Levinson 1998_Wollheim on Pictorial Representation

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Wollheim on Pictorial Representation

Author(s): Jerrold LevinsonSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Summer, 1998), pp. 227-233Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics

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Symposium: Wollheimon PictorialRepresentation Levinson, On Wollheim 227

Jerrold Levinson

Wollheimon PictorialRepresentation

RichardWollheimoffersus in the presentessayan elegant precis of the view of pictorialrepre-sentation he has developed over the past thirtyyears.' In addition he comments on competingviews of the matter,and responds to criticismsor calls for elaborationthat his own view has

elicited. Somewhatregrettably,rom thepointofview of one chargedwithproducinga criticaldis-

cussion, the extentof my accord with Wollheimon this topic is rather arge, as I now indicate.

First, I agree with Wollheim that the conceptof pictorial representation,or depiction, cannotbe explicatedwithoutappealto a characteristicsort of experience, the sort of experience Woll-

heim has denominated "seeing-in." Sustainingan appropriate eeing-in experience, that is, aseeing-in experience that conforms with the

artistic intention governing a given picture, is

what is criterialof such representation,and not

anything else.Second, I agree with Wollheim, as against

Budd, that seeing-in is generally prior to, andnot to be analyzedin terms of, the perceivingof

resemblancesas such, whether betweenobjectsor experiences.

The fundamental rationale for so insistingis this. Though perceptionof resemblance,ormore narrowly, structural isomorphism, be-tween object aspects or visual fields, may be a

concomitant,trigger,or consequenceof seeing-in, it is not equivalent o seeing-in. Seeing-incanoccur without such perceptions,and vice versa,andso therecanbe no identifying hem. The ex-periences of perceiving resemblancesand see-ing-things-in-other-thingsare different, and ir-

reducibly so; the former is inherentlyrelationaland comparative,the latter not.2 We may ob-serve, n addition, hat were seeing-intobe iden-tified withperceptionof structuralsomorphism,thensince the latter s clearlyadegreenotiononewouldexpect the former to be as well. But see-ing-in is not evidently a notion of degree, nor isthat of depiction, which seeing-in underwrites;seeing-inanddepictionarecloser, f anything,tobeing on-off or all-or-nothingaffairs.

What is likely true in this matter is that anonzero degree of structural somorphism be-tweenarepresentation nd its subject s required

for seeing-in to take place, that is, that somesuch isomorphismmay be a causalpreconditionof seeing the subject in the representation; hemechanisms whereby seeing-in-a kind of see-

ing, after all-is enabled to occur seem to re-quire as much. But even if thatis so, the percep-tion of such isomorphism,as opposedto itsmereexistence,remainsstrictlyunnecessary o the oc-currenceof the distinctexperienceof seeing-in.

Third, I agree with Wollheim,as againstWal-ton, that seeing-in is generally prior to, and notto be analyzedin termsof, imaginedseeing.

A reason for that insistence, beyond thosehinted at by Wollheim, s as follows. If seeing-inis equated with imagined seeing of a certainkind, that is, if every case of the former s madeout to be a case of the latter,then we lose a re-source for explaining some of the special char-acter, whetherof immediacy, ntimacy,absorb-ingness, or emotional impact, of some picturesas opposed to others (or alternatively,of someoccasions of experiencing picturesas opposedto others), by appeal to the idea that althoughall pictures in being perceived as such induce

seeing-in, only some pictures induce (or onlysome occasions of experiencing involve), actu-ally imagining seeing the object that a picture

represents. Imagining seeing X in viewing Yimplies, as a default, imagining you are face-to-face with X; but it seems doubtful one is stan-

dardlydoingthatmerelyin virtueof seeing X in

Y,that s, recognizingthelook of X inthedesignof Y.3

II

The basic shape of Wollheim'sposition on pic-torialrepresentations thusone I find congenial.ButI have come to have variousqualmsabout ts

specific articulation,qualmsthatpromptme toa friendly interrogationof some of its constitu-tive elements.As aresultI will be led to venturecertainclaims thatWollheimwould, I am sure,be reluctant o embrace.Still, the pictureof pic-turing hatI uphold remains,in broadoutline, arecognizablyWollheimianone.

