PICTURES AND THEIR USE IN COMMUNICATION

Transcription

1 PICTURES AND THEIR USE IN COMMUNICATION

2 PICTURES AND THEIR USE IN COMMUNICATION A Philosophical Essay by DAVID NOVITZ. ~ ".. '". MAR TINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1977

3 In Memory of Daantjie Oosthuizen 1977 by MarlillllS Nijhal/' The Haglle, NetherfOllds_ All righls resened, inel/lding the right 10 trallslate or 10 reprod/lce this book or parts thereof ill ally form_ ISBN-13: 97K )01 IOt007/97K c-ishn-ij: 97K-94-0tO- l063-4

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS List oj illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction PICTURES AND DEPICTING Part One vii ix xi CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III PICTURING l. Pictures and denotation 2. The use of pictures 3. Telling what a picture is of 4. Conclusion DEPICTING AND THE CONVENTIONAL IMAGE l. Leonardo and the practice of depicting 2. Towards conventionalism 3. Coordination problems 4. The problem of picturehood 5. Conventions and resemblance 6. An objection to conventionalism 7. Conclusion CONVENTIONS AND THE GROWTH OF PICTORIAL STYLE l. Two kinds of pictorial convention 2. The Gombrich problem 3. The individuation of pictorial styles 4. Pictorial progress 5. Pictorial revolutions 6. Conclusion Part Two PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION CHAPTER IV PICTORIAL ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS 1. The picture / use distinction 67 67

5 VI CONTENTS 2. IlIocutionary acts Pictorial iilocutions Explaining oneself Conclusion 84 CHAPTER V PICTORIAL PROPOSITIONS Indication and attribution Can pictures express propositions? Pictorial propositions - An objection Pictorial propositions - Some qualifications Conclusion 106 CHAPTER VI THE PICTORIAL POINT OF VIEW Pictures in nature - Schemata and beliefs Noticing a rhinoceros Perceptual revolutions Visual 'Metaphor' Representation and arousal Pictures and expression Conclusion 149 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION 151 Bibliography 155 Name index 158 Subject index 160

6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1 Birds 34 Figure 2 Schematic Drawings 48 i) De Wit: Putti. From Frederik de Wit, Lumen picturae et delineationes (Amsterdam, c.1660). Victoria and Albert Museum. Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 ii) Van de Passe: Putti. From Crispyn van de Passe, Lumen Picturae (Amsterdam, 1643). Victoria and Albert Museum. iii) Fialetti: Eyes From Odoardo Fialetti, II vero Modo ed ordine per dissegnar tutti Ie parti et membre del corpo humano (Venice, 1608). Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. iv) Schon: Heads. From Erhart Schon, Underweysung der Proportion (Nuremburg, 1538). Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. v) Vogtherr, Feet. From Heinrich Vogtherr, Ein fremds und wunderbarliches Kunstbuchlin (Strassburg, 1538). Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. 13th Century Illustrated Manuscript. Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. 100 Locusts. From the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Zentralbibliothek, ZUrich. 115 Nonsense Figure. From F.e. Bartlett, Remembering, Cambridge University Press, Reproduced with the kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Press. 116 From Hieroglyph to Pussycat. From F.e. Bartlett, Remembering, Cambridge University Press, Reproduced with the kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Press. 116 Diirer: Rhinoceros. Prints Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 118 Heath: Rhinoceros. From James Bruce, Travels to the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh, 1790), Vol. V. Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. 118

7 VIII Figure 9 i) ii) iii) Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Cartoons 127 Cartoon from Charivari, 10 October, Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. Cartoon from Charivari, 17 March, Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. Cartoon by Sir David Low. From the Evening Standard, 15 May Cartoon by David Low by arrangement with the Trustees and the London Evening Standard. Tree-Person 129 William Blake: Giant Oak. From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. 131 The Shadow. From the Sturmer, No. 10, Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. 133 Hugo van der Goes: Adam and Eve. Reproduced by permission of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. ] 34 The Red Dragon. From the Sturmer, No.4, Photograph by courtesy Phaidon Press. 134 Jusepe de Ribera: Archimedes. Reproduced with permission of The Prado, Madrid. 140 John Constable: The Hay-Wain, National Gallery, London. Reproduced with the permission of the National Gallery, London. 144 John Constable: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, Tate Gallery, London. Reproduced with the permission of the Tate Gallery, London. 144

