Seeing-in
A similar duality is proposed by the philosopher of art, Richard Wollheim. He calls it ‘twofoldness’ (1987, pp. 46–7, 72-5.). Our experience of the picture surface is called the ‘configurational’ aspect, and our experience of the object depicted the ‘recognitional’. Wollheim's main claim is that we are simultaneously aware of both the surface and the depicted object. The concept of twofoldness has been very influential in contemporary analytic aesthetics, especially in the writings of Dominic Lopes and of Bence Nanay. Again, illusion is forestalled by the prominence of the picture surface where an object is depicted. Yet the object depicted quite simply is the picture surface under one reading, the surface indifferent to picture, another. The two are hardly compatible or simultaneous. Nor do they ensure a reference relation.
Wollheim introduces the concept of ‘seeing-in’ to qualify depictive resemblance (1987 pp. 59–61). Seeing-in is a psychological disposition to detect a resemblance between certain surfaces, such as inkblots or accidental stains, etc. and three-dimensional objects. The eye is not deceived, but finds or projects some resemblance to the surface. This is not quite depiction, since the resemblance is only incidental to the surface. The surface does not strictly refer to such objects. Seeing-in is a necessary condition to depiction, and sufficient when in accordance with the maker’s intentions, where these are clear from certain features to a picture. But seeing-in cannot really say in what way such surfaces resemble objects either, only specify where they perhaps first occur.
Wollheim’s account of how a resemblance is agreed or modified, whereby maker and user anticipate each other’s roles, does not really explain how a resemblance refers, but rather when an agreed resemblance obtains.
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