Contents of spoon-archives/film-theory.archive/papers/Gerwen.intimation
Rob van Gerwen
Dept. of Philosophy
Utrecht University
Depiction and the Intimation of Experience.*
Ò[Aesthetic attributes] furnish an aesthetic idea, É with the proper function É of
animating the mind by opening out for it a prospect into a field of kindred representations
stretching beyond its ken. [The fine arts] drive the soul that animates their work wholly
from the aesthetic attributes of the objects-attributes which go hand in hand with the
logical, and give the imagination an impetus to bring more thought into play in the
matter, though in an undeveloped manner, than allows of being brought within the
embrace of a concept, or, therefore, of being definitely formulated in language.Ó (Kant,
Critique of Judgement, ¤49:7, B195).
1. Introduction.
Usually, analytical aestheticians understand the riddle of pictorial representation as the
problem of how to account for the functionality of pictures in making present the absent.
Naturalists explain pictorial functionality in terms of similarity, resemblance, or
imitation, and they refer to our natural powers and propensities to recognize the like and
the unlike. Conventionalists tend to dismiss the arguments presented in defence of these
notions one after the other, and contend that it is conventions which explain our so-called
natural propensities and faculties, instead of the other way around. Evidently, the
approach here diverges from the merely epistemological concern with the (im)possibility
of establishing whether our representations are true or not, a concern, that is, with the idea
of a GodÕs eye point of view enabling us to establish such truth. Starting then from the
aesthetic approach to the matter of representation, I further limit my concerns in this
paper to pictures, photographic or filmic, that represent persons, their facial expressions,
their actions and reactions, and, more narrowly, to those among these pictures that also
profess to render the experience of these persons. I am interested here in pictures then that
pretend to inform the spectator about what it is like to go through a certain experience.
Normally, such making present of the experiential is not taken as a case of
representation, but either as the evocation of a relevant emotion in the spectator, or as
expression, which is taken to function in a reversed direction when compared to
representation.
The latter two notions, evocation, and expression, however, are connected with the
problematic idea that we can and should separate the affective impact of a representation
from its representational achievement.1 But can we? This separation of representation
from its affective impact has not been questioned adequately in analytical aesthetics, due
to the neat ways in which it is laid out. The emotional is private, intrinsic, and subjective
and this might seem to imply that we cannot represent it in the first place, or that its
representation is possible unproblematically through the representation of its publicly
accessible outlook; we are supposed to be able, then, to analyze the problem of
representation without reference to the affective. I agree that we can account for
representation without reference to the emotional response evoked, and also, that a picture
of a woman can be said to represent the woman irrespective of the question of the exact
expression involved. Nevertheless, in this paper I shall comment on the separation of the
affective from representation, and shall argue that the affective is more narrowly
connected with the representational where the representation is of the experiential.
There exists a peculiar way to represent the experiential and it is not at all
unproblematic. In terms of intimation I shall propose an account of such representation of
the experiential, and shall determine its singular contribution to our identification of the
problem of representation.2
2. Show and tell.
Wittgenstein's remark in the Tractatus that "What can be shown, cannot be said" can be
seen as the utterance of an exclusive disjunction, referring to the general difference
between language on the one hand, and pictures or the gestural, real life, presentation of
things on the other: either you put something into words or, if you cannot do this, you show
it.3 My proposal here is, that we also distinguish what I call ÔintimationÕ of what we
cannot say or show literally: the experience of the antagonist person figuring within the
described or depicted (fictional) world. Intimation is the recurrence within the spectator
of the experience supposedly being lived through by the represented person. Thus an object
or event intimates an experiential aspect if and only if it makes us experience this aspect
for ourselves. To achieve such a recurrence, it is my thesis, the spectator must actively
bring in certain relevant, personal, memories, and therefore intimation is a side-effect
of more literally shown or described events or states of affairs.4 Pictorial intimation then
is not a case of showing, but of not-showing instead.
Let me give two telling examples: I once saw a news footage on television about a racial
riot in South-Africa. People were stoning a young man. While watching this I was fairly
confident that he would escape: people were merely throwing stones at him, and they
wouldnÕt want to go on throwing them as soon as they would realize that he was wounded,
et cetera. Next, other events were shown and I had already forgotten the young man when,
out of the blue, one single shot was shown with the young man lying on the deserted street:
he had died. Devastatingly, the news-reader didn't even notice. Had they shown the man
being stoned to death this wouldnÕt have made the difference that the not-showing did.
