Schwartz 1985_The Power of Pictures

Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

The Power of PicturesAuthor(s): Robert SchwartzSource: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 12 (Dec., 1985), pp. 711-720Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026405 .Accessed: 15/09/2013 15:39

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THE POWER OF PICTURES 711

THE POWER OF PICTURES* T HERE's an oft-quoted, though perhaps apocryphal, re- mark attributed to Pablo Picasso concerning a portrait of Gertrude Stein he had just completed. When told by critics

that the picture didn't look like Stein, Picasso is supposed to have quipped, "Everybody thinks she is not at all like her portrait, but never mind, in the end she will manage to look just like it."' What Picasso seems to be claiming here is that certain pictures, his portrait of Stein, for example, can alter the very way we see the world. To many, this has seemed like an exaggerated boast about the power of pictures. I disagree. Indeed, pictures may not only shape our perception of the world; they can and do play an important role in making it. And it is primarily this latter, stronger claim that I wish to defend.2

Even those who readily admit that pictures can serve to guide our perception and influence its development often balk at the idea that in making pictures we take part in constructing the world. Such a brash claim would seem to fly in the face of common sense. Pictures no more than paragraphs determine the way the world is. We use language and other systems of representation to describe and depict reality, not create it.

In some sense, of course, this is so. To draw sketches for a skyscraper is not to build one. And a bank that gave out a mortgage on the sketches would be in deep trouble. At the same time, we may note that it would be impossible to construct the skyscraper without some prior representations, and the architect who drew the

*I wish to thank Margaret Atherton, Paul Coppock, Mark Kaplan, John Koethe, and Arnold Koslow for helpful comments on this paper.

' Roland Penrose, Picasso (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 122. Nelson Goodman cites a variation of the Picasso story in Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett 1968), p. 33. My thoughts about the power of pictures have been much influenced by what Goodman has to say in that book and elsewhere.

2A good discussion of how pictures can affect what we see as well as how we see can be found in E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960) and, more recently, in his The Image and the Eye (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1982).

Throughout this paper I focus on Picasso's portrait of Stein, but the epistemolog- ical and metaphysical points I wish to make do not, I think, depend on this particular example. I might have cited other paintings by other artists. My neglect too of relevant art-historical details should not be taken to suggest that we can determine the significance or best interpretation of a work without paying attention to these matters. Finally, I do not wish to maintain that the primary goal of portraiture is always to provide information about what the subject looks like. In some cases the artist may be more interested in showing us something about color and light, or about pictorial style, or about social mores. 0022-362X/85/8212/071 1$01.00 ? 1985 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.


712 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

plans for the building will surely be among those demanding credit for its making. Whether such credit is given, however, will depend on how widely we are willing to construe the notion of making. Similarly, a lot will depend on what we make of the term 'making' when we speak of pictures as "tools for making the world." For some, any construal of 'making' other than as 'the physical manipulation of matter', will stretch their linguistic intui- tions beyond the breaking point. I do not intend to spend much time trying to overcome this verbal barrier. Rather I wish to exam- ine what power pictures can and often do exert in fashioning how we organize and understand our world. Moreover, I hope to con- vince those who are determined to resist the claim that in devising representations we partake in "world-making," that the alternative idea of a world ready-made, waiting out there to be captured in word or image, is itself not a viable position.

What we see is in part a function of what we look for, and pictures can inform our habits of looking. Picasso's portrait serves to focus our attention on certain aspects of Stein's physiognomy, gaze, body frame, hairline, expression, and demeanor that even her best friends may have overlooked. Yet had we the occasion to meet Stein, we may have been led to take notice of these features-features that would have escaped our seeing without Picasso's aid. In turn, the more we find what Picasso has urged us to look for, the more the portrait, as Picasso suggests, will begin to look right. Accord- ing to Penrose, this is just what did happen. In later years, he says, the portrait "was acclaimed by all as an admirable likeness" (22).3

There is an unfortunate temptation, though, to think of Picas- so's accomplishment here as a bit of conjuring. Like the magician, Picasso has got us to look where he wants us to, while reality has slipped by unnoticed. To the extent that we are "hypnotized" by Picasso's work, we are not seeing what Gertrude Stein "really" looks like. But, as E. H. Gombrich, Nelson Goodman, and others have argued for a long while now, we can make no good sense out of this last notion-what things pure and simple look like to the innocent eye. And even if we could, it is not clear why seeing the world through innocent eyes is seeing it more objectively or correctly than viewing it through the eyes of experience.