The elements of Wollheim'sposition that Iwill examine are these: the treatmentof trompel'oeil; the statusof twofoldnessin seeing-in; therecognitional aspect of seeing-in; the scope orrangeof seeing-in;and the appealto the artist'sfulfilled intention as a standard of representa-

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228

tion. At morelength,thequestionsI wantto pur-sue are as follows. 1) Is trompel'oeil precludedfrom being understoodas representationalbe-cause it is designedto forestallan apprehending

experience characterizedby twofoldness?2) Isthe experience of seeing-in in fact necessarilycharacterizedby twofoldness,thatis, simultane-ous awareness of medium and of subject, suchthat seeing-in has always a configurationalaswell as a recognitionalaspect? 3) What can besaid aboutthe recognitionalawareness hat is ar-guablyatthecore of seeing-in, especiallyif con-figurational wareness,or awarenessof medium,is not alwayspresentas well?4) Is seeing-inreallythe same phenomenonor mental state across allthe sorts of things it is said can be seen in

pic-tures?5) Isthe artist's ulfilledintention odepictsuch-and-suchan apt criterionof what it is cor-rect to see in a picture,and so of what it depicts?

III

That trompe l'oeil pictures pose a problem forthe seeing-in theoryof depiction is, I think,un-deniable. If being a depiction requiresinvitingand sustaining seeing-in, and if seeing-in is anexperience that necessarily involves twofold-

ness, and if twofoldness necessarily implicatesawarenessof and attention to pictorialsurface,at some level, then it seems that trompe l'oeilpictures cannot be depictions. Though Woll-heim is contentto acceptthis consequenceof hisseeing-in account, it strikesme, as it has others,as counterintuitive.4

Now, there is in fact a way to understandtrompe l'oeil pictures as supportingapprecia-tive experiences with something like twofoldcharacter, and thus as thereby having clearclaim to depictive status,before addressingthe

question of whethersimple seeing-in is neces-sarily characterizedby strict twofoldness. It isthis: Whenwe see trompe 'oeil pictures as pic-tures, that is, when we are aware that they arepictorial contrivances, when we are past thepoint of being taken in by them, when we rec-ognize them as trompe l'oeil while allowingthem to continue to "fool the eye," then some-thingon the orderof twofoldness,or simultane-ous awareness of subject and medium, is pres-ent, even though the medium is, in a way,transparent.In such cases there is a kind ofawareness, perhaps even visual awareness, of

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

the surface,in the sense thatvisual attentioniscarriedto it, despite the fact thatwith a perfecttrompe l'oeil the surface remains invisible.Once you graspthatsomething s atrompe 'oeil

you can attendto its surface,andin its visual as-pect, even though you cannotby hypothesisseethe surface as such. What you can do with atrompe l'oeil painting,as with any painting, ismentally focus on the surface before you at thesame time as you register its pictorialcontent,notwithstanding he fact that in such cases thesurface does not end up arrestingyour vision.

But let us put aside thatresolution of the dif-ficulty, appealing as it does to an exceedinglyliberal construal of twofoldness, and consideragain the problem

generated for the theory ofpicturingby trompe 'oeil. It seems there aretwooptions open to us. Wecan eitherallow that see-ing thepictorialcontent of a trompe 'oeil paint-ing without realizing it is such, and so afortioriwithout any awarenessof thepainting'ssurface,is still an instance of seeing-in, and thus thatsuchseeingdoes notalwaysinvolve twofoldness(firstoption), or else deny thatseeing the picto-rialcontentof a trompel'oeil paintingwithoutrealizing it is such is an instance of seeing-in,thus retainingtwofoldness as a necessary fea-