Now, however, his dying nearly grew into an experience of my own. That this profound
effect was not merely a function of the reality of the event may become clear from the other
Ð fictional Ð example, of a scene taken from a moving picture by Robert Bresson,
LÕArgent. In this film, a criminal hides out in a shack of a farm owned and run by an
elderly couple. The wife takes care of the criminal, the husband thinks he should be taken
to prison. In the relevant scene the wife, on her way to bring the criminal a cup of coffee, is
stopped short by her husband. A few irritated glances are exchanged, and, just when the
husband strikes out to slap his wife in the face, the camera moves downward, to show the
impact in the sudden movement of the trembling cup, and the coffee spilling over. Instead
of being shown the manÕs hand hit the womanÕs face we are being shown the dancing cup
and saucer. The shock occasioned derives not so much from watching a man slap his
wife, but from the sheer moral depth of this event.5
Now, in both cases this not-showing is more impressive than showing might have been.
Because the slapping is not depicted the situation becomes more intimate, we are more
concerned with what it would be like to be this elderly woman being slapped in the face by
this husband with which you have had Ðto say the leastÐ a fairly regular marriage up to
now. That is, you are forced to imagine what it would mean to go through this very event if
you were this very person or persons; not just any man and woman having a fight, but
these two persons with their unique history, having this fight. This is why the not-
showing morally deepens the event; it intimates the eventÕs moral depth. How to
understand this phenomenon? Evidently, this moral depth is not depicted, yet it is an
effect of what is depicted. An account in terms of expression though, as suggestive as it
may appear to be, seems to me to give way under the load of what it is supposed to explain.
A dancing cup of coffee is shown and intimates the moral depth of an event in two
personÕs lives. The cup can never achieve this in itself; it cannot possibly be expressive of
such complexities, although it may express the force of the blow. Yet another possible
answer might be given in terms of evocation: the whole sequence in the film, that which is
shown, and that which isnÕt, evokes in us a response to our awareness that what we are
witnessing is of great implication for these people. However, evocation would have to be
explained in terms of our response to something comprehended, but it does not show how
we got to comprehending it. It does not explain, in other words, why not-showing the event
would be significantly different from showing it.
My thesis regards the merits and limitations of pictorial representation of experience.
Thus, I am concerned with the aesthetic problem of representation. My thesis is twofold:
first, the experiential, which is invested with the moral depth relating it to the life of the
person having the experience, cannot be depicted, but, secondly, it can be represented. The
way in which it can be represented, is by intimation.
We cannot fully explain the difference between depiction and intimation as long as we
adhere to the exclusive disjunction between representation and expression, because this
would leave us with the sole possibility for explaining artistic communication of the
experiential in terms of expression, in terms, that is, of a reference relation somehow
antipodal to the one of representation. Indeed, we cannot communicate the experiential by
any ÔliteralÕ depiction, but this does not preclude its being representable altogether. To
dissipate the traditional separation of representation from expression I propose we
distinguish three kinds of representation: telling (description of matters of fact),
showing (depiction of visual aspects of the world), and intimation (occasioning
associations which enable one to relive the involved experiential aspect). Before I
elaborate on the issue of expression, there are some things to be said about the measure of
conventionality of discursive and, respectively, pictorial representation.6
3. Pictures do not state, they exemplify.
It is of great importance to realize how depiction differs from assertive description:
pictures cannot state. They cannot assert knowledge regarding matters of fact at all,
even though they do show certain perceptual aspects of them. A picture never asserts: Òthis
is the case, and this, not thatÓ: one single photograph would be conveying uncountably
many facts. They are just as much overdetermining our descriptions as reality itself is,
as I shall further argue below. Donald Davidson once put this rather clearly:
How many facts or propositions are conveyed by a photograph? É Bad question. É Words
are the wrong currency to exchange for a picture. (Davidson, 1984, p. 263).
If I were to ask three persons to describe a certain situation, three different descriptions
would be the result of their endeavours. If we would be trying to decide which of these
descriptions is true we might come up with a photograph of the scene to compare the
descriptions with. However, this could never function as a criterion, because the
photograph merely repeats certain visual aspects of the situation, and these
underdetermine the descriptions. Contrary to the descriptions, the photograph is not
similarly underdetermined, but is instead determined fully by the situation it depicts.
Therefore, it provides no alternative for an assertive description. This is illustrated by
the fact that no pictures can deny that something is the case.
Evidently this relates to the distinction between telling and showing. Pictures show forth
certain perceivable aspects of a situation. Because they do this by a reduction in
dimensionality, there will be required specific conventions to thus render some three-
dimensional, moving event into a flat, still, photograph. However, this does not reduce
pictorial representation to mere conventionality: some parts of what we see in the picture
can be seen in the depicted scene as well. Such questions as are quite normal for
discursive assertions, concerning the (epistemic) truth of a picture are not to the point.
