Seeing-as, Seeing-in, Seeing-with: Looking Through Pictures

Abstract

What do we see what we look at pictures? What kind of vision is conveyed by and through pictorial representation? Such questions have been kept aesthetics and visual studies busy for decades. As it turns out, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein has proven to be a major source of inspiration in these discussions, and in particular his notion of “seeing-as”, which is sometimes also referred to as “aspect seeing”. Indeed, it seems plausible to say that pictures never show things in general, but always only in a certain respect, from a certain point of view or under a certain aspect. Besides, what holds true for pictorial representation seems equally valid for the stance taken in front of pictures: looking at pictures requires seeing them in a certain way, that is, as pictures. Considering Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) as a rectangular object made of oil, canvas, and stretcher bars does not exactly correspond to the kind of vision pictures generally require (Fig. 29.29.1). Pictures, in that respect, usually present themselves as objects that should be seen as depictions of something else they are about, and in the case of the Hopper painting, say, of a late-night scene in an American diner, with four human figures seen through a wedge of glass. Other descriptions would be possible too, of course, such as one which would present Hopper’s 1942 painting as a depiction of solitude in high industrial modernity.