tureof such seeing (second option).Onemightargue n favorof the second option

thatnaively registering hepictorialcontent of atrompe 'oeil does not involveseeing thepictureas apicture,and forthatreasonshouldnot be ac-counteda case of seeing things in the picture.Inaddition, since attentionto form concurrentlywithcontent,or tocontent-as-embodied-in-form,is often taken tobe theheartof what t is tocarryaestheticattentionto an object,5one mightfur-ther argue, against the first option, that by itslights seeing-in would not necessarily exhibit

aestheticcharacter.However,as is probablyapparent, uch an ar-

gumentwouldbe weak, since theconsiderationson which it turnsseem more convincingly de-ployed in the opposite direction. Plausiblynotall seeing-inorregisteringof pictorialcontentisaesthetic in character,or even informed by theawareness of picturesas pictures; for instance,thatdirectedto or had in connectionwith post-cards, passport photos, magazine illustrations,comic strips, television shows, or movies.6

Thus, any view that builds aesthetic character,or even awareness of pictures as pictures, di-







Symposium:Woliheim on PictorialRepresentation Levinson, On Wollheim 229

rectly into seeing-in would seem to have some-thing amiss. It seems perfectly reasonable tohold that one can be seeing things in pictures, nvirtue of looking at pictures, even when one is

not seeing them as pictures,and a fortiori, with-out appreciating hemaesthetically.7

I propose,then, that we embracethe first op-tion, whereby simple seeing-in, and what wemight call pictorial seeing proper, are distin-guished, with only the latterdefinitionally im-plying twofoldness. Pictorial seeing, or seeingpictures as pictures, is indeed a sine quanon ofaestheticappreciationof pictures,but the fact isthat herecanbe seeing-in nconnectionwithpic-turesthatis not even pictorialseeing, that doesnot involve any awarenessof pictorialpropertiesor the medium n whichtheyareembedded.

If you see a womanin apicture n virtue of vi-sually processing a patternof marks, then ofcoursein some senseyou aretherebyperceivingthe medium n which those marks nhere or con-sist. But it is far from clear that whenyou see thewomanin thepictureyou mustin somemeasurebe attendingto, taking notice of, or consciouslyfocusing on the picture'ssurface or patterningas such. Yetthat does appearto be part of theimport of twofoldness as Wollheimconstrues t:

"Looking at a suitablymarkedsurface, we arevisuallyawareat onceof the marked urfaceandof something in front of or behind somethingelse. I call this feature of the phenomenology'twofoldness."' That twofoldness as Wollheimunderstandst means thattheexperienceof see-ing-in involves, in its configurationalas well asits recognitionalaspect, some level of consciousapprehensionand not, say, merely unconsciousregistering s confirmed by this moreextensivepassage from Painting as an Art:

The twofoldness of seeing-indoes not, of course, pre-clude the one aspectof thecomplexexperiencebeing

emphasizedat the expense of the other. In seeing a

boy in a stained wall I may very well concentrateon

the stains, and how they are formed, and the materi-

als and colours theyconsist of ... and I might in con-

sequencelose all buta shadowyawarenessof theboy.

Alternatively, mightconcentrateon the boy, and on

thelong earshe seemsto be sprouting.. and thushave

only thevaguestenseof how the wall is marked.8

A crucialissue, then, wouldseem to be what,exactly, being visually aware of a picture surface

amountsto. Not, surely, receiving informationfrom the surface,orbeingsensitive to changes infeatures of the surface; such construalsare tooweak for the purpose,since too easily satisfied

by mentalstates, forexample,subdoxasticones,that lie below the level of consciousness. Not,surely, thinkingor reflecting that one is seeingthesurfaceas one sees it; such aconstrualwouldbe too strong,collapsing visualawarenessper seand self-conscious visual awareness. Perhaps,then, something like this: attending to the sur-face as one views it and is affected by it. But ifanything like thatconstrual s adopted,it is in-deed doubtful that the seeing-in involved ingrasping pictorialcontentalways entails or in-cludes visual awareness of the surfaceas well.At any rate,Wollheim has not indicated an in-termediatenotion of awareness hatmightbe aptto the needs of the case but that does not importany degreeof attentionwhatsoever.9

IV

The taskremains,though, of saying whatsimpleseeing-in consistsin, given it does notinevitablyinvolvevisual awarenessof medium,thatis, at-tention in some degree to medium, and yet is

not just seeing in the ordinary sense.'0 As hasrightlybeen observed," clarifying what Woll-heim calls the "recognitionalaspect"of seeing-in-and what we may now take to be the verycore of seeing-in-seems incumbenton a sup-porterof the seeing-inapproach o pictorialrep-resentation.

