds’ made familiar by The Matrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999) and its

Sculpting in Time 223 derivatives. These are not point of view shots. Nonetheless, to engage fully with their dizzying effect, we may have to experience the perspective as shifting rapidly within Scene space. This may in turn require us to experience the duration of the shot as a whole as a feature of that continuously moving perspective. 8 The relevant sequence can be seen in its entirety here: www.youtube.com/ watch?=XP9cfQx2OZY. The passage that particularly interests me runs from around 3 minutes in to around 7’35”. 9 See www.youtube.com/watch?=O58GMFjwqd4, especially 3’10” to 3’40”. 10 What of theater? That is an art of time. Perhaps it involves something like seeing-in. Even if so, its resources for manipulating time seem to be a subset of those available to cinema. (What, for instance, is there in theater to correspond to the shot?) We would thus expect cinema to outstrip theater in its capacity for temporal inflection. 11 Podro (1998) takes his examples of inflection from both painting and drawing on the one hand and sculpture on the other, without even really bothering to mark the distinction. 12 I have been greatly helped by comments from Thomas Jacobi; the editors; and audiences at the White Rose Aesthetics Forum, New York University, CUNY Graduate Center, Dartmouth College, Auburn University’s conference on Film, and the University of Fribourg’s workshop on experience and time.

Bibliography Abell, C. (2010). “Cinema as a Representational Art”. British Journal of Aesthetics 50: 273–286. Allen, R. (1993). “Representation, Illusion, and the Cinema”. Cinema Journal 32: 21–48. Arnheim, R. (1957). Film as Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Bazin, A. (1958). “The Evolution of Film Language”. In What Is Cinema? Vol. 1, translated by H. Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gombrich, E. (1960). Art and Illusion. Oxford: Phaidon. Hopkins, R. (1998). Picture, Image and Experience. Cambridge: CUP. Hopkins, R. (2008). “What Do We See in Film?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66: 149–159. Hopkins, R. (2010a). “Inflected Pictorial Experience: Its Treatment and Significance”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Picturing, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 151–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hopkins, R. (2010b). “Moving Because Pictures?” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 34: 200–218. Hopkins, R. (2012). “Seeing-in and Seeming to See”. Analysis 72: 650–659. Lopes, D. M. (2005). Sight and Sensibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Newall, M. (2011). What Is a Picture? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Prammagiore, M.T. and T. Wallis. (2008). Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Lawrence King. Podro, M. (1998). Depiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tarkofsky, A. (1987). Sculpting in Time: Reflexions on the Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1977). Remarks on Colour. Oxford: Blackwell.

12 Why to Watch a Film Twice Enrico Terrone

When I began writing film reviews, the editor of the magazine who had hired me told me this basic principle: if you want to properly evaluate a film, you should always watch it twice. The first time, he said, is for pleasure. The second time is for pleasure too, but a different kind of pleasure. At that time, I did not completely understand the meaning of his words. Now, I think I have finally understood what he meant. Moving from film criticism to the philosophy of film has helped me to clarify this principle. We should watch a film twice since there are two important sources of pleasure in a film, and we find it hard to fully enjoy them both if we watch the film only once. The first source of pleasure is the exploration of a world, the second one is the appreciation of an artifact. These two sources of pleasure are distinct and yet connected. This paper aims at providing an account of the film experience that can explain both their distinctness and their connection. For this purpose, I will develop Richard Wollheim’s (1980) idea that the pictorial experience involves two folds. More specifically, I will argue that in the case of the film experience these folds are to be understood as two distinct temporal series, which can provide us with different kinds of pleasure (§§ 1–2). Conceiving of the cinematic folds as temporal series will lead me to reformulate the traditional distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic features of a film, thereby highlighting two different kinds of non-diegetic features, which play a different role in our appreciation of films (§§ 3–5). Then, I will compare my account of film experience and appreciation, which rests upon the notion of temporal series, with alternative accounts, which rest upon notions such as imagination, intention and embodiment (§§ 6–7). Finally, I will exemplify my account of film experience and appreciation by analyzing a film segment (§ 8).

1.  C-Series and R-Series With the aim of articulating the “requirement upon the seeing appropriate to representations”, Wollheim (1980: 142–143) introduces “the

Why to Watch a Film Twice 225 twofold thesis” stating that, while looking at a picture, “visual attention must be distributed between two things though of course it need not be equally distributed between them [. . .] what I have expressed as seeing the medium versus seeing the object”. In this sense, a pictorial experience involves two experiential folds, one directed to the picture’s surface (i.e., the medium) and the other to the scene depicted (i.e., the object). For the film experience is a kind of pictorial experience, one can conceive of it as a twofold experience, whose folds represent the screen’s surface and the world depicted respectively (see Hopkins 2009: 69). I argue that, in virtue of the peculiar temporality of films with respect to still pictures, the two folds of the film experience should be characterized as temporal series. More specifically, the film experience is constituted by both a temporal series that concerns an enlightened screen in a theater (or in some other place) and a temporal series that consists of perspectives on the world depicted. Borrowing Wollheim’s (1998) adjectives, I will call “Configurational Series” (C-series) the former and “Recognitional Series” (R-series) the latter. While twofoldness is the hallmark of the pictorial experience in general, twoseriesness is the specific hallmark of the cinematic experience.1 Comparing the C-series and the R-series with the two melodies that constitute a polyphony, one might also treat the film experience as a polyphonic experience (for a similar use of the notion of polyphony in the case of speech acts, see Bakhtin 1981; Ducrot 1998; Recanati 1981). The C-series and the R-series are often conflated in the debates about films. A clue of this is the use of expressions such as ‘camera movement’ or ‘editing cut’ to designate not only something experienced in the C-series (namely, some features of the film as an artifact) but also something in the R-series (namely, some changes in the perspective on the world depicted). Yet, I argue, a proper account of the film experience requires that one treats the C-series and the R-series as distinct and yet connected. My aim is to investigate their distinctness and their connection in order to explain the distinctness and the connection of two sources of pleasure in the film experience, namely, the exploration of a world and the appreciation of an artifact. Just as the pleasure we take in the exploration of a world primarily comes from the R-series, the pleasure we take in the appreciation of the film as an artifact primarily comes from the C-series. Thus, we can dub the former R-pleasure and the latter C-pleasure. By providing an account of the relationship between the C-series and the R-series, I will provide an account of the relationship between the C-pleasure and the R-pleasure. Both the C-series and the R-series are experiences in the sense figured out by Peter Strawson (1966), who conceives of an experience as a subjective route through an objective world. On the one hand, the R-series is a subjective route through the world depicted. On the other hand, the C-series is a phase of a wider subjective route through the actual world,

226  Enrico Terrone i.e., the spectator’s lifelong experience. More specifically, the C-series is the phase of the spectator’s lifelong experience that focuses on a certain artifact in the actual world, namely the film screened. Both the R-series and the C-series exhibit a subjective temporal order, which is distinct from the objective spatiotemporal order of the world explored. For instance, in the R-series, I can see an eagle flying in the sky and then a horse running in a field; yet, in the objective order of the world depicted, the eagle is flying while the horse is running. Likewise, in the C-series, I can watch the screen and then take a look at my friend munching popcorn in the near place; yet, in the objective order of the actual world, my friend is munching popcorn while the film is being screened. However, there is a key difference between the C-series and the R-series in this respect. In the C-series (and, more generally, in ordinary experience), the subjective temporal order of my experience is determined by the position of my body in the objective spatiotemporal order of the actual world. In other words, the series of perspectives that constitutes my experience as a subjective temporal series is determined by the series of standpoints that my body occupies in the objective spatiotemporal order of the actual world. By contrast, in the R-series there is no constraint of this sort. My series of perspectives on the world depicted is independent of the position of my body in the objective spatiotemporal order of the world depicted. That is because I have no body in the world depicted. In this sense, we might say that the C-series involves an embodied experience whereas the R-series involves a disembodied experience. Here is a specificity of the film experience that can be a source of pleasure for the spectator. In the R-series, we can explore the world depicted in a way that is precluded in our ordinary experience of the actual world, namely, by enjoying a series of perspectives on a world that is independent of the position of our body in that world. This is the core of what I have called the R-pleasure. An important consequence of this difference is the following. On the one hand, the C-series is an experiential route through an objective world to which the experience itself belongs (as far as the experience belongs to the body that determines the experiential route). On the other hand, the R-series is an experiential route through an objective world to which the experience itself does not belong. In short, the C-series is an experience from the inside whereas the R-series is an experience from the outside. As a disembodied experience from the outside, the R-series, unlike the C-series, does not make room for action and interaction. In fact, in the C-series, one can interact with the object experienced because one can do so by means of one’s body. For instance, in the C-series I can move toward the screen and possibly touch it, whereas, in the R-series I cannot move toward the individuals depicted and touch them. The R-series is an experiential route through an objective world that prevents the subject of experience from acting in that world and interacting with the inhabitants

Why to Watch a Film Twice 227 of that world. As a consequence of that, the R-series, unlike the C-series, surely does not make room for sensory modalities such as touch or taste, which involve experiences in which the body shows up (for instance, my experience of touching a table involves experiencing a contact between my body and this table). Among the actions precluded to the subject in the R-series, there is also the possibility to change the viewpoint by changing the position of the body. While the C-series is a series of perspectives that are chosen, the R-series is a series of perspectives that are imposed. Yet, in the R-series itself, there is no answer to the question: imposed by who? The answer to this question lies in the C-series, in which the film is experienced as an artifact that has been designed in order to determine our exploration of the world depicted. In the R-series, the perspectives are imposed just in the sense that there is no alternative to them: one cannot choose one’s perspectives, but only enjoy them. This is the price that the R-series must pay in order to provide the subject of experience with a disembodied experience from without the world depicted. Nevertheless, this lack of freedom can be a source of pleasure, as far as in the R-series we are released from the burden of action, interaction and decision. We have no longer to choose our viewpoint by positioning our body in the world, and to face the consequences of this choice. Viewpoints come for free, so to say, and we can simply enjoy them without worrying about our choices and their possible consequences. This is another key feature of what I have called the R-pleasure. Another important feature of the R-pleasure, which is in turn related to the disembodied character of the R-series, comes from the possibility of discontinuity. In ordinary experience—and thus in the C-series, which is just a phase of it—the perceptual route through the actual world is continuous since the series of subjective perspectives is determined by the series of positions of the subject’s body, which can move only continuously. By contrast, in the R-series the perceptual route through the world depicted does not depend on the position of the subject’s body, and thus can involve discontinuities. More specifically, the R-series can involve both spatial discontinuity and temporal discontinuity. The former allows the subject to change the viewpoint from place A at time T to place B at time T’ (which is the immediate successor of T in the objective temporal order) without experiencing a continuous movement from A to B. The latter allows the subject to change the viewpoint from place A at time T to place B (or, possibly, A itself) at time T* (which is not the immediate successor of T in the objective temporal order) without experiencing a continuous duration from T to T*. Editing cuts are the ways in which such experiential discontinuities are implemented in the film as an artifact, and one can actually appreciate such an implementation in the C-series. Yet, in the R-series, what in the C-series we called ‘editing cuts’ are no longer editing

228  Enrico Terrone cuts (understood as features of the film as an artifact), but rather spatial or temporal jumps in the subjective route through the world depicted. Enjoying such experiential jumps is another important component of what I have called the R-pleasure.

2.  C-Pleasure and R-Pleasure The R-pleasure, whose basic traits I have sketched just above, is the basic pleasure that one can take in watching a film. This is shared by all moviegoers. Overlooking the R-pleasure means overintellectualizing the film experience. However, cinema provides us with another important source of pleasure that is worth highlighting. This is the C-pleasure, which is not alternative to the R-pleasure but rather complementary to it. In fact, the R-pleasure, as such, is not simply a pleasure one takes in the scene depicted. Rather, this is the pleasure one takes in the peculiar experience of the scene depicted that films provide us with, namely the R-series (see previous section). On the one hand, the R-series exhibits a specific way of presenting the scene depicted that distinguishes it from ordinary perception. On the other hand, the C-series helps us to make such a specificity explicit by revealing where it comes from. In this sense, the C-pleasure arises from the etiological question: what caused my R-pleasure? While the R-pleasure consists in the exploration of a world, the C-pleasure consists in the appreciation of the artifact that makes such an exploration possible. This artifact is the film, which we initially encounter in the C-series as a configuration of light on a screen. The C-pleasure involves treating such a configuration as the link between the film as a complex artifact having a distinctive history of production on the one hand, and the exploration of a world that this artifact supplies us on the other. Films are artifacts whose primary function is the generation of an R-series that provides us with an R-pleasure. Still, in watching a film, we can also focus on the functioning of the artifact itself (instead of limiting ourselves to enjoy its effects), thereby enjoying a C-pleasure. We can do so by means of a cognitive process that consists in tracing valuable experiences back to their causes. Following Wollheim (1980, 1984), I will call this process retrieval. Although there are films that patently reveal themselves as artifacts, for example, the so-called Brechtian films like Une femme est une femme (J.-L Godard, 1961) or Othon (J-M. Straub and D. Huillet, 1969), traditional narrative cinema normally favors the exploration of the world depicted in the R-series. However, the spectator can always appreciate any film also as an artifact by means of cinematic retrieval. This can be characterized as the process of tracing the R-series back to its causes through three kinds of awareness. First, the awareness that the R-series is caused, in the C-series, by patterns of light upon the screen and sounds

Why to Watch a Film Twice 229 coming from the speakers. Second, the awareness that there is a template (e.g., a film strip, a disk, a file) enabling the showing of such lights and sounds. Third, the awareness that this template is linked to a historical chain that originates in the creative action of a maker who intended to elicit certain responses from the audience. In sum, tracing the R-series back to a configured surface in the C-series leads us to wonder where this configuration comes from, thereby tracing it back to its history of production. This is the cinematic retrieval from which the C-pleasure originates. The cornerstone of the C-pleasure is the acknowledgment that our perspective on the world depicted is in fact a shot that is currently projected on the screen and that was produced through a camera (or some alternative technical device such as computer graphics). In this sense, the range of our perspective (in the R-series) on the world depicted corresponds to the frame of the shot that is screened (in the C-series). The frame, understood as the shape of the screened shot, is the most basic configurational feature of cinema since it appears in any moving picture. Even if one endorses the thesis that moving pictures constituting documentaries, audiovisual recordings or live television are “transparent” (see Walton 1984), that is, they put us in perceptual contact with real events, one should still acknowledge that the experience elicited by such transparent pictures, unlike ordinary perception, essentially involves a frame. In fact, the experience of documentaries, audiovisual recordings or live television sharply differs from ordinary perception first of all because the content of the former, unlike the content of the latter, is framed. To sum up, the exploration of the world depicted that one enjoys in the R-series rests upon the frame, which one can experience in the C-series. Even in a moving image that leads us to focus on the R-series thereby minimizing the role of the C-series, the frame keeps playing a fundamental role. For instance, the frame plays a crucial role in early films such as Lumière Brothers’ vues, just as in the digital videos one can nowadays make using one’s smartphones. Ultimately, the frame is the basic formal constituent of any film, and we can appreciate it in the C-series as providing us with the perspective on the world depicted that we enjoy in the R-series.

3.  Perceptual Non-Diegetic Features The frame is not part of the world depicted. ‘Being framed’ is not a property of the scene we see, but only of our experience of it. At most, if we are watching a documentary, we can infer from the frame that a camera was there in face of the scene depicted, but the frame itself is not something that inheres in the scene depicted. Film scholars (see Souriau 1951; Metz 1977), as well as philosophers of film (see Wilson 2011; Livingston

230  Enrico Terrone 2013), usually call “diegetic features” those features that inhere in the world depicted and “non-diegetic features” those that do not. Framing, in this sense, is a non-diegetic feature; indeed, it is the most basic nondiegetic feature, which enables us to visually experience diegetic features. I will call framing a perceptual non-diegetic feature (or perceptual feature for short) since it does not inhere in the world depicted but nevertheless affects our perceptual experience of that world. As an essential feature of any film, framing is the most basic perceptual non-diegetic feature. Yet, it is not the only one. Editing also is a perceptual feature, just as framing is. The difference is that, in principle, a film can do without editing but it cannot do without framing. Indeed, editing itself requires framing whereas framing does not require editing. While framing provides us with a perspective on the world depicted, and possibly allows us to continuously change this perspective by means of camera movements, editing enables us to discontinuously change this perspective. Thus, an editing cut in the C-series corresponds to a jump of perspective in the R-series. By undergoing this jump, we can enjoy an R-pleasure, which concerns our exploration of the world depicted. Moreover, by tracing this jump back to its cause (i.e., a skillful activity of cutting and linking motion pictures), we can enjoy a C-pleasure, which concerns our appreciation of the film as an artifact. Here is the reason why the technical terms used in our reports of cinematic experiences—and especially those used by film critics in their reviews—are somehow misleading. By speaking of an ‛amazing camera movement’ or of an ‛impressive editing cut’, one wrongly suggests that what we primarily experience is a configuration in the C-series. In spite of their wordiness, ‛continuous change of viewpoint caused by a camera movement’ and ‛discontinuous change of viewpoint caused by an editing cut’ would be better reports of our experience. The reason is that the latter expressions rightly suggest that what we primarily experience are perceptual effects in the R-series, which we can then trace back to the configuration in the C-series that caused them. In addition to framing and editing, there are two other kinds of perceptual features that can significantly contribute to both our R-pleasure and our C-pleasure in watching a film. These are visual texture and film music. By ‘visual texture’ I mean a special use of cinematography in virtue of which our visual experience of the scene depicted significantly differs from a putative ordinary perception of the same scene from the same perspective. The black and white cinematography is a paradigmatic case of this. In watching a black and white film, we do not experience the things depicted as being black and white. In this sense, the black and white is not a diegetic feature. Yet, it would be hasty to claim that black and white is nothing but a feature of the film as an artifact that we experience in the C-series. This would amount to overintellectualizing the film experience.

Why to Watch a Film Twice 231 In fact, the black and white also plays a role in the R-series, inasmuch as it affects our visual experience of the world depicted. Although we do not represent the things depicted as being black and white, we do represent-as-black-and-white the things depicted. That is to say that black and white is not a feature we ascribe to what we see, but rather a modifier of our visual experience of such things. In an ideal report of our seeing the things depicted in the film, ‘black and white’ would not function as an adjective that applies to ‘things’ but rather as an adverb that applies to ‘seeing’. Borrowing a distinction from the philosophy of mind, we might say that the black and white is not part of the content of our experience, i.e., what we experience, but rather of its mode or attitude, i.e., how we experience (see Brentano 1973; Crane 2003; Kriegel 2015).2 Film music functions in a similar way. On the one hand, we do not experience film music (viz. the musical score of a film) as belonging to the world depicted. This is the basic difference between film music and diegetic sounds such as noises, dialogues or the music played within a certain scene. On the other hand, film music does not come down to a feature of the film as an artifact that we enjoy in the C-series. Film music also play a role in the R-series, inasmuch as it affects our perceptual experience of the world depicted. We do not represent the things depicted as producing film music, and yet we represent-as-imbued-with-music the things depicted. Film music metaphorically “colors” our experience of the world depicted just as the black and white literally colors (or discolors, if you prefer) this very experience. In sum, the fact that film music is not to be experienced as a feature of the scene that we enjoy in the R-series does not mean that it should be exclusively experienced as a feature of the film that we appreciate as an artifact in the C-series. There is room for an experience of film music in the R-series, not as a feature of the content of our experience, but as a feature of our very experience. In his essay “Film Music and Narrative Agency” (1996), Jerrold Levinson argues that the spectator experiences film music either as the communicative act of the narrator within the fictional world or as the communicative act of an implicit filmmaker in the real world. In both cases, film music is experienced as the outcome of an agency. The distinction is only between a fictional agency (the narrator) and a purportedly real agency (the implicit filmmaker). I argue that the notion of an R-series reveals a basic level of the experience of film music that Levinson overlooks. At this level, we can experience film music as a modifier of our experience in the R-series, independently of the mediation of any agency. In fact, Levinson (1996: 266) mentions the possibility that film music could be experienced as “an atmosphere”, as “a mood” of the presentation of a scene, but he treats this as a secondary case of little interest. By contrast, I argue that such an auditory atmosphere enveloping the scene depicted is the primary way in which one usually experiences film music. The communicative functions

232  Enrico Terrone that Levinson attributes to film music are only secondarily derived from this basic cinematic experience, by tracing it back to its alleged causes. Treating film music as a perceptual modifier of the R-series allows us to make sense of an apparently unsound commonplace in film studies, which Levinson (1996: 250) stigmatizes: “that non-diegetic film music is standardly ‘inaudible’, i.e., is not, and is not meant to be, consciously heard, attended to, or noticed. This seems to be clearly false”. On the one hand, I am inclined to agree with Levinson’s criticism of the claim that film music is inaudible. On the other hand, I think that there is a more charitable reading of the commonplace of the inaudibility of film music that can help us to make sense of this. The idea is to interpret the attitude of the audience not as a total lack of auditory attention, but rather as a way of experiencing film music as a modifier of the R-series through which the audience perceives the world depicted. What in the commonplace is roughly called “inaudible film music” can be better understood in terms of a musical sound that is primarily experienced neither as belonging to the scene depicted nor to the film as an artifact. The “inaudible music” is inaudible in the sense that is not primarily heard as a content of the spectator’s experience, i.e., as something produced in the world depicted or as the skillful work of a composer or as the skillful selection of a filmmaker or, in Levinson favorite conception, as the communicative move of a fictional narrator. Yet, even though film music is not part of content of the spectator’s experience (either in the R-series or in the C-series), it is not completely unperceived. Indeed, it can be felt as a modifier of the way in which the spectator experiences the content provided by the R-series. In this sense film music is an attitudinal feature of the R-series; it contributes to the attitude of this series toward its content. Just as treating film music as an attitudinal feature of the R-series helps us to make sense of the commonplace according to which film music would be “inaudible”, so treating camera movements and editing cuts as attitudinal features of the R-series helps us to make sense of another film studies’ commonplace, according to which in many films camera movements and editing cuts are “invisible” or “transparent” (especially in the so-called classical Hollywood movies, see Bordwell et al. 1985). Camera movements and editing cuts may be “invisible” or “transparent” to the extent that we can experience them not as the outcome of an agency but rather as attitudinal features of the R-series, which gives us perceptual access to the world depicted. That is to say that “invisible” camera movements and “transparent” editing cuts allow us to keep enjoying our experience in the R-series without being forced to tracing it back to its causes in the C-series. In sum, perceptual non-diegetic features operate at two different levels. First, we can enjoy these features in the R-series as special features of our experience of the world depicted, and this can elicit a special R-pleasure

Why to Watch a Film Twice 233 since such features allow us to perceive the world depicted in a special way, which is different from ordinary perception. Second, we can trace the experience we undergo in the R-series back to what caused it in the C-series. This leads us to acknowledge that the screened film that we experience in the C-series is the exhibition of an artifact, which has been provided with the visual and auditory features that are responsible for our peculiar experience (in the R-series) of the world depicted. In this way, we can enjoy a different kind of pleasure, namely the C-pleasure, which comes from the appreciation of the skillful achievement that has caused our R-pleasure. In savoring the C-pleasure provided by perceptual non-diegetic features, we, so to say, turn the “adverbs” of the film experience that we enjoyed in the R-series into the “adjectives” of the film as an artifact that we appreciate in the C-series.

