Abstract
Richard Wollheim famously argued that figurative pictures depict their scenes, in part, in virtue of their ability to elicit a unique type of visual experience in their viewers, which he called seeing-in. According to Wollheim, experiences of seeing-in are necessarily twofold, that is, they involve two aspects of visual awareness: when a viewer sees a scene in a picture, she is simultaneously aware of certain visible features of the picture surface, the picture’s design, and the scene depicted by the picture. Even though Wollheim’s notion of twofoldness has been very influential, a number of philosophers have put forward powerful arguments against it. In this paper, I defend the claim that some pictorial experiences are twofold in Wollheim’s sense. My argument has two parts. In the first part, I provide a phenomenal contrast argument in favor of twofoldness. In the second part, I respond to what I take to be the most important objections against twofoldness. I believe that both parts together provide strong support for the claim that some pictorial experiences are twofold in Wollheim’s sense.
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Notes
Vincent van Gogh, Irises, 1889, housed at the Getty Museum.
Nanay has argued that Wollheim conflates two different senses of twofoldness. Twofoldness in one sense requires that “we consciously attend both to the depicted object and to some properties of the surface” and twofoldness in the other sense requires that “we represent both the depicted object and some properties of the picture surface (while we may or may not attend to the surface)” (Nanay 2011, 463). See also Nanay (2005). Nanay argues that only twofoldness in the latter sense is a necessary feature of picture perception. In this paper, I will only be concerned with the first sense of twofoldness. I will remain neutral on the question of whether we can also ascribe to Wollheim twofoldness in the second sense.
Wollheim sometimes uses the term “sustaining features” (Wollheim 1980, 212). In “On Pictorial Representation,” he refers to the viewer’s visual awareness of the visible features of the picture surface as “the configurational aspect” of the twofold pictorial experience, implying that it represents the picture’s “configuration” (Wollheim 1998, 221). It is now more common to use the term “design” instead of “configuration.” For definitions of the term “design” along these lines, see, for example, Lopes (1996, 3; 2005, 25), Cavedon-Taylor (2011, 271), and Hopkins (2010, 155). Nanay uses the term “design-properties” (Nanay 2010, 182).
Two comments are in order at this point. First, Wollheim further argues that a picture’s design sustains the viewer’s awareness of the scene in virtue of being seen. This claim is contentious. It is possible, for example, that the role of these features is purely causal, as a number of authors have argued. See, for example, Sartwell (1991) and Chasid (2014a). I believe that the picture’s design sometimes functions by being seen and sometimes purely causally. For an example of the former, see the discussion of overlap at the end of Sect. 4. For an example of the latter, see my next comment. Second, in many cases, the marks will sustain experiences of the scene by instantiating properties that cannot actually be seen. Suppose you draw four pencil lines on a white sheet of paper that form a trapezoidal shape. Suppose further that, due to other lines that are also on the paper, you see a tilted square in the picture. In this case, the lines sustain your experience collectively. Moreover, even though you may be able to see the lines on the picture surface, you will not be able to see the property by means of which they sustain your experience of the tilted square as a feature of the picture surface. In this paper, I chose to use the term “design” only to refer to marks and the visible properties by means of which they sustain the viewer’s experience of the scene.
An extensive discussion of this feature of Wollheim’s notion of twofoldness can be found in Flint Schier’s book Deeper into Pictures (Schier 1986, 199–205). Schier first points out that Wollheim’s goal was to present an analysis of what it means to see a picture as a picture of a scene. He then argues that Wollheim’s twofoldness account of pictorial experience fails to do justice to this because it does not account for the fact that pictorial experience is explicitly interpretative in nature. More specifically, Schier argues that a viewer can see a scene in a picture’s design only if she sees the surface as depicting that scene (Schier 1986, 205). In this paper, I am only interested in the possibility of twofold pictorial experiences and therefore remain neutral about the question of whether genuine pictorial experiences require seeing the surface as depicting the picture’s scene.
A number of authors have argued that the two aspects of visual awareness can inflect each other. More specifically, these authors hold that the viewer’s experience of the design can affect her experience of the scene and vice versa. See, for example, Lopes (2005), Kulvicki (2009), Bantinaki (2010), Nanay (2010), and Newall (2015). For a critical discussion of inflection, see Hopkins (2010). In this paper, I am not concerned with the question of whether pictorial experience can be inflected.
I would like to point out that it is possible that a pictorial experience represents only part of the design as features of the picture surface. Such an experience would be partially design-scene twofold.
Authors who interpret Wollheim in this sense include Lopes (2005, 40) and Bradley (2014, 415). Wollheim writes, for example, that twofoldness “leads us to marvel endlessly at the way in which line or brushstroke or expanse of color is exploited to render its effects” (Wollheim 1980, 216). It seems that a viewer can marvel at this only if she can see the marks as responsible for her experience of the scene.
Wollheim calls genuine pictorial experience “representational seeing” (Wollheim 1980, 205).
Wollheim also supported twofoldness by appeal to phenomenal contrasts. In particular, he pointed out that seeing a scene in a picture differs phenomenally from seeing the very same scene face to face. See, for example, Wollheim (1974, 277). For similar considerations, see also (Lopes 2005, ch. 1). My argument is based on a different phenomenal contrast. Wollheim presented a number of other arguments in favor of design-scene twofoldness (Wollheim 1980, 205–226), which have received extensive criticisms that I will not review here.
There are, of course, exceptions, such as copies of certain kinds of photorealistic paintings.
For an overview of this debate, see Bayne and Montague (2011).