This difference between the pictorial and the discursive relates to the measure of
thoroughness of the conventions involved. In section 6 I will return to this difference. So
no picture states that in this scene X is the case rather than Y, although we can use a
picture to provide by way of exemplification the material necessary for understanding
and verifying a statement of such intent.7 We also can arrange whatever is exemplified
in a picture by introducing subtitles or interpretations, but this does not change the picture
into a statement. Nor do pictures of themselves denote what they depict. They merely
exemplify it.8
To be sure, exemplification is what samples do: be examples of whatever it is that
explains your peculiar interest in it. For example, an interior decorator might show you
some samples in order to suggest the textile that you might want your new curtains to be
made of. We all know how a sample works, but how should we account for it? According to
Nelson Goodman, who reassessed the notion of exemplification, in the end the sample
refers to the curtain you want to have tailor-made, but it does so in a complex way.9 In
fact, Goodman thinks, exemplificatory reference is the inverse of denotation. Now
denotation is the reference of labels to things. Exemplification, then, involves a symbol,
the sample, which refers to certain labels, which denote certain properties possessed by the
sample, and, in our example, by the curtain. Goodman thinks, however, that ÔpropertiesÕ
is merely short for Ôbeing denoted by some labelÕ, or Ôbelonging to the extension class of
certain labelsÕ. Therefore, according to Goodman, a sample only exemplifies labels, not
the properties that these labels denote. Exemplification also is conventional, in that it is
the conventions which decide which of the sampleÕs ÔpropertiesÕ supposedly exemplify: the
texture and the colour, but not the width, or the absolute weight of the sample. Now
Goodman is certainly right in claiming that exemplification is not like denoting in that
it does not directly refer to things, primarily, because the thing the sample is a sample of,
does not exist yet. This doesnÕt make exemplification merely fictional, because even
though the curtain does not exist yet, it will soon enough. To short circuit these
complexities, then, Goodman elegantly suggests that we take the exemplificatory
reference relation to be aimed at the label which denotes both the sample, and the curtain.
For several reasons this account is not satisfactory.
First, the conventions involved are strictly formal. They regulate which species of
properties should be relevant, but they do not regulate the exact token instance of these
properties. Even though we will know that only texture and colour are significant, this
does not tell us which colour or texture the sample exhibits. Showing forth a specific shade
of colour clearly cannot be reduced to convention: the sample itself will have to exhibit the
properties. To say, secondly, that talk of properties is merely short for talk of extensions
of labels is not going to help explain exemplification, because the exemplificatory
reference supposedly starts with the sample, not with the labels denoting the sampleÕs
properties: it will be the properties of the sample which make one decide whether the
sample is going to be of use to us. Thirdly, the elegance of GoodmanÕs proposal is illusory.
We can describe a sample in many different ways, but we wonÕt normally have the exact
terms at our disposal, even though we know fairly well how to pick the right sample, and
use it. Instead, then, of first referring to hard-to-find labels, it is exactly the function of
the sample to make the use of descriptions obsolete. A sample rather is a conglomerate of
secondary qualities,10 and that is exactly where its strength lies. Put differently: all
labels on offer for a description of a sample will be underdetermined. This
underdetermination with regard to exemplification will help provide an explanation of
the remarks just made on behalf of the citation from Davidson. Fourthly, Goodman
introduces his account in terms of a reversed reference to labels to sustain his rejection of
similarity as a necessary condition of exemplification on the one hand, and on the other,
to sustain his rigid conventionalism. However, it is precisely because of the
underdetermination of the labels which supposedly describe what is being shown by the
sample, that the similarity of the sample with the curtain is going to be of paramount
importance, instead of obsolete. Goodman is right in that the principles of
exemplification will be relative to the context in which a sample is used, but he is wrong
about the conventionalism involved in the proper meaning of some singular
exemplification, which instead stands in need of a naturalistic account.
Exemplification, then, is not a case of a reversed reference to a label.11 A sampleÕs
functionality depends, instead, on a projected recurrence of properties: the properties in
the sample are supposed to be the same as, and not merely similar to, those of the curtain.
The conventionality involved, then, is relative to property species, not to specific
properties: to colour in general, for example, and not to a specific colour. Exemplificatory
functionality at large is subject to conventions, but the question of exactly what is
exemplified in a concrete instance must be accounted for naturalistically, in terms of
recurrence of properties.
I propose we understand representation as a kind of exemplification.12 With
exemplification the idea that the object which is exemplified exhibits (to an extent) the
same properties that we find in the exemplifying symbol is an anticipatory claim, a
projection based on the general significance of the referential medium. The same goes
for depiction: we anticipate on uncovering the properties exhibited in the picture also in
the depicted subject as it may exist in the real world. In short, a pictureÕs representational
properties are those properties which are projected onto the depicted object. The difference
between exemplification and depiction then lies in the ontological status of the object
referred to. With depiction the object may be fictional. This, however, in no way changes
the representational functionality, as it wouldnÕt reduce the exemplificatory functioning
of a rejected sample, of a textile that we donÕt want our curtains to be made of. Because
pictures at first merely suggest to refer to some real event, the ontological problem of
fictional entities evaporates. Indeed, of its essence a representation is a case of
exemplification, it does not denote, or state matters of fact.13 Establishment of the reality
of a pictureÕs referent lies beyond the reach of the picture itself. The crucial part of what
makes a thing a representation, then, lies in the exemplificatory recurrence involved,
which sometimes is merely anticipated; and to understand this we need a naturalistic
account.