4.  Discursive Non-Diegetic Features Perceptual non-diegetic features such as framing, editing, visual texture or film music essentially differ from other non-diegetic features such as intertitles, superimposed inscriptions, or voices over (e.g., the voices of narrators). The latter do not shape our perceptual experience of the world depicted, but rather provides us with discursive contents that supplement this experience. However, such features also are non-diegetic since they do not belong to the world depicted. Therefore, I will call them discursive non-diegetic features (or discursive features for short). Unlike perceptual features, discursive features play no role in our perceptual experience of the world depicted that we enjoy in the R-series. That is to say that discursive features have their place only in the C-series and therefore we experience them only as features of the film as an artifact. More specifically, such features are the way in which the film as an artifact (or, if you prefer, the agency who is responsible for this artifact) provides us with some pieces of information (or comments) about what is going on in the world depicted. Filmmakers can use discursive features to force spectators to shift their attention from the experience of the world depicted to the film as an artifact that has led to this experience. The “Brechtian” intertitles in 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (J.-L. Godard, 1967) are of this kind. However, discursive features are usually avoided as much as possible in traditional narrative cinema, whose implicit challenge consists in telling a story by showing as much as possible what is going on, that is, by relying as much as possible on the R-series (see McKee 1997). In this sense, film critics often deplore the use of the voice-over, especially when this seems to be a clue of the incapacity of the filmmaker to provide us with a perceptual experience of some crucial passages of the story—see, for instance, some reviews of films such as The Gangs of New York (M. Scorsese, 2002)

234  Enrico Terrone or Vicky Cristina Barcelona (W. Allen, 2008), e.g., Romney (2003) and Rowson (2009) respectively.3 Ultimately, discursive non-diegetic features can contribute only to the C-pleasure, not to the R-pleasure. When a filmmaker exploits such features, she communicates with us directly in the C-series by overtaking our perceptual experience of the world depicted that occurs in the R-series. Thus, our appreciation of such features does not come from wondering what in the C-series caused our experience in the R-series. We appreciate such features by directly grasping them in the C-series, that is, by directly treating them as features of the film as an artifact. While perceptual features emphasize the perceptual dimension of the film experience, discursive features emphasize its cognitive dimension. Indeed, discursive features lead us to shift our attention from the world depicted in R-series to the film as an artifact in the C-series. Conversely, perceptual features like the black and white or film music, let alone editing and camera movements, do not primarily bring us back to the film as an artifact, but rather make us perceive the world depicted in a certain way. However, perceptual features can also be experienced by tracing them back to their real causes, that is, to the achievement of a filmmaker. Yet, I argue, such an achievement can be fully appreciated only secondarily, as the agency that contrived the R-series experience as an apparentlynot-contrived effect. In this sense, we can conceive of film-making as the design of a special experience, namely the R-series experience, which is primarily experienced as not designed. Consider, for example, the black and white in Manhattan (W. Allen, 1979), the editing in The Godfather (F. Coppola, 1972), or the camera movements in Satantango (B. Tarr, 1994).4 The spectator enjoys such non-diegetic features primarily as perceptual effects, as a special way of perceiving the world depicted. It is only at a secondary stage that these perceptual non-diegetic features are also appreciated as the skillful (and possibly expressive or symbolic) achievement of an agent who purposely produced such perceptual effects. Discursive non-diegetic features, instead, directly put us in contact with some agency.

5.  Diegetic Features Both perceptual and discursive features are non-diegetic, that is, they do not inhere in the world depicted. There is no framing, no editing, no black and white, no film music, no intertitles or superimposed inscriptions in the world depicted. Instead, the world depicted is inhabited by a variety of individuals having their distinctive properties and relations. Such individuals, properties and relations constitute the diegetic features of a film. For the R-series is a series of perspectives on the world depicted, the diegetic features, as features of the world depicted, play a crucial role in

Why to Watch a Film Twice 235 this series. Yet, the role of the diegetic features in the R-series is essentially different from that of the perceptual non-diegetic features in this very series. The diegetic features concern what a certain perspective in the R-series represents, namely its content, whereas the perceptual features concern how this perspective represents its content. As seen above, framing, editing, visual texture and film music, understood as constituents of the R-series, are all non-diegetic perceptual features, inasmuch as they concern how we perceptually represent the world depicted. Still, in order to provide an exhaustive account of the R-series, we should consider also the diegetic features. The point is that a perspective makes sense only if it is understood as a perspective on something. The diegetic features allow us to figure out this something. It is at the level of the diegetic features that we can distinguish between fiction films and non-fiction films. In the latter, the diegetic features simply are the features of our actual world, whereas in the former the diegetic features concern a fictional world, which may exhibit some relevant affinities with our world (as in the case of biographical or historical movies) but remains substantially different from it in virtue of providing us with different perceptual contents. In this sense, there is a substantial difference between a documentary, which provides us with perceptual perspectives on the actual world, and a docudrama, which provides us with perceptual perspectives on a fictional world that resembles (or stands for) the actual one.5 Diegetic features play a key role in constituting the R-series; they play a key role also in eliciting the R-pleasure that we can take in this series. That is to say that the R-pleasure comes not only from the special way (disembodied, from the outside) in which we perceive the things depicted, but also from the very nature of such things. The R-pleasure depends not only on how the film allows us to represent a certain content in the R-series, but also on what it allows us to represent, i.e., this very content. Just as we can trace the perceptual non-diegetic features in the R-series back to the corresponding features of the film as an artifact in the C-series, we can do the same for the diegetic features. The things that we enjoy in the R-series as features of the world depicted can also be appreciated in the C-series as components of the film as an artifact. For instance, the events that we enjoy in the R-series correspond to a certain screenplay that we can appreciate in the C-series, the places that we enjoy in the R-series correspond to a certain production design that we can appreciate in the C-series, the individuals that we enjoy in the R-series correspond to a certain acting (or computer graphics) that we can appreciate in the C-series, and so on and so forth. The C-pleasure that we can take in diegetic features precisely consists in appreciating what in the C-series caused the contents of our experience in the R-series.

236  Enrico Terrone

6. Alternative Models of Film Experience and Appreciation The distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic features allows us to compare the twoserieness model of film experience and appreciation proposed so far with two alternative models. These have been proposed by George Wilson (2011) and Paisley Livingston (2013) in the framework of the debate on the role of the imagination in the experience of fiction films. According to Wilson’s “Mediated Version of the Imagined Seeing Thesis”, the spectator of a fiction film imagines to see a sort of imaginary recording that shows her the fictional events that this film depicts. Thus, the spectator imagines perceiving the fictional events in virtue of the mediation of such an imaginary recording. Yet the spectator is not forced to imagine anything about the way in which such a recording is produced. In Wilson’s (2011: 47) terms, it is “fictionally indeterminate” how these recordings are produced. By claiming that the viewer imagines to see a sort of imaginary recording, Wilson’s account can easily deal with non-diegetic features without the need to refer to the history of making of the actual film. It suffices that the viewer imagines such features as non-diegetic features of the imaginary recording. If a film is in black and white, for example, the spectator imagines that the imaginary recording has a black and white texture. Thus, Wilson provides us with a unitary account according to which the spectator can experience and appreciate both diegetic and non-diegetic features within the framework of the fictional world. By contrast, Livingston proposes an “Appreciator Version of the Imagined Seeing Thesis”, according to which diegetic and non-diegetic features are separately experienced. While the spectator imagines perceiving the diegetic features of the depicted scene, she appreciates the non-diegetic features by scrutinizing the real vehicle (i.e., the film as an artifact) that produces such an impression. As Livingston (2013: 144) puts it The absence of colors is for the competent and informed spectator a familiar feature of black and white photography in the actual world, and not necessarily to be reasoned about as the vestige of some obscure story-internal mediation. Good appreciators of movies pay attention to attributes of the audio-visual presentation such as color, grain, focus, aspect ratio, depth of field and editing, and they are warranted to think of these features in terms of the filmmaking strategies of the actual filmmakers who have been operating within the constraints of available cinematic technology. I argue that both Wilson’s Mediated Version and Livingston’s Appreciator Version cannot adequately deal with non-diegetic features. On the one hand, Wilson’s Mediated Version treats all the non-diegetic features

Why to Watch a Film Twice 237 of the real film as non-diegetic features of the imaginary film, thereby forcing the spectator of, say, a black and white film to imagine a fictional documentary made in black and white, instead of simply acknowledging that the real movie has been made in black and white. On the other hand, Livingston’s Appreciator Version forces the spectator to treat all the non-diegetic features as exclusively belonging to the film as an artifact, thereby splitting the spectator’s attention between the latter and the world depicted. For example, the spectators of a black and white film should experience the scene depicted as being colored, and the cinematic artifact as being black and white. While Wilson’s Mediated Version requires an excessive effort of imagination from spectators, Livingston’s Appreciator Version seems to require an excessive effort of selective attention. The point is that both the Wilson’s Mediated Version and Livingston’s Appreciator Version, in spite of their contrasting views, put all non-diegetic features on the same level. According to Wilson’s Mediated Version, all non-diegetic features are experienced as belonging to the imaginary recording, whereas according to Livingston’s Appreciator Version all such features are experienced as features of the film as an artifact. Yet, as I have showed above, there is a relevant distinction between two kinds of non-diegetic features, namely, perceptual features, which shape our experience of the world depicted, and discursive features, which provides us with further pieces of information or comments on the world depicted. Both Wilson’s Mediated Version and Livingston’s Appreciator Version overlook this distinction thereby conflating perceptual non-diegetic features with discursive ones. Instead, in the model of film experience and appreciation that I have proposed, these two kinds of non-diegetic features can be effectively keep distinct. That is because my model locates different kinds of features in different places; the diegetic features in the content of the R-series (as features of the world depicted); the perceptual non-diegetic features in the attitude of the R-series (as features of the perceptual experience of the world depicted); the discursive non-diegetic features in the content of the C-series (as features of the film as an artifact). That being the case, perceptual features such as the black and white are primarily enjoyed in the R-series; they can be appreciated also in the C-series, as Livingston rightly points out, but only secondarily, as the result of a retrieval. We primarily experience-as-black-and-white the world depicted, even though we can trace this experience back to its cause thereby also appreciating the film as a black and white artifact.

7.  Intentions and Embodiment The models of film experience and appreciation that I have discussed so far mainly focus on the perceptual and imaginative states of the spectator. Still, there are scholars who, by relying on linguistic pragmatics, cognitive science and neuroscience, have argued that the spectator’s uptake of the filmmaker’s

238  Enrico Terrone intentions, just as the spectator’s bodily reactions, also play a crucial role in film experience and appreciation (for the emphasis on the uptake of intentions, see Donati 2006; Kobow 2007; Pignocchi 2015; for the emphasis on embodiment, see Sobchack 1992; Anderson 1996; Gallese and Guerra 2012; Zacks 2015). I contend that the distinction between C-series and R-series paves the way for a unified account of film experience and appreciation in which all these different components can find their proper place. The perceptual and imaginative states of the spectator are the keys to understand what goes on in the R-series. Indeed, as a perceptual route through the world depicted, the R-series essentially involves perceptual states. In the case of fiction films, the R-series also involves imagination, which enables the spectator to locate the things she perceives in a unitary spatiotemporal system that is not her own. Furthermore, the R-series can involve emotions that allows the spectator to evaluate what she perceives in the world depicted (see Scherer et al. 2001). Such emotions do so by affectively coloring, so to say, the perceptually based fold that is mobilized in the R-series. For instance, an emotion of fear allows the spectator to evaluate something as dangerous, just as an emotion of joy allows her to evaluate something as good. In this sense, borrowing Ed Tan’s (1996: 65–66) terminology, we might call “fiction emotions” those that, in virtue of being enjoyed in the R-series, are directed toward (and enables evaluation of) the fictional world, thereby distinguishing them from “artifact emotions”, which, in virtue of being enjoyed in the C-series, are directed toward (and enables evaluation of) the film as an artifact in the actual world. By contrast, the filmmaker’s intentions and the spectator’s embodiment play no role in the R-series. That is because the R-series essentially is the exploration of an imaginary world in which neither the filmmaker nor the spectator have a place. Representing the filmmaker’s intentions and the spectator’s body in the R-series would amount to prejudice the R-pleasure, which precisely consists in the impression of exploring a selfstanding world in a disembodied way, from the outside. However, intentions and embodiment start playing a crucial role when our appreciation of a film traces the R-series back to what caused it in the C-series. When we start focusing on the C-series, the filmmaker’s intentions can reveal to be the source of the perspectives on the world depicted that we have enjoyed in the R-series. In fact, in the R-series, we limit ourselves to exploit a sort of epistemic luck, which allows us to perceive the world depicted from informatively favorable points of view. It is only by moving from the R-series to the C-series that we can treat such an epistemic luck as the outcome of the filmmaker’s intentions to make us effectively understand what is going on in the world depicted. Something similar happens in the case of embodiment. As argued above, our R-series experience of the world depicted is disembodied in the sense that this world does not include the spectator’s body in it. However, when we wonder where the disembodied experience enjoyed in the R-series comes from, we acknowledge that it is produced by the

Why to Watch a Film Twice 239 interaction, in the C-series, between the film as an artifact and our own body. The perceptual and emotional states that in the R-series we enjoyed as purely mental attitudes toward a world in which our body has no place, in the C-series reveal to be states of our embodied mind that have been generated by the film as an artifact. An interesting example of the difficulty for an embodiment-based conception of the film experience to take the R-series into account can be found in Vivian Sobchack’s influential book The Address of the Eye (1992). Sobchack rightly acknowledges that the perspective of the spectator as an embodied subject is different from the perspective on the world depicted that the film provides us with. Yet, I argue, she overlooks the specificity of the latter perspective, namely its being an R-series. In fact, she states that this perspective also is essentially embodied, in the sense that it depends on the “body” of the film: We recognize the moving picture as the work of an anonymous and sign-producing body subject intentionally marking visible choices with the very behavior of its bodily being. However, these choices are not initiated by the movement of our bodies or our intending consciousness. They are seen and visible as the visual and physical choices of some body other than ourselves [. . .] That some body is the film’s body [. . .] The camera its perceptive organ, the projector its expressive organ, the screen its discrete and material occupation of worldly space. (Sobchack 1992: 278–299) As a consequence of her conception of the film experience as embodied all the way through, Sobchack conflates the R-series, in which we enjoy a perceptual perspective on the world depicted, with the C-series, in which we recognize that such a perspective is the outcome of a technological process involving the “body” of the film. Thus, Sobchack ends up in treating a secondary level of the film experience, namely the acknowledgment of the film as a technological artifact, as if it was the primary one. Yet, this conception prevents the most basic cinematic pleasure, namely the R-pleasure, which consists in enjoying a perceptual perspective on a world in which neither our body nor the film itself have a place.

8.  Why to Watch Au hasard Balthazar Twice At the beginning of Au hasard Balthazar (R. Bresson, 1966) we see a newborn donkey, then a girl who caresses him, and then a boy and a man which, we guess, are the brother and the father of the girl. Then our viewpoint changes by means of a temporal jump that allows us to see the father and his children bringing that donkey to their house. Then, we temporally jump to the moment in which the two children baptize their donkey naming him Balthazar. Some spatial jumps allow us to recognize two other

240  Enrico Terrone participants to this ceremony; one is a friend of the two children who is called Marie; the other is their elder sister, a girl who lies in a bed and seems to be seriously sick. After that, a temporal jump makes us see a farmer who accompanies Balthazar in his stable. Then, another jump leads us to see the two children who play with their friend Marie and their donkey Balthazar, first in the barn (Figure 12.1), and then in the garden (Figure 12.2), where their sick sister observes them. Finally, we temporally jump to the moment when the owners of Balthazar are going to leave the countryside.

Figure 12.1  Au hasard Balthazar (R. Bresson, 1966)

Figure 12.2  Au hasard Balthazar (R. Bresson, 1966).

Why to Watch a Film Twice 241 All of this occurs in the R-series. In fact, as showed in the previous lines, we can describe our experience of Au hasard Balthazar’s beginning only in terms of perceptual perspectives on the world depicted, without the need of making reference to the film as an artifact. We can speak in terms of viewpoints and their continuous or discontinuous changes, without the need of making reference to camera movements or editing. Likewise, the fact that we see things in black and white can be treated as a modifier of our experience of the world depicted without the need of making reference to the film as an artifact. Even when we hear nondiegetic music, that is, from the happy moment in which the children play with the donkey until the sad moment when they leave the countryside, we are not forced to treat this music as a feature of the film as an artifact. Rather, we can enjoy this music as a modifier of our experience of what is going on in the world depicted. In this sense, film music, just as the black and white texture, is a perceptual non-diegetic feature. By contrast, the superimposed inscription “Les années passent” (“Years go by”), which we read when—a little later in the film—we see a grown Balthazar cruelly exploited by his new owners, is a discursive non-diegetic feature, which forces us to treat the film as an artifact. The R-pleasure that the beginning of Au hasard Balthazar provides us with consists in the peculiar exploration of the world of Balthazar and his young owners. This is what I have tried to verbally describe just above. This pleasure is crucial to the appreciation of the film, but there is another pleasure that is equally important, namely, the C-pleasure. This consists in wondering what caused the R-pleasure, thereby paying the attention to the C-series, in which we appreciate the film as an artifact that allows us to explore (in the R-series) the world depicted. For instance, we can appreciate the way in which the film begins with a close-up of the donkey and then gradually reveals the girl, his father and his brother by means of a diagonal camera movement that ends up in a sort of triangular configuration having the three characters as its vertexes. Likewise, we can appreciate the way in which the temporal jumps in the R-series are realized through editing cuts that involve lap dissolves. In particular, focusing on the lap dissolve that links the two scenes in which the children play with the donkey, we can appreciate the symmetry produced by the skillful inversion of the figure/background relation; in the first shot the sister and Balthazar are in the foreground, while the brother and Marie are in the background (Figure 12.1); in the second shot it is the other way round (Figure 12.2). Furthermore, in the whole segment of the R-series that begins with this lap dissolve and finishes with Balthazar’s owners leaving the countryside, we can appreciate Bresson’s expressive use of Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 20 as a way of emphasizing the intensity, the fragility and the evanescence of childhood’s happiness. This analysis of Au hasard Balthazar ultimately shows that both the R-pleasure, which comes from the exploration of a world in the R-series,

242  Enrico Terrone and the C-pleasure, which comes from the appreciation of an artifact in the C-series, are highly valuable. In principle, we might enjoy them both while watching a film since we are able to switch from the R-series to the C-series in our film experience. However, the first time that we see a certain film, the R-series tends to capture our attention thereby preventing us from fully enjoying plenty of features of the film as an artifact that lie in the C-series. That is why we need to watch a film twice, or even more than twice, in order to fully appreciate it. Even if the experience of the world depicted remains the same, scrutinizing the film as an artifact can provide us with further layers of pleasure at each new watching.

Notes 1 In principle, twoseriesness also applies to naturally moving things in which one can see something else moving. For instance, one can see a moving dog in a moving cloud. In this case, the C-series would represent the moving cloud, the R-series would represent the moving dog, and the sky would play the role played by the screen in the film experience (on the analogy between the sky and the screen, see McGinn 2005: 26). One might call this ‘a naturally produced cinematic experience’. Thanks to Alberto Voltolini for drawing my attention to this possibility. 2 The content/attitude distinction can allow me to address two problems that are traditionally raised against Wollheimian accounts of seeing-in. First, how the content of the R-series is related to that of the C-series. Second, how the R-series can have a perceptual nature. I contend that the R-series involves perceptual states having a distinctive attitude that can include features such as ‘being black and white’ or ‘being framed’, which are instead represented in the content of the C-series. I defend this view in my (still unpublished) paper How We See Things in Pictures. An Attitudinal Approach to Seeing-in, which I presented at the PaCS Seminar, Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, 11 December 2017. This application of the content/attitude distinction to the pictorial experience also allows me to avoid the commitment to the claim that seeing-in for films is just inflected seeing-in. The latter is a case of seeing-in such that “what is seen in a surface includes properties a full characterization of which needs to make reference to that surface’s design” (Hopkins 2010: 158). In the case of the film experience, inflected seeing-in would recruit the features of the C-series content to the features of the R-series content. Yet, my account of the film experience is not committed to inflected seeing-in because it claims that the features of the C-series content are recruited to the R-series attitude, not to its content. My account is just committed to what one might call ‘attitudinally inflected seeing-in’, but I am happy with this. For a thorough account of inflection in the film experience, see Robert Hopkins’s paper in this collection. 3 In films such as The Gangs of New York or Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the neutrality of the voice over with respect to the fictional world leads spectators to treat this voice as a discursive feature. However, when the voice over belongs to a character, things are more complicate. In principle, spectators might treat such voice as a diegetic feature thereby enjoying it directly in the R-series. In this case, the voice over becomes a component of a complex perceptual experience that allows us to see events that occur at a certain time while listening to a character that speaks, through the voice over, at a different time. We can enjoy such experience, for instance, in Millennium Mambo

Why to Watch a Film Twice 243 (Hou H.-h., 2001), in which we see events that occur in a fictional 2001 while listening to the voice of the protagonist who comments on them after the fact, in a fictional 2011. Thanks to Alberto Voltolini for leading me to consider this sort of cases. 4 In his paper for this collection, Gregory Currie treats camera movements in La regle du jeu (J. Renoir, 1939) as “a surrogate for, if not a trace of, the corresponding movements of an agent”. However, according to the account I propose, such an agency is something that one can only secondarily appreciate by tracing the change of perspective experienced in the R-series back to its causes in the C-series. 5 Following Currie (1999), I conceive of documentaries as motion pictures that depict their subjects in virtue of being traces of them. That is to say that I treat documentaries as essentially factive pictures, which entails that the facts depicted have actually occurred.

References Anderson, J. D. (1996). The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. Bordwell, D., J. Staiger and K. Thompson. (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press. Brentano, F. C. (1973). Psychology from Empirical Standpoint, translated by A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, L. L. McAlister. London: Routledge. Crane, T. (2003). “The Intentional Structure of Consciousness”. In Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, edited by A. Jokic and Q. Smith, 33–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Currie, G. (1999). “Visible Traces: Documentary and the Contents of Photographs”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57: 285–297. Donati, S. (2006). Cinema e conversazione: l’interpretazione del film narrativo. Civitavecchia, RO: Prospettiva. Ducrot, O. (1998). Dire et ne pas dire. Principes de sémantique linguistique, 3rd ed. Paris: Hermann. Gallese, V. and V. Guerra. (2012). “Embodying Movies: Embodied Simulation and Film Studies”. Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 3: 183–210. Hopkins, R. (2009). “Depiction”. In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, edited by P. Livingston and C. Plantinga, 64–74. London: Routledge. Hopkins, R. (2010). “Inflected Pictorial Experience: Its Treatment and Significance”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 151–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kobow, B.S. (2007). See What I Mean: Understanding Films as Communicative Actions. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag. Kriegel, U. (2015). “Experiencing the Present”. Analysis 75: 407–413. Levinson, J. (1996). “Film Music and Narrative Agency”. In Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, edited by D. Bordwell and N. Carroll, 248–282. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

244  Enrico Terrone Livingston, P. (2013). “The Imagined Seeing Thesis”. Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 7: 139–146. McGinn, C. (2005). The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact. New York: Pantheon. McKee, R. (1997). Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Harper-Collins. Metz, Ch. (1977). Le signifiant imaginaire. Paris: UGE. Pignocchi, A. (2015). Pourquoi aime-t-on un film? Quand les sciences cognitives discutent des goûts et des couleurs. Paris: Odile Jacob. Recanati, F. (1981). Les Énoncés Performatifs. Contribution à la Pragmatique. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Romney, J. (2003). “Gangs of New York: A Rougher, Bloodier, Saltier Cut”. Independent. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/gangsof-new-york-18-123908.html. Accessed 14 October 2017. Rowson, F. (2009). “Film Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona”. New Humanist. https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/1992/film-review-vicky-cristina-barcelona. Accessed 14 October 2017. Scherer, K., A. Schorr and T. Johnstone. (eds.) (2001). Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sobchack, V. C. (1992). The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Souriau, É. (1951). “La structure de l’univers filmique et le vocabulaire de la filmologie”. Revue internationale de filmologie 7–8: 231–240. Strawson, P. F. (1966). The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. London: Methuen. Tan, E. S. (1996). Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Walton, K. L. (1984). “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism”. Critical Inquiry 11: 246–277. Wilson, G. M. (2011). Seeing Fictions in Film: The Epistemology of Movies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wollheim, R. (1980). Art and Its Objects: An Introduction to Aesthetics, 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Row. Wollheim, R. (1984). “Art, Interpretation, and the Creative Process”, New Literary History 15: 241–253. Wollheim, R. (1998). “On Pictorial Representation”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56: 217–226. Zacks, J. (2015). Flicker: Your Brain on Movies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Films Allen, Woody. Manhattan. 1979. Allen, Woody. Vicky Cristina Barcelona. 2008. Bresson, Robert. Au hasard Balthazar. 1966. Coppola, Francis. The Godfather. 1972. Godard, Jean-Luc. Une femme est une femme. 1961. Godard, Jean-Luc. 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle. 1967.

