#picturing

Michael Craig-Martin, On Being an Artist

Sokolowski says that picture-consciousness isn't an ability we can exercise on just anything we want. Being able to take something as a picture doesn't mean we can decide to see a table as a depiction of something else, to transform it at will into a photograph of a beluga whale or a sculpture of David (if we found ourselves doing so, we'd be in a similar position to the man who mistook his wife for a hat).

It's exciting to see philosophy influence artists and others outside of philosophy departments. I'm just worried that Craig-Martin's description of the first lesson creates the impression that Sokolowski's phenomenology is more 'subjectivist' than it actually is. In fact, much of his philosophical interest in pictures has to do with their publicity -

We tend to place the kinds of presentation "in the mind" and call them psychological or subjective, in contrast to things, which are the only objectivities we allow. This consignment to the mind-bin is rather easy for remembrances, imaginations, dreams, names, and propositions, and even perceptual aspects and views (which turn into sense impressions when so consigned), but it is less easy for pictures, which even to the unreflective seem somehow to be "out there" next to things. For this reason, pictures provide a good access to the question of being and manifestation.

I've thought about this in relation to pareidolia, and I think that provides a contrast between an actual depiction and a merely apparent one that's closer to being something like a creation of the viewer. I think this cartoon lady I found on a wall has a different ontological status from a reflection or a portrait, for example -