Here,then, is a stabat what suchrecognitionamounts to. In looking comprehendinglyat apictureof a woman, say Kees van Dongen's en-gaging and mildly fauve canvas, La chemisenoire, one does not necessarily perceive an iso-

morphism between experience of the pictureand experience of a woman (Budd), nor doesone invariably magine seeing a woman (Wal-ton), nor, in all probability,does it seem to youthat a woman is actuallybeforeyou (Gombrich).Rather,I suggest, it seems to you as if you areseeing a woman (alternatively,you have an im-pression of seeing a woman), n virtue of attend-ing visually to portions of the canvas.12Thecore of seeing-in, in otherwords,is a kind of as-if seeing that is bothoccasionedby visually reg-isteringa differentiated urfaceandinextricablyboundup with suchregistering.'3







230

Of course, more needs to be said about thetight relationrequiredherebetweentheregister-ing of visual informationand the perception ofpictorialcontent.14The relation has to be such

as to rule out nonstandard causal routes bywhich a picture'svisual arraymightlead one tohave an impression of seeing a woman, for ex-ample, one where such an arraytriggered,at asubperceptual evel, a chemical change that inturn issued in a localized hallucination of awomanjust like the woman seeable in the pic-ture.The impressionof seeing, oras-if seeing,atthecore of seeing-in is one intimatelyboundupwith the registeringof the visual dataaffordedby thepicture,wherebythelatter n a sense con-stitutes or realizes the former.'5

V

None of this is to denythat muchof the interestand appeal of seeing-in lies in the possibilityoftwofoldnessin one'sexperienceof apicture, hatis, simultaneous awareness of both picturingpatternandpicturedobject,whereone's seeing-in thus becomes seeing pictorially, properlyspeaking. Yet equally important,I would sug-gest, is the option, in which one mightat turns

indulge, of switching back and forth betweenawarenesses or focusings of attentionof thosetwo kinds, seeing sometimes only purepattern,sometimes only pure object. In fact, it wouldseem reasonable o include,within the ambitofpictorialseeing, that is, seeing of the kind nor-mative for picturesunderstoodand appreciatedas pictures,both seeing where there is simulta-neous awareness of design and content (ortwofoldness),and seeing in which therewas al-ternation back and forth betweenphases of si-multaneous awareness of design and content

and phasesof exclusive or near-exclusivefocuson one or the other. It seems that our knowingengagement with picturesdoes in general dis-play an alternationbetween phases of simul-taneity,often sustainedwithoutdeliberateness,and ones of switching, often occasionedby de-liberatereflection on what one's experience islike. Pictorialseeing might thusconvenientlybestretched o cover suchactivity in all its phases.

It is hard o overestimate hekeeninterest hatviewersof paintingnaturally akein bringingsi-multaneouslyinto relation, or alternatingsys-tematicallybetween, the recognitional and the

The Journalof Aestheticsand Art Criticism

configurational,or the pictured and the pictur-ing, in differentstyles of depiction. This is oneof the obvious, but neverthelessdeep, sourcesof fascination with the differences among

neoclassical, impressionist, postimpressionist,expressionist, cubist, surrealist, and abstract-expressionist reatments f what s in some sensethe same subject. We areendlesslyamazed withthe varietyof ways thereare to pictorially"con-struct"familiarobjects, so that patternsor de-signs that wouldseem to have little in common,comparedas such,arerevealed o have an affin-ity in supportingequally a visual impressionof,say, a cow. That a cow can be "made,"visuallyspeaking, out of dots, dashes, lines, angles,

masses, smears, or mere chiaroscuro, s some-thing we delight in bringing home to ourselvesthrough his activityof regularlycorrelatingde-sign andcontentin ourapprehensionof a paint-ing. Each time, after absorption in the repre-sented world, that we attend primarilyto theconfigurationsaffordedby apainting, we deriveanew the pleasure of seeing of whatthe objectsof thatworldhavebeen made.