Why to Watch a Film Twice 245 Hou Hsiao-hsien. Millennium Mambo. 2001. Renoir, Jean. La regle du jeu. 1939. Scorsese, Martin. The Gangs of New York. 2002. Straub Jean-Marie, and Huillet, Danièle. Les yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer ou Peut-être qu’un jour Rome se permettra de choisir à son tour (d’après Othon de Pierre Corneille). 1969. Tarr, Béla. Satantango. 1994.

Part IV

Aesthetic Appreciation, Agency and Facture

13 Pictures and Their Surfaces1 Greg Currie

Aesthetics is often characterized as disconnected from moral, political or generally practical concerns—one reason why aesthetic notions are now regarded as unsuited to ground a comprehensive philosophy of the arts, where those connections are evidently in place. We should not waste time arguing that all art is aesthetic in nature. But we can restore some significance to the art/aesthetic connection by recognizing that aesthetic activity is a form of social activity, that aesthetic artifacts are things which manifest the thoughts, feelings and actions of makers. Just as microscopes, telescopes and, according to some, photographs extend our perceptual reach, so these artifacts extend our capacity for intellectual, emotional and bodily connection with others. One task is then to understand the many and varied ways of ‘making manifest’ that are available in the arts; another is to understand the ways these thoughts, feelings and actions are processed at different cognitive levels by audiences, with sometimes little or no consciousness of the processes involved. In contemplating this latter task we may hope that the science of social cognition has things to tell us. I will point to some ideas that may help, as well as to the scarcity of evidence that they do. Throughout I focus on pictures, a category which quickly divides into sub-kinds with very different explanatory requirements. My overarching concern is with the artistic distinctness of photographs, cinematic images and other ‘mechanical’ pictures on the one hand, and paintings, drawings and generally ‘handmade’ images on the other. This distinction has generated other speculations I’ll discuss, notably the idea that photographs do, and paintings do not, enable us to see the things they are of—from which we get the placement of photographs alongside telescopes and other ‘aids to vision’. Section 1 briefly sketches some art historical and art theoretic context for the discussion. Section 2 distinguishes between two kinds of depictive marks and two ways that marks can be related to what is depicted. Section 3 uses the case of mosaic depiction to broaden our understanding of the kinds of marks that can be artistically significant. Section 4 asks whether work in the empirical sciences of mind can deepen our understanding of the artistic relevance of the marked surface. Section 5

250  Greg Currie introduces the central claim: it is a quite general fact about painting that engagement with it requires attention to the marked surface as a record of activity, something that is not true of photographs or cinematic images. Section 6 explains and responds to three objections to the claim. Section 7 argues that, the central claim notwithstanding, there are ways in which photographs and cinematic images function as registers of bodily activity. Section 8 considers two things which have been said about photography which an advocate of the central claim need not endorse, while seeing how that claim may seem to support them.

1. Brushwork David Rosand, in his 1981 essay Titian and the eloquence of the brush, asks Must we dissociate the mimetic impulse of the stroke from its selfexpression? Or can we in fact legitimately claim meaning for the brushwork itself—that is, for I’arte, the art itself? To put it another way, is there a meaning initiating in the artist, a meaning that may itself be mediated by the imitated subject matter but that resides essentially in the visible traces of the painter’s gesture, a meaning in which we hear his own voice?2 I want to take up the idea of ‘claiming meaning for the brushwork itself’. Whether this is strictly a matter of meaning I am not sure; ‘significance’ might be a better term. The idea that brushwork is significant because it is the visible trace of the painter’s gesture will be my starting point. It will turn out that the story is more complicated; visible brushwork is sometimes significant exactly because of its absence, as where traces of the painter’s gesture have been significantly effaced. And brushwork is one of a larger group of techniques which have a role in relating the viewer to the process of artistic production. I’ll argue that the capacity of painting, drawing and some other media to register, on a surface, the activity of the artist is part of what separates them as artistic media from photography and film.3 This registration is by means of placing marks on the surface. Such marks are capable of having a complex and special interest for us when they are depictive marks. They point in two directions: forward, to the scene depicted, and backward, to the activity of the artist. They are both depictive marks and traces of intentional activity with, as Rosand says, an affective as well as a mimetic (representational) function. There are even cases where we are invited to see the two functions as fused. Philip Sohm says ‘Not only did Titian represent Marsyas’ flayed body, he enacted it across the painting’s surface. Paint no longer represents things, it embodies them as well’.4 Pictures like this instantiate this duality in

Pictures and Their Surfaces 251 highly salient ways; others seek to efface it. For others again the duality simply does not arise, as we shall see. In painting, these marks are made by brushwork, the proper use of which has occupied a good deal of art-related discourse and art-world rhetoric. Sohm, in his book on pittoresco, notes that commentators on painting in the seventeenth century struggled with the problem. The view from earlier times seems to have been that the painter should be “a master of his medium and display that mastery by subduing it”, rendering invisible the physical act of painting, at least at ordinary viewing distances. Brushwork had some admitted interest as the record of creativity, but “as form, it was considered to be unfinished or chaotic, acceptable if concealed in a sketchbook or muted by distance”.5 Titian’s later work, with its insistence on of the place of brushwork—and finger marks—in the finished product, was especially problematic for commentators such as Vasari. An uncompromising proponent of Titian’s approach was Marco Boschini; in his La Carta del Navegar Pittoresco (1660) he attacked Vasari: You say that [Titian’s Adonis, his Venus and his Europa], are made with stylish strokes, with gross sketchiness and openly . . . You say that these paintings have an effect which cannot be seen from nearby but can only be enjoyed from a distance, and you praise that effect . . . Don’t you understand that these strokes are everything, and that all the rest is nothing? That this artificial sketchiness is worth much more than the laborious, meager and dry style that the diligent painter uses.6 Here and elsewhere Boschini is overly combative in his approach to the issue of the visibility of strokes or marks, and unwilling, apparently, to see the evidence of Vasari’s own sensitivity to Titian’s later work.7 Fortunately, I don’t need to defend the view that strokes are ‘everything’. My concern is rather with the idea that the heirs to Titian (and Delacroix, as we shall see) have available to them options which are not only aesthetically rich—an uncontroversial opinion these days—but revelatory of what is and always was distinctive about painting and drawing, whether or not the options are taken up in any particular case. I will note two much more recent contributions to the debate over marks. The theme of the dual status of marks is notably developed in Richard Wollheim’s philosophy of painting. Many things that would not interest us if we saw them interest us as depicted because of the way the marks support the depiction. Wollheim said that a precondition for this sort of interest in representations is twofoldness: the capacity we have to attend simultaneously to what is represented in the picture and to the marks which support the representation.8 We see, if we attend at the right distance, both what is represented and how it is that the marks constitute the representation. We may, he says, marvel at the skill and imagination

252  Greg Currie exercised in achieving this representational effect with these marks. Some of what Wollheim has claimed about the extent and explanatory power of twofoldness has been questioned, and I won’t rely here on those claims.9 But he has drawn attention to a vital distinction, in painting, drawing and other depictive forms, between the surface as the locus of depictive properties and as the locus of marks, intentionally applied. Acknowledging this, I will proceed along a related path, but in my own way. Finally, David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese note that ‘observers sometimes feel a form of somatic response to vigorous handling of the artistic medium and to visual evidence of the movement of the hand more generally’.10 They argue for an approach to this phenomenon that connects aesthetics and neuroscience via an explanation of this feeling in terms of the activation of brain areas in the observer. I turn briefly to this suggestion in Section 4. For all the historical and scientific interest of this topic my concern is primarily normative. A given picture may be experienced in different ways, including ways which are ill informed, which reflect inattention or the effects of perception-disturbing drugs. The differences I am interested in here are differences between the kinds of experiences pictures merit, which are appropriate to the kinds of pictures they are. There is no single best way to experience any picture. But good ways have things in common, as do bad ways. Certainly, paintings and photographs do not merit the same responses and I aim to say why that is. I am concerned here only with depictive pictures: pictures that represent, and do so in depictive or pictorial ways. I don’t see it as my role to define depiction here.

2.  Two Kinds of Marks Not all the marks visible on a depictive surface contribute to the representation, at least in the sense of ‘helping to determine what is represented and how it is represented as being’. Dom Lopes makes a distinction between design and surface.11 Design properties are those ‘in virtue of which a picture depicts what it does’.12 But these are just a proper subset of the picture’s surface properties and non-design surface properties are ones the picture possesses in virtue of it having marks of, for example, age or wear, or which are due to the texture of the canvas. Given our concerns, it will be helpful to speak directly about marks rather than properties, so let us distinguish between design surface marks and non-design surface marks, or merely surface marks. It looks as if surface marks divide neatly into design and merely surface marks and that merely surface marks have no or at least very little artistic interest. In the next section I will argue that we need a more complex taxonomy of marks. Design marks in painting vary greatly, particularly in the extent to which their status as manually applied marks is made salient. Some are

Pictures and Their Surfaces 253 thickly impasted, while others have no obvious depth or irregularity. Some produce shapes and colors which do not correspond precisely to the shapes and colors of the subject as it is represented, while others are worked together to produce smooth areas of color, with the surface of the whole approximating (as we would now say) to the condition of a conventional, well taken photograph. Indeed it is now common to have the experience that one cannot tell just by looking whether one is confronted with a superrealist painting or a photograph. With late Titian and other painters where the action of marking is highly salient, the marked surface is notable for a failure of what I will call transparency. I use this term, despite a potential for confusion which I will acknowledge in a moment, because I take the idea from a thesis with this name in the philosophy of perception.13 In the formulation I depend on, visual perception is said to be transparent in that any aspect of perceptual experience we choose to focus on will turn out to be a feature of the world as visual perception represents it as being.14 On this view, properties of experience we might otherwise be tempted to think of as “purely phenomenological” turn out to be accounted for in representational terms. How might a picture be transparent in something like this sense? By being such that any variation in its appearance (the totality of its design marks) across its surface in any direction represents a variation in how the depicted object is represented as appearing, in a corresponding direction as seen from the perspective of the picture. The design of the picture, in all its detail, corresponds to the appearance the subject is represented as having.15 The depictive work in such a picture is representational, without residue. Perhaps only a few pictures are absolutely transparent; perhaps we can set the standard of transparency so high that none are. But many pictures approximate this condition, or have significant parts which do, or seem to be intended to approximate it, or approximate it for privileged viewers or conditions of viewing. By contrast, there are pictures which do not merely fail to be transparent but which flout the condition. Compare the work of two artists well known for their very public disagreement on the topic of design marks: Ingres and Delacroix. Ingres’ portrait of Princesse Albert de Broglie (1851–3, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Figure 13.1) is such that there are, so far as design marks go, no variations in color, shape, texture or grain other than those which are understood to correspond to variations in the visible properties of what is depicted, as seen from the perspective defined by the picture itself.16 A Delacroix such as Landscape with Rocks, Augerville (1854, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Figure 13.2) is very different, with a much looser relation between the details of the surface and the details of the visible features the scene is represented as possessing. And that looser relation is evidently the intended one.

254  Greg Currie

Figure 13.1 Delacroix, Landscape with Rocks, Augerville 1854.

I said that “transparency” is apt to be confusing in this context. This is because the term has already been used to label a supposed property of certain pictures, notably photographs: the property of enabling us to see the things they are of. I will discuss this idea in the final section.

3.  A Wider Class of Marks The free brushwork we find with Titian, Delacroix and others is one notable kind of violation of transparency. But it is important that we not confine our thoughts about transparency to marks like these. Good examples from a wider class come to mind when we consider a depictive form very neglected in these discussions: mosaic work. Here we have a form of depiction where transparency is impossible, in practice if not in theory, because of the visible joins between the tesserae; the interest of the medium is in seeing how the limitations of a buildingblock approach to depiction are exploited to create a richly twofold experience. With unicolored tesserae the image has an appearance superficially similar to that of a modern digital image where the pixels

Pictures and Their Surfaces 255 are discernable. But aesthetically these are quite different forms. Each tessera’s color and position in a mosaic pattern represents a choice implemented by the hand of the artist, something not true in the case of a digital image.17 In what ways if any do mosaics manifest or record the activity of the artist? Not in the way that a brush or pencil stroke might; the joins between tesserae are not what Rosand called “the visible traces of the [maker’s] gesture”, those traces often being said to generate imagined recreations in the viewer of the movement itself, something I will discuss in the next section. But let’s not allow enthusiasm for what is now called ‘embodied cognition’ to crowd out other, more reflective ways of relating the viewer to the activity manifested in an image. Figure 13.2 Ingres, Princesse Albert de Broglie, 1851-3. Any worthwhile experience of a work of art will involve cognitive engagement at various levels including conscious, reflective thought, which can be expected to modulate and guide the operation of perceptual and simulative mechanisms. Some knowledge of the process of mosaic construction (the more the better no doubt) allows us to see the resulting pattern as the upshot of decisions and actions that require manual skills of various kinds as well as such things as delicacy of depiction and expressive poignancy (Portrait of a Woman, and Boxer with Rooster, both in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, first century AD), and, occasionally, recognition of the medium’s capacity for amusing self-reference (Unswept Room, Musei Vaticani, second century AD). With mosaic, each tessera-placement is a discriminable act of artistic choice and each tessera in its place records both the nature of the choice, the size, shape and color of the tessera and its position, and the skill that is manifested in that choice and in its implementation as seen in the context of the whole.

256  Greg Currie Mosaic surfaces are replete with information about artistic choices and actions. While that information is unlikely to call forth sympathetic recapitulations of the artist’s movement in the way that brush strokes sometimes do, it is available to the suitably informed viewer and plays significantly in appreciation of the work.18 Mosaics have an additional interest in that they pose a challenge to the distinction between design and merely surface marks described in Section 2. Take, for example, the Hunters mosaic from the Great Palace at Constantinople, about the fifth century AD. In Hunters, one may see how the placement of tesserae and the joins between them create a repeating quasi-circular pattern on the background. But the pattern is not, I think, to be taken as depictive in content: we are not to see the figures as standing against a patterned wall, any more than we are to see the figures as having segmented skin and clothing. The joins in a depictive mosaic serve to superimpose a pattern on the depiction, even where the pattern is not as recurrent and obvious as with the background of Hunters. The marks created by joins between tesserae are not in Lopes’s sense design marks since they don’t contribute to the representation of properties of depicted objects. In the terms so far advanced they are therefore merely surface marks. But this is intuitively wrong. They are not like the texture of canvas or foxing in a drawing. They do contribute to the design (broadly understood) of the work, though not to its depictive features. Thus we need either a new, more inclusive definition of design marks, or a new tripartite distinction between depictive design, surface and non-depictive design. Either would help us capture what is so fascinating about the medium of mosaics: that it is an art with design features that sometimes float free of and sometimes interact unpredictably with properly representational features.

4.  Marks and Movement I have drawn attention to those marks which serve as ‘visible trace[s] of the painter’s gesture’. It is generally agreed that we have a tendency to experience muscle activation, feelings of unbalance and even bodypart specific discomfort in response to works of visual art. For example, the viewer of Bellini’s Virgin with the Standing Child, Embracing his Mother, (São Paulo Museum of Art), in which the orientation of the Virgin’s head seems distinctly uncomfortable, is likely to have a sense as of their own head being held at an awkward angle. That seems to me an important part of the phenomenology of a confrontation with this picture and one which could be put aside as aesthetically irrelevant only through dogmatic insistence that such things have no place in a ‘purely visual’ aesthetic. I take it we have escaped from such confining theories of pictorial art.19

Pictures and Their Surfaces 257 David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese have suggested that works which engage the viewer in this bodily way do so by triggering neural activity in areas associated with motor planning.20 They also distinguish between responses to the depictive content of the picture, as with the Bellini, and responses to the marks which implement that content, noting the way these marks provoke a sense in the viewer as of undertaking the movements productive of those marks. It is that second kind of response which is our special focus here. Freedberg and Gallese suggest that the activity of mirror neurons is crucial in this process, and claims on behalf of the explanatory power of mirror neurons are controversial.21 But there is a prior question: are the facts about underlying mechanisms, whatever they are, helpful for understanding aesthetic preference and aesthetic judgment? Why not concentrate instead on the relation between the phenomenology of bodily engagement with pictures and the aesthetic preferences and judgments to which that phenomenology gives rise? Isn’t the aesthetic, after all, part of the manifest image, not the scientific image? Here are two reasons for not confining ourselves to phenomenology. First, we would in that case rely very heavily on the viewer’s intuitive sense of that relation to understand how our bodily and other responses to marks contribute to the artistic judgments we make. But people are rather poor at knowing the bases of their own judgments. We are more likely to think a statement true or to think we will solve a logic problem if it is presented in easy to read font.22 People whose judgments are affected in this way do not think of these factors as reasons for their decisions. There is evidence that the affect we feel (positive or negative) when we experience a situation “isn’t tied to the representations that produce it” (Carruthers 2011: 136); people rate their satisfaction with their lives more positively on sunny days than on dull ones, failing to segregate the affect associated with genuine life satisfaction from that due to the weather.23 In the aesthetic domain there is considerable evidence that the reasons people give for their choices are in fact post hoc rationalization of those choices.24 Focusing instead on the underlying neural representations involved in bodily responses may give us a better (though no doubt imperfect) sense of how bodily response really affects judgment; it is at the very least an additional source of evidence we should not ignore. Secondly, the phenomenology of bodily response to pictures and other art objects varies a good deal in intensity and is sometimes something we are barely aware of. It’s a coherent thought that motoric responses, as registered in brain activity, influence our preferences for and judgments about works of art even when we have no consciousness of them. We cannot find out whether that is true by focusing on phenomenology. What evidence do we have for a connection between motor activity in the brain and aesthetic judgment? At present not much. A plausible

258  Greg Currie starting assumption is that one of the things underlying a sense of felt connection with a picture is the ability to engage in implicit or imagined movement while viewing, where the movement corresponds to the movement that produced (or perhaps merely seems to have produced) the visible marks. Circumstances that interfered with that implicit mirroring of movement would then tend to reduce liking for the picture and might affect judgment of its artistic qualities.25 Working with this assumption Helmut Leder and colleagues presented subjects with similar pictures where one was produced with a pointillistic ‘dotting’ movement and the other in a back-and-forth hatching style.26 Subjects were asked to rate the pictures while themselves performing one or other of these movements. Because real movement and simulated movement depend on overlapping brain areas and thus compete for resources, the capacity to simulate a movement is likely to be compromised by really performing a contrary movement. It was predicted that subjects looking at a dot painting and performing a hatching (i.e., contrary) movement would have their tendency to mentally simulate the dotting compromised and that this suppression of sympathetic movement would decrease aesthetic pleasure. Leder did in fact find a tendency (not a strong one) for people performing the contrary movement to rate the picture lower than did those who were performing the concordant movement and whose simulation would have been preserved or enhanced. Ticini and colleagues found a similarly modest effect in a related experiment, but the effect reported by Leder’s group was not found in an attempted replication.27 I’ve suggested that the possibility that motor processes contribute both to the experience and to the appraisal of pictures is one that aestheticians should attend to. That the data is indecisive won’t halt progress in this essay. It is enough for now to say that the surfaces of paintings and drawings are of legitimate interest to us not merely for what they represent but in virtue of being the sites of the artistic activity which produced those representations, and I think we can take that for granted. The critical vocabulary that has been shaped by the later work of Titian, the contrasting styles of Ingres and Delacroix, and much in the subsequent history of artistic style would have to be written off as confused if that were denied.

5.  Aesthetic Surfaces: Paintings and Photographs Let us put the distinction between design and surface to one side, and make an adjustment to terminology. I want to talk about the ‘surface’ of a picture not by way of contrast with design but as the site of design: the place where the painter makes the marks which constitute the design. That surface—paper, canvas or whatever it is—is what we attend to when

Pictures and Their Surfaces 259 we view a painting as a painting. If we don’t view it as a painting but as, say, simply a way of accessing the appearance of some represented object that interests us, we still see the surface, but we attend to what is represented and not to how representation is achieved. The conclusion I offer is that representational paintings have aesthetically significant surfaces in virtue of the facts that (i) it is the engagement of the artist with that surface which makes this a representation; (ii) that surface is a record of that engagement; (iii) a properly aesthetic engagement with the work requires attending to that surface as such a record. You may say that I am not entitled to this conclusion because, as we have agreed, only some paintings (the non-transparent ones) have the kinds of marks which draw attention to the activity of the artist; transparent paintings are in this respect no different from conventional photographs. That would be the wrong conclusion. All paintings have aesthetically interesting surfaces, because their surfaces are always records of aesthetically interesting choices and activity.28 With a transparent painting, we have a surface where the painter has chosen to efface (or avoid making) marks which have any visible features other than those that contribute directly to the determination of what is depicted, and to the visible qualities it is depicted as having. That activity of effacement makes the surface a focus of aesthetic attention.29 Photographs do not arise by any such processes of effacement or avoidance; they simply do not have the kinds of surface interest that paintings have. This does not mean that a photographic positive and a film image projected on a screen lack surfaces. One may touch the photograph or the screen and trace with one’s finger the outlines of shapes, distinguishing hues and colors as one goes. But these surfaces do not have the relation to the activity of the image-maker that surface marks have in the case of painting. Those colors and shapes are not records of the artist’s activity in the way that colors and shapes are in painting. The painter places marks on the canvas; the photographer arranges objects in space and in relation to a camera in such a way that those shapes and colors will appear as downstream causal consequences of this activity. Of course a photographer may choose to intervene by making painterly marks on the surface of the photograph. But this moves us from a discussion of photography itself to mixed media of various kinds, which are not my concern here. These differences between paintings and photographs need not be visible. As noted above, paintings may have transparent surfaces much as a conventional photograph does, and a pair of pictures, one a photograph and one a painting, my look the same. But even in this case there remains the difference that the painting’s surface is a site of (in this case largely effaced) artistic activity whereas the photograph is a product of activity that is directed at the things represented. My claim is that the viewer’s

260  Greg Currie awareness of this difference creates two quite different artistic experiences, even where the pictures themselves have exactly the same looks. The painting encourages attention both to what is represented (its intensional content) and to the surface marks which are its material underpinning. The photograph focuses us on those things and events which were the focus of the artist’s attention in producing the picture. Note that those things and events are not exclusively the things and events photographed; they include also things and events involved in the process of photographing. The camera itself is one of these things, and we will return to the relation between the camera and the body in Section 7.

