Twofoldness and Three-Layeredness in Pictorial Representation

• Authors: Alberto Voltolini
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In this essay, I defend a Wollheimian account of a twofold picture perception. While I agree with Wollheim’s objectors that a picture involves three layers that qualify a picture in its complexity – its vehicle, what is seen in it, and its subject –, I argue that the third layer does not involve perception, even indirectly: what is seen in a picture constrains its subject to be a subject of a certain kind, yet it does not force the latter to be pictorially perceived, not even indirectly. So, even if a picture is three-layered, pictorial experience remains a twofold experience, as Wollheim claimed. Neither the proponents of threefoldness nor Wollheim himself, however, have convincingly explained how the experience really is a perceptual experience. My Wollheimian account thus aims to reconceive the pictorial experience in properly perceptual terms.

Keywords

EN

Wollheim R.; seeing-in; pictorial experience; aesthetic experience; perception

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 55 (New Series 11)
• Issue: 1
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Alberto Voltolini

• Estetika, redakce, Katedra estetiky, Filozofická fakulta UK, Celená 20, 116 42 Praha 1, Czech Republic