But there is yet more than that. Differentstylesof representational aintingarguablygiveus access to unique.kindsof beings, allowing us

to see thingsnotencounteredn the realworld atall, rather hanmerelyallowingus to see famil-iarthings in a new way.WhatI have in mindare"beings" uchas these:Ingres-women,Picasso-women, andde Kooning-wornen;Kirchner-men,Beckmann-men, and Grosz-men; and finally,Miro-dogs,Klee-dogs,andDubuffet-dogs.Paint-ings of the respectiveartistsfamiliarizeus withextraordinarycreaturesof that sort, ones thatcan enter importantly into one's imaginativeand interpretiverepertoire;such paintings domorethan simply show us how those artists, or

their implied personae, may be said to haveviewed ordinarywomen, men, and dogs.'6 Ofcourse,aftermakingtheacquaintanceof Ingres-women, Kirchner-men,or Miro-dogs, one maythenbe in a positionto spottheirinstantiations,or near-instantiations,n the worldaroundone,hors de peinture.That is to say, we achieve ac-quaintancewith kinds of beings whose exem-plarsare not all of them,or not necessarily,fic-tional.







Symposium:Wollheimon PictorialRepresentation Levinson, OnWollheim 231

VI

I haveconcentrated o far mostly on seeing-inasit applies to objects. Butas Wollheimurges, see-

ing-in may be held to range over actions andevents as well, and even over individuals-merely-of-a-certain-kindas opposedto particu-lar individuals. Concernarises, however,as towhetherthe rangeof seeing-in is usefully takento be as wide as Wollheimproposes. The con-cern might alternativelybe expressedas one ofwhetherthe seeing-in involvedin all such casesis sufficiently of a piece as to merit the singlelabel. Let us look to what Wollheim says aboutthe outer imits of seeing-inas he descriesthem,as illustratedin the example of the classicallandscapewith ruins.

Wollheim suggests that a suitably preparedand promptedviewer plausiblycan see, in sucha painting, all the following:columns,columns-as-having-come-from-a-temple,olumns-as-hav-ing-been-thrown-down,olumns-as-having-been-thrown-down-hundreds-of-years-ago,nd col-umns-as-having-been-thrown-down-hundreds-of-years-ago-by-barbarians.But such a viewercannot, Wollheimsubmits, see in the paintingcolumns-as-having-been-thrown-down-hun-

dreds-of-years-ago by-barbarians-wearing-theskins-of-wild-asses.

Butwhy not? Why are all those otherqua-ob-jects seeable in the picture-which I take to beroughly interconvertible with the seeabilitytherein of correspondingstates of affairs-butnot the last? What principleof cut-off for thequa-objectsor states of affairs that can be seenin a picturedoes Wollheimhave in mind? Whathe offers is an operational est: proposefor see-ing-in a candidate state of affairs and notewhether it makes a difference in the suitable

spectator'sexperience.Yet in the absence of aclear idea of the bounds of seeing-in, it is hardto know how one would interpret he results ofsuch a test. It is notentirelyobvious whatwouldrule out seeing the columns as having beenthrowndownby barbarianswearingthe skins ofwild asses. Afterall, we no more see the vandalsandtheirdestructiveactsthan we see theequinepelts they may very well havesported.