6.  Three Objections I’ll consider three reasons for doubting the claim directly above in full generality, the last two of them arising in situations where photographs fail to be transparent. Here is the first. Sometimes the depiction of objects or their shadows, in photographs and film images, attains a kind of abstract status which makes it advantageous to see them as forming a striking geometric pattern on the image. Does this mean that these images have, after all, surfaces of artistic interest? It does not. We should not confuse an interest in the two-dimensional pattern of an image with an interest in the image surface. If we attend to the abstract pattern of a photograph or cinema image we are not attending to qualities of its surface but to the way that objects in space are arranged, often in creative and surprising ways, to create that abstract pattern. Our response to the abstract pattern of a depictive painting may be partly constituted by such thoughts, but it is also and centrally a feature of the design imposed by the artist on the worked surface.30 The second reason, and one of two salient ways that photographs violate transparency, is that photographs sometimes have a visible graininess which reveals something about the underlying mechanics of the photographic process and fails to correspond to anything represented. Occasionally film draws attention to this. In the final shot from Bergman’s A Passion, we have a case where the blowing up of the shot makes the grain of the film stock more and more evident to the point where one can no longer identify representational elements of the scene; the image decomposes into its non-depictive parts.31 But while the pattern of grains in such an image is non-depictive it is the material from which the picture’s overall visible pattern is composed. The pattern of shapes and colors (including here black and white) that we identify in the photograph supervenes on the pattern of grains; fix all the facts about how it is with grain and you thereby fix the facts about how it is with color and shape. Should we say, in that case, that photographs where the grain is visible are like paintings in respect of having aesthetically significant surfaces? We need first to be careful about what we are comparing. The grain of the photograph, visible or not, constitutes a level of structure within the

Pictures and Their Surfaces 261 picture that does not line up with the pattern of representing shapes and color which we find in both painting and photography. It does line up with something in the case of painting, for paint consists ultimately of particles in suspension which are visible under magnification. The facts about the distribution of these particles constitute a supervenience base for the facts about shapes and colors we focus on when we see a painting: fix the facts about the particles and their distribution and you fix the facts about colors and shapes. The particles in paint are not normally visible to the naked eye and it would be unusual to make them visible. But it could be done; one might paint a picture that is to be seen through a magnifying device, or simply use paint with more visible particles. That might have some artistic interest, but it tells us nothing about the interest we normally ascribe to the colors and shapes of a painting. When we compare the properties and interests of painting and photography we must compare things that occupy the same level of structure. It would be a mistake to draw conclusions about the similarities or differences between painting and photography by comparing the grain of photographs with the colors and shapes we normally focus on in painting. If we want a comparison for photographic grain it will be found in the particles of paint. Would such a comparison illuminate our discussion? It is true that the presence of a visible grain in a photograph may be the result of the photographer’s choice (with regard, for example, to film stock) and that such a choice may be aesthetically relevant. It might also be argued that this kind of interest is never or almost never a feature of painting, a medium which does not exploit the potential for visibility in grain (I’ll assume that, for the sake of the argument). Still, the admitted distinctive interest of grain in photography does nothing to support the idea that the surface of the photograph is aesthetically interesting in the way that of a painting is. For while the grain may be visible on the photograph’s surface, it is not made visible by the physical action of the photographer on that surface; its appearance is merely a downstream effect of prior, and perhaps aesthetically interesting choices with regard to film stock, shutter speed and other matters. Finally, blurring is a property of photographs which may be thought to generate interest in the picture surface. Do blurred photographs, such as Robert Capa’s photograph of a soldier struggling ashore on D-day at Omaha beach, represent their subjects as blurred? We noted earlier that according to the doctrine of the transparency of perception, whatever we focus on in perceptual experience turns out to be a feature of how the world is represented in that experience. Frank Jackson includes blurred vision in this characterization: ‘when vision is blurred, what is seen appears to be blurred’.32 As A. D. Smith notes, this seems wrong: When an object looks blurred, we typically have no problem detecting this blurriness. Such blurriness is not, however, and is not taken to be, even by totally naïve subjects, a feature or apparent feature

262  Greg Currie of the object seen . . . . Blurriness is not a way that things in the world themselves seem to be. It is, however, a feature of experience of which we are usually aware when it is there. The Transparency Thesis is therefore false.33 The same holds, I think, for photographs.34 Neither in vision nor in photographic representation is blurring taken for a way things seem to be. Blurring in photographs, being non-representational, violates transparency. Does that mean that photographs like Capa’s are pictures which do draw attention to their surfaces in the ways that paintings do? I say not. The blurring in Capa’s picture draws attention to the fact of (presumably uncontrolled) movement of the camera at the instant when the shot was taken. The blurring certainly is artistically relevant, though it may be unintentional, and so is to be attended to. But attending to it focuses us on the instability of the relations between the photographer and the worldly object—a soldier in water—which is its subject. In other cases blurring indicates that the object photographed was moving at a rate incompatible with the shutter speed. Again, our attention is drawn to the relation between the photographic act and the photographed subject, not the surface. There is more to be said about blurring, and that will come in the next section.

7.  The Camera and the Body I have put much emphasis on these surface-differences between painting and photography because the idea of the worked surface in painting is vital for understanding the role of paintings as social objects: objects which connect human subjects. In face to face situations people imitate each other’s postures and expressions, move in step and, below the threshold of observable behavior, recapitulate each other’s movements through the production of motor representations concordant with what is observed. Paintings and drawings are among the many kinds of objects which extend our capacity to respond in these ways, allowing us to feel an embodied connection with people distant in time and place. They do so in two ways already distinguished. They do this, first and rather obviously, by making available to us images of people doing things which call forth our sympathetic motor responses, as with the Bellini depiction of the Christ child holding the Virgin’s head at an awkward angle. That way has not been the focus of our concern here. We have been concerned instead with the ways in which paintings and drawings provide us with surfaces which manifest the activity of the artist who has made the depiction. Photographs and cinematic images do facilitate interpersonal connection in the first of these ways: they show us images of people doing things, just as paintings do, and cinematic images which depict

Pictures and Their Surfaces 263 movement in time may do this superbly well. But photographs do not have available to them the second way. We should not conclude from this that photographs lack all capacity to connect the viewer with the physical activity of the maker. There are various ways for a photograph to do this. Blurring is one of them. Although attention to blurring is not attention to surface, it is attention to a feature of the work that generates, or may generate, the kind of sympathetic, imagined movement that brush marks on the surface of a painting can create. The enduring popularity of Capa’s image is surely something to do with its capacity to provide a vivid sense of the movement of the artist and my own vague sense is one of unbalanced movement in response to it. Empirical work may even show that inner motor representations consistent with ‘holding a camera in an unsteady way’ accompany seeing pictures like this. Because photography is a static art we would not expect it to provide many kinds of opportunities for this kind of mental recapitulation. What do we find when we turn to film images? Is there anything in what is made visible in film which achieves effects comparable to the effects of the marked surface in painting, mosaic work and the other depictive arts? The best and most obvious candidate (given the discussion of Capa’s picture) is camera movement through the duration of the shot. There are difficulties here to do with the powerful and complex technologies that support camera movement and prevent it having the very direct relation to movement of an artist’s body that painterly marks have. Still, there are occasions on which camera movement creates a strong impression of the physical presence and activity of an agent. In Renoir’s Rules of the Game the complex, exploratory movements of the camera are a surrogate for, if not a trace of, the corresponding movements of an agent. But if this is the closest that film comes to achieving the effects of painterly marks it is one which focuses us on the relation between the camera and the space represented in the film image, and not on the surface of the resulting image. In cases like this, where we sense agency in the movement of the camera, who is the agent in question? We should not think of this as a character in the pro-filmic world, an invisible companion to the other characters, spying on them unnoticed. Renoir’s camera produces a much more amiable effect than this. Nor, it seems to me, should we think of this as a real extra-filmic presence such as that of the camera operator. We do better to think of this as a somewhat shadowy and indeterminate filmic narrator, described by George Wilson as a ‘minimal narrating agency’.35 Wilson, I think would argue that such a narrating agent is present in almost all movies and indeed in almost all fictional narratives. I do not go anywhere near this far.36 But the case for such a narrator, and for their close connection with the camera, is strong in the case of Rules of the Game and some other filmic narratives.37

264  Greg Currie

8. Consequences All pictures, photographs included, have surfaces. When we see a picture of any kind we see its surface, and we attend to the things represented by means of seeing marks on that surface. But handmade images encourage attention to their surfaces as surfaces: as physical locations where artistic activity has taken place and where traces of that activity are registered. Photographs do not do that. We should not see in this any support for what Dom Lopes has called the equivalence thesis: that ‘any interest we take in photographs, when we view them as photographs, is wholly an interest in the actual objects that were photographed and not an interest in the photographs themselves’, a view he attributes to Roger Scruton and which seems to lead to the thought that there is no artistic or aesthetic interest in photographic representation itself.38 Scruton encourages this attribution when he says that “if there is such a thing as a cinematic masterpiece it will be so because . . . it is in the first place a dramatic masterpiece”.39 In response, Lopes points out that we may very well have an ‘an interest in the scene as it is seen through the photograph’, and hence an interest in the photograph itself.40 The argument I have given suggests that a good deal of the artistic interest of a photograph is in what it reveals about its own process of making—something which clearly bears on what is represented but which does not have the subject of the photograph as its focus. Relevant facts include skill in composition by arrangement of objects before the camera, lighting, or simply the capacity to grasp the decisive moment. So I join with Lopes in rejecting the equivalence thesis. But this much is true; that whatever is of interest in a photograph does not include—as it does so importantly in painting—an interest in the way in which the representational marks on the picture’s surface support the representational properties of the painting. That is such an important aspect of the aesthetics of pictures that one may understand the attractions of the thought that, without that relationship between marks and representation in place, the aesthetics of pictures would be a null topic—while recognizing on reflection that the thought is not correct. Scruton suggests at one point that a photograph is like a frame around an object: it presents the object rather than representing it.41 Framing generally preserves the visibility of what is framed and Kendall Walton argues that photographs are ‘transparent’ pictures, ones we ‘see through’ to what they are of. On this view a photograph of Queen Victoria lets us literally see Queen Victoria. Being transparent, they are like windows and telescopes: aids to seeing.42 Paintings and drawings are not transparent. I emphasize again that Walton’s transparency is not the same property as the kind of transparency I have been discussing and which derives from a theory of ‘the transparency of perception’.

Pictures and Their Surfaces 265 In support of his view, Walton argues that seeing things directly and seeing photographs of them share distinctive patterns of counterfactual dependence and perceptual error. These arguments, even on a favorable reading, don’t establish the transparency of photographs; they point to features that seeing photographs of things have in common with seeing things directly. Since there are things these processes don’t have in common, a judgment on transparency will depend on weighting the similarities and the differences, and one is likely to give heavier weight to the similarities if one finds intuitive appeal in the idea of (Waltonian) transparency.43 Indeed, there is something about photographs that encourages the idea that the object represented is made directly available to us in a way that a painting cannot match and the argument of this essay offers an account of what the something is. Because they are not the sites of artistic activity, the surfaces of photographs lack the salience enjoyed by paintings, so their surfaces do not compete with their subjects for our interest and attention. We might even say that their lack of surface salience gives us the impression of ‘seeing through them’ to their subjects. But lack of salience does not really support the idea of transparency in Walton’s sense. What is made salient need not be literally shown. That photographs make their objects salient in ways that paintings don’t is no argument for the thesis that photographs literally show us their objects.

Notes 1 This paper originated from workshop presentations in Paris and Turin. My thanks go to Jerome Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini for inviting me to those events and for their comments then and later. My thanks also go to the audiences on both occasions for their comments and to audiences at the universities of Leeds, Edinburgh and Miami, where developing versions were presented. 2 Rosand (1981: 95). 3 Throughout I will have traditional photography in mind though the arguments apply to digital photography as well. The manipulability of such images does not bring anything essentially new to the discussion; various forms of manipulation are possible in traditional photography and here as elsewhere in the literature I confine myself to relatively ‘pure’ forms of (unmanipulated) image-making. 4 Sohm (2007: 97); Hopkins (2010, sec. 3). 5 Sohm (1991: 27). 6 See Sohm (1991: 27). For parallel debates concerning sculpture, see Mangone (2016). 7 Sohm (1991: 27) quotes Vasari: ‘Often artists best express their ideas with a few strokes in sketches, suddenly being born from inspiration. Conversely labour and excessive diligence, by an artist who knows not when to take his hand off the work, often deprives it of strength and character’. 8 Wollheim (1980: 213–224). 9 Levinson (1998); Nanay (2005); Lopes (2005: 34–36); Currie (2018). 10 Freedberg and Gallese (2007: 201–202). 11 Lopes (2005: 25).

266  Greg Currie 12 It is clear that this is meant to include all those visible properties of the picture which contribute to the determination of the object depicted and its depicted properties. 13 The idea goes back to Moore, who used the term “Diaphanous” (Moore 1922). Jackson (2003) uses the same term. For complex reasons Jackson thinks that understanding sensory qualities this way shows the failure of his influential knowledge argument against physicalism; he now holds, with Lewis and Nemirof, that what Mary gains when she leaves the room is not factual knowledge but abilities. 14 Jackson says “The redness of sensings of red is the putative redness of what is seen; when vision is blurred, what is seen appears to be blurred; the location quality of a sound is the putative location of the sound; the experience of movement is the experience of something putatively moving; and so on” (2003: 257). Or, as Mike Martin puts it, concerning a subject who sees, or seems to see the blue of the ocean, “The phenomenological character of his experience is determined by how the experience represents the environment to be” (2002: 385). 15 This formulation is consistent with the idea that a picture may misrepresent its subject. 16 The debate between Ingres and Delacroix had much to do with the visibility of ‘touch’, advocated by Delacroix and decried by Ingres who said “Touch even though it is very skilled, must not be apparent: otherwise it prevents illusion and locks everything. Instead of the represented object, it makes the way of doing [procédé] visible; instead of thought, it denounces the hand” (quoted in Georges Roque, Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture, this volume, p. 276). 17 The artist may have control over the level of pixilation. 18 Rug making is similarly productive of twofoldness and provides a record of the artists actions—the placement of a thread; like mosaic work, it does not record the artist’s movement in the way that painting and drawing can. There is also tapestry and stained glass work to consider. 19 Currie (2007, 2011). On the idea of touch as an aesthetic sense, see Moshenska (2014, ch. 5). 20 Freedberg and Gallese (2007: 202): “The marks on the painting or sculpture are the visible traces of goal-directed movements; hence, they are capable of activating the relevant motor areas in the observer’s brain”. 21 See, e.g., (Hickok 2014) for an accessible attempt to deflate the explanatory role of mirror neurons. Much of the criticism of Freedberg and Gallese (e.g., Casati and Pignocchi 2007: 410; Kesner and Horáček 2017) points out that there is a good deal in our response to art which cannot be explained in their terms—something they readily agree with. And much of the critical literaturefocuses on our responses to depictive content and not on our responses to the visible traces of the artist’s activity, and does not transfer from the one case to the other (see, e.g., Gallagher 2011). 22 Reber and Schwarz (1999); Alter et al. (2007). 23 See Schwarz and Clore (1983). People are able, it seems, to make the segregation if the state of the weather is drawn to their attention. 24 Lopes (2014). 25 Artistic preference and artistic judgement may pull in different directions, as when we prefer a work that we acknowledge is inferior; but in many situations preference and judgement will be coherent. 26 Leder et al. (2012). 27 Ticini et al. (2014); McLean et al. (2015).

Pictures and Their Surfaces 267 28 I don’t mean that all paintings have aesthetically valuable surfaces, only that any aesthetic interest we take in a painting should focus on, among other things, its marked surface. Some paintings—mine for example—are not worth taking an aesthetic interest in. 29 I take it that an absence of activity of a certain sort may be evident on a surface, as with the absence of sunburn on the skin under a wrist watch. It is another, more difficult question whether such an absence can literally be seen. I don’t take a view on that here. For an argument in favor of seeing absences see Farennikova (2013). 30 Many thanks here to Berys Gaut who saved me from confusion. 31 Currie (2010). 32 Jackson (2003: 257). 33 Smith (2008: 201). Smith distinguishes blurring from fuzziness, a respectable property of external objects. 34 It might be argued that in some photographs blurring and fuzziness could not be distinguished. All I need to assume here is that in a photograph (like Capa’s) where the blurring is recognizable, that blurring is not taken to be a feature of the scene depicted. 35 Wilson (2011: 112–113). 36 Currie (2010, 4.5). 37 Rules of the Game is notable for the sustained presence of this narrating agency; in many films we sense such a presence only at certain moments. 38 See Lopes (2003), citing Scruton (1981). 39 Scruton (1981: 577). 40 Lopes (2003: 445, my emphasis). Lopes has a number of arguments against the equivalence thesis. See also Currie (1995, sec. 2.9). 41 Scruton (1981: 589). 42 Walton (1984). 43 Reactions to this idea have tended to be of two kinds. One is to deny that photographs are transparent; see Currie (1995, sec. 2.6). The other is to argue that all depictions are transparent; see Lopes (1996, ch. 9). For further generalization see Yetter-Chappel (2017).

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268  Greg Currie Currie, G. (2018) “Visually Attending to Fictional Things”. In Essays on Memory and Perceptual Imagination, edited by F. McPherson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Currie, G. and I. Ravenscroft. (2002). Recreative Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Farennikova, A. (2013). “Seeing Absence”. Philosophical Studies 166: 429–454. Freedberg, D. and V. Gallese. (2007). “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Aesthetic Experience”. Trends in Cognitive Science 11: 197–203. Gallagher, S. (2011). “Aesthetics and Kinaesthetics”. In Sehen und Handeln, edited by H. Bredekamp and J. Krois, 99–113. Berlin: Oldenbourg Verlag. Hickok, G. (2014). The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Hopkins, R. (2010). “Inflected Pictorial Experience: Its Treatment and Significance”. In Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction, edited by C. Abell and K. Bantinaki, 151–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, F. (2003). “Mind and Illusion”. In Minds and Persons (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements), edited by A. O’Hear, 251–272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kesner, L. and J. Horáček. (2017). “Empathy-Related Responses to Depicted People in Art Works”. Frontiers of Psychology 8: 228, doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2017.00228. Leder, H., S. Bär and S. Topolinski. (2012). “Covert Painting Simulations Influence Aesthetic Appreciation of Artworks”. Psychological Science 23: 1479– 1481, doi: 10.1177/0956797612452866. Levinson, J. (1998). ‘Wollheim on Pictorial Representation’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56: 227–233. Lopes, D. (1996). Understanding Pictures. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lopes, D. (2003). “The Aesthetics of Photographic Transparency”. Mind 112: 434–448. Lopes, D. M. (2005). Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lopes, D. M. (2014). “Feckless Reason”. In Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind, edited by G. Currie, M. Kieran, A. Meskin and J. Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mangone, C. (2016). “Bernini scultore pittoresco”. In Material Bernini, edited by E. Levy and C. Mangone, 39–69. Burlington: Ashgate. Martin, M.G.F. (2002). “The Transparency of Experience”. Mind & Language 17: 376–425. McLean, C., S. Want and B. Dyson. (2015). “The Role of Similarity, Sound and Awareness in the Appreciation of Visual Artwork Via Motor Simulation”. Cognition 137: 174–181. Moore, G. E. (1922). “The Refutation of Idealism”. In Philosophical Studies, 1–30. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Moshenska, J. (2014). Feeling Pleasures: The Sense of Touch in Renaissance England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nanay, B. (2005). “Is Twofoldness Necessary for Representational Seeing?” British Journal of Aesthetics 45: 248–257.

Pictures and Their Surfaces 269 Reber, R. and N. Schwarz. (1999). “Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Judgments of Truth”. Consciousness and Cognition 8(3): 338–342. Rosand, D. (1981). “Titian and the Eloquence of the Brush”. Artibus et Historiae 2: 85–96. Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45(3): 513–523. Scruton, R. (1981). “Photography and Representation”. Critical Inquiry 7: 577–603. Smith, A. (2008). “Translucent Experiences”. Philosophical Studies 140: 197–212. Sohm, P. (1991). Pittoresco: Marco Boschini, His Critics, and Their Critiques of Painterly Brushwork in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sohm, P. (2007). The Artist Grows Old: The Aging of Art and Artists in Italy, 1500–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ticini, L., L. Rachman, J. Pelletier and S. Dubal. (2014). “Enhancing Aesthetic Appreciation by Priming Canvases with Actions that Match the Artist’s Painting Style”. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 3: 1–6. Walton, K. (1984). “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism”. Critical Inquiry 2: 246–277. Wilson, G. (2011). Seeing Fictions in Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wollheim, R. (1980). “Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation”. In Art and Its Objects, 205–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yetter-Chappel, H. (2017). “Seeing Through Eyes, Mirrors, Shadows and Pictures”. Philosophical Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0948-8.

14 Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture Georges Roque

Introduction Touch plays an important part in pictorial technique. At the same time, it is one of the criteria of aesthetic appreciation. Indeed, several artists as well as theoreticians have insisted in their writings on the importance of touch. However, two completely opposed positions have been held, as some consider that touch must be as discrete as possible, while others hold that it must be apparent. Such opposition is patent in two French painters from the same period: Ingres and Delacroix. In this paper, I propose to deal with this issue of touch perception and appreciation in the case of Neo-Impressionism. I will first give a quick overview of NeoImpressionism focused on the special technique adopted by the painters belonging to this movement, pointillism and particularly on its scientific aspects, as they were very interested in science and read avidly scientific treatises. Emphasis is made on “optical mixture”, which is the method used by Neo-Impressionists, the so-called dot. The second part of the chapter is focused on the touch, as seen by Paul Signac in his book From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, which is the main defense of the movement written by one of its leaders and published at the very end of the nineteenth century. The objective of this part is to explain an apparent contradiction: why was Signac so opposed to the “dot” and to the part played by the hand in painting, when facture is an essential feature of Neo-Impressionism? This will lead me to a close scrutiny of Signac’s essay and in particular his analysis of Delacroix, with whom he shared a lot. After noting that Delacroix, and Signac after him, at the same time condemn the brushstroke and praise the touch, I logically wonder whether it is not contradictory. In order to understand this apparent contradiction, I suggest a distinction between two factures, which have different names: touch and brushstroke. Then, I analyze the issue of touch as aesthetic appreciation from different standpoints, in order to understand the opposition between those who praise touch and those who consider that it must be hidden. In

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 271 the following part of the essay, I examine another chapter of Signac’s book, where he insists on the difference between Delacroix and NeoImpressionism (while in the first chapter, he emphasized the similarities between them). Finally, in the last section, I suggest that a semiotic approach might prove useful for understanding touch. For classical aesthetics, as represented by Ingres, indeed, the process of making must be semiotically transparent, in order not to disturb the appreciation of the content of the painting. For the Neo-Impressionists painters, however, process of making and result are not opposed anymore, so that the aesthetic appreciation embraces the visible marks on the canvas.