Stein, along with any object, exhibits an unbounded number of properties, and pictures no more than descriptions can treat them all. Of necessity, Picasso's portrait discriminates against some features or some ways of seeing Stein and highlights others. So must it

'It should be noted too that looking at the real Stein can alter our perception of the portrait and lead us to appreciate aspects of it we may have overlooked.



be with any representation. Selection, however, is not license. Not every attempt at portraying Stein will result in an equally good depiction or description of her. Picasso's selection will be better than others if the features Picasso emphasizes provide more insight into Stein's character and help capture more forcefully what is significantly distinctive about her looks. Picasso's portrait may, then, not only cause us to view Stein in a new way, but may win out and become a dominant way of seeing her. The features Picasso draws our attention to may come to be seen as "the" features that are most characteristic and informative. The person for whom this mode of perception has become customary may, in fact, find it as difficult to see Stein in the old way, as it is to hear French as it sounded before one learned the language. What's more, someone initially schooled via Picasso's painting may be at a loss to see what the critic could have had in mind in questioning the correctness of Picasso's rendering.

Granting such plasticity and relativity of perception, neverthe- less, will seem like tame stuff next to the claim that pictures partic- ipate in making our world. Yet to admit even this much is to admit quite a lot. It is to allow not only that pictures guide our looking but that they help determine which among alternative ways of or- ganizing our world are to be taken as accurate or adequate. Once Picasso's portrait has done its job, our heightened sensibilities will alter our evaluations of the correctness of this and other portraits or descriptions. They will cause us to rule that some representations are less apt or appropriate, and lead us to see that others have got it more right than we had perhaps realized. So the power of pictures extends beyond its influence on our perceptual skills. It can share in determining the correctness or accuracy of depictions and descriptions. And in so doing, I would claim, Picasso's picture helps to make or create what Gertrude Stein looks like.

Such making is not the genetic making that Stein's parents par- took in, nor is it the sort in which a makeup artist may have been engaged. The making is less direct. Nonetheless, in accenting certain aspects and downplaying others the portrait carves out from a multitude of possible properties those which now "just are" Stein's features. They characterize or constitute what Stein "really" looks like. The picture joins in giving Stein her looks.

Another way to explore this power of pictures is to see how Pi- casso's portrait may serve to shape the classification of people into those who do and those who do not look like Stein. What is it, we may ask, that determines whether it is correct to claim that Stephen resembles Gertrude Stein? Well there's Stein, Stephen, and how


714 THE JOURNAI. OF PHILOSOPHY

they both look. And I have already indicated the manner in which pictures can affect these matters. But we would be remiss if we did not also include mention of whatever it is that determines what is to count as relevant likeness. For remember that Stein exhibits an unbounded set of properties, and logically, at least, she shares as many properties with any one object as she shares with any other. What matters for "real likeness," therefore, is which properties are taken as salient or characteristic or are seen as useful for purposes of grouping and categorization. And this is something that very well may fall within Picasso's sphere of influence. To the extent that Picasso's portrait shapes our perception and conception of Stein, it at the same time alters what it is to be someone who looks like Stein. The features Picasso delineates will become "definitive" of the property of looking like Stein.4

We cannot answer the question, Does Stephen look like Stein? until we give sense to the notion "looks like Stein." Yet which features or looks serve to establish the boundaries of this concept are inextricably a function both of our doing and Stein's "being." So long as Picasso's vision and version dominate our looking and categorizing, his work plays a significant role in creating or determining what constitutes being a Stein look-alike. Stephen is a member of this class because Picasso has drawn out and highlighted features of Stein's looks that Stephen has (or at least, guided by Pi- casso, we now can come to see Stephen as having). Picasso makes Stephen a member of the class of Stein look-alikes not by surgery or other physical manipulation but by bringing it about that the features Stephen has count. Picasso makes it so that it is reasonable or right to group Stephen with Stein on the basis of looks. In a similar vein, Picasso may be given some credit for creating the class of Stein look-alikes, since he helps carve out just which class this is.