Of course we can speculateon what it is thatmakes a nonmanifest state of affairs or condi-tion a reasonable candidate for seeing-in asWollheimconceives that. Possibly a condition

being such that perceptual inference to it ishighly compelling, or a conditionpossessingvi-sual traces of a relatively unequivocal sort, atleast for a properly backgrounded viewer,

makes such a condition somethingthat can beseen in a picture.But I am not concernedto fur-therworrythese oranysimilarsuggestions.Therealproblem,I think, is thatseeing nonmanifeststatesof affairsin pictures,seeing occurrentac-tions in pictures,and seeing objects in picturesmaybe importantlydifferentphenomena,whosedifferences,sayas regards patial ocalizationorpermeabilityby thought,maybe moreobscuredthan illuminatedby consideringthem togetheras membersof aspecies."Seeing-in"maynotbeunivocal across its putative nstances, especiallyif, as suggested earlier,twofoldnessis not evenan invariant eatureof the experience of seeingone thing in another.

It is not clear thatthe same sort of activity orperception s involvedwhengoing fromseeing-in of objects to seeing-in of events to seeing-inof conditions, or from seeing-in of physicalevents or conditions to seeing-inof psychologi-cal events or conditions. For example,localiza-tion, the propertyof such-and-such'sbeing see-able more or less right where the relevant

pictorial design is, may be characteristicof theseeing in paintings of physical objects, butsomewhatless so of the seeing of events, andvery much less so of the seeing of psychologicalentities,whetherobjectsor events.And the per-meability of seeing-in to thought, reflection,or conceptualizationseems progressively morepronounced, n general, as one moves from theseeing of objects to the seeing of events to theseeing of only indirectlyevidenced states of af-fairs in a painting. And finally, one might add,for good measure, that a role for imagination

in the robust sense appearsconsiderably moreplausible n regard o seeing-in of this lattersortthanto seeing-inof the former two sorts. Thesedivergences make suspect, at the least, the as-sumptionthatseeing-in in all the cases claimedby Wollheim s of a uniform nature.

VII

Lastly, there is to my mind a problem aboutWollheim'sappeal to fulfilled representationalintentionsas a standard or what a picture rep-resents.Here is a formulation,though from an







232

earlier paper:"Veryroughly,P representsX if Xcan be correctlyseen in P,where the standardofcorrectness s set forPby the fulfilled intentions

of the artist of p."17 A difficultylurksherethat

Wollheim and other actual intentionalistsaboutmeaning have some tendencyto gloss over.It is

this: Whatit is for the pictorial ntentionsof theartist of P to be fulfilled cannot be specifiedapartfrom whatsuitableviewersare enabledtosee in P.Such intentions are fulfilled if viewersarein fact enabled-and enabled withoutunduethematic promptingor inordinate mental con-tortion-to see in P what the artist intendedtobe seen there.Theartist'sfulfilled ntentioncan-not be thoughtof as an independentconditiontowhich viewers' responsescan be held account-

able,but can only be understood n termsof theresponses of appropriatelyprimed and back-grounded viewers being the ones they were in-

tended to be. Another way of making my pointwould be to say that the standardof correctnessfor depiction is not, as Wollheim sometimesputs it, thefulfilled intentions of the artist, butmerely the intentionssimpliciterof the artist fora certain sort of seeing-in, given they are capa-ble of being complied with by the picture'sin-tended viewers. The artist'srepresentationaln-

tentionsonly are fulfilled if suitable viewersareenabled, on reasonableprompting, o see-in thepainting in accord with the artist'srepresenta-tional intentions. Thus it arguably makes littlesense to say they comply with the artist'sful-filled intentions in this regard, since such donot, as it were, pre-exist such compliance.'8

VIll

RichardWollheim's heory of pictorialrepresen-tation is the fruit of long reflection, deep in-

sight, and an intense love of painting. In thecourseof this essay I have criticized that theoryin a numberof respects, notably, ts treatment ftrompe 'oeil, itsconception of seeing-in, and itsappealto the artist'sfulfilled intentionas a stan-dard.Note, however,how much remainsof whatWollheim has urgedin whatI am willing to af-firmon this vexed topic: pictorialrepresentationinvolves the intentionalmarkingof a flat surfaceso as to elicit a distinctive sort of visual experi-ence in appropriate pectators,an experiencewemay continue to call seeing-in as long as we un-derstand that this sometimes amounts only to