Gombrich writes: “But is it possible to see both the plane surface and the battle horse at the same time? If we have been right so far, the demand is for the impossible. To understand the battle horse is for a moment to disregard the plane surface. We cannot have it both ways” (Gombrich 1960, 279).
I would like to emphasize that some authors who reject design-scene twofoldness do not follow Gombrich. As Hopkins has made clear, proponents of the experienced resemblance theory can allow for twofoldness in a different sense. According to this theory, when a viewer sees a scene in a picture, she sees the picture’s design as resembling the scene in some respect. This, so Hopkins, allows us to distinguish between two aspects of visual awareness. However, these aspects are abstract features of the complex content of one single experience, rather than two psychologically real aspects as required for design-scene twofoldness. See Hopkins (2010). My phenomenal contrast argument does not address these views. For a critique of these kinds of theories, see, for example, Briscoe (2016, 2018) and Jagnow (2017).
One can appreciate this latter point if one compares the photograph in the contrast scenario with a photograph that actually depicts the surface. One can produce a photograph of this latter kind, for example, by tilting the painting.
I would like to emphasize that this formulation is an attempt to capture the phenomenology of the experience, which somehow fuses brushstrokes and scene. I do not claim that the experience represents all material properties of the brushstrokes. For example, when I look at the irises in the photograph, I do not experience the brushstrokes as consisting of paint.
Perhaps, the brushstrokes are somehow filtered out. One way to understand this difference here is in analogy to the difference between seeing irises in the photograph of van Gogh’s painting and seeing irises face to face.
Gombrich illustrates the relation between the viewer’s awareness of the picture surface and its scene by appeal to the duck-rabbit figure. In this context, Gombrich writes: “What is difficult, indeed impossible, is to see all these things at the same time. We are not aware of the ambiguity as such, but only of the various interpretations. It is through the act of ‘switching’ that we find out that different shapes can be projected into the same outline. We can train ourselves to switch more rapidly, indeed to oscillate between readings, but we cannot hold conflicting interpretations” (Gombrich 1960, 236). Gombrich seems to make two points here, namely that shifting one’s attention from surface to scene, and vice versa, is like a gestalt-switch and that this switch requires an intentional effort on the viewer’s part and is not automatic.
The Necker cube has two different 3-D interpretations, but it is also possible to see it as a 2-D figure. The shift from one of the 3-D interpretations to the 2-D interpretation is dramatic. The so-called Kopfermann cubes provide more examples of 2-D/3-D ambiguous figures (Kopfermann 1930). One might respond to my observation in this paragraph by pointing out that the picture surface is not actually two-dimensional. The thick impasto brushstrokes have relief. Nonetheless, one would expect a phenomenally impressive gestalt-switch from a more or less flat surface to a three-dimensional scene.
These arguments are usually presented as criticisms of representationalism, that is, of the view that phenomenal character is either identical with, or supervenes on, representational content.
For a recent criticism of these examples, see Bourget (2015).
See, for example, Boghossian and Velleman (1989).
See Bourget (2015).
Chasid has recently argued that when a viewer sees a scene in a picture, the features of the picture surface (brushstrokes, ink splotches, etc.) become phenomenal noise “much like the ‘hazy’ phenomenal aspect of blurred or distorted experiences” (Chasid 2014a, 476). The present suggestion could be elaborated in further detail by appeal to Chasid’s argument.
Binocular disparity refers to the relative lateral displacement of the two retinal images due to the distance between the two eyes.
Shading refers to variations in the amount of light reflected from the surface as a result of variations in the orientation of the surface relative to a light source. Depth information from shading differs from information provided by cast shadows. Under appropriate conditions of illumination, the raised brushstrokes on the picture surface provide both types of information.
This option and the terminology has been suggested to me by Rob Hopkins.
The authors also mention the Necker cube, Mach’s folded sheet, and Schröder’s staircase.
I modified Hopkins’s formulation so that it applies to my example. For Hopkins’s formulation of the argument, see Hopkins (2012, 656).
Vishwanath formulates this as follows: “In pictorial space, we have no real sense of absolute depth because we have no sensory information about absolute distance” (Vishwanath 2011, 224).
Hyman explicitly rejects the claim that the scene appears either in front of, or behind, the surface (Hyman 2006, 133).
Newall has argued that some, but not all examples of seeing-in can be understood as instances of transparency perception (Newall 2015). I think that my proposal is compatible with most of his examples. I agree that some twofold pictorial experiences can be understood as transparency effects, and that these experiences present the scene behind the picture surface. But, on my view, these experiences are not design-scene twofold. For example, a scene in a photograph might look like seen through glass or through a white veil or mist, depending on the structure of the surface (Newall 2015, 145).
For a discussion of the phenomenon of overlap, see Hopkins (2010).
Briscoe argues in favor of what he calls weak onefoldness. According to this view, “[h]aving the experience as of virtual depth and 3D structure when looking at a picture…excludes representing some, but not all of its superficial properties” (Briscoe 2018, 66). My proposal in this paragraph is similar to Briscoe’s. But, on my view, these experiences are design-scene twofold and the selective attribution of properties goes both ways.
I would like to thank the two reviewers for this journal for their insightful and detailed comments. These comments helped me to improve the argument significantly. I would also like to thank Min Tang and Rob Hopkins for their comments on the phenomenal contrast argument at the annual meeting of the Central Division of the APA 2019. Their comments helped me to further improve the argument in this paper.
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Jagnow, R. Twofold Pictorial Experience. Erkenn 86, 853–874 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00135-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00135-0