Another major contribution of Goodman lies in his thesis that what he calls the
ÔsyntacticalÕ properties of the pictorial ÔsystemÕ are lacking in distinct characters.14 If
sometimes we appear to be able to distinguish such characters (the pictorial symbol of a
house has this and that parts) it will become clear soon enough that there is no possibility
whatsoever to differentiate the ÔcharactersÕ involved in a finite way, as we are able to do
in the case of letters and words.15 In GoodmanÕs words, the pictorial is syntactically
dense and relatively replete; the discursive is syntactically differentiated and not
replete. This is consequential for the differences between the semantic peculiarities of
discourse and those of the pictorial. Ambiguity, and semantic density appear to be
paradigmatic of discourse, but they are not so with regard to pictures. On the contrary: a
photograph of my mother not only unambiguously depicts my mother, it does so
exclusively: this photograph depicts no other person. Not that every picture will represent
its object unambiguously, but, the pictorial does have this potency of its essence, whereas
the discursive does not. Description will always be underdetermined by its subject,
whereas pictorial representation will be as overdetermining as its subject matter is.16
We can and should explain this naturalistically, by taking depiction as a form of
exemplification. In itself a pictorial representation Ð if referring to real events at all Ð
refers to one singular event, by (anticipated) recurrence of its perceptual aspects, and does
not state anything about the event. In photography such recurrence is causal, even.17 Our
thoughts about the event depicted in a photograph, then, derive from without the picture.
4. Real life expression and experience.
Representation, then, depends on noticed (anticipated) recurrence. How does this relate to
intimation? The crucial difference between pictorial and intimated representation is that
in the case of depiction the spectatorÕs activity is one of noticing what is there in the
picture, whereas in the case of intimation the spectatorÕs activity lies in spontaneously
supplying the associations needed to fill in what is not there to be noticed. To the question
of how these latter, mostly affective, attributions to works of art come about, and where we
should look for their standards of correctness, the most illustrative answer provided by
analytic aestheticians is in terms of expression.18 For our purposes the more interesting
case of this is real life expression.
First, there is an obvious difference between the ÔliteralÕ expression of a real life face, and
the ÔexpressionÕ on a represented face: the latter is far more subject to conventions than the
former is. People endowed with normal cognitive powers will have the natural propensity
to perceive things and their natural properties when confronted with them. Apparently
they also have the propensity to look through the merely perceptually available outlook of a
person, straight into the mental life expressed in it. We do not require specific
interpretative activities for such recognition. I am not implying that we always fully
recognize a personÕs feelings from his gestural and facial expressions, but in principle
we find little difficulties in it. Lastly, real life expression is directly and causally
related to the mental life in question, which means that whatever emotional state we
ascribe to a person his subsequent actions will reveal whether we were right and to what
measure.19 However this is, the experiential awareness one has of the mental event one
is in, is irreducible to oneÕs outlook, and cannot therefore be fully represented by
repeating such an outlook. This is not merely a consequence of the fact that the
experiential awareness of oneÕs mental life would lie hidden ÔbehindÕ its visual
symptoms, but also of this awareness being bound up with a moral depth embedded in a
complex personal history.
Now then, if depiction equals exemplification, and if this implies that only a situationÕs
visual aspects recur in a picture, then this would dismiss the capacity of the pictorial to
represent an eventÕs experiential aspect. The ease involved in mere depiction will be at
odds with the gravity and moral depth of the experience involved. This is, first, because
in real life we are being served with more clues which are causally connected to the
experience; secondly, because in real life we are less tended to think that some singular
ÔimageÕ will settle the question as to the exact nature of the experience involved, i.e. the
causal and contextual complexities of the experience from part of our everyday
recognitions. In representation, however, because of the absence of these complexities,
ellipsis, narrative allusion, and discursive information will have to fill the gap. These
devices, however, are not pictorial, and for an understanding of just how they fill in the
gap more than a keen analysis of the merely pictorial is required.
To depict a crying face is merely one way to direct our associations, it certainly does not
automatically depict the grievous experience in full depth.20 We know that cubist
painters have tried to fill in the gap by providing more perspectives on a face or event, and
so did cinema in furnishing moving images, but to little avail, as it is not just a matter of
quantity of information, but of how to induce the spectator to empathically fill in the
emotion. Instead, the problem of the representation of experience is a matter of the
individuality of the represented. To convey this individuality only empathy might be
successful. It is the associations of the spectator that must come to the aid of the visual if
the representation is successfully to encompass an experiential aspect. By way of these
personal associations the spectator fills in the gaps in the visual with his own
experiences, past or present. This is to say that the experiential aspect can only be
intimated. Cinematic montage does provide an answer, as we saw already in the
example with the coffee cup taken from Bresson.