Of course, this class, like any other class of objects, tenselessly always existed. It also always contained all and only the members it has, regardless of the doings of Picasso or anyone else. Indeed, the class we now take to be composed of resemblers of Stein would (if we ex- clude the reflexive case) have been extensionally the same class and just as real had Stein herself never existed. This, however, says no more than that classes are individuated by the members they keep. What remains undetermined is whether the members of this par-

4 I have spoken and will continue to speak of the features that go to make a person's looks or constitute a property. I do not, however, mean to imply by this that we can give a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for either the looks or the property in terms of such component features. Nor do I believe that the features al- luded to are themselves in any sense epistemologically prior or are just what they are independent of our making.



ticular class are the Stein look-alikes. The question that matters then is, Which class should constitute the class whose members look like Stein? But this is nothing that the world wears on its face. There is no antecedent grouping of reality that our efforts at categorization must aim at and get right; for what could such a prior fact be? Or, to put it the other way around, there are too many possible classes "out there" to be right about. No one class can claim to provide the essential or metaphysically natural fit to the label 'looks like Stein' until our efforts at categorizing, describing, and depicting help demarcate just what that property is. . The point then is not the trivial reminder that words bear arbi- trary connections to their denotations and, hence, require human habits or conventions to give them their referential force. It's not merely the English phrase 'looks like Stein' that requires a human touch; it's also the very "property" the label is used to express. The property "looks like Stein" is not something preformed, lacking perhaps only an associated name or term in some language. The property itself requires molding or shaping. What Picasso does is help make this property the property it is. Antecedent to his or all other efforts to make the property come alive, the fact that Stephen looks like Stein is a fact without any factuality or substance. The idea of the fact of the matter, "Stephen-looking-like-Stein," sitting out there or just being that way, while awaiting the good fortune to be noticed or recorded, evaporates.5

But surely it will be felt that something is radically wrong here. Stephen may have lived out his life long before Picasso or Stein were born. So unless we are willing to countenance some occult notion of backward causation, how could Picasso affect the facts about Stephen? Stephen's looks, are Stephen's looks, are Stephen's looks. This there is no denying. What does not follow is that this is enough to make Stephen look like Stein. For the applicability of this property to Stephen will depend on Picasso as well as Stephen. Had Picasso not made salient the features of Stein he did, Stephen might not have possessed the property of looking like Stein. His looks would not have been the relevant looks. There would be no grounds for seeing Stephen and Stein as significantly alike. In

'I use the notion of a property here and in what follows to make a point and point out some contrasts. I hope this use can help spell out my position without committing me to an ontologically or metaphysically rich view of properties. For those, however, committed to properties as some sort of eternal essence-embodying objects, my claim would have to be put differently. Let all the properties be. Still, which of these properties is the property "Stein's look" or "looks like Stein" is not given us by the world or fixed independently of our efforts to describe and depict Stein and group persons according to likenesses.



shaping Stein's looks Picasso also helps make it correct to classify Stephen together with Stein, to link them both under the property "looks like Stein." Thus Picasso provides a basis for its being right to include "Stephen looks like Stein" among our stock of truths or facts.6

Our inclination to grant such power to pictures and other representations or descriptions is not, however, stable. Our assessment of the situation can flip or flop. From a slightly different perspective it may seem more reasonable to deny Picasso credit for making any sentence true or false. For once Picasso has affected our understanding of how Stein looks and influenced the contours of the property of looking like Stein, he too must live with what he has wrought. 'Stephen looks like Stein' is true if and only if Stephen looks like Stein. Truth is a matter of whether what the sentence says is so. Pi- casso has no privileged position here. Picasso cannot make pictures accurate and sentences true merely by drawing the former or pro- claiming the latter. But notice that the situation in this respect also holds for cases where we readily admit Picasso was the actual or sole physical maker of the object under consideration. That Picas- so's Guernica has patches of black paint and weighs more than 5 pounds are things that Picasso brought about; he made them so. Yet the sentences 'Guernica has patches of black paint' and 'Guer- nica weighs more than 5 pounds' are true (or false) independent of Picasso. They are not subjective, or so simply because Picasso says they are or wants them to be. They are true if what they say is true and false if what they say is not the case. And similar remarks apply to the truth or falsity of 'Stephen looks like Stein'. Picasso influences the truth value of this last sentence not by decree or fiat but by altering and shaping our perceptions and conceptions of which people are most appropriately allied with Stein. By so doing he partakes in establishing which people are really like her. In molding our categories and influencing our habits of classification Picasso helps make it plausible or reasonable or right or correct or true to group Stephen and Stein according to their looks.