Optical Mixture The term “Neo-Impressionism” was coined by the critic Félix Fénéon, one of the best spokesmen of the movement. Neo-Impressionism is an artistic movement which started in 1886. Its founding figure was Georges Seurat (1859–1891), whose monumental painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte is a kind of standard bearer of the whole movement. Seurat died in 1891 in his early thirties. After Seurat’s death, Paul Signac (1863–1935) became the leader of the movement and his chief publicist. The main feature of Neo-Impressionism is a faith in science and color science, on which Neo-Impressionists relied a lot (Roque 2009, 2013). Since a superficial feature of their facture is the use of small dots of color, the term of pointillism is often used to describe their technique. Different origins of the so-called pointillism can be traced from the sources given by the artists. The first is Charles Blanc, who coined the expression “optical mixture”, a technique already used by Delacroix, according to him, as well as by the Impressionists (Blanc1 1989). The basic idea is to mix colors not on the palette, but rather to juxtapose them on the canvas, so that when seen at a distance, they melt into the eye and produce a new color not present as such on the canvas. Rood gave a more complete description of optical mixture in his book published in 1879 (Rood 1899) and translated into French in 1881. This French translation is one of the sources acknowledged by the Neo-Impressionists painters. This new technique has an important effect: it is much more luminous than a mixture on the palette, which Fénéon soon stressed: “the luminosity of optical mixtures is always superior to that of material mixture” (Fénéon 1966: 109) and justified accordingly the new Neo-Impressionist technique. Note that the Neo-Impressionist technique is then rather complex and cannot be limited to “pointillism”. Signac insisted a lot on the fact

272  Georges Roque that the so-called dots are just a means and cannot be considered as characteristic of Neo-Impressionism. Reacting against critics, he wrote indeed that this technique [. . .] does not reside necessarily in the point (dot), as they imagine, but in any touch of any form that is precise, not swept over, and of a size proportioned to that of the picture:—the touch may have any form, because its purpose is not to create optical illusions but to render truly the diverse colored elements of the hues.2 (Ratliff 1992: 257) For him, using dots is not enough: far more important for its technique is the “divided touch”.

Touch and Brushstroke I would like now to address the issue of the touch in Signac’s writings, and in his book From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism in particular. Before starting, it must be said that his book, written in the late 1890s, had been conceived as a defense of the movement. So the rhetorical strategy adopted by Signac, and which is clearly expressed in the title of his book, From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, was to show that the movement, still criticized at the time, was not so new, and could be understood as developing ideas already present in Delacroix, and then in Impressionism. About touch, Signac writes: This means of expression, the optical mixture of small, colored touches, placed methodically one beside the other, leaves but little room for skill or virtuosity; the hand is of very little importance; only the brain and the eye of the painter have a part to play. (Ratliff 1992: 214) After writing that, Signac added that the Neo-Impressionists painters refused to be tempted by the charm of the brushstroke (“coup de pinceau”) and used not a bright facture but a meticulous and precise one (see fig. 1). In doing so, the Neo-Impressionists took into account what Delacroix said. And then comes a quote from Delacroix, which reads: The most important thing is to avoid the infernal convenience of the brush. Young people are infatuated solely by the skill of the hand. Perhaps there is no greater obstacle to any sort of real progress than this universal mania to which we have sacrificed everything. (Ratliff 1992: 214)

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 273

Figure 14.1 Paul Signac, Evening Calm. Concarneau, Opus 220 (Allegro ­Maestroso), oil on canvas, 1891, 64,8 x 81,3 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0

After quoting Delacroix and his strong critique against the hand skill, Signac uses Delacroix again, this time in order to legitimize the Neoimpressionist touch. And indeed, Delacroix praised touch a lot.3 In Signac’s book, the first quote from Delacroix on this topic is: There are in all the arts means of execution adopted and agreed upon, and that person who knows not how to read these indications of thought is but an imperfect connoisseur; the proof is that the vulgar prefer above all the smoothest paintings with the fewest touches and prefers them for this reason. (Ratliff 1992: 214) It might seem strange, at least at first sight, to realize that Delacroix, and Signac after him, at the same time condemns the brushstroke and praises the touch. One might logically wonder whether it is not contradictory. In order to understand this apparent contradiction, it is important to make a distinction between two factures, which have different names: touch and brushstroke.

274  Georges Roque In French as well as in English, a touch is literally the fact of touching the surface of the canvas with the paintbrush. Interestingly, Delacroix also uses “touch” not as a substantive, but as an adjective, when he talks about “the least touched” paintings. The touch, therefore, is a minimal intervention, the fact of touching the canvas with the brush when painting. The brushstroke, instead, requires a movement of the hand, a gesture. That’s the reason why it is frequently associated with the hand. Interestingly, here again the English “brushstroke” and the French “coup de brosse” contain exactly the same image of a movement, a stroke, the fact of striking. Now, why does Delacroix condemn the brushstroke, and praise the touch, as does Signac, too, following Delacroix? For Delacroix, the brushstroke is a very subjective gesture, a movement of the hand, which remains independent of the painting and its subject matter. He sees it as mere skill producing easy effects, while style for him requires a long research process. But why does he praise instead the touch? The main reason is that for him, the touch, unlike the brushstroke, is related to the painting subject matter. Indeed, he conceived of the touch as part of the painting and contributing to its meaning. In another passage quoted by Signac, Delacroix wrote indeed: “The touch is one of a number of means which help to render the thought in painting” (Ratliff 1992: 215). Color is another means to produce the same effect. So, an analogy could be made here between color and touch. As about color, in another sentence quoted by Signac, Delacroix wrote: “color is nothing if it is not fitting to the subject and does not enhance the painting’s effect through the imagination to the subject matter” (Ratliff 1992: 216). Delacroix relies here on a way of understanding colors known as “modes theory”, already illustrated by Poussin and according to which the choice of colors must fit the kind of painting being painted: for a sad subject matter, dark colors must be used, while in a cheerful subject, saturated and bright colors are recommended (see Mérot 1994). Delacroix is not so clear about the part played by touch. However, as quoted above, he considered that the touch is part of the thought of the painting. Interestingly, the Neo-Impressionists also shared this idea (Roque 2001). So, insofar as the touch, for him, plays a part in the “thought” of the work, that is in its meaning, it is perfectly justified, and even more than justified, it is necessary.

Touch and Aesthetic Appreciation We can therefore understand the main difference between touch and brushstroke: the former is related to the painting subject matter while the latter is just the expression of the artist’s skill. How is this related to aesthetic appreciation? For Delacroix, the “imperfect connoisseur”

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 275 praises paintings without touch. Interestingly, something similar already occurred in eighteenth century France. Various authors, indeed, were very critical about the amateurs who praised high finish in painting, considering it as “léché”, i.e., “painted licked smooth”. Conversely, “true connoisseurs condemned work that was ‘trop léché’ ” (quoted by Wrigley 1995: 277). It would be wrong, however, to conclude that only “true connoisseurs” praised touch. As “touch” belonged to the vocabulary of art criticism, other authors mocked the use of a jargon by those littérateurs who only take into account the execution of a painting, as Comte de Caylus in the mid-eighteenth century (Wrigley 1995: 238). Not surprisingly, “touch” belongs to this vocabulary of those who “pronounce with pretention terms like [. . .] fini précieux, touche vigoureuse, composition riche” and criticized as “jargon” (quoted by Wrigley 1995: 276). This means that the aesthetic appreciation of touch must be considered carefully, due to the interference of various aspects, among them the general condemnation of brushstroke as related to execution seen as independent of the painting content. An important standpoint, from this perspective, is that of Jonathan Richardson in An Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725). In his chapter on color, he devotes a paragraph to “handling”: “By this term is understood the manner in which the Colors are left by the pencil upon the picture” (Richardson 1971: 164). After confessing that he loves “to see a freedom and delicacy of hand in painting”, he adds “But the handling may be such as to be not only good abstractedly considered, but as being proper, and adding a real advantage to the picture” (Richardson 1971: 165). Here Richardson is more explicit about the relationship between handling and the general meaning of the painting: Generally, if the character of the picture is Greatness, Terrible, or Savage, as Battles, Robberies, Witchcrafts, Apparitions, or even the portraits of men of such characters there ought to be employed a Rough, Bold Pencil; and contrarily, if the character is Grace, Beauty, Love, Innocence, etc. a Softer Pencil, and more finishing is proper. (author’s emphasis; Richardson 1971: 166) Richardson seems to adapt here the “modes theory” already evoked, and according to which, as wrote Félibien about Poussin, a sad subject matter imposes the use of faded and dull colors, while a “graceful” subject matter requires the use of bright colors (Félibien 1996: 58). Such a conception, with which Delacroix and Neo-Impressionists agree, is here slightly transformed to take into account not the brightness and saturation of colors, but their “handling”. Richardson’s standpoint confirms what has been suggested, i.e., that touch is admitted and praised when it has to do with the general mood or “character” of a painting.

276  Georges Roque

Showing or Hiding Touch? From what precedes one might conclude that when touch is related to the “thought” of a painting, it is accepted and praised as such. However, things are more complicated, as there is no consensus about this point: other artists are quite opposed to touch. This is in particular the case of Ingres who claimed that: What is called ‘touch’ is an abuse of execution. It is only the quality of false talented persons, of false artists, who wander from the imitation of nature in order to merely show their skill. Touch even though it is very skilled, must not be apparent: otherwise it prevents illusion and locks everything. Instead of the represented object, it makes the way of doing [procédé] visible; instead of thought, it denounces the hand. (Ingres 2006: 85) This quote requires several comments, as it puts forward a strong opposition between Delacroix and Ingres. On the one hand, Delacroix claims that touch serves to render the thought of a painting while Ingres considers the other way around that touch is completely opposed to the “thought” of a painting, that is, its meaning. On the other hand, the relation to nature is also completely opposed. For Ingres, indeed, the fact of making touch visible is contrary to the aim of painting that is faithfulness to nature. I suppose that there were at the time discussions between artists about this issue, since Delacroix’s position is a critique against Ingres’s. Delacroix writes indeed: “No doubt a painting can be very beautiful without showing the touch, but it is childish to see in this a resemblance to the effect of nature” (Ratliff 1992: 215).4 Interestingly, Signac completely shares Delacroix’s ideas about this point. Later in his book, he replies to objections against the Neoimpressionist technique, explaining that unlike Delacroix and Impressionist technique, the divided touch was not yet admitted: “Nature doesn’t look like that”, people say. “There are no multicolored spots on the face” (Ratliff 1992: 263). And Signac adds: The hatchings of Delacroix, the comma-strokes of Monet, and the Neo-Impressionists’ divided touches are artificial tools which these painters use to express their particular vision of nature. [. . .] As a simple colored element, it can, through its very impersonality, lend itself to any subject. (Ratliff 1992: 263) Ingres’s position also raises the issue of whether touch must be visible. In order to understand what is at stake here, the opposition made by

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 277 linguists between utterance and the act of enunciation can be helpful.5 For Ingres, indeed, the main opposition is between the way of making (execution, skill, hand) and the represented object. It is clear that we are in a clear-cut disjunction: if the painter wants to produce such an illusion, he must hide the touch. Interestingly, the opposition between enunciating and the act of enunciating has been applied to that of “discourse” and “history”: in a discourse often uttered at the first person, the enunciative marks are put forward, while in a historical text they tend to be erased (Benveniste 1966: 77–78). Relying on this opposition, Louis Marin noted that the same happens in Renaissance painting, i.e., “the denegation of enunciation which is characteristic of historical enunciation” (Marin 1977: 39, 65–66). This explains why classical painters tend to erase the marks of painting execution as they feared that such marks would distract the attention from the “thought” of painting to its execution. This is exactly the fear expressed by Ingres. Furthermore, there is a general suspicion concerning the hand since Renaissance onward. This has to do with the general position of the first Academies of art that emphasized the importance of painting as a liberal art and dismissed accordingly the role played by the hand, seen as “mechanical” (see Posner 1993). This can explain the reason why, when talking about artistic style, the reference to the hand is very often omitted (Sohm 1999). This fact cannot be overlooked as an additional reason for negating the importance of touch. However, opposite standpoints also exist. Aesthetic appreciation of the touch sometimes adopts the point of view of rejecting smoothness and blandness of a surface without any visible marks. Such is the position of the painter and theoretician Émile Bernard, in a letter to a fellow painter: “I repeat that glazing must be done with large brushes and a great freedom. If the brushstrokes are visible, it is even more beautiful than when it is smooth. The reason is that if the surface is smooth, it gives an aspect of chromo” (Bernard 2012: 837).

The Parameter of Distance Aesthetic appreciation of touch has also a lot to do with the complex issue of distance, i.e., at which distance a painting is supposed to be viewed. Such a parameter has indeed important consequences, as a pragmatic approach to painting must take into account the distance imposed or suggested by the painter to the beholder (see Roque 1986, 1997). The reason might seem trivial, since the touch, in order to be visible, is to be seen at a short distance, and is much less visible when seen from a bigger distance. As it is well known, Rembrandt, for instance, recommended his paintings to be looked at from a distance, as “the smell of the paint would make you sick”. From this perspective, distance plays an important part in the

278  Georges Roque aesthetic appreciation. Now, this issue is crucial for Neo-Impressionism. Charles Blanc, who coined the idea of “optical mixture”, already insisted on it: If at a distance of some steps, we look at a cashmere shawl, we generally perceive tones that are not in the fabric, but which compose themselves at the back of our eye by the effect of reciprocal reactions of one tone upon another. Two colors in juxtaposition or superposed in such or such proportions, that is to say according to the extent each shall occupy, will form a third color that our eye will perceive at a distance, without having been written by weaver or painter. This third color is a resultant that the artist foresaw, and which is born of optical mixture. (Blanc 1989: 475) Not surprisingly, Delacroix (who was a source for Blanc) was already aware of the parameter of distance, when writing in the already quoted entry on “touch”: Moreover, everything depends on the distance required for viewing the painting. At a certain distance, the touch blends itself into the whole composition, but it gives the painting an accent which could not be produced by mixing the colors together. (Delacroix 1996: 202) This passage did not escape Signac, who quotes it (Ratliff 1992: 215). In fact, Signac comes back to this issue later in his book, noting in a paraphrase of Delacroix that, at a distance, facture disappears (Ratliff 1992: 264). A few years earlier, he already noted in his Diary: “We must reach the disappearance of the touch, and what is easy for small canvases is much harder in a bigger format that demands touches rather big” (Signac 1949: 108). However, this last quote might seem contradictory with what we have seen: How can Signac, who praises touch, at the same time wish its disappearance? The answer is of course the issue of distance: at a distance, touch disappears. Furthermore, such a disappearance is important as it is closely related to the visual effect to be reached: the different color touches melt into a new one. Rood, another source of Neo-Impressionist technique, also insisted on distance in order to produce the desired effect: “We refer to the custom of placing a quantity of small dots of two colors very near each other and allowing them to be blended by the eye at the proper distance” (Rood 1899: 140; see also 279–280). Not surprisingly, the same author, professor of Physics at Columbia College, wrote a brief note on our perception of distance and color (Rood 1861).

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 279

The Specificity of Neo-Impressionist Touch In a previous section, I insisted on the fact that Signac, following Delacroix, criticizes the brushstrokes, and at the same time praises the touch. There is, however, an important difference between Signac and Delacroix. When Signac wrote that the divided touch is impersonal, he didn’t refer to the process of painting, i.e., to an impersonal execution, but to the relationship between touch and the painting. As Signac pointed out, touch is impersonal because it is not adapted to the painting topic. If, in the first part of his book, focused on the similarity between Neo-Impressionism and Delacroix, Signac insists of course on what they have in common, in the last part, however, he emphasizes the differences. Interestingly, these differences have a lot to do with aesthetic appreciation. When coming back to the issue of touch, Signac sees indeed an evolution between Delacroix, the Impressionists and finally the Neo-Impressionists. Their touches are even given a name. For Delacroix, it it the hatching, for the Impressionists, the comma-shaped stroke, and for the Neo-Impressionists, the divided touch. Note again that Signac never uses the word “dot”, as for him what is particular to Neo-Impressionism is not the shape of the touch, but a particular method, he precisely calls “divided touch”. If the three techniques are “conventional methods”, “each [is] accommodated to the particular requirements of a corresponding aesthetic” (Ratliff 1992: 258). About Delacroix, Signac stresses that the hatching is bound to the painting thought; he considers it as a romantic technique well adapted to Delacroix’s will to emphasize movement: Delacroix, that soaring and yet thoughtful spirit, covers his canvas with impetuous hatchings, which, for all their fine fury dissociate color methodically and precisely: and, by this method, which favors optical mixing and rapid modeling that follows the form, he satisfies his double concern for color and movement. (Ratliff 1992: 258) The Impressionist touch, however, is different. According to Signac, indeed, the Impressionists were led to a technique which was more fragmented than that of Delacroix and, instead of his romantic hatchings, they executed tiny strokes laid on from the tip of a lively brush and entangled in a multicolored cluster—adroit methods, well-suited to an aesthetic compounded wholly of sudden, fleeting sensation. (Ratliff 1992: 258)

280  Georges Roque Signac also considers that the Impressionist touch constitutes an intermediary step between Delacroix and Neo-Impressionism: The Impressionists’ comma-shaped stroke, in some cases, plays the expressive role of the hatchings in Delacroix as, for example, when it renders the form of an object—leaf, wave, blade of grass, etc.—but, at other times, like the Neo-Impressionists divided touch, it represents only the colored components, separated and juxtaposed, which can be reconstituted by optical mixture. (Ratliff 1992: 259) Signac insists on this feature that is specific to the Neo-Impressionists painters, since they attach no importance to the form of the touch, because they do not require that it should model, express a feeling, or imitate the form of an object. For them, a touch is just one of the infinite colored elements which will [. . .] compose the painting, an element having precisely the same importance as a note in a symphony. (Ratliff 1992: 259) The reason given is that “Sad or cheerful sensations, and calm or animated effects will be expressed, not by virtuosity with the brush, but by the combinations of lines, hues, and tones” (ibid.), that is ideas borrowed from Charles Henry. For this reason, Signac adds the following comment, emphasizing then the aesthetic issue at stake: “Is it not this simple, precise mode of expression, the divided touch, in full accord with the clear and methodical aesthetic of the painters who use it” (ibid.). So, for Signac, the three factures, hatchings, comma-shaped stroke and divided touch have a common aim: to reach colors as bright as possible, thanks to the optical mixture of juxtaposed pigments. Signac considers that the three factures are “three conventional methods, identical, but each accommodated to the particular requirements of a corresponding aesthetic” (Ratliff 1992: 258). The difference, then, is not about the ends, but about the means and what Signac calls the aesthetic principles corresponding to the technique. Yet, the specificity of the Neo-Impressionist technique has been very well emphasized by Meyer Schapiro, for whom: The revolutionary character of Seurat is that he has been the first painter in the history to have created paintings whose matter is quite homogeneous: in his work, the small dots that give the color are the same as those that give lines and spaces. (Schapiro 1957: 251)

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 281 This homogeneity has several meanings equally important. Indeed, for an academic painter, there is a correspondence between the touch and what is painted. However, with the dots, and their homogeneous construction of the surface, the touch becomes independent of the object, since the same touch is used for the skin and the hair, for the trunk of a tree and its leaves. In linguistics terms, we could say that before NeoImpressionism the touch was motivated, and now it becomes arbitrary. Yet, even if Signac didn’t speak of signs, he was quite aware of the arbitrary nature of the dots, since he constantly uses the term “conventional” to refer to the divided touch and put accordingly emphasis on the fact that it is an artificial means. Now the fact of using artificial means has a double implication. First, within a painting, the touch (as a means) becomes independent of the content of the painting (as an end). It is the first step for the means to become an end in themselves. And second, the relationship of painting to nature is also modified. Indeed, using artificial means signifies that the aim of the painting is not being faithful to nature any more, since the means used to render it don’t belong to nature and are conventional. As Signac noted in 1894 in his personal diary: Some years ago, I tried to prove to the other painters, using scientific experiments, that these blues, these yellows, these greens can be found in nature. Now, I content myself with saying: I am painting so because it is the technique that seems to me the most appropriate in order to give the most harmonious, the most luminous, the most colored result . . . and because I like it so. (Signac 1949: 101) Through this quote, we can grasp the dramatic shift occurring in the relationship of painting to nature. Up to the Impressionists, colors were considered as a normal way of representing nature: we look at the colors in nature and try to represent them in the painting. For Signac, however, the technique is used not to represent colors in nature, but, as he emphasized, in order to give a result as harmonious, luminous and colored as possible. Furthermore, the colors taken as a model are not the colors of nature, but the “spectral” colors, that is the colors of the rainbow. And they are used pure. This explains that most of the painters that counted for the development of color in the first half of the twentieth century passed through a Neo-Impressionist period. The list is quite impressive: Matisse, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich, Braque, Delaunay, Kupka and so on. They were fascinated by the new technique, since the fact of using artificial means has another consequence: the touch (as a means) becomes independent of the representation of nature, which was the traditional aim of painting.

282  Georges Roque Finally, not only is the divided touch a technique in order to paint through color only, but it also contains a syntax, that is, a way of organizing the contiguous color dots, as well as a complex harmony system. The vocabulary (the dots), the syntax (the divided touch), as well as the harmony constitute a totality in itself, independently of the world of the objects painting is supposed to represent. This is the main reason why the next generations of painters were so interested in Neo-Impressionism, read avidly Signac’s book and had a Neo-Impressionist phase: the dots were a way of exploring the possibility of painting through colors only, which eventually led to abstract art (Franz 1977).

Facture and faktura Signac uses the term “facture” a lot in order to refer to the way a painting is technically made. However, it is not very satisfying, even though it is useful as a general term to refer to touch, brushstroke, hatching, dividing touch and so on. The problem with this concept is that it belongs to the vocabulary of the connoisseur, as we have seen (in English it has been used since at least the fifteenth century; Koerner 1999: 10). In other words, it corresponds to the aesthetic of the brushstroke criticized by Delacroix, Ingres and Signac as a sign of the virtuosity of the hand. As such, it emphasizes the process and brackets out the product. Now, if we speak instead of the texture, it is in order to focus on the features of the surface, but in so doing we don’t take the process into account. That is the reason why I prefer to use the Russian concept Faktura, with a K, as it embraces both process and result of the process (Gough 1999: 3). As a way of conclusion, I would like to suggest that it might be useful to try to understand the issue of the touch from a semiotic perspective, if we agree to see it as a sign. In art history, two main reasons have been given for condemning touches. The first one is that the sign must be transparent, it must hide itself so as to better show the represented objects. If we want a painting to give the impression of a third dimension, its surface must be as transparent as a glass. That is exactly what Ingres said, transposed into semiotic terms. And for this purpose, the touch cannot be visible. The second one is that brushstrokes are special signs that refer to the maker of the work. Their meaning is the virtuosity of the hand. Hence their rejection by Delacroix and Signac, who consider that they divert the attention from the painting to the painter’s hand. However, they reject it for the same reason connoisseurs praise it: as a sign of the artist’s skill. Now, what about the divided touches of the Neo-Impressionists? What kind of signs are there? Regarding Peirce’s famous classification of signs, they can be considered simultaneously as index, icons and symbols. Index, since they are marks of the brush, and therefore marks

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 283 of a movement, a gesture. Icons, since they contribute, thanks to their colors, to the recognition of the painted scenes. And finally, symbols, as they are conventional signs equally applied to all the part of the painting and independently of the represented objects. This means that they simultaneously require a double or triple kind of attention. Attention to the represented scene through the touch, attention to the touch itself as an autonomous organization of luminous and vibrant color dots. And lastly, attention to the dots as marks on the canvas, marks that refer to facture. To be sure, this is a rough sketch of a semiotic approach to touch. We actually still lack tools in order to analyze touch, which has generally been overlooked by art historians. Interestingly, psychoanalysts have nevertheless drawn our attention to touches emotional meaning. Writing about painting, Ehrenzweig observed that “the great emotional power of spontaneous handwriting testifies to its hidden meaning and symbolism. A great work of painting stripped of its original brush work by a bad restorer will lose almost all of its substance” (Ehrenzweig 1967: 21). And Lacan also noted: “Don’t forget that the painter’s touch is something where a movement ends” (Lacan 1973: 104). He therefore insists on the fact that the gesture is always present when we look at a painting, gesture as a driving force to which refers the touch, calling thus our attention to touch as a sign of the act of enunciating. As he wrote elsewhere about verbal language: “The fact of saying remains forgotten behind what is said in what is heard” (“Qu’on dise reste oublié derrière ce qui se dit dans ce qui s’entend”) (Lacan 1975: 20). The same can be said about painting, so that touch reminds us that a painting is first of all a painted canvas and calls therefore our attention to its faktura.