How exactly should we understand the hiddenness of an individualÕs experience? For the
most part there is a difference between real life expression and representation of the
mental experience, because although our understanding of mental states derives from a
public perspective, the person experiencing the state nevertheless is somehow in a
privileged position. This thesis may appear to collapse under the weight of its
presupposing that I know better than anyone else what it is that I am experiencing. But
that is not my point. I agree that my understanding of my own experience to a large extent
converges with insights provided by other people: their insights in why I am sad, and
even their acknowledgement of the fact that I am sad might even outdo mine at times. On
top, my own insights derive mostly from what I have learned to think about mental states
from other people's actions. So I am not stating that the person having the experience is
better equipped in a cognitive manner. However, he does possess an experiential
privilege deriving from, again, experiential acquaintance with oneÕs own individual
personal history. Evidently, to understand an experience is far removed from
undergoing it.21 And to undergo it is an act more solitary than might be concluded from
its public accessibility. To represent experience then is more difficult than the existence
of real life expression might induce us to think. In fact, representation of the experiential
depends on the success of making the spectator associate with the depicted specific
memories of feelings so that he can revivify the represented experiential aspect within
his own mental life. This subjective supplement is the exemplificatory recurrence
requisite for the intimation of the experiential to be a case of representation.22
5. Intimation and convention.
Discursive reference to things and events involves a symbol system that is highly
conventional and possesses a syntax of characters that can be differentiated in finite
manner: letters, words, and sentences. The relation between a word and its object is
arbitrary; it does not involve similarity (not normally at least; onomatopoeias are not
paradigmatic), nor recurrence. The reference works its way due to the semantics related
to the characters used; a functionality based exclusively on convention. We must
distinguish between two aspects of this conventionality. First, the discursive medium at
large is conventional, amounting to something like Ôwith things of these types (words,
sentences) we can refer to things of those types (things, events, et cetera)Õ. Then there is a
more specific conventionality relating singular words and sentences, to specific kinds of
things and events. Now it is because discourse is conventional in both ways that it takes
such great pains to learn a language: we must learn from each single word what it stands
for. And it is this thorough conventionality which generates the question of truth to the
facts, which generates, in other words, discourseÕs potency to state matters of fact, in ways
underdetermined by the data.23 Contrary to this a pictorial representation does
presuppose regularities between the symbol (if that is what pictures are) and what it stands
for. Certain similarities between some surface parts of the picture and some surface parts
of the depicted found the possibility of the pictorial reference relation. We have already
analyzed this in terms of exemplification, and exemplification is conventional only as a
medium, not in its token singular instances. To sum up, pictorial conventions relate to
the medium only, they do not pertain to the token-instances, singular pictures. This
explains why we have less trouble in learning to decipher pictorial representations: once
we have grasped one, we will know how to grasp most others.24 With regard to the
measure of conventionality involved intimation resembles discourse more than
depiction.
Moreover, there is an asymmetry between depiction and intimation, in our recognition of
what is represented. Recognition of a merely visual aspect equals experiential
awareness, which, clearly, is what makes them secondary qualities. Here, perception
equals experience. However, to recognize someone expressing a mental state does not
automatically involve an experiential recurrence of this personÕs mental life. As a
consequence, representational intimation of an experience will not take place
automatically whenever its visual expression recurs pictorially, and such intimation,
therefore, will be subject to token-conventionality also. In order to draw the spectator
towards a re-experiencing of a mental event a representation must lure the spectator into
providing spontaneously a subsidiary subjective activity on top of his perceptions. These
token-conventions, however, because they induce the shown to occasion something which
is not shown, appear to be of a ÔnegativeÕ, dependent kind: they would rule over when not to
depict, i.e., over where to leave the open spots in the picture so that the spectator can fill
them in empathically with his own associations.25 Because intimation of the experiential
originates in not-showing, it can only be conveyed by some significant transgression of
the available conventions: there are no direct ways available. Thus intimation
presupposes and motivates creativity.26
Above, we have been meaning to oppose ÔpictorialÕ intimation with pictorial showing,
which we took as kinds of recurrence of experiential and, respectively, perceptual
aspects. We have described this opposition in terms of the difference between the
respective conventions. In discursive language, however, due to its thorough
conventionality, we find a continuity between the paradigmatic use of the medium, which
is statement, and the non-stating involved in discursive intimation. This seems to
suggest that discursive representation of an experience does not involve any special
problems. The analogy with the pictorial, however, points in a different direction,
namely, that intimation in discourse is achieved by metaphorical use of terms.27 I
cannot follow up on this in the space allotted to this paper. Instead I will offer one last
thought regarding the criteria of success germane to intimation.