Now nothing I have said so far about the power of pictures is meant to imply that Picasso can depict Stein arbitrarily and still provide an accurate or significantly interesting representation of her. Nor do I wish to deny that the visual system we are born with

6 Putting matters this way is a little misleading in that it may suggest that Stephen's looks as opposed to Stein's are fixed or "given," and clearly this is not my intention. Likewise such phrases as 'which features count' or 'which features are relevant' will mislead if they are taken to suggest that the features are simply out there untouched by our cognition. (On this last point see fn 4 and my remarks toward the end of this paper.)



may provide physiological constraints on how we group people together on the basis of their looks. There might even be cases-for example, if Stein had an identical twin-where we would have trouble telling Stein and her look-alike apart. Including such a twin in the class of Stein resemblers might then seem forced on us by the physical limits of our perceptual apparatus alone. Consider- ations of this sort, however, do not affect my claim about the relativity of facts to human intervention. First, innate constraints on our judgments of likeness cannot account for the full range of persons who may be said correctly to look like Stein. There's no problem telling Stephen and Stein apart; there's much about them that is and looks different. Moreover, until Picasso came along we did not (or were not able to) see that Stephen looked like Stein. Sec- ondly, to admit that the property of looking like Stein is shaped or determined by the innate constraints of our visual system would not show that the property's features and dimensions are independent of us. Just the reverse. It would mean that what constitutes looking like Stein importantly depends on how we are genetically determined to organize our world. And although this innate/ acquired distinction may be of interest to the psychologist, metaphysically speaking, there could be no point in distinguishing those categorizations primarily due to learning from those more influenced by genetic endowment. On either account, whether a person has the property of looking like Stein will depend on how we organize, order, and comprehend our world. There is no fact that Stephen looks like Stein which is not in some fashion or other the result of being filtered through our conceptions and perceptions.7

In explaining the power of pictures to make our world I have fo- cused on Stein's looks and on the related property "looks like Stein." I have argued that both are molded by our cognitive and sensory habits and that these aspects of our understanding may themselves be shaped by pictures and other representations. Still, it will be maintained that this example of the power of pictures is of limited significance. It cannot be used to support any general thesis about the role of depictions and descriptions in shaping our world. After all, the property "looks like Stein" is a put-up job that could not fail to be "mind-dependent." To look like Stein is to have a

'While on the topic of genetic and psychological influences, I might mention that I do not hold the position that realistic depiction is solely a matter of convention or our familiarity with the system of representation. Although there is much freedom and flexibility in our standards, there are constraints on what we can and cannot come to see as realistic rendering. I have discussed these issues in "Represen- tation and Resemblance," Philosophical Forum, v, 4 (Summer 1974): 499-512.



property that by definition depends on the fluctuating standards of human perception and habits of classification. "Looks like Stein" is similar to "thought about by Cynthia"; both properties are in- trinsically relative to us or our mental doings. But, it will be said, most of the properties that make up reality are not of this sort, they are not mind-dependent. So Picasso's power will be quite re- stricted. At most, he can influence a narrowly circumscribed set of people-relative facts.8

Understanding the role of pictures and other representations in this constricted manner, however, will not do. Picasso's portrait may alert us to particular aspects of Stein's hair style, line of neck, and setting of eyes, features that are not in any obvious sense more mind-relative than her weight or height. Nor is it apparent why the associated classificatory properties of having a Stein-like hair style, or a Stein-like line of neck, or Stein-like eyes should be so charac- terized. In addition, the skilled artist can get us to see beyond mere "surface" features or looks. We can be led to see the portrait's subject as a person who is spirited, or reflective in nature, or basically long-suffering, or of great inner strength. So Picasso may get us to see not only what Stein looks like but what she is like, what is distinctive and important in her character and disposition. Picasso may thereby shape our notions of what sort of a person Stein is and, hence, determine whether Stephen is a Stein-like person or has Stein's demeanor or personality.

But the point about the power of pictures and other representations to create or partake in making how things are runs deeper than this. For what Picasso does with his portrait bears an important resemblance to what the scientist does or we do in developing concepts and theories. Whether w is to count as a star, x as a fish, y as a piece of furniture, or z as a string of days that constitutes a month of the year, depends on how much likeness we see among w, x, y, and z and the other memnbers of their prospective classes. And this in turn depends on what we see as important, relevant, or salient about those members of the classes we are already in the habit of categorizing together. These properties or classes too require our participation in making them what they are. Significant likeness is not something the world can proclaim or have on its own. By highlighting some features and downplaying others our descriptive and classificatory schemes influence what we take notice of and shape what constitutes "real" sameness. In attempting to determine what our world is really like there's no more place for the innocent

8Though I doubt whether one could spell out in any clear noncircular way what makes a property mind- or people-relative, I do not want to press this issue hert.



mind than there is for the innocent eye. Thus I am inclined to argue that the scientist or theorist may

also be thought of as a maker as well as a reporter of what is.9 The astronomer molds the fact that the Sun is a star and the Morning Star is not in much the way that Picasso makes it that Stephen looks like Stein but Sarah really doesn't, after all. What perhaps distinguishes the astronomer from Picasso are the interests, de- mands, and types of constraint that shape their representations. But it is beyond the scope of this paper to elaborate on the nature and limits of the power of concepts and theories to make our world. Arguing the case for the power of pictures is quite enough.