The Journalof Aesthetics andArt Criticism

what may be more transparentlyabeled seeing-from, where such experienceis indeed elicited

from those spectators n virtue of theirattending

to the surface so marked.19

JERROLD LEVINSON

Departmentof Philosophy

SkinnerBuilding

Universityof Maryland-College Park

College Park, Maryland20742

INTERNET: [email protected]

1. Notable bulletins in thatdevelopment nclude"Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and PictorialRepresentation,"n Ar-t nd Its

Objects,2nd ed. (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1980); "Imagination and Pictorial Understanding,"Pro-

ceedings of the AristotelianSociety,SupplementaryVolume

60 (1986): 45-60; 'Art, Interpretation nd Perception," n

The Mind and Its Depths (HarvardUniversity Press, 1993);and above all, Painting as an Art (Princeton UniversityPress, 1987).

2. Toelaborate:perceptionof resemblancebetween visualfield 1 and visual field 2 explicitly involves relating and

comparing hose items, while seeing objectX in paintingYdoes not involve a parallelrelatingandcomparingof thoseitems. The second term in such an experience, that is, Y,does not enter into the contentof the experience involved,

though naturally t is involved in generatingthe experienceandin fixing whatexperience t is. The contentof theexpe-rience, consisting as it does in "seeing X," in a manner of

speaking, s basically ustX. (I say "basically," ince itmightbe held that the content in question is slightly otherthan X

per se, for instance, image of X. But the point would remain

that such content was nonrelational,or at least, not involv-ing a relation o Y.)

3. Onmy conception of it, imagining s necessarilyactiveor contributory (though not necessarily something one isawareof initiating,and notnecessarilysomethingunder hecomplete control of one's will). By contrast,seemingto oneas if-what I proposecaptures,as well as anything can, theexperienceat the heartof pictorial seeing-is passii e or re-

ceptive, not something one brings about and actively sus-tains, but somethingthat, in the last analysis, simply occurs.

Seeing X in Y is something that happens o one, even wheredeliberate mental actions of various kinds, for instance,framings, hinkings,orsuggestings, serveas triggers o suchhappening.

4. See, forexample, Dominic Lopes, Understanding ic-tures (Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press, 1996), chap. 2.

5. See Richard Eldridge, "Formand Content: An Aes-thetic Theory of Art," The BritishJournal of Aesthetics 25(1985); Malcolm Budd, Valuesof Ar-t London: Penguin,1995); and Jerrold Levinson, The Pleasures of Aesthetics(CornellUniversity Press, 1996), chaps. I and 2.

6. I amnot, of course, denyingthat we mayoften be cog-

nizant of such pictures as pictures, orcarry aesthetic atten-tion to them, only that we must oreven usuallydo so.







Symposium: Woliheimon PictorialRepresentation Levinson, On Wollheim 233

7. I have been influenced by Lopes's critiqueof seeing-intheoryon these points in UnderstandingPictures.

8. Wollheim, Painting as an Art, p. 47, emphases added.We might, appropriatingwords of Willy Loman in Death ofA Salesman, underline that"notice must be taken" n order

for something to countas awareness.9. Note that if this critique of seeing-in in respect of

whether it necessarily displays twofoldness is correct, wemay still rest with Wollheim'sdesired characterization f a

depictionas a markedsurface intended for seeing-in-onlythat shouldnow be understoodas simple seeing-in, it beinggranted that in most cases the surface is also clearly in-

tendedforpictorial seeing, with its inherent wofoldness,aswell.

10. To say it does not involve visual awareness of themediumis not, of course, to say that it does not involve vi-sualprocessing of the informationembodiedin the medium.

11. See Kendall Walton,"Seeing-in and Seeing Fiction-ally," in JamesHopkins and Anthony Savile, eds., Psycho-

analysis, Mind andArt (Oxford:Blackwell, 1992).12. Note that"seemingto one as if P."or "havingthe im-

pression thatP,"are not locutionsthat entail "believingthatP" or even "thinking it probable that P."For example, "Itseems to me as if I amfalling unsupported,"aid in a rapidlydescending elevator.