6. Intimation and aesthetic excellence.
We must distinguish between the psychology of evocation and the aesthetics of
intimation. It is common knowledge that with respect to evocation the mental aspects
involved in a work often diverge from our response to them: the anger or sadness of the
main character in a scene in a film may arouse a feeling of pity. The question, however,
whether this scene also succeeds in intimating the experiential aspect of the main
characterÕs anger or sadness is a different question altogether: it is a question about
representation, not one of psychology. So for an appropriate ascription of intimation to a
work we must distinguish whether our experience is merely a psychological reaction to
the represented, or whether it is some recurrence of this experience.
Secondly, a revivification of some experiential aspect relates to aesthetic evaluation in a
very substantial manner, as is illustrated by the citation from Kant with which this paper
started. Kant describes aesthetic ideas as the addition of aesthetic attributes to what
logically belongs to a certain concept. (I would say: an addition to what is literally
described or shown). He ascribes to this addition the functionality of animating the
mind. Re-experiencing a mental life evidently animates the free play of oneÕs mental
faculties. If this free play provides us with an adequate understanding of certain
aesthetic evaluations, as I think it does, intimating efficacy will be an essential part of it.
Lastly, we must ask if experiencing an emotion can form a sufficient justification for
attributing this emotion to the workÕs intimation. Evidently, it is part of my thesis that for
such attribution experiencing the emotion is a necessary condition: the only way for us to
really know if a work has represented some experience is by going through the
experience. On top of this, however, we must also believe that it was the work that made us
go through this experience, and we must be right about this. To establish this latter
rightness it will not do to take issue with some spectatorÕs claim that he did not have the
specific experience. Instead we must try to find out whether the ontological implications
are viewed correctly. It is a consequence of the point of view defended in this paper that
standards regarding this issue are an ideal at best, because the experiential aspect is
being rebuilt within the mental life of the individual spectator by way of his own
associations. These associations will be guided by what is present Ðshown, or told Ð in the
representation, but these discursive and pictorial parts in themselves do not provide the
decisive criteria for the way in which we filled in the supposedly absent experience.
Therefore, with regard to the intimation of the experiential aspect we must be non-realist,
because the very success, and even existence, of intimation depends upon our personal
associations. Now this non-realism regarding intimation may be problematic from the
point of view of universal validity claims. From the point of view of the individual and
the way he lives his life it appears not to be defective at all. Intimation makes us compare
our own past experiences with a new experience based upon these past ones but
nevertheless not reducible to them. The impact of the intimated associations provides the
explanation of the impressing grip which a representation of people may have on us. Here
the ethical import of (representational) art is at its deepest, and to ask for the truth of our
ascriptions may be inappropriate for that very reason.28
* The investigations were supported by the Foundation for Philosophy and Theology
(SFT), which is subsidized by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
(NWO).
My thanks are due for Paul Crowther, Malgosia Askanas, Louis Schwartz, Anthony
Savile, Jan Bransen, Marc Slors, Maureen Sie, Bert van den Brink, and Willem van
Reijen, for providing the provocations that I needed to formulate this paper.
1 By the way, this separation involved some progress relative to the hybrid notion of
expression propounded by the immediate, idealist predecessors of analytical philosophy. I
most certainly do not propose we return to their vestiges. A typical treatment of the
separation can be found with Nelson Goodman (in Languages of Art. 19852 Indianapolis:
Hackett).He characterizes representation as a denoting reference relation between a
symbol and a matter of fact, and expression by way of a reverse reference of a symbol to
emotion labels, i.e., not from a symbol to something denoted, but from a symbol to
something denoting. (Both are supposed to be merely conventional.)
2 Even though Goodman explicitly denies the non-cognitive nature of the emotional, he
nevertheless does not escape the implications of the involved separation. We all agree
that an emotion is something quite different from a propositional thought. The question Ð
which, however, is not at stake in this paper Ð is then, if the emotions supposedly function
cognitively: how do they differ from thoughts? (The answer, I think, must involve
experiential awareness, but this is an answer unavailable to an extensionalist like
Goodman.)
3 Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.1212. Cf. also TilghmanÕs discussion of the matter in his
ÒWittgenstein, Ethics and AestheticsÓ (1991) London, etc.: The MacMillan Press.
4 The question of how we know whether the experience had equals the experience
represented will be the subject of the last section.
5 In his ÔcinematographicÕ films the French film director Robert Bresson has tried to
empty the shots from the individuality of the actors, and from that of the represented
persons. He explicitly defies acting and works instead with ÔmodelsÕ who do not express
their own emotional life, in order to invest them with the meanings inherent in the
narrative of the film. However, the effect of this filmic strategy is not that the images are
provide with some universal meaning, but with the exact, individual, experiential
meaning Bresson wants them to have. (Which is in exact contradistinction with the
Medieval pictorial system of biblical illustration). Within such ÔcinematographyÕ the
decisive meanings then explicitly derive from what lies in between subsequent shots and
is highly dependent upon editorial qualities. BressonÕs ideas provide an illustration of
the concept of intimation.