Notes 1 Blanc’s book, Grammaire des arts du dessin was published in 1867. I am quoting here from the English translation of the chapter on color. 2 Signac’s book D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme has been published in 1899. A full English translation comes as an appendix of Ratliff (1992). I am quoting Signac from this translation. 3 The most interesting passage on touch was written by Delacroix in his diary as an entry for a Fine Arts Dictionnary after having been appointed as Member of the French Fine Arts Academy (Delacroix 1981: 611–613). This dictionary, that remained a project during Delacroix’s life, has been published as Delacroix 1996. 4 Delacroix insists more in the “touch” entry of his Dictionnary on this point; see Delacroix (1996: 202–204); he considers in particular that touch belongs to the “language” of painting, as each language implies “conventional means”. 5 The French term “énoncé” is usually translated as “utterance”, but this translation loses the parallel made in French between “énoncé” and “énonciation”, i.e., the utterance and the act of enunciation (Benveniste 1974). In what follows, I will translate “énonciation” as “the act of enunciating”.

284  Georges Roque

References Benveniste, É. (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard. Benveniste, É. (1974). “L’appareil formel de l’énonciation”. In Problèmes de linguistique générale II, 79–88. Paris: Gallimard. Bernard, É. (2012). Les lettres d’un artiste (1884–1941). Dijon: Les presses du réel. Blanc, C. [1867] (1989). “The Grammar of Painting and Engraving”. In NineteenthCentury Theories of Art, edited by J.C. Taylor, 80–88. Berkeley: University of California Press. Delacroix, E. (1981). Journal 1822–1863. Paris: Plon. Delacroix, E. (1996). Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts. Paris: Hermann. Ehrenzweig, A. (1967). The Hidden Order of Art: A Study in the Psychology of Artistic Perception. Berkeley: University of California Press. Félibien, A. [1668] (1996). Les Conférences de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture au XVIIe siècle. Reprint. Paris: ENSBA. Fénéon, F. [1887] (1966). “Neo-Impressionism”. In Impressionism and PostImpressionism 1874–1904: Sources and Documents, edited by L. Nochlin, 110–112. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Franz, E. (ed.) (1977). Signac et la libération de la couleur de Matisse à Mondrian. Exhib. cat. Grenoble: Musée de Grenoble. Gough, M. (1999). “Faktura: The Making of the Russian Avant-garde”. RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 36: 33–59. Ingres, J.-A.-D. (2006). Écrits et propos sur l’art. Paris: Hermann. Koerner, J. L. (1999). “Factura”. RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 36: 5–19. Lacan, J. (1973). Le séminaire. Livre XI. Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse. Paris: Seuil. Lacan, J. (1975). Le séminaire. Livre XX. Encore. Paris: Seuil. Marin, L. (1977). Détruire la peinture. Paris: Editions Galilée. Mérot, A. (1994). “Les modes, ou le paradoxe du peintre”. In Nicolas Poussin, exhibition catalogue, 80–88. Paris: Grand Palais. Posner D. (1993). “Concerning the ‘Mechanical’ Parts of Painting and the Artistic Culture of Seventeenth-Century France”. The Art Bulletin 75: 583–598. Ratliff, F. (1992). Paul Signac and Color in Neo-Impressionism. New York: The Rockefeller University Press. Richardson, J. [1725] (1971). An Essay on the Theory of Painting. Reprint. Menston, Yorkshire: Scolar Press. Rood, O. N. (1861). “On the Relation Between Our Perception of Distance and Color”. American Journal of Science 32: 184. Rood, O. N. [1879] (1899). Student’s Textbook of Color or Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Roque, G. (1986). “Distances critiques”. Noésis 3: 106–120. Roque, G. (1997). “La pragmática de las obras: Hacia una antropología política del espacio”. In Arte y espacio, XIX Coloquio Internacional de Historia del arte, 27–52. Mexico: UNAM. Roque, G. (2001). “Harmonie des couleurs, harmonie sociale”. 48/14. La revue du musée d’Orsay 12: 62–73.

Neo-Impressionism Touch and Facture 285 Roque, G. (2009). “Seurat and Color Theory”. In Seurat Re-Viewed, edited by P. Smith, 43–64. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Roque, G. (2013). “Signac et la théorie de la couleur”. In Signac. Les couleurs de l’eau, exhib. cat., 30–39. Giverny: musée des Impressionnismes and Paris: Gallimard, Schapiro, M. (1957). Comments given in the debate following a paper delivered in a conference. In Problèmes de la couleur, edited by I. Meyerson, 248–253. Paris: Bibliothèque générale de l’École pratique des Hautes Études, VIe section. Signac, P. (1949). “Extraits du Journal inédit de Paul Signac. I. 1894–1895”. Gazette des Beaux-Arts 36: 97–128. Sohm, P. (1999). “Maniera and the Absent Hand: Avoiding the Etymology of Style”. Res 36: 101–124. Wrigley, R. (1995). The Origins of French Art Criticism from the Ancien Régime to the Restauration. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

15 Evidence of Facture and the Appreciative Relevance of Artistic Activity David Davies

I. Introduction The appreciation of works of fine art—drawings, paintings, prints and works of sculpture—involves an experiential encounter between a receiver and an artifact that issues from a process of human making. We can think of this artifact as the vehicle through which the artistic content of the work is articulated. To what extent does the nature of the process of making that vehicle bear upon the proper appreciation of the work? And, a different but related pair of questions: (1) to what extent does an experiential recognition of that vehicle as having had a particular history of making figure in the perceptual engagement with the artifact through which a work is given for appreciation?, and (2) in what ways, if any, does such an experiential recognition, if it occurs, and any affect attending such a recognition, bear upon the proper appreciation of the work? Philosophers have offered very different answers to these questions. Some have vigorously denied that the history of making of a work’s artistic vehicle has any bearing on proper appreciation of the work. According to Clive Bell, for example, the visible manifold that a painting presents to a receiver is to be appreciated purely in virtue of the formal properties that it exemplifies, abstracting entirely from whatever process led to that manifold being ordered in the way that it is: Great art remains stable and unobscure because the feelings that it awakens are independent of time and place, because its kingdom is not of this world. To those who have and hold a sense of the significance of form what does it matter whether the forms that move them were created in Paris the day before yesterday or in Babylon fifty centuries ago? (Bell 1914: 37) At the other extreme, some philosophers have argued not only for the appreciative relevance of artistic making but also for the essentially

Evidence of Facture 287 experiential way in which the provenance of a work’s artistic vehicle must be given if full appreciation of the work is to be possible. Perhaps the most forthright expression of the latter idea occurs in the following passages from R. G. Collingwood’s The Principles of Art (1938). Collingwood maintains that “what can be painted must stand in some relation to the muscular activity of painting it” (144). As a consequence, “the art of painting is intimately bound up with the expressiveness of the gestures made by the hand in drawing and of the imaginary gestures through which a spectator of a painting appreciates these ‘tactile values’ ” (243). The imaginative content of the work of art comprises the rich qualities of the artist’s awareness as he engages in the physical acts of painting. The work itself is the imaginative transmutation of “his visual sensation of the colors and shapes of his subject, his felt gestures as he manipulates his brush, the seen shape of paint patches that these gestures leave on his canvas: in short, the total sensuous (or rather sensuousemotional) experience of a man at work before his easel” (307). It is this “imaginative experience of total activity” (148) enjoyed by the painter in his or her physical work on the painting that we, as spectators, can come to share if we look at the resulting painting “using our imagination”. The picture produces in the audience “sensuous-emotional or psychical experiences which, when raised from impressions to ideas by the activity of the spectator’s consciousness, are transmuted into a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter” (308).1 While the idea that viewers of a painting are able, through their awareness of facture, to enjoy “a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter” as she worked on the canvas is too heady for most contemporary theorists, talk of the “imaginary gestures” elicited in the spectator when she observes the results of the expressive activity of the artist has a clear relevance in the present context. Indeed, it resonates more widely with recent work in cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive science more generally, that experimentally investigates the idea that, in perceptually engaging with an artistic vehicle, a receiver can both register and represent evidence of its history of making if she is appropriately “trained” or primed to see it. The most extensive work thus far in this area has been done on dance reception. Beatriz Calvo-Merino and her fellow-researchers (2005, 2006) have investigated neuronal activity and affective response in trained and untrained observers of bodily movements executed by professional dancers. fMRI measurements of the brain activity, principally in the pre-motor cortex, of subjects watching certain kinds of dance movements, taken together with subjects’ experimentally expressed relative preferences for these kinds of movements, have been offered in support of the claim that observers involuntarily simulate the movements of dancers and that

288  David Davies this simulation has positive affect, described by the researchers as “aesthetic pleasure”. Of further interest are much stronger results (2005), both in terms of fMRI-measured neurological activity and enhanced preference, when the tested subjects had prior training in executing the kinds of movements being observed. This work has led one philosopher of dance, Barbara Montero (2006), to maintain that what is being registered by such observers is a genuine aesthetic property of movement that is given proprioceptively to the dancer so that some movements ‘feel’ beautiful when executed. The trained observer, it is argued, proprioceptively simulates the movements of the dancer and, in so doing, shares the dancer’s awareness of aesthetic properties of her movements given proprioceptively rather than visually. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have anticipated analogous findings in the reception of works in other art forms. I want to focus here upon a recent paper by Luca Ticini et al. (2014) on spectators’ responses to evidence of facture in paintings. As Ticini et al. make clear, their research seeks to experimentally assess certain speculations in a paper by David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese (2007). Freedberg and Gallese, like Calvo-Merino, are interested in exploring the implications, for the appreciative reception of artworks, of recent work on so-called mirror neurons originating in experimental studies of macaque monkeys carried out by a group of cognitive neuroscientists, including Gallese himself, based in Parma (the ‘Parma school’). Mirror neurons are neurons that are activated both by the execution of a given movement and by observing the same type of movement being executed by another agent.2 They play a crucial role in the explanations that some have offered of puzzling phenomena, such as the neonate’s apparent ability to mimic facial expressions without any opportunity to visually observe its own face.3 Mirror neurons, it is claimed, are involved in certain kinds of cross-modal neurological connections which ‘translate’ between visual apprehension of the world and the operation of motor systems in action. Mirror neurons were first discovered in the premotor and posterior parietal cortices of macaques, but subsequent research claims to have established their presence in these and other areas of the human brain. Scientists at the forefront of mirror neuron research have further claimed that they provide an innate neural basis for social cognition.4 Freedberg and Gallese maintain that, if claims about the simulation of observed behavior made by researchers working within the broad paradigm established by the work of the Parma school are correct, we might expect to see similar kinds of simulation in those who observe works of visual art. In particular, they claim that mirror-neuronal activity might account for two relationships reported by some observers: (R1) between “embodied empathetic feelings in the observer and the representational content of the work in terms of the actions, intentions, objects, emotions, and sensations depicted”; and

Evidence of Facture 289 (R2) between “embodied empathetic feelings in the observer and the quality of the work in terms of the visible traces of the artist’s creative gestures, such as vigorous modeling in clay or paint, fast brushwork and signs of the movement of the hand more generally” (Freedberg and Gallese 2007: 119). It is in relation to the claim that simulation of the artist’s creative gestures occurs when viewing visible traces of such gestures—term this claim FG2—that Ticini et al. situate their experimental work. The experiments they conducted were designed to determine whether suitably primed subjects respond affectively to evidence of facture in paintings in the manner we would predict if FG2 were correct. Early in their discussion, they clearly state how they take their work to relate to FG2: Several neuroimaging experiments have shown that the perception of artworks elicits motor activity in the observers’ brain without fully clarifying its role in aesthetic experience . . . . Some have hypothesized that it may represent the covert and involuntary simulation of the artist’s gestures when viewing a work of art, signs of which may be present on the canvas in the form of brushstrokes (Freedberg and Gallese 2007). Whether the latter interpretation is correct and whether motor activity contributes to the aesthetic experience at all, is still unclear. The abstract for their paper brings out the purported import of their experimental work for such speculations: The creation of an artwork requires motor activity. To what extent is art appreciation divorced from that activity and to what extent is it linked to it? That is the question which we set out to answer. We presented participants with pointillist-style paintings featuring discernible brushstrokes and asked them to rate their liking of each canvas when it was preceded by images priming a motor act either compatible or incompatible with the simulation of the artist’s movements. We show that action priming, when congruent with the artist’s painting style, enhanced aesthetic preference. These results support the hypothesis that involuntary covert painting simulation contributes to aesthetic appreciation during passive observation of artwork. In the pre-print version of the paper, the two distinct claims for which the experimental work provides evidence are characterized as follows: [C1] Passive observation of canvases featuring discernable brushstrokes triggers in the observer’s brain the covert simulation of actions similar to those executed by the artist during the creative act.

290  David Davies [C2] This involuntary covert simulation causally contributes to aesthetic appreciation. I want to raise some questions in a constructive spirit about the bearing of the experimental work on both [C1] and [C2]. In each case, my questions seek to clarify how we should situate the results established by Ticini et al. relative to other strands in the literature. In the case of C1, the relevant literature, as surveyed above, is recent empirical work that explores the neurological and psychological (behavioral) dimensions of our experiential engagements with the vehicles of artworks. In the case of C2, the literature is philosophical, involving claims about the bearing of aspects of artistic making on the appreciation of works of art.

II. A Critical Assessment of C1 Freedberg and Gallese, as we have seen, hypothesize—FG2—that covert simulation of the gestures of the painter occurs when the viewer recognizes evidence of facture in the marks on the canvas. One way to try to confirm this claim would be to conduct experiments analogous to those conducted by Calvo-Merino and associates. Such experiments would use fMRI to measure relevant aspects of neurological activity— especially activity in the pre-motor cortex—when suitably ‘primed’ subjects look at paintings with evident facture. The methodology adopted by Ticini et al. in their published research is less direct.5 The support that their experimental work provides for FG2 rests upon the following claims: (1) “the aesthetic appreciation for pointillist-style paintings is enhanced by presenting supraliminal action priming images that are congruent (Compatible condition) with the style required to create those paintings”, and (2) this is explicable if we assume that “the congruent priming facilitated the covert simulation of the brushstrokes present in the paintings, thus yielding to higher ratings”. As to the mechanisms involved in simulating brushstrokes, Ticini et al. refer to the work on mirror neurons by the Parma school and their associates characterized above: The concept of covert action simulation has acquired a new interest with the work conducted on the mirror neuron mechanism in the non-human and human primate brain (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2010). Through this mechanism, other agents’ actions are mirrored in one’s own motor system thus, it is thought, helping to understand others’ motor acts from ‘within’. (Ticini et al. 2014: 4)

Evidence of Facture 291 The argument in Ticini et al. for FG2 has the following structure: 1/ If motor simulation were occurring when primed subjects looked at evident facture, we would expect this to be reflected in certain differences in affect. 2/ There are indeed such measurable and statistically significant differences in affect. 3/ This supports the claim [FG2] that motor simulation is occurring. But, modeled in standard Bayesian terms, the support that is thereby provided for FG2 depends not merely upon whether FG2 can explain the evidence but upon how well it can explain the evidence relative to alternative hypotheses. Bayes theorem, we may recall, states that the support provided by evidence E for a hypothesis H is to be calculated as follows:

P ( H/E ) =

P ( E/H ) x P ( H ) P ( E/H ) x P ( H ) + P ( E/-H ) x P ( -H )

To assess the support that FG2 receives from the evidence, we therefore need to consider the values plausibly ascribed to: (BT1) the prior probability of FG2 [P(FG2)]; (BT2) the conditional probability of the evidence—the measurable and statistically significant differences in affect—given FG2 [P(E/ FG2)], and (BT3) the conditional probability of the evidence given that not-FG2 [P(E/-FG2)]. Let us begin with (BT3). At the end of their discussion, Ticini et al. themselves reflect upon a number of different ways in which we might explain the evidence E—the measured differences in preferences—if FG2 were false. These results could be also explained by alternative mechanisms not necessarily involving painting simulation. For instance, it is plausible that the implicit knowledge about the correct action needed to manipulate the paintbrush (see Buxbaum and Kalenine, 2010) may have facilitated the most functional and effortless motor program to grasp a brush in order to create pointillist-like paintings. This would be in accordance with the idea that fluency in stimulus processing can influence aesthetic responses, as well (Reber et al., 2004). Moreover, unlike in Leder et al. (2012), we cannot exclude that self-observation of one own’s hands during

292  David Davies the training may have strengthened visuo-visual (instead of visuomotor) associations between the hand grip and the painting style. We also cannot exclude that an intrinsic affective value of the action primes may have biased the preference ratings (e.g., the precision grip could have been perceived as more positive than the power grip). In this regard, a recent article from Flexas et al. showed differences in liking for abstract artwork when they were preceded by facial primes showing happiness, disgust or no emotion (Flexas et al., 2013). In particular, paintings preceded by happiness primes were liked more than those preceded by disgust primes. If it were the case in our experimental setup, our results would extend previous research on how the affective transfer elicited by priming may influence evaluative judgments (e.g., Murphy and Zajonc, 1993; Rotteveel et al., 2001) to the domain of aesthetic experience. Finally, we cannot exclude that the prior training alone could be sufficient to enhance the ratings as a result of an exposure effect, without the need of priming images presented before each painting. (Ticini et al. 2014: 4) This impressively frank recognition not only of alternative explanations of E but of alternative explanations that are themselves supported by other empirical studies gives good reason to think that the prior conditional probability of E if FG2 is false [P(E/-FG2)] is significant. Given Bayes theorem, the support that E can offer for FG2 is at least prima facie correspondingly diminished. How much it is diminished depends, inter alia, on (BT1) the prior probability of FG2 itself. This cannot be divorced from the prior probability of the more general claim that covert simulation occurs in a variety of cases, including those cases studied by Calvo-Merino. Ticini et al. draw attention to a number of other empirical studies—both behavioral and neurological—whose findings have been cited in support both of the idea of covert simulations in non-artistic contexts and of the idea that such simulations involve the activation of a mirror neuron system. The more plausible this general claim, the greater the prior probability of FG2, and correspondingly the lower the prior probability of -FG2. While those working within the Parma school paradigm will certainly argue that the evidence for various kinds of covert simulation involving mirrorneuronal activity is very strong, one must not ignore the considerable critical literature challenging, at various stages, the claims made about the nature and function of mirror neurons. I have critically discussed elsewhere some of the principal challenges and their import for parallel claims about the occurrence of covert simulations involving mirror neurons in dance spectatorship.6 To the extent that these challenges are taken seriously, this weakens the neurological evidence for covert simulation and thereby the prior probability of FG2, and it also calls into question

Evidence of Facture 293 the ability of the other studies cited here by Ticini et al. to offset the problem, noted above, consequent upon the relatively high prior probability of E given -FG2. These remarks identify some general challenges that must be addressed if we are to assess the strength of the support that Ticini et al.’s behavioral study provides for FG2. Before turning to C2, however, I want to consider two other possible challenges and how they might be met. First, the affective responses measured in the experiment are to photographic images of paintings, not to the paintings themselves. Thus, any effects produced by ‘evident facture’ are mediated by the subject’s belief that the things imaged in the photographs bear marks made in a way that either is or is not compatible with the technique imaged in the representation paired with a given presentation of a painting. Freedberg and Gallese, on the other hand, are claiming that it is the marks themselves that elicit covert simulation. This might not be thought to be a serious concern if—as the empirical studies of responses to dance suggest—photographic images can elicit covert simulation just as well, or almost as well, as observing the real thing—although this itself calls for empirical investigation. But it might be argued that the relevant features of the bodily movements in the dance case are preserved by the photographs, whereas the relevant features of facture—features manifest in the three-dimensionality of the marks on the canvas and the ways in which the appearance of these marks alters as the spectator physically moves in front of the painting, thereby altering the perceived effects of illumination on the canvas—are not preserved. Once again, this challenge by itself isn’t a problem, since it can still be maintained that such belief-mediated affective responses to the photographic displays are caused by covert simulations of the actions taken to have produced the marks on the photographed canvas. But it does distance Ticini et al.’s claims about covert simulation from the kind of sub-personal perceptual engagement with facture that Freedberg and Gallese have in mind, and also from the idea, informing Collingwood’s remarks, that it is the qualities visible in the actual marks produced by the artist’s expressive gestures that produce affective responses and covert simulation. Second, it might be thought that Ticini et al.’s results stand in an uneasy relation to Calvo-Merino et al.’s work on dance. Ticini et al. identify no significant difference between ‘art familiar’ and ‘art unfamiliar’ subjects in the test group. The experimental tests conducted by Calvo-Merino et al. on the neurological responses of ‘naive’ and ‘trained’ viewers of dance performances, on the other hand, showed that activity in the premotor cortex of subjects trained to execute particular dance routines differed significantly from such activity in ‘naive’ subjects, strongly suggesting that simulation in such cases—supposing that it occurs—reflects the prior neural establishment of the particular motor routines that are simulated.

294  David Davies It is important, however, to distinguish between two kinds of ‘nonnaivety’ in receivers of the manifest results of artistic activity. The work of Ticini et al. indicates that affective responses to evidence of facture do not differ according to one’s familiarity with or naivety concerning the general history and practice of an art and the institutional structure of the artworld. But the ‘priming’ given to subjects in their experiments establishes that none of them are ‘naive’ in a more relevant sense—the sense in which to be naive is to have no experience in executing the kinds of motor routines involved in generating the artistic manifold to which one attends. Of course, the routines for which the subjects in Ticini et al. were primed are much less sophisticated than those in the dance examples, where what matters is not merely dance training but training leading to a mastery of specific dance techniques. But the ‘routines’ involved in producing a painting executed in the pointilliste style are themselves more elementary than those involved in executing complex dance routines, and the priming given to subjects in Ticini et al. is sufficient to establish the relevant motor routines and thus sufficient for the covert simulation of those routines under the experimental situations.

III. A Critical Assessment of C2 C2, we may recall, is the claim that the covert simulation of actions similar to those executed by the artist during the creative act causally contributes to aesthetic appreciation. The issue here is the bearing of the findings in Ticini et al. on (1) the appreciation of the artworks in their study, and, relatedly, on (2) philosophical debates about whether the proper object of appreciation in our engagement with artworks comprises not merely the product of the artist’s activity but also the activity whereby that product was generated. Let me address each of these points in turn. Even if we grant that a receiver’s affective responses to artworks, as evidenced in preferences measured on Likert scales, are personal expressions of sub-personal covert simulations, the bearing of these responses on the aesthetic appreciation of those works is unclear. Consider, for example, one experimental study conducted by Calvo-Merino et al. (2008) In this study, fMRI was used to measure the brain activity of subjects who watched different dance movements. At a later session, the participants graded the movements along various aesthetic dimensions. The researchers identified distinctive bilateral activity in the occipital cortices and the right pre-motor cortex when participants viewed the moves that they rated more highly. They concluded that the empirical data “suggest a possible role of visual and sensorimotor brain areas in an automatic aesthetic response to dance. This sensorimotor response may explain why dance is widely appreciated in so many human cultures” (911). The subjects in this experiment were ‘naive’ in the sense that they had no prior experience of either observing or performing artistic dance.