8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am particularly indebted to my good friend and colleague, Paul Crittenden, for the trouble that he has taken in reading and commenting on the various drafts of this book. His interest in the topic as well as our many, often protracted, discussions made the task of writing this book a very pleasant and engaging one. My thanks as well to Stuart Hampshire, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and to Jane Osborn of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, whose detailed comments on an earlier version of this work led to radical revisions and improvements. Rom Harre of Linacre College, Oxford, supervised my doctoral thesis which formed the origin of this work, and his comments have done much to clarify my ideas and to correct mistakes. Rosemary Novitz was the patient and willing sounding board for many of my arguments. Her eye for detail and accuracy, and her uncanny ability to find the weak points in even my most treasured arguments, helped make this work very much more substantial than it would otherwise have been. Professors Bernard Mayo and R.H. Stoothoff commented both copiously and helpfully on Chapter Three, and I am grateful to Professor John Fisher for his comments on Chapter One. He has very kindly allowed me to reprint an expanded version of my article "Picturing" which appeared in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in Winter, My thanks as well to the editor of The British Journal of Aesthetics for granting me permission to publish as part ofthis book certain material which is to appear in his journal in Autumn, Finally, I am grateful for the permission given me by the various museums, galleries and libraries mentioned elsewhere, to reproduce the illustrations which appear in this volume. lowe a special debt of gratitude to Mr D.V. Sims of the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, for arranging the reproduction and photographing of these illustrations. New Zealand July, 1976 David Novitz University of Canterbury

9 INTRODUCTION Ours is the age of the picture. Pictures abound in our newspapers and magazines, in storybooks and on the glossy pages of instruction manuals. We find them on billboards and postage stamps, on the television screen and in the cinema. And in all of these cases pictures inform us: they explain, they clarify, they elucidate - and at times, too, they entertain and delight us. Images on the television screen have all but replaced the printed word as a source of information about the world; and nowadays, too, picture books and comic strips are consulted much more readily, and with much less intellectual effort, than the printed word. There can be little doubt but that pictures have come to play a very important role in communication. It strikes me as odd that, in what is nothing less than a visual age, philosophers have had so little to say about the visual image and its use in communication. Hardly anything has been done to explain the way in which pictures are used to inform us; the way in which they influence our thinking, our attitudes and our perception of the world. My aim in this work is to fill this gap, and in so doing to provide a viable account of pictorial communication. There is, however, a widespread but mistaken tendency to think of the philosophical enquiry into pictures and their use in communication as a branch of aesthetics: a tendency, I think, which is to a large extent a product of the history of the visual image. Before the advent of picture printing in the 15th Century, pictures were comparatively scarce. They were usually produced as works of art: semi-precious artefacts painstakingly created as objects of beauty and as candidates for aesthetic appreciation. By contrast, only a few of the pictures produced today are either regarded, or intended, as works of art. They are usually produced in order to serve certain nonaesthetic functions - as advertisements or warnings perhaps; and the philosophical problems which surround their use on these occasions have very much more to do with the philosophy of language and epistemology than they have to do with traditional aesthetics. Of course, there is no

10 XII INTRODUCTION denying that such pictures may have aesthetic qualities and can be considered from an aesthetic point of view. But questions as to the aesthetic qualities of pictures are very different from questions about the picturing relation, the practice of depicting, and the use of pictures to convey information. In what follows I shall consider these latter questions, and for the most part problems about the aesthetic dimension of pictures will be left on one side.