13. Thereis a real questionwhether heexperienceI havecontinuedto referto as simple seeing-in shouldin fact be socalled. Two reasonsgive pause.The first is thatthe associa-tion of seeing-in-which is, after all, a term of art intro-

ducedby Wollheim-and twofoldness is so entrenched hatan experienceof seeing-in sans twofoldness sounds almostoxymoronic. The secondis thatconceiving suchexperiencesas the "seeing-in" abelencouragesone to do, as a matterof

seeing things in surfaces, does undeniablyoccasion strainwhere trompe l'oeil pictures are concerned, since in suchcases the surfacesare, by hypothesis, neither seen nor see-able. One might thus concede that the visual experience ofpicturesI have beencalling simpleseeing-in,and that s pres-ent even when twofoldness is not, might in certain caseswith more justice be called seeing-from.

14. It is a virtue of Walton's account of depiction, ofcourse, thatit secures the desiredintimacyin the most directfashion, by making the act of perceiving the picture thatwhichtheviewer imagines to be an actof actually seeing thesubject of the picture.But it seems to me that what neces-sarily happens n such a case of seeing-in is atmost that onetakes one's apprehendingof a surface's formsand colors to

be a seeing of a woman, in a sense that does not imply thatone believes or suspects that one is seeing a woman,butnotthat one imagines of such apprehending,more actively orpositingly, that it is a seeing of a woman.

15. One might worry, finally, that if simple seeing-in is

construedso as not to necessarily nvolve awarenessof apic-ture'ssurface, then simple seeing-in and simple seeing willcollapse. But this worryis unfounded.In the case of simpleseeing-in you seem to see X, that s, you haveanas-if-seeing

experienceof X, in virtue of visually registering ertain con-figurationsof a surface, rather hanin virtue of being in thevisual presenceof X. In the case of simply seeing X, it is trueas well thatyou seem to see X, that is, have an as-if-seeingexperienceof X, butthen there aredifferences.Withsimplyseeing X there s, first, thebelief ortendencyto believe, thatX is beforeyou, andsecond, it is X, and notmerelya surfaceconfiguredto afford an impressionof X, that indeed is be-fore you. This is all admittedly rough and ready, not in-tended as careful analysis. The point is just that the experi-ences of simple seeing-in and simple seeing can surely bediscriminated, hough once twofoldness is abandonedas asine quanon of seeing-in such discriminationmay not be awholly internalmatter,but may instead rest on matterssuch

as what is precipitating the experience and what sort ofmechanisms are involvedin its doing so.

16.A story from the golden era of The NewvYorkereemsrelevanthere. JamesThurber, ne of theearly greatcartoon-ists of the magazine, was once the subject of discussion atthe weekly artmeeting being presided over by the then edi-

tor,HaroldRoss.The point at issue was the seal perchedonthe headboardof a bed in one of Thurber'smost famouscar-

toons, in whichthewife is vocally skepticalof her husband'sclaims to have heard a seal bark. Someone at the meeting,noting the somewhat loosely drawncharacterof the seal,asked "Do seals look like that?"To which Ross's reply was"Thurber'sseals look like that." From an interview withNew YorkerCartoon Editor RobertMankoff, The Washing-

tonPost,December7, 1997.17. Wollheim, "Imagination and Pictorial Understand-

ing," p. 46.

18. To be fair to Wollheim, the formulationof the inten-tional condition on representation n the present paperal-most entirely escapes the problem, highlighted here, towhich earlier formulationswere subject: "Representationalmeaning, indeed pictorial meaning in general, is, on myview, dependent,not on intentionas such, but on fulfilledin-tention. And intention is fulfilled when the picture cancause, in a suitablespectator,an experience that tallies withthe intention."Still, it seemed worthdrawingattention o, ifonly to forestallbacksliding.

19.Thanks to Gregory Currieand especially Alessandro

Giovannelli for helpfulcomments on a draft of this essay.

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Levinson 1998_Wollheim on Pictorial Representation

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