Evidence of Facture 295 Experimental controls ensured that differences in their responses were attributable to differences in the kinematics of the movements observed. The experiments identified neural correlates in the tested subjects for positive responses (‘liking’) to the movements, which were taken to be correlates of positive aesthetic experiences. The locations of these correlates, in the visual and the right pre-motor cortices, were consistent with the hypothesis that they involved activation of mirror neurons. A number of features of these studies raise doubts about their relevance for philosophical questions about the aesthetics of dance. First, neural correlates were found only for the distinction between ‘liked’ and ‘disliked’ movements. No such correlates were discovered for the other more obviously aesthetic dimensions tested—‘simple/complex’, ‘dull/ interesting’, ‘weak/powerful’, and ‘tense/relaxed’ (Calvo-Merino et al. 2008: 918). However, in spite of this, the researchers took the subjects’ preference for certain movements to be an aesthetic preference and as registering the relative beauty of the movements (see, especially, the final lines of Calvo-Merino et al. 2008: 919). This suggests that ‘aesthetic’ (and indeed ‘beauty’) is being used here in a very broad sense that encompasses any positive affective response to the observed properties of something. Second, the distinctions between the physical stimuli correlated with the difference in preference and in the corresponding neural activity were ‘molar’ in nature, such as whether the dancer executed a movement while standing still or while jumping (918). We might turn a similarly critical eye on the claim that the experimental results reported in Ticini et al. bear upon the artistic appreciation of paintings. As we have already seen, there are a number of possible explanations of the expressed preferences of the subjects that would not involve any kind of motor simulation of the action of the painter, and would ground these preferences in affective responses that in no way bear upon the appreciation of the paintings—for example, explanations that take the preferences to be an artifact of priming. But suppose we grant that the expressed preferences do reflect the affective correlates of covert motor simulation on the part of viewers. How might likings so grounded bear upon the aesthetic (or more broadly artistic) appreciation of the paintings? To the appreciation of which artistically relevant properties of the painting might such affective responses contribute, and in what manner would they make such contributions? There is general consensus that the aesthetic/artistic appreciation of artworks is at least partly a matter of grasping values that reside in the artistic contents articulated by the artifact generated by the artist(s). Such contents comprise broadly representational, expressive and formal properties. Formal qualities of a visual work seem ill-fitted to being grasped through affective responses grounded in the covert simulation of the actions of the artist, since they are more global qualities of the artistic manifold, rather than qualities of individual markings of a canvas

296  David Davies evidenced in facture. More plausible, however, are expressive qualities which are, at least for some philosophers, irreducibly tied to our ability to experience, in our engagement with the artistic manifold, what are taken to be the actions and gestures of the artist generative of that manifold. Jerrold Levinson, for example, argues that this is the case with the expressive properties rightly ascribed to musical works (1996b), and the idea of artistic expression grounded in the expressive activity of the artist is central to artistic movements such as abstract expressionism and exemplified in the ‘action painting’ of an artist like Jackson Pollock. Such a view of at least some forms of artistic expression would be compatible with the empirical studies by Ticini et al, but, as in the case of the 2008 study by Calvo-Merino et al. cited above, the kinds of affective responses registered in those studies are only questionably of aesthetic relevance. To respond positively to an element in an artistic manifold in virtue of enacting a covert simulation of the gesture taken to be productive of that element falls far short of what would be required in a gestural account of artistic expression, since the latter requires that elements of facture in a painting be experienced as having a particular expressive valence. If affective responses to evident facture that are expressive of covert simulation of the gestures of the artist are to bear upon the aesthetic/ artistic appreciation of artworks, it might seem more promising to appeal to the idea, canvassed earlier, that the proper object of appreciation in our engagement with artworks is not merely the product of the artist’s activity but also the activity whereby that product was generated. We saw one ‘extreme’ version of this idea in the passages from Collingwood cited in section I above. According to Collingwood, to grasp the expressive content of a visual artwork just is to imaginatively simulate the creative process generative of the artistic vehicle. The bearing of an awareness of the history of making of an artifact on the proper appreciation of the artwork for which it is the vehicle has been a central theme in recent work in analytic philosophy of art. ‘Contextualists’ hold that aspects of the context in which an artistic vehicle is generated are partly constitutive of the work itself, and play a central role in determining its artistic content. For at least some contextualists, the artist’s achievements in generating the artistic vehicle are among the properly artistic values of the work that must be grasped if the work is to be fully appreciated. Jerrold Levinson, for example, espouses such a broad contextualism, arguing that the pleasure proper to an object as art is one that is fully cognisant of the background from which a work emerges, the process whereby it came to have the exact shape that it does, the challenges inherent in the medium and material employed, the problems with which the work is wrestling, and so on. The proper pleasure of art is an informed pleasure, and understands that its object—unlike the

Evidence of Facture 297 beauties of nature—is an artifact, has a history, and represents something done and achieved. (1996a: 16–17) In subsequent papers, he stresses that what he terms ‘problem-solving value’ is itself a component in a work’s artistic value: knowledge of the artist’s achievement in generating the artistic vehicle bears directly on proper appreciation of a work, and not merely indirectly through the ways in which it partly determines the artistic content articulated through that vehicle. I have elsewhere (Davies 2004, ch. 3, and 2005) defended related views.7 How do the findings of Ticini et al. relate to this literature? In particular, what, in the context of this literature, should we make of their claim to have shown that “action priming, when congruent with the artist’s painting style, enhanced aesthetic preference”, and to have thereby provided support for “the hypothesis that involuntary covert painting simulation contributes to aesthetic appreciation during passive observation of artwork”? Obviously, before any claims about the aesthetic import of the affective results of perceived facture can get off the ground, we have to establish that ‘making matters’ for appreciation. If it doesn’t, then the registering of facture and any response to such registering will have a bearing on the proper appreciation of the work only if sensitivity to these features of painted canvases is itself a precondition for such appreciation. It is important to realize that this is an ineliminably normative question. It isn’t answered by pointing out that, given that the simulatory and affective responses to the perception of facture is involuntary, it is necessarily causally implicated in appreciation. For both the hypothesized simulation and the measured difference in affect presuppose, in the experimental work, prior ‘priming’ to establish relevant visuomotor coordination. We can grant that the perceptual engagements of primed receivers with pointilliste paintings have an affective dimension that is lacking in the engagements of non-primed receivers. But we must still ask whether this additional affective dimension provides a richer appreciation of the work, or represents a distraction from its proper appreciation. That experience of the artistic manifold informed by the perception of facture is richer does not settle matters here. Taking LSD before looking at pointilliste paintings will provide a richer visual experience, but this doesn’t mean that proper appreciation of such paintings requires chemical ‘priming’! This case is similar to one discussed by Vincent Bergeron and Dominic Lopes (2009). Experimental studies have revealed significant differences in aesthetic responses to performances of musical works when the latter are not only heard but also seen. These differences concern the expressive qualities that receivers ascribe to the performance. This clearly indicates that what is comprised by the broadly aesthetic experience of an

298  David Davies instance of a musical work is conditional upon the contingent circumstances in which the receiver encounters the audible properties of that instance. But it does not tell us whether one or other circumstance of audition provides better access to the expressive properties of the performance, or, indeed, of the work performed. And the same considerations apply to the empirical evidence of differential responses furnished by the studies of Calvo-Merino et al. (2005). Again, we can ask whether the heightened receptivity of the trained dancer, and the supposed occurrence of covert simulations of movements of whose felt properties the viewer is proprioceptively aware, provides (1) a deeper appreciation of the dance performance or of the work performed or (2) an obstacle to proper appreciation. Let us return to Ticini et al.’s suggestion that the involuntary responses—simulatory and affective—of primed receivers to evidence of facture in paintings can causally contribute to aesthetic appreciation of those works. In what way is this supposed to happen? (1) One possibility is that the affective response provides evidence of covert simulation, and covert simulation provides evidence of facture, where it is features of the history of making manifest in facture that bear upon the appreciation and the artistic value of the work. On this account, it is through playing such an evidential role that affective responses contribute to appreciation. The affective accompaniment of simulation, on this account, is not itself a contributory part of our experiential appreciation of the work, but merely evidence of something else that may enter into that appreciation. This doesn’t seem to be what Ticini et al. are claiming, however. For one thing, if the affect and simulation only play such an evidential role, then they have no privileged status relative to other non-perceptual forms of evidence of a work’s history of making, such as scholarly accounts by art historians of the artistic methods employed. (2) Rather, the claim seems to be that affective responses attending the covert simulation of perceived facture do not play a primarily evidential role in identifying aspects of facture, but enter directly, as positive affect, into the appreciation of the artwork. This, presumably, is the sense in which such responses contribute causally to appreciation. (3) But in this case, as just noted, we are confronted with the normative question whether such responses to perceived facture should matter for proper appreciation—the kind of issue raised by Bergeron and Lopes. Here is another take on these concerns. Let’s assume that appreciation of artistic making—of the artist’s achievements in generating the artistic vehicles for her works—is a crucial element in the proper appreciation of artworks. We may ask whether ‘maker’s knowledge’ of such things matters, or whether one can equally well appreciate ‘from the outside’ what was done. Is it enough, in other words, that I know how pointilliste paintings are produced in order to properly appreciate such works, or does experience of performing the relevant actions also matter? Would

Evidence of Facture 299 I gain as full an appreciation of the pointilliste paintings if I first watched a video showing how they are made, and was then experimentally tested in the same way? In this case, if I exhibited the same preferences, should we also conclude that there is an embodied simulation here? One argument for the view that maker’s knowledge does matter is that only with such knowledge can we assess the magnitude of the artist’s achievement—as, for example, with a performer’s execution of a very difficult passage in a musical work. But might it also be enough that we have independent evidence—perhaps the testimony of those who possess maker’s knowledge and tell us how difficult it is to perform certain kinds of artistic acts? Montero’s claim (2006) that only those with appropriate dance training can be proprioceptively aware of the ‘felt’ beauty of a dance movement offers one kind of argument for the significance of understanding the activities constitutive of making ‘from the inside’, but this argument fails to address the normative question voiced above, and doesn’t in any obvious way generalize to the case of painting. Let us confront the normative question head on. Is it plausible to think that the satisfaction that a receiver experiences in perceiving facture in a work’s artistic vehicle bears directly upon the ‘proper’ appreciation of the work? It might be thought that such affective responses to one’s own simulations of the artist’s activity do not bear upon the value of the work. But it might be responded that this is no different in principle from satisfactions grounded in the effects produced in us by the other manifest features of a work—for example, its composition or color array. In the latter cases, we would say that the response is an aesthetic one grounded in the experienced qualities of the work, so why shouldn’t we say the same in the case of affect grounded in the perception of facture? But the experienced satisfactions bearing upon artistic appreciation that derive from exploring such manifest features of an artistic manifold as composition and arrangement of colored forms is a satisfaction that is grounded in the determination, through such explorations, of those features of the work that make up its artistic content—those broadly representational, expressive and exemplificatory properties that, as noted above, we take to be articulated through the artist’s intentional manipulations of the artistic medium. Here it is obvious that satisfactions attending such experiential explorations of the manifold bear upon the artistic value of the work and upon its proper appreciation. (I assume that we are using ‘satisfaction’ in a broad sense—clearly ‘liking’ is not itself a condition for something’s being such a property.) But neither facture nor our responses to facture have artistic value simply as such. It is the nature of what the artist has done—what the artist achieves in (rather than through) her engagement in those activities—that is relevant here. This requires that we use evidence of making—whether visible or indirect—in constructing a broader sense of what the artist has done. We assess this, as Levinson suggests, in terms of the challenges an

300  David Davies artist’s project presents, how the artist overcomes these challenges, the originality and ingenuity involved in such solutions, how this furnishes new practical resources for the medium, and the historical context in which this making occurs. Michael Baxandall’s model (1985), in Patterns of Intention, is helpful here, as elsewhere: we view the artifact that results from a process of making as ‘a solution to a problem in a situation’. Visible evidence of facture, then, it might be argued, only bears upon artistic appreciation insofar as it enters into such a reconstruction and assessment of the artist’s ‘doing’. As suggested above, this role seems to be evidential. All of these reflections lead to the following question: Insofar as an appreciation of the artist’s achievement is an essential part of the appreciation of her work, does the value of that achievement contribute to the value of the work through the experiential value of either the process itself, as experienced by the artist, or our experience of recognizing the process. Suppose, for example, that part of Seurat’s achievement in his paintings lies in the way he was able to use the stipple technique to produce markings that visually affect the viewer powerfully in a way not realized by previous painters, thereby serving in a novel way the general artistic interest in effective depiction. The artistic content that I grasp and appreciate in exploring the resulting manifold is clearly partly constitutive of my artistic appreciation of the work. But does any pleasure that I feel as a result of experientially simulating the kind of gesture used to produce such a manifold via the same instrumental means as employed by Seurat bear on appreciation? It does, of course, if, like Collingwood, we take the appreciation of an artwork to involve simulating the creative activity of the artist, appreciating the artist’s achievement ‘from the inside’, so that the value of the work resides, wholly or partly, in this experience. If we are not Collingwoodians of this stripe, however, one salient question we may ask—a question addressed in recent literature in the philosophy of art—is whether all artistic value is experiential value, a value that resides in the (perhaps very broad) range of experiences elicited in suitably qualified receivers in their engagements with the work. This question is particularly germane when we consider achievement value—the value that resides in what an artist has achieved in her making of the artistic vehicle of an artwork. I have argued elsewhere (2005) that, in such a case, experiential value cannot ground achievement value. Where I am experientially affected by what I take the artist to have achieved, my response is prompted by a recognition of a value that the achievement has: the value is not grounded in my affective response, but vice versa. But if facture enters into artistic appreciation through its evidential bearing on what the artist achieves, then it is through our intellectual recognition of its qualities, not through the qualities of the experiences elicited in us when we register these qualities, that it enters into the proper appreciation of a

Evidence of Facture 301 work. Such experiences, again, play an evidential role. While a Collingwoodian account of artistic appreciation will warmly embrace the idea that affective responses elicited by facture factor directly into aesthetic appreciation, contemporary contextualists who wish to include achievement value in artistic value are unlikely to agree.

Notes 1 For a much more detailed discussion of Collingwood’s views on the role of perceived facture in artistic appreciation, see Davies (2008). 2 For critical reviews of the work on mirror neurons by some of the principal researchers in the field, see Gallese (2009), Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2010). For claims about the more general philosophical significance of the work on mirror neurons for our understanding of cognition and agency, see Gallagher (2005), esp. 220–223. 3 See Gallagher (2005), chapter 3, for an argument to this effect. For skepticism about neonate imitation see Ray and Heyes (2011). 4 See, for example, the annotated summary of work relating mirror neurons to empathy in Freedberg and Gallese (2007: 197–203): ‘Neuroscientific research has shed light on the ways in which we empathize with others by emphasizing the role of implicit models of others’ behaviors and experiences—that is, embodied simulation. Our capacity to pre-rationally make sense of the actions, emotions and sensations of others depends on embodied simulation, a functional mechanism through which the actions, emotions or sensations we see activate our own internal representations of the body states that are associated with these social stimuli, as if we were engaged in a similar action or experiencing a similar emotion or sensation. Activation of the same brain region during first- and third-person experience of actions, emotions and sensations suggests that, as well as explicit cognitive evaluation of social stimuli, there is probably a phylogenetically older mechanism that enables direct experiential understanding of objects and the inner world of others’ (198). 5 Neurological studies were conducted as part of the same experimental project presented in Ticini et al. (2014, but no analysis of the former studies has been made available at the time of writing. 6 For a survey of skeptical responses to these and other claims about mirror neurons, see Davies (2013). 7 The claim that the process generative of the artistic vehicle of an artwork bears directly on artistic appreciation and artistic value can be funded by at least two different views as to the nature of the work itself. For a standard contextualist like Levinson (1980), the work is the contextualized product of the artist’s activity as produced in a certain way. For other contextualists such Gregory Currie (1989) and myself (2004), the work is itself the generative process (type or token) as completed by the product.

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302  David Davies Calvo-Merino, B. et al. (2005). “Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An FMRI Study with Expert Dancers”. Cerebral Cortex 15: 1243–1249. Calvo-Merino, B. et al. (2006). “Seeing or Doing? Influence of Visual and Motor Familiarity in Action Observation”. Current Biology 16: 1905–1910. Calvo-Merino, B., C. Jola, D. E. Glaser and P. Haggard. (2008). “Towards a Sensorimotor Aesthetics of Performing Art”. Consciousness and Cognition 17: 911–922. Collingwood, R. G. (1938). The Principles of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Currie, G. (1989). An Ontology of Art. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Davies, D. (2004). Art as Performance. Oxford: Blackwell. Davies, D. (2005). “Against ‘Enlightened Empiricism’  ”. In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, edited by M. Kieran, 22–34. Oxford: Blackwell. Davies, D. (2008). “Collingwood’s ‘Performance’ Theory of Art”. British Journal of Aesthetics 48: 162–174. Davies, D. (2013). “Dancing Around the Issues: Prospects for an Empirically Grounded Philosophy of Dance”. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70: 195–202. Freedberg, D. and V. Gallese. (2007). “Motion, Emotion, and Empathy in Aesthetic Experience”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11: 197–203. Gallagher, S. (2005). How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallese, V. (2009). “Motor Abstraction: A Neuroscientific Account of How Action Goals and Intentions are Mapped and Understood”. Psychological Research 73: 486–498. Levinson, J. (1980). “What a Musical Work Is”. Journal of Philosophy 77: 5–28. Levinson, J. (1996a). “Pleasure and the Value of Works of Art”. In The Pleasures of Aesthetics, 11–24. Ithaca: Cornell. Levinson, J. (1996b). “Musical expressiveness”. In The Pleasures of Aesthetics, 90–125. Ithaca, NY: Cornell. Montero, B. (2006). “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense”. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64: 231–242. Ray, E. D. and C. M. Heyes. (2011). “Imitation in Infancy: The Wealth of the Stimulus”. Developmental Science 14: 92–105. Rizzolatti, G. and C. Sinigaglia. (2010). “The Functional Role of the ParietoFrontal Mirror Circuit: Interpretations and Misinterpretations”. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 11: 265–274. Ticini, L.F., L. Rachman, J. Pelletier and S. Dubal. (2014). “Enhancing Aesthetic Appreciation by Priming Canvases with Actions that Match the Artist’s Painting Style”. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 3: 1–6.

Contributors

Katerina Bantinaki is an Assistant Professor in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art at the University of Crete. Her research interests include different issues relevant to the nature and character of pictorial experience, aesthetic perception, art and emotion and artistic authorship. Clotilde Calabi is Associate Professor at the University of Milano. She has written extensively on philosophy of perception, perceptual illusions, attention and emotions. She is currently working on motion experience. Greg Currie teaches philosophy at the University of York. He is executive editor of Mind & Language and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has taught in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and was a visiting professor at L’Ecole Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris in 2014. His most recent book is Narratives and Narrators (Oxford, 2010) and he hopes that Imagining and Knowing: the cognitive power of fiction will appear soon (also with Oxford). David Davies is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. He is the author of Art as Performance (Blackwell 2004), Aesthetics and Literature (Continuum 2007) and Philosophy of the Performing Arts (Wiley-­ Blackwell 2011). He is also the editor of The Thin Red Line (2008) and co-editor of Blade Runner (2015), both in the Routledge series Philosophers on Film. He has published widely on philosophical issues relating to film, photography, performance, music, literature and visual art, and on issues in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Robert Hopkins is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. His publications include various papers on the aesthetics of pictures and the other visual arts, and how pictures represent; on film; and on photography. He is currently working on a book on perception, the imagination and episodic memory. Wolfgang Huemer is Professore Associato at the University of Parma. His research focuses mainly on the philosophy of literature, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language as well as on the

304  Contributors relation between early analytic philosophy and early phenomenology. He is author of The Constitution of Consciousness: A Study in Analytic Phenomenology (Routledge, 2005) and numerous articles and is co-editor of The Literary Wittgenstein (with John Gibson; Routledge 2004) and of On Beauty (with Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, Philosophia, forthcoming). John Kulvicki has taught at Dartmouth College since 2004, and he writes about representation in art and perception. Currently he is investigating ways of appying tools from the philosophy of language to pictorial representation, and tools from the philosophy of art to the philosophy of perception. Dominic McIver Lopes FRSC teaches philosophy at the University of British Columbia. His books include Understanding Pictures (1996), Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Picture (2005), Four Arts of Photography (2009), Beyond Art (2014) and Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value (2018). His next project develops a cosmopolitan approach to aesthetic culture. Regina-Nino Mion is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her research focuses on Husserl’s phenomenology and aesthetics. Bence Nanay is a BOF Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp and Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and two monographs with Oxford University Press, with two more under contract. He has also received a number of major grants, including one from the European Research Council. Jérôme Pelletier is member of Institut Jean-Nicod and associate professor in philosophy at University of Brest. After a PhD thesis in the philosophy of language on fiction and reference, he has conducted in the recent years at Institut Nicod two interdisciplinary research projects in cognitive aesthetics: the AVE project ANR-10-CREA-005 (2011–2014) and the FICTION project ANR-11-EMCO-008 (2012– 2016). Both projects have combined state-of-the-art experiments with a philosophical framework for thinking about our emotions in response to paintings and fictions. Georges Roque, a philosopher and art historian, is honorary senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris. He has two main lines of research: color theory (in particular the relationships between the scientific conceptions of color and artistic practice, as well as methodology of color analysis in artworks); image theory (visual rhetoric, relationship between text and image, visual argumentation). He has published about fifteen books. The latest one is Quand la lumière devient couleur, Paris, Gallimard, 2018.

Contributors 305 Marco Santambrogio was one of the founding members of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy and of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy. He taught philosophy of language at the Universities of Bologna, Cagliari and Parma and has published extensively on proper names, direct reference and fictional entities. Elisabeth Schellekens is Chair Professor of Aesthetics at the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala and Co-Editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics. She has published on aesthetic reasons, the relation between aesthetic and moral value, aesthetic perception, Kant, Hume, neuroaesthetics, the value of cultural heritage and conceptual art. Currently, she is working on a project to do with aesthetic understanding and the connection between aesthetic value and epistemic value. Paolo Spinicci (1958) is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of Milan. His publications include various papers and books on Husserl; on the aesthetics of pictures; and on perception. He is currently working on a book on imagination and fiction. Enrico Terrone is “chercheur associé” at Collège d’études mondiales in Paris. He works on issues at the intersection of aesthetics, philosophy of mind and social ontology, especially issues concerning fiction and depiction. His primary area of research is philosophy of film. Alberto Voltolini (PhD Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1989) is a philosopher of language and mind whose works have focused mainly on fiction, intentionality, depiction and Wittgenstein. He is currently Professor in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Turin (Italy). He has been awarded scholarships at the Universities of Geneva and Sussex. He has been visiting professor at the Universities of California, Riverside (1998), Australian National University, Canberra (2007), Barcelona (2010), London (2015), Auckland (2007, 2018). He has been a member of the Steering Committee of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy (2002–2008) and of the Board of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (2009–2012). His publications include How Ficta Follow Fiction (Springer, 2006), as well as the “Fiction” entry (with F. Kroon) of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction (Palgrave, 2015). John Zeimbekis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Patras. He works on the philosophy of perception, especially demonstrative thought, the metaphysics of qualities and the relations between thought, perception, imagery, memory and pictures. He recently coedited The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception (OUP, 2015). He also works on topics in aesthetics and is the author of a book on aesthetic value, Qu’est-ce qu’un Jugement Esthétique? (Vrin, 2006).