Any discussion of constraints on depictions, however, is likely to engender another flip-flop in our assessment of the situation. Pi- casso cannot paint Stein any way he pleases and still influence our perception and conception of her. His portrait will be correct or accurate only if he gets her right.'0 Yet what could count as getting her right other than that the portrait corresponds to reality, to how Stein really is? So it will be claimed that it is this fact, the way Ger- trude Stein just is, that is the important constraint on Picasso's representation.

The problem with adopting such a perspective is that it requires us to spell out what it is about the way Stein just is which determines what she is like and what it takes for someone to be like Stein. And if the views I have been promoting are correct, this is nothing that can stand on its own independent of our perceptions and conceptions.

But now we have come full circle. Picasso is not free to paint Stein merely according to his whims, if he is to depict her accu- rately. Picasso must get his portrait right. On the other hand, I have maintained that Picasso's picture goes toward determining

9I have begun to act on this inclination in a forthcoming paper "I'm Going to Make You a Star," to appear in volume 1I of Midwest Studies in Philosophy. For a development of some similar claims see Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (New York: Cambridge, 1981); see especially chap. 3, "Two Philosophical Per- spectives."

'?Some might be tempted to argue that unless Picasso gets her reasonably right the picture could not even refer to or be of Stein. This seems to me wrong. Depictive or visual content will not always give the best account of reference. A picture that is a grossly inaccurate rendering of x may nonetheless be of x, even though it acciden- tally captures the likeness of y quite well. In some situations, the artist's intentions may be paramount for settling denotation, in others causal factors, in others, still, context or convention or perhaps some balanced weighting of them all. Fixing the reference or denotation of pictures would seem to involve many of the complexities one runs into in dealing with language. And, as in the case of language, there is much to be said for the claim that there may be more than one acceptable set of as- signments. For different purposes or emphases, the schemes may differ.



what Stein is like. So Picasso helps determine what is right (the way Stein really is) while at the same time trying to get it right. This task might seem impossible, if it were not for the fact that Pi- casso may very well have pulled it off. And if doing the impossible seems like a difficult feat, Picasso's success would only attest to the power of pictures.

ROBERT SCHWARTZ

University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

BOOK REVIEWS

Traditional and Analytical Philosophy: Lectures on the Philo- sophy of Language. ERNST TUGENDHAT. P. A. GORNER trans. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. xii, 438 p. $49.50.

This original, exciting, complicated, and difficult book was published in 1976 under the title Vorlesungen zur Einfuehrung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag). It became the philosophy book of the decade in Germany, the topic for innumerable seminars and discussion groups. A younger generation of German philosophers, interested in analytic philosophy as a way of breaking free of the tradition in which they had been educated, found in Tugendhat just what they had been looking for: an ex- planation of why philosophy of language is as important as the Anglo-Saxons think it.

Rather than plunging into Anglo-American philosophy of language simply because it was there, as some of his German contem- poraries had previously done, Tugendhat tried to place it in a historical frame. Dedicating his book to the memory of Martin Heidegger and explaining that he owes to Heidegger "the specific mode of access with which I approach the problems of analytic philosophy" (p. x), he argues that analytic philosophy of language is the culmi- nation of Aristotle's ontological project.

This kind of metaphilosophical self-consciousness, which sees analytic philosophy as the fortunate outcome of the entire history of philosophy, is uncommon in Britain and America (although Gustav Bergmann, Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Dummett, and Ian Hacking are notable exceptions to the rule). Recourse to Heidegger's version of

0022-362X/85/8212/0720$01.00 1985 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.


Article Contentsp. 711p. 712p. 713p. 714p. 715p. 716p. 717p. 718p. 719p. 720

Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 12 (Dec., 1985), pp. 677-754Volume Information [pp. ]Front Matter [pp. ]Metaphor as Demonstrative [pp. 677-710]The Power of Pictures [pp. 711-720]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 720-729]Review: untitled [pp. 729-734]Review: untitled [pp. 734-738]

Comments and Criticism"Fitness" in Fact and Fiction: A Rejoinder to Sober [pp. 738-749]

Notes and News [pp. 749]Back Matter [pp. ]

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Schwartz 1985_The Power of Pictures