6 I am not primarily engaged with the problem of denotation and fictive representation
here, for two reasons. Mostly, because I think the problem of fictive entities is an
ontological problem which does not regard the aesthetic problem of representation. Nor,
again, do I write about the epistemological, metaphysical questions regarding the
existence or intelligibility of a knowledge-indifferent world and its accessibility for us.
7 Cf. Walton: ÒThe fundamental function of representation thus is not to express
propositions, but rather to make them make-believedly true. This is a function which
predicates do not have (although novels and poems containing them do). And the
occasional use of representations as predicates is quite incidental to it. Consider a
convention whereby when a goal is scored in a basket-ball game an 'announcer'
indicates this fact by throwing a ball through a hoop himself and pointing to the player.
His throwing the ball through the hoop is a predicate used to attribute a property to the
player pointed to. But the similar action performed by the player, by which he scores a
goal, is not a predicate. It is used not to express a proposition but to make one (literally)
true, to give something a property rather than to attribute a property to it. The player's
action is not true of any goal or goals, nor does it symbolize, refer to, stand for, denote one;
instead it brings one into existence. Representations, in their essential role, are
comparable to an action of throwing a ball through a hoop whereby a goal is scored, not to
one whereby a goal already scored is signalled.Ó (Walton, work cited, 253-54).
8 According to Kendall Walton pictures are not denotative of themselves. Ò[denoting]
representing is not matching and hence É something other than what a work matches
helps to determine what, if anything, it [denotingly] represents.Ó (Walton: Are
Representations Symbols? Monist, 1974, 241).
9 Unfortunately, Goodman has failed to recognize the exact scale of this notionÕs
importance. Exemplification is not merely Ôone among manyÕ reference relations, one
which is distinct from representation. Instead, it seems to be the very reference relation
explaining pictorial representation. The reason why Goodman has failed to see this lies
in his rigid sustainment of the brand of extensionalist nominalism that he adheres to,
but, clearly, I cannot here elaborate this point to the full.
10 I do not intend to introduce a discussion about the usefulness of the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities, but merely refer to the notion of secondary qualities
because it is illustrative here of the fact that the use of a sample lies in perceiving its
qualities. And these qualities are of such a nature that they cannot be described without
some reference to a person seeing them.
11 By the way, for an extensionalist nominalist like Goodman such a reference relation
should be inconceivable in the first place.
12 In a most illuminating article Douglas Arrell, has proposed an emendation of
GoodmanÕs theory along these lines. He gives these three definitions: ÒA symbol
exemplifies a property if and only if it refers to that property and possesses that property. A
symbol represents an object if and only if it refers to that object and exemplifies one or
more of the properties of that object. A symbol denotes an object if and only if it refers to
that object and does not exemplify any of the properties of that object.Ó (Arrell, 1987, What
Goodman should Have Said About Representation. Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 46, p. 44). Evidently, tables and chairs can denote the map of Utrecht, without
however, this explaining the nature of these tables and chairs: it merely illustrates the
arbitrariness of denotation.
13 Cf. Roger Scruton, (1983) Photography and Representation, in Scruton: The Aesthetic
Understanding: Essays in the Philosophy of Art and Culture. London, New York:
Methuen, p 112.
14 I put these words in quotation marks because of their suggestion of a correlate
semantics and of a strictly conventional pictorial language which would be the sum of
such a syntax and semantics, and of which I am not convinced that something like it is at
work in pictorial representation. It seems instead that use of these terms are highly
debatable and metaphorical at best. It appears wrong to call these surface properties
syntactical, as they are merely a recurrence of surface properties of what is depicted.
15 Unless we first reduce the pictorial to a symbolical system comparable to discourse.
This appears to have been done in the Middle Ages religious art, assigning fixed
meanings to pictorial elements. Such procedure, however, is atypical, and involves a
reduction of the representational powers of depiction. Nor is it the kind of ÔsymbolicalityÕ
Goodman is attributing to the pictorial.
16 Now one might want to object that proper names have this potency as well. However,
these do not show the named, but arbitrarily denote them. This denotative force derives
from some baptizing practice. It may be a rigid denotation, but that is irrelevant here.
They do not have the power to verify or falsify statements of fact, which pictures do
possess; and the information that is conveyed by the descriptions in which the proper
name is applied is not itself rigidly referring to one single individual. Contrary to this
underdeterminacy of discursive assertion, there is no universal applicability involved
in pictorial representation, even though, again, certain statements can make it apply in
various ways to more than one individual.
17 Whereas in painting it merely is intentional. Cf. Scruton (1983) for this distinction.
18 Typically, Mulhall, in his discussion of expression, (in Cooper, ed., 1992: A
Companion to Aesthetics, Oxford: Blackwell), instead of talking about our experiences,
merely mentions our responses. His reduction of the issue to linguistic techniques
exactly misses the point that the experiential ought to form the basis of our ascriptions.
