Is twofoldness necessary for representational seeing?

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 45, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 248-257

  Nanay, Bence ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249423175     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayi034     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Kendall L. Walton, 'Depiction, Perception, and Imagination', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 60 (2002), pp. 27-35, esp. p. 33
2. Kendall L. Walton, 'Reply to Reviewers', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 51 (1991), pp. 423-427, esp. p. 423
3. Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Boston, MA: Harvard U.P., 1990), esp. pp. 300-301
4. Walton writes: 'Seeing-in is an experience characterized by what [Wollheim] calls "twofoldness": one sees the marked picture surface, and one sees the subject of the picture.... These are not two independent experiences, he insists, but two aspects of a single one. It is hard to know what this means, and Wollheim offers little explanation.... I propose that my theory goes some way towards showing how two different intentional contents can be combined. The experience is a perception of the pictorial surface imagined to be a perception of... whatever is depicted' (Walton, 'Depiction, Perception, and Imagination', p. 33)
5. In other words, according to Walton, his notion of twofoldness, which can be seen as an interpretation and explication of Wollheim's, is necessary for the perception of pictorial representations. (I recently argued against Walton's claim that his and Wollheim's concept of twofoldness are the same. Bence Nanay, 'Taking Twofoldness Seriously. Walton on Imagination and Depiction', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 62 [2004], pp. 285-289)
6. Robert Hopkins, for example, also embraces a version of the claim that twofoldness is necessary for the perception of pictorial representation. See Robert Hopkins, Picture, Image and Experience. A Philosophical Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1998), esp. p. 77
7. Dominic McIver Lopes, Understanding Pictures (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1996), esp. ch. 2 (pp. 37-51)
8. Jerrold Levinson, 'Wollheim on Pictorial Representation', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 56 (1998), pp. 227-233
9. Levinson, 'Wollheim on Pictorial Representation', pp. 228-229
10. Richard Wollheim, 'On Pictorial Representation', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 56 (1998), pp. 217-226 at p. 221
11. Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1987), p. 46
12. Wollheim, 'On Pictorial Representation', p. 221
13. Wollheim, Painting as an Art, p. 73
14. He also uses formulation of the twofoldness thesis that is ambiguous between these two notions. When he introduces this concept in 1980, for instance, he writes: 'The seeing appropriate to representations permits simultaneous attention to what is represented and to the representation,' Richard Wollheim, 'Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation', in Art and its Object, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1980) pp. 205-226 at p. 213
15. Interestingly, Wollheim gave a very similar argument in another context. See Richard Wollheim, 'On Formalism and Pictorial Organization', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 59 (2001), pp. 127-137
16. Wollheim, 'Seeing-as, Seeing-in, and Pictorial Representation', pp. 214-216
17. Maurice Henri Pirenne: Optics, Painting, and Photography (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1970)
18. Michael Polanyi: 'What is a Painting?', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol, 10 (1970), PP. 225-236
19. On the question of the role of trompe l'oeil in Wollheim's theory, see Susan L, Feagin, 'Presentation and Representation', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 56 (1998), pp. 234-240