Abstract
In this paper, I will present an argument against Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness. Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness (as it can be found primarily in the recently translated volume Husserliana 23) moves from a theory of depiction in general to a theory of perceptual imagination. Though, I think that Husserl’s thesis that picture consciousness is different from depictive and linguistic consciousness is legitimate, and that Husserl’s phenomenology avoids the errors of linguistic theories, such as Goodman’s, I submit that his overall theory is unacceptable, especially when it is applied to works of art. Regarding art, the main problem of Husserl’s theory is the assumption that pictures are constituted primarily as a conflict between perception/physical picture thing and imagination/picture object. Against this mentalist claim, I maintain, from a hermeneutic point of view, that pictures are the result of perceptual formations [Bildungen]. I then claim that Husserl’s theory fails, since it does not take into account what I call “plastic perception” [Bildliches Sehen], which plays a prominent role not only within the German tradition of art education but also within German art itself. In this connection, “plastic thinking” [Bildliches Denken] was prominent especially in Klee, in Kandinsky, and in Beuys, as well as in the overall doctrine of the Bauhaus. Ultimately, I argue that Husserl’s notion of picture consciousness and general perceptive imaginary consciousness must be replaced with a more dynamic model of the perception of pictures and art work that takes into account (a) the constructive and plastic moment, (b) the social dimension and (c) the genetic dimension of what it means to see something in something (Wollheim).
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Notes
For an overview see Wiesing (2005).
For this, see Brough (2006).
Husserl is, of course, implicitly repeating the metaphysical thesis that art/pictures deal with the conflict between material and form. I cannot deal with this problem in this paper, since this would require a more subtle discussion of the metaphysics of images and art in Heidegger, Hegel and Adorno.
This analysis pushes Husserl beyond his early act analysis to a more noematically centered analysis of pictures, given that the consciousness of “negation” and “Widerstreit” are, as he claims in Experience and Judgment and in Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans., Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), noematic modifications.
When I cut through my passport photo, no one will take this as an attempt to commit suicide.
For this claim, see also Stiegler (2002).
In addition, similarities between pictures and the referent are historically constituted and can change. For example, a painted tree might look like a tree simply because that is how trees are usually painted; for this, see Lopes (2006), 161.
I am adding this section for a demonstration of what I have dealt with so far within the realm of abstract depiction. On a first glance it could be the case that Klee’s picture is linguistically constituted by signs, but as it turns out, the abstract patterns on the canvas are an image because these patterns can be seen as the image of an organic process. This interpretation is possible because Klee uses in his painting forms and “scribbles,” in which an organic process can be seen. Simple scribbles or simple patterns on a canvas certainly do not make this painting an image. In other words, Klee does not operate with signs of organic processes, which the viewer must interpret as standing for organic processes; rather, the way these patterns are carried out and “shaped” are the form we see organic processes in nature.
See Klee 1991. One can see this notion working in Husserl’s overall theory as well (see Crisis, 113; the term here is “Sinngebilde”).
Heidegger was also interested in this aspect of Klee’s art, which he calls “Bildsamkeit von Welt” (Heidegger 1993, 10) [I do not know how one could possibly translate the word “Bildsamkeit”].
For Klee’s conceptions of nature that went into the painting see Harlan (1981).
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Lotz, C. Depiction and plastic perception. A critique of Husserl’s theory of picture consciousness. Cont Philos Rev 40, 171–185 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-007-9049-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-007-9049-2