What should interest us most, is not our describing a work as sad, but our experience of
the mental life involved. Rather too hastily does Mulhall in the end state that the
application of certain linguistic terminology does not imply anything about the involved
aesthetic value. This I dispute on the grounds that the revivification of the represented
experience may form part of an interesting definition of artÕs value. However, I will not
yet argue elaborately for this point of view in this paper.
Possibly two other answer might be worked out, in terms of supervenience and of
secondary use of terms, but I am not sure as to how these answers ought to be worded, nor
am I confident whether they will succeed in accounting for representational efficacy
regarding the experiential any better than ÔintimationÕ does.
19 It resembles such primitive exclamations as ÔouchÕ and ÔwowÕ. Discourse only helps us
to raise such expression to more sophisticated levels. Cf. Stephen Mulhall on
psychological terms in On Being in the World. Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing
Aspects. London, 1990: Routledge.
20 Someone who admits the impossibility of such representation of the full moral depth of
experience but who denies that this is problematic, throws out what we all take to be an
important goal of representation.
21 I am not referring here to ÔexperienceÕ in the sense of a kind of knowledge of skills, the
kind of knowledge which is requested of a person applying for a job, for example.
22 It may well be for reasons such as the individuality of the experience to be intimated,
that the revivification by the spectator hooks up with the creative act of the artist. Thus the
empathy involved may entangle three levels: the experience of the spectator, the
experience of the represented, and the experience of the artist. I thank Paul Crowther for
occasioning this thought, which, clearly, is still in need of elaboration. Also, intimation
presupposes a creativity on behalf of the spectator, placing him at the level of the artist.
The artist, however, in his creative act, has somehow anticipated the success of his work
and has thus revivified the represented experience before representing it. The artistÕs
creation as much as the spectatorÕs awareness both involve what individuality they are
able to invest. Thus the empathy involved in intimation will be threefold and will
explain why works of art are at best also instances of morally deep communication
between artists and art appreciators.
23 Cf. Scruton (1983), p. 107.
24 Cf. Flint SchierÕs excellent analysis in: Deeper into Pictures. An Essay on Pictorial
Representation. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
25 One must have a deeper understanding of the involved pictorial conventions to
experience an intimation of the experiential aspect of a picture of a dying person, in
contrast to merely recognize it as a picture of someone dying.
Also, the representation of the most simple and best known mental events is much less
transparent than may be suggested to us by what we can see on television. The
conventions that are at work with such a seemingly straightforward event as Ôbeing in
loveÕ, for example, are aptly illustrated in the moving picture Betrayal, directed by David
Jones, on a script written by Harold Pinter. In this movie the story of the love between a
man and a woman is being told in reversed chronological order. The film starts with the
quarrel occasioned by the manÕs flirtations with another women, followed by the
separation of the two antagonists. It then recedes to what went on before this, and ends
with the two falling in love. We have the hardest of times trying to imagine their love,
because of our foreknowledge; even though the images used are among those which
normally enable us within seconds to understand how two people Ôare made for each
otherÕ, et cetera. The involved intimation, then, is a function of convention, much more so
than the involved depicting of a man and woman kissing is.
26 Cf. Cf. David Goldblatt on self-plagiarizing: 1984, Self-Plagiarism. Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43, p. 71-77, and, again Paul Crowther: Creativity and
Originality in Art. In: British Journal of Aesthetics 31, p. 301-309, 1991.
27 There is a paradox involved in trying to render the experiences involved in some
events that have really taken place, in that although some measure of literary technique,
and of fiction for that matter, may help intimate a certain experience, this at once may
destroy the documentary impact of the descriptions. However, any merely literal
description of what happened will leave out something very important: what it meant to
experience the event. In certain documentaries the mere provision of information, the
enumeration of facts may suffice. Here, intimation may not be necessary at all, let alone
crucial. However, with regard to artistic representations of persons we may seriously
wonder if provision of information ever is the sole purpose of a work.
28 The analysis provided by Paul Crowther of artÕs functionality sustains my analysis of
intimation: ÒThat the legitimizing discourse should exert so profound a pull in relation to
even the most (superficially) antithetical works is hardly surprising. For, whilst the
concept ÔartÕ is a social construct of Western culture, it is not merely a construct. The
reason why it needs to be constructed is to pick out the fact that certain kinds of artefacts
bring about certain positive effects through the mere contemplation of them. It is the fact
that certain artefacts can be valued in this way that necessitates the concept ÔartÕ. The
legitimizing discourse, in other words, legitimizes not just this art and that, but the very
concept of ÔartÕ as such. É To escape the legitimizing discourse, in other words, would
involve giving up art.Ó (Crowther, 1993: Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, p. 194-95).
ÒÉwhat legitimizes modern art and gives it its worth is some kind of elevating
expressive effect embodied in its creation and reception.Ó (Crowther, 1993, p. 185).
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