Abstract
Cynthia Freeland’s investigation of four kinds of ‘fidelity’ in portraiture is cut across by more general philosophical concerns. One is about what might be called the expression of persons--the persons or ‘inner selves’ of portrait subjects and of portrait artist: whether either is possible across each of the four kinds of fidelity, and whether these two kinds of expression are in tension. More fundamental is the problem of telling how self-expression is at all possible in any of these forms. Finally, she wonders how photography affects all these questions. This comment addresses portraiture not so much in terms of the four fidelities, but with another quartet of concepts: four ordinary types of ‘display’, in terms of which we see how artists’ self-expression is possible in all these forms, also including photography. Its key idea is that portraits are displays simply by being pictures or sculptures, which are kinds of artifacts, hence things that we perceive as having intentional affordance: that is, as being intentionally made ‘for’ something.
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Notes
These two examples and the comment on Gudea are due to Paul Magriel and John T. Spike, in Magriel and Spike (1987), pp. 89, 109.
I am grateful to Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada grants for assisting travel to the following sites: the The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum, Copenhagen; the Pergamon Museum, Berlin; The National Archeological Museum, Naples; uncountable visits to the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the last, notably for the exhibit, “Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh” (June–July, 2006). Freeland’s second category, presence, may be satisfied by monumental works, whose obdurate physical massiveness might in imagination transfer to a sense of the persons depicted.
Tomasello (1999), esp. pp. 89f.
Podro (1998), p. 88.
Regarding Freeland’s fourth kind of “subjectification,” John Shearman—who reminds us what a much-discussed topic that was during the Renaissance—suggests an important distinction between imparting the sense of “a mind behind the mask” and of “the specific emotional identity, of an individual”—the former but not the latter being achieved in “Mona Lisa,” whose perceived deficiency Raphael set out to remedy. See Shearman (1992), pp. 121–125.
Podro (1998): “the painter...is also presenting himself socially, so the apt mode of self-presentation combines in exercising his skill with representing himself” (97); “the appearance of the painter and the exemplification of his skills give focus to each other”; “the logic of the self-portrait, the self-presentation through one’s likeness, embodying one’s skill” (98).
Although Tomasello further argues that it is only because we can perceive artifacts as artifacts, puzzle out their intended functions, that we have been able to retain inventions, so that we could begin to improve on them. What he calls the ‘ratchet effect’ isn’t required by the present argument.
Although neither Cottingley nor Cottington: neither the Cottingley fairy photo fraud involving Arthur Conan Doyle nor Brian Froud’s Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book.
See Tomasello (1999), p. 84.
This point is complicated by people’s purposely enhancing or disguising perceptual cues in nature, where it also appears that they have done so, in architecture or personal adornment, for example.
The first and third fallacies are notable in an influential paper by Roger Scruton: Scruton (1981). Regarding the first, Siegfried Kracauer had already discussed the issue of degrees of formative control in Kracauer (1960). The second fallacy is a prominent principle of argument in Malcolm (1997). (Coincidentally, Schopenhauer seems the earliest-born famous philosopher of whom we have photographs—even a daguerreotype.)
See Walton (1990), ch. 8.
Sometimes called ‘transparency,’ a provocative term that should be avoided. To see other things, we look through transparent objects such as spectacles, contact lenses and windows, certainly not at them, whereas one must look at photographs indirectly to see or detect their subjects. Furthermore, in most instances, in order to do this we must look at photographs as depictions: that is, imagining that seeing them is seeing their subjects. I have treated this topic several times, especially in Maynard (1997), esp. ch. VII.
As in cinema and television, we may imagine seeing the actors as well, but we don’t even indirectly see the subjects in such cases. See Walton (1990), p. 27.
I have attempted to place use of this triad in a wider cultural and historical perspective in several articles and Maynard (1997), ch. VIII.
References
Kracauer, S. (1960). Theory of film: The redemption of physical reality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Magriel, P., & Spike, J. T. (1987). A connoisseur’s guide to the Met. New York: Vintage Books.
Malcolm, J. (1997). Diana & Nikon: Essays on photography. New York: Aperture.
Maynard, P. (1997). The Engine of visualization: Thinking through photography. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Podro, M. (1998). Depiction. London: Yale University Press.
Scruton, R. (1981). Photography and representation. Critical Inquiry, 7, 577–603.
Shearman, J. (1992). Only connect: Art and the spectator in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Walton, K. (1990). Mimesis as make-believe: On the foundations of the representational arts. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
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Maynard, P. Portraits as displays. Philos Stud 135, 111–121 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9095-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9095-y