Index

acquaintance principle 7, 22 – 23, 26, 34n4 aesthetic consciousness (attitude) 114 – 117 aesthetic evaluation 9, 38, 48, 51 – 54, 59 – 60, 66, 68 – 69; judgment of 66; Positive Aesthetic Evaluation Thesis 53 – 55 aesthetic experience 2 – 3, 6 – 8, 15, 17, 22, 24 – 25, 27 – 32, 105, 114 – 119, 289, 292, 295, 297 aesthetic judgment 21 – 24, 26, 29 – 30, 34n2, 34n4, 55, 257 – 258 aesthetic properties 21 – 22, 26, 30, 34n4, 52, 59, 288 aesthetic value (of an artwork) 2, 4, 6 – 7, 21 – 22, 24, 26, 29, 33n1, 34n4, 53, 61, 88n16, 116, 159 agency (agentiality) 6, 10, 12, 15, 92, 94, 126 – 127, 235, 244n4, 263, 288 Alberti, L-B. 138 Alston, W. 61 analogical representant 112 anamorphosis 2, 12 – 13, 162 – 164, 166, 168, 183; hosted 166; integral 166 appearance 42, 75, 77 – 81, 86n6, 108 – 119, 120n16, 121n19, 133, 141, 150, 175, 183, 253, 255, 259, 261, 293 appreciation: epistemic 38; pictorial 2 – 3, 7 – 8, 38 – 39, 41 – 43, 47 – 48, 74 apprehension: of expressive attitude 33; image-object 108, 117, 121n21; physical image (thing) 108, 110, 117, 121n21; sensation (apprehension contents) 107 – 109,

115, 117, 121n21; subject 110, 121n21 Arango-Nuñez, S. 61 artistic vehicle 296 – 299, 301n7 artwork 9, 22, 25 – 32, 34n5, 51 – 69, 69n9, 135, 150, 152, 195, 201, 288 – 290, 292, 294 – 297, 301n7 artworld 57 – 58, 61, 66 – 67, 294 Aspect View 86n6 attention 3 – 5, 10, 29, 73 – 74, 81, 84, 91, 93, 95, 100 – 101, 108, 115, 118, 140, 145, 164, 172, 174, 189, 219, 226, 233 – 235, 238, 242 – 243, 250, 259 – 260, 262 – 264, 277, 282 – 283; aesthetic 118, 259; endogenous 97, 100; spatial 93, 97, 100 attunement 29 – 30 Bantinaki, K. 7, 11 Baxandall, M. 39 – 42, 45, 47 – 48, 64 – 65, 300 Beardsley, M. 21 Belke, A. 135 Block, N. 79, 93, 95 Bresson, R. (Au hasard Balthazar) 240 – 242 Briscoe, R. 81, 97 Brough, J. 106, 109, 116 – 117 Brown, J. 125, 127 – 128, 132 – 136 brushstroke 16, 129, 270, 272 – 275, 282 Budd, M. 43 Calabi, C. 7, 9 Carrasco, M. 91 Carroll, N. 126, 134 Casati, R. 79

Index  307 category 9, 51 – 59, 61, 66 – 68, 69n9, 87n14, 88n17, 159n2, 177n6, 249; of art 55, 57 Chardin, J-S. (Soap Bubbles) 41, 45 – 48 Chasid, A. 75, 80, 125, 127 – 129, 132, 136 Churchland, P. 91 cognitive feelings 9, 61 – 63, 65, 68 – 69, 69n11 cognitive penetration 42, 97 – 98; weak 86n4 comma-shaped stroke 16 compatibility problem 75, 77 conceptual (non-perceptual) art 7 – 8, 24 – 25, 27 – 28, 68 configurational nondepictive properties 129 – 132 content (significance): apprehension 108; artistic 295, 297, 299 – 300; (enriched) of configurational fold 9, 11, 75 – 79, 86nn6 – 7, 102; of the C-series 238, 243n2; depictive 204, 266n11, 257; discursive 234; distorted figurative 81; egocentrically represented 94 – 95, 102n1; expressive 15, 32, 125, 127 – 128, 131 – 133, 136 – 137, 296; figurative 1, 5 – 7, 15, 81 – 82, 87n9, 87n11, 171, 175; imaginative 287; intensional 260; (low-level) perceptual 91, 98, 230, 236; pictorial 2, 11, 87n9, 93, 97 – 99, 101 – 102, 125, 127, 133, 137 – 140, 159, 161, 171, 202, 271, 275, 281; of pictorial seeing (experience) 8, 10, 101, 125, 127, 133, 136 – 140, 149, 159n1, 177n1, 205, 207, 230, 232; poor figurative 81; of recognitional fold 75 – 79, 81, 86n6; of the R-series 236, 238, 243n2; representational 4, 12, 102, 132, 136 – 137, 148, 152, 156 – 157, 236, 288; scenario 92; sensuous 121n21; temporal 201, 219, 221; of visual experience 92; of a V-representing state 37; see also volumetric, content content-apprehension-schema 108, 117, 121n21 content-bearing properties of a picture 120n10 Crowther, T. 91, 98

Currie, G. 7, 15 Cutting, J. 74, 94, 99, 101 – 102 Danto, A. 9, 56 – 58, 65, 67, 130, 135 Davies D. 7, 15 – 16 Delacroix, E. 15 – 16, 251, 253, 255, 258, 270 – 276, 278 – 280, 282 (In)dependence: 21, 74 – 75, 85, 109, 152, 165, 168, 176, 177n1, 227 – 228, 236, 240, 258, 278, 281, 291, 301n4; causal 80; counterfactual 6, 48, 92 – 93, 265; existential 80; mind- 86n3; response- 21, 33n1; stimulus 92, 95, 97, 100 depiction 36, 43, 45, 99, 114, 120n15, 126 – 127, 139, 173, 177n5, 181 – 182, 188, 195, 249, 252, 255, 260 depictive function 109 – 110, 116, 120n14 depictive merit property 8, 45 – 47; see also pictorial merit depth 76, 93 – 95, 97 – 101, 164, 173, 175, 177, 237, 253; absolute 81; cues 93, 95, 97, 100; relative 81; stereoscopic 169 design 5, 95, 175, 208 – 209, 212, 220, 243n2, 252 – 253, 256, 258 – 260; see also design properties (features) design properties (features) 5 – 6, 10, 12, 73, 75 – 76, 79, 81 – 85, 86n4, 88n16, 107, 178n15, 208 – 210, 212, 252; extra 73 – 74, 76; as manners of presentation 82, 87n11; mere 10, 73 – 74, 82, 84 – 85, 87n11 design-scene properties 5 deviant figurative (or formal) properties 11, 125 – 127, 129, 131 – 138 De Warren, N. 106 diegetic features 235 – 236, 238, 243n3 distortion: (stylistic) figurative 12, 85, 124 – 125, 129 – 132, 135 – 141, 157, 162 – 164; perspective 164 – 168, 172, 176, 177n1, 177n5, 178n10 Dokic, J. 78 dot 153, 169, 178n11, 258, 270 – 272, 278 – 283 Duchamp, M. (Fountain) 51 – 52, 57, 63, 69

308 Index Egré, P. 54 emergence 74, 79, 82, 84, 100 expressive function 131, 136, 139, 153 expressive properties (features, qualities) 11, 33, 88n16, 129 – 130, 132, 137 – 139, 295 – 299 expressive representation 135 facture 3, 15 – 17, 132, 270 – 302 faktura 282 – 283 Ferencz-Flats, C. 117 Ferretti, G. 78, 81, 182 figure-ground segmentation (segregation) 76, 98 Flam, J. 133, 135 Fodor, J. 91 Freedberg, D. 252, 257, 266nn20 – 21, 288 – 290, 293, 301n4 French, C. 23 Fried, M. 41 – 42, 45, 47 – 48 Gallese, V. 252, 257, 266nn20 – 21, 288 – 290, 293, 301n4 Gerbino, W. 97 Gericault, T. (The Raft of The Medusa) 32 Gestalt 82, 84, 87n12, 88n16 gestures 1, 16, 163, 250, 255 – 256, 274, 283, 287, 289 – 290, 296, 300; communicative 167; expressive 293 Gibson, J. 99 Goldman 43 Gombrich, E. 1, 80, 99, 105, 202 Goodman, N. 36, 45, 59 – 60, 137 Gorodeisky, K. 23 grouping properties 9 – 10, 73 – 77, 79 – 80, 82, 84 – 85, 86nn3 – 4, 86nn6 – 7 hallucination 61, 109; perceptionbased 79 Harrison, A. 130 hatching 16, 129, 258, 279, 282 Hogarth, W. 64 Holbein, H. (The Ambassadors) 12, 166, 169, 183 Hopkins, R. 1, 5, 7, 13 – 14, 23, 26 – 28, 36, 38, 45, 75, 77, 85, 127, 133, 145 – 146, 301 Huemer, W. 7, 9 Husserl, E. 3, 10 – 11, 105 – 119 Hyman, J. 6, 78, 130

image consciousness 10, 105 – 108, 111, 114 – 117, 119nn1 – 3, 119n5, 121n20, 121n26; impure 114; pure 114 imagination 26, 28, 79, 131, 237 – 239, 251, 274, 287; mental imagery 92, 110, 120n17; perceptual 8, 26 – 28, 107; physical 107; sensory 26, 34n6; visual(ization) 95, 97 – 98, 106, 119n3 inflection 5 – 6, 12 – 14, 126, 128, 144 – 146, 149, 151, 153, 155, 159, 162 – 163, 172, 175 – 176, 201 – 202, 205, 208 – 210, 212, 218 – 221, 222n2, 223n11; temporal 14, 201 – 202, 210 – 212, 214, 218 – 222, 223n10; see also seeing-as, inflected Ingres, J-A-D. 15 – 16, 253, 258, 270 – 271, 276 – 277, 282 Iseminger, G. 43 Kandinsky, W. 139 Kanizsa, G. 97 Kant, I. 21, 51 Kennedy, J. 38 Kosslyn, S. 92 Kulvicki, J. 1, 7, 13, 45, 89 Laetz, B. 23 Laios, K. 130 Lamarque, P. 67 Lamme, V. 95 Lang, B. 130 Leder, H. 135, 258, 291 Leone, S. (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) 14, 201, 213 – 214, 219 – 222 Levinson, J. 43, 59, 61, 182, 232 – 233, 296, 299 Livingston, P. 22, 237 – 238 Lopes, D. 1, 7 – 8, 10, 46 – 48, 78, 99, 107, 202, 208 – 209, 252, 256, 264, 297 – 298 Lotz, C. 108 Mach’s figure 92 Magritte R. (The Human Condition) 13, 194; (Le Blanc-Seeing) 12, 153 – 157 Manet, E. (La Prune) 146, 151, 159n2; (Portrait of Madame Brunet) 159n2; (Un Bar aux Folies Bergère) 146

Index  309 Manzoni, P. (Socle du monde) 63, 65 Marbach, E. 11 marks: depictive 15, 128, 249 – 250; design 252 – 253, 256; figurative 12 – 13, 174 – 175; merely surface 252, 256; vehicle marks 12 – 13, 174 – 176 Marr, D. 94, 97, 99, 101 – 102 Martin, M. 78 Massironi, M. 74, 94, 99, 101 – 102 Matisse, H. (La musique) 133 – 135, 137, 141 Matthen, M. 78 meaning (aboutness) of an artwork 56 – 57, 65 Merleau-Ponty, M. 140 – 141 Mervis, C. 54 Meskin, A. 23 metaiconic game 12, 172 – 177 Michaelian, K. 61 Mion, R-N. 7, 9 – 11 moments: analogizing 11, 105, 111, 113 – 119; nonanalogizing 11, 105, 113 – 118, 121n27 Mothersill, M. 43 Nanay, B. 4 – 5, 7, 13, 75, 84, 105 – 107, 110, 144 Neander, K. 125 Newall, M. 15, 202 Nishihara, K. 94 nondiegetic features 237 – 238; discursive 14, 234 – 235, 242; perceptual 14, 231, 233 – 236, 238, 242 onefoldness 80 outline shape 121n25 Pacioli, L. 52 Parmigianino (Madonna with the Long Neck) 11 – 12, 116, 124, 128, 131, 137, 147 – 151, 157, 159n2 Peacocke, C. 99 Pelletier, J. 7, 12 Pelletier, L. 161 perception (ordinary object) 8 – 10, 12, 21 – 26, 28 – 33, 40, 52, 75, 77 – 78, 91 – 94, 97 – 98, 100, 107, 109, 111, 121n21, 138 – 140, 161, 163 – 164, 168, 178n14, 229 – 231, 234, 253; aesthetic 25, 51 – 52; cognitively driven

picture perception 10, 95, 97 – 100; expressive (physiognomic) 137 – 140, 148, 154; face-to-face 26, 28, 134, 139, 144, 145, 146, 147, 151, 192, 207; of distance and color 278; of emotional attitudes 32; of facture 15 – 17, 297, 299; of high-level properties 88n16, 138; of the vehicle (surface) 174, 176; intellectual 62; illusory 10, 77; knowingly illusory 77 – 79; of low-level properties 88n16, 138; misperception 183; nonstereoptical 80; pictorial 74, 81, 93 – 95, 97 – 100, 105 – 106, 109, 146, 157, 162, 164, 167, 174, 176, 177n1; of the picture’s content 175; quasi- 109, 111, 121nn20 – 21, 177n1; problem 75, 78; stereoptical 81; touch 270; transparency of 261, 264; visually driven picture perception 10, 94 – 95, 97 – 100 perceptual activity 10, 86n7, 91 – 92, 94, 101 – 102; affecting agentive phenomenology 91; affecting sensory phenomenology 91, 93, 98, 100; telic 91, 98 perceptual experience 7, 10, 14, 16, 21 – 22, 24, 26 – 27, 30 – 31, 34n4, 73 – 74, 78, 87n11, 92, 105, 109, 140 – 141, 150, 159n1, 231 – 232, 234 – 235, 238, 243n3, 253, 261 perceptual properties 79, 82 – 85, 87n11, 138; high-level 87n16; low-level 87n16 Perceptual Requirement (PR) 7 – 8, 22 – 27, 31 – 32, 34n4 period eye 39 perspective 2, 12 – 14, 32, 66, 127 – 128, 132, 135, 137, 162 – 164, 166 – 168, 172 – 173, 175 – 176, 177n1, 177nn4 – 5, 178n7, 178n10, 178n14, 183, 214 – 218, 223n7, 226 – 228, 230 – 231, 236, 239 – 240, 242, 244n4, 253, 275, 277, 282 Peterson, M. 93 Pettit, P. 21 phantasy 106 – 107, 119nn2 – 3, 120n9 phenomenal awareness (visual) 8, 73, 79, 84, 95, 97, 202, 209 – 210, 213, 217; (proprioceptive) 298 – 299 photographs 2, 4, 25 – 27, 47, 113, 116, 181, 183 – 184, 187 – 189,

310 Index 191 – 196, 196n5, 203 – 204, 208, 210, 237, 249 – 250, 252 – 254, 258 – 265, 265n3, 267nn34 – 43, 293 pictorial experience: merited 155, 157 pictorialization 107 pictorial merit 8, 39, 41 – 42, 45 – 47 pictures: anamorphic (paintings) 87n14, 163 – 164, 177n5; (perspectival) anamorphic images 12, 161 – 169, 171 – 176, 178n7, 178n10, 178n12; ‘aspect dawning’ 2, 76, 86n7, 87nn13 – 14, 178n11; caricatures 3, 11, 83 – 84, 87n15; FFU subject (object, scene) 146 – 148, 151 – 152, 156 – 157; fortuitous (images) 74, 94 – 95; the how of a picture 5, 105, 115, 17, 132, 137; image-object (visually encoded) 10 – 11, 85n1, 105 – 108, 110 – 118, 120n6, 120n11, 120nn16 – 17, 121n23, 121n26; image-subject 10 – 11, 105 – 108, 110 – 119, 119n2, 119n5, 120n6, 120n11, 120n13, 120nn17 – 18, 121nn20 – 21, 121nn26 – 27; impossible 101; Material how 5 – 6, 11, 115, 117, 124, 148 – 149; naturalistic 4, 78 – 79, 84 – 85, 86n7, 99, 102; nondepictive 6 – 7; opaque (nontransparent) 6, 15; painterly naturalistic (paintings) 4, 84 – 85; perceptually ambiguous 76, 86n4, 86n6; picture’s subject(-matter) (object) 1, 3 – 5, 9 – 10, 12 – 13, 15, 51, 74 – 76, 79 – 80, 82 – 85, 85n1, 86n4, 86nn6 – 7, 87nn10 – 11, 87nn13 – 14, 88n16, 125 – 132, 135 – 137, 139, 162, 166, 171, 174, 190, 208, 253, 262, 264, 266n15, 274 – 275, 287; picture’s vehicle (image substrate, physical image (thing), surface) 3 – 5, 9 – 13, 73 – 85, 85n1, 86n3, 86n6 – 7, 87n10, 87n13 – 14, 88n16, 98, 106 – 109, 112, 115, 117 – 118, 120n5, 120n13, 120n15, 120n17, 121n21, 121n29, 144, 146, 162, 174, 176, 177n1, 207 – 208, 237, 286 – 287; Presentational how 5 – 6, 11, 87n11, 115 – 117, 124, 131, 148 – 149, 154 – 155; puzzle pictures 2; Representational how

5 – 6, 11, 115 – 116, 124, 148 – 149, 154 – 155; stylized 3, 82; temporal 12, 162, 167 – 171, 178n8; transparent (paintings) 4, 13, 15, 230, 233, 253, 259 – 260, 264, 267n43; the what of a picture 5 – 6, 11, 87n11, 105, 115, 124, 132, 137, 148, 154; see also content Piero della Francesca: (De prospectiva pingendi) 164; (Madonna del Parto) 40 – 42, 45 – 48, 52; (Resurrection) 170 planar: figure 99 – 100; representations 101; surface 95, 102 pleasure 14, 38, 51, 59 – 65, 69n1, 155, 225 – 236, 239 – 243, 258, 288, 296, 300 Podro, M. 5, 85, 145 Prinz, J. 61 psychologism 36 – 37, 43 Putnam, H. 55 Pylyshyn, Z. 92 – 93, 101 Raftopoulos, A. 95 recognitional capacities 138 – 140 regimes 8, 36, 43, 46; pictorial 46 Reisberg, D. 92 Rembrandt (sketch for the posthumous etching of Jan Cornelisz Sylvius) 88n18, 121n28, 145 – 146, 205, 206 – 207, 222n2 Resemblance theory 112; Experience 127 Robinson, J. 32 – 33, 135 Robson, J. 23 Roque, G. 7, 15 – 16 Rosand, D. 250 Rosch, E. 54 Rozzoni, C. 106 Ruckstuhl, F. 130 Sacks, O. 94 Santambrogio, M. 7, 9 savoring 27, 34n6, 38, 134, 234 Schellekens, E. 7 – 8, 24 Schier, F. 1, 99, 137, 145 seeing-as 33, 80; the image-thing as an image-object 120n6 seeing-in 1, 3 – 5, 7 – 13, 33, 73 – 82, 84, 86nn6 – 7, 87n9, 87n11, 88n16, 93, 98 – 100, 105 – 106, 119nn3 – 4, 120n6, 120n15, 124 – 126, 129, 132, 155, 157, 201 – 205, 207,

Index  311 209, 215, 222, 223n10, 243n2; authorized 128, 136; correct 9, 11, 126, 131 – 132; illusory 77; inflected (pictorial experience) 5, 12 – 14, 85, 88n16, 144 – 145, 148 – 149, 155 – 158, 174, 201 – 202, 205, 207, 243n2; a picture as a picture 80; sculptorial 86n6, 222; separation 128, 133, 136 – 137, 140, 203; see also image consciousness separation 11, 127 – 128, 132 – 138, 140, 145 – 146, 203 – 204, 206, 222n1, 222n5 Scruton, R. 2, 81, 264 Shelley, J. 21, 23 Sibley, F. 21 – 22 Sider, D. 97 Signac, P. 15 – 16, 270 – 274, 276, 278 – 282 simulation 3, 16, 258, 288 – 299, 301n4 Special Category Theory 51, 53 Spinicci, P. 7, 12 – 13, 64 Stecker, R. 43 Steinberg, S. 82 Stokes, D. 41 style 5, 9, 12, 69, 116, 124 – 132, 141, 141n1, 148 – 150, 152, 157, 251, 258, 274, 277, 289 – 290, 292, 294, 297; individual 126, 130 style inflectionism 12, 148, 150, 153 – 158 style separatism 12, 146, 148 – 154, 156 – 159 stylistic deformity 11, 125 – 127, 132 – 133, 135, 137 – 141 surface properties (features) 10, 75, 107, 209, 252; mere 11, 75, 252 surface-scene experience 8 – 9, 39, 41 – 42, 48 temporal experience 98, 101, 171, 195; series 225 – 229, 239 – 242; see also Inflection Terrone, E. 7, 13 – 14 testimony 2, 22 – 23, 34n4, 299; aesthetic 23 – 24 theory of innocent eye 69nn10 – 11 Thomson, J. 43 – 44 threefoldness 87n10, 105 – 107, 110, 115 – 116, 118, 119n5; threefold visual experience 120n5 Ticini, L. 16

tingle-immersion theory 59 – 60, 69n11 touch 16, 139, 266n16, 270 – 283, 283nn3 – 4; divided 16, 272, 279 – 282; impressionistic 279 transparency 13, 253 – 255, 260, 262, 264 – 265; of perception 261, 264; thesis 107, 262 Trompe-la-camèra 184, 187 Trompe-l’oeils 1, 13, 63 – 64, 77 – 79, 81, 88n17, 161, 169, 171, 182 – 184, 186 – 190, 192 – 195, 196n2, 209 twofoldness 3, 9, 12, 15, 33, 73, 75, 80 – 81, 86n6, 87n10, 101 – 102, 106, 119n5, 128, 162, 226, 251 – 252, 255, 266n18; configurational fold (CF, aspect) 3 – 4, 9, 73 – 82, 84, 86nn6 – 7, 88n16, 102, 128, 162, 174, 176; configurational series (C-series) 14, 225 – 236, 238 – 240, 242 – 243, 243nn1 – 2, 244n4; C-pleasure 14, 226, 229 – 231, 234 – 236, 242 – 243; recognitional fold (RF, aspect) 3, 9 – 10, 73 – 82, 84, 86n6, 87n9, 87n11, 88n16, 102, 128 – 129, 132 – 133, 162, 174, 176, 177n3; recognitional series (R-series) 14, 225 – 236, 238 – 240, 242 – 243, 243nn1 – 3, 244n4; R-pleasure 14, 226 – 227, 229, 231, 233 – 236, 239 – 240, 242; strong 4; weak 4 Tye, M. 92 value: figurative (import) 2 – 5, 12, 73 – 74, 78; pictorial 8, 36 – 39, 42 – 43, 47 – 48 value kind 43, 45 – 47 Van Der Berg, S. 42 Van Eyck, J. (Arnolfini Portrait) 5, 85 Van Paasschen, J. 135 Verheyen, S. 54 Vishwanath, D. 81 vision: early 92, 94, 97; late 92 Voltolini, A. 7, 9 – 10, 45, 81, 98, 101 – 102, 182 volumetric: content 100; cues 99; features 95; interpretations 99 – 100; representations 94, 100 – 101; shapes 92 – 95, 99 – 101

312 Index Walton, K. 4, 12, 15, 43, 55, 99, 126, 130, 145, 150 – 153, 155, 157, 230, 264 – 265 Waltz, D. 101 Warhol, A. (Brillo Box) 51 – 52, 55 – 58 Watkins, M. 21

Wollheim, R. 1, 3, 5 – 14, 22, 33, 73 – 75, 78, 80, 99, 101 – 102, 105 – 107, 112, 115 – 116, 124 – 125, 128, 131, 136, 146 – 150, 152 – 155, 157, 162, 176, 225 – 226, 229, 251 – 252 Zeimbekis, J. 7, 9 – 10, 81, 94, 98