Table Of ContentPICTURES AND THEIR USE IN COMMUNICATION
PICTURES AND THEIR USE
IN COMMUNICATION
A Philosophical Essay
by
DAVID NOVITZ
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MAR TINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1977
In Memory of
Daantjie Oosthuizen
© 1977 by MarlillllS Nijhal/' The Haglle, NetherfOllds_
All righls resened, inel/lding the right 10 trallslate or 10
reprod/lce this book or parts thereof ill allY form_
ISBN-13: 97K-90-247-1942-6 c-ISHN-IJ: 97K-94-0tO-l063-4
1)01 IOt007/97K-94-010-1063-4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List oj illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi
Part One
PICTURES AND DEPICTING
CHAPTER I PICTURING 3
l. Pictures and denotation 3
2. The use of pictures 5
3. Telling what a picture is of 10
4. Conclusion 18
CHAPTER II DEPICTING AND THE CONVENTIONAL IMAGE 21
l. Leonardo and the practice of depicting 21
2. Towards conventionalism 26
3. Coordination problems 28
4. The problem of picturehood 30
5. Conventions and resemblance 32
6. An objection to conventionalism 39
7. Conclusion 43
CHAPTER III CONVENTIONS AND THE GROWTH OF PICTORIAL STYLE 45
l. Two kinds of pictorial convention 45
2. The Gombrich problem 50
3. The individuation of pictorial styles 54
4. Pictorial progress 57
5. Pictorial revolutions 60
6. Conclusion 63
Part Two
PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION
CHAPTER IV PICTORIAL ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS 67
1. The picture / use distinction 67
VI CONTENTS
2. IlIocutionary acts 71
3. Pictorial iIlocutions 75
4. Explaining oneself 80
5. Conclusion 84
CHAPTER V PICTORIAL PROPOSITIONS 86
1. Indication and attribution 87
2. Can pictures express propositions? 90
3. Pictorial propositions - An objection 96
4. Pictorial propositions - Some qualifications 98
5. Conclusion 106
CHAPTER VI THE PICTORIAL POINT OF VIEW 108
1. Pictures in nature - Schemata and beliefs 112
2. Noticing a rhinoceros 119
3. Perceptual revolutions 123
4. Visual 'Metaphor' 126
5. Representation and arousal 136
6. Pictures and expression 139
7. Conclusion 149
CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION 151
Bibliography 155
Name index 158
Subject index 160
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1 Birds 34
Figure 2 Schematic Drawings 48
i) De Wit: Putti. From Frederik de Wit, Lumen picturae et
delineationes (Amsterdam, c.1660). Victoria and Albert
Museum.
ii) Van de Passe: Putti. From Crispyn van de Passe, Lumen
Picturae (Amsterdam, 1643). Victoria and Albert Museum.
iii) Fialetti: Eyes 1608. From Odoardo Fialetti, II vero Modo
ed ordine per dissegnar tutti Ie parti et membre del corpo
humano (Venice, 1608). Photograph by courtesy Phaidon
Press.
iv) Schon: Heads. From Erhart Schon, Underweysung der
Proportion (Nuremburg, 1538). Photograph by courtesy
Phaidon Press.
v) Vogtherr, Feet. From Heinrich Vogtherr, Ein fremds und
wunderbarliches Kunstbuchlin (Strassburg, 1538). Photograph
by courtesy Phaidon Press.
Figure 3 13th Century Illustrated Manuscript. Photograph by courtesy
Phaidon Press. 100
Figure 4 Locusts. From the Department of Prints and Drawings of
the Zentralbibliothek, ZUrich. 115
Figure 5 Nonsense Figure. From F.e. Bartlett, Remembering, Cam
bridge University Press, 1932. Reproduced with the kind
permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Press. 116
Figure 6 From Hieroglyph to Pussycat. From F.e. Bartlett, Remem
bering, Cambridge University Press, 1932. Reproduced with
the kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University
Press. 116
Figure 7 Diirer: Rhinoceros. Prints Division, The New York Public
Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 118
Figure 8 Heath: Rhinoceros. From James Bruce, Travels to the
Source of the Nile (Edinburgh, 1790), Vol. V. Photograph
by courtesy Phaidon Press. 118
VIII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 9 Cartoons 127
i) Cartoon from Charivari, 10 October, 1867. Photograph by
courtesy Phaidon Press.
ii) Cartoon from Charivari, 17 March, 1871. Photograph by
courtesy Phaidon Press.
iii) Cartoon by Sir David Low. From the Evening Standard,
15 May 1933. Cartoon by David Low by arrangement with
the Trustees and the London Evening Standard.
Figure 10 Tree-Person 129
Figure 11 William Blake: Giant Oak. From the Collection of Mr. and
Mrs. Paul Mellon. 131
Figure 12 The Shadow. From the Sturmer, No. 10, 1937. Photograph
by courtesy Phaidon Press. 133
Figure 13 Hugo van der Goes: Adam and Eve. Reproduced by permis-
sion of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. ] 34
Figure 14 The Red Dragon. From the Sturmer, No.4, 1937. Photo-
graph by courtesy Phaidon Press. 134
Figure 15 Jusepe de Ribera: Archimedes. Reproduced with permission
of The Prado, Madrid. 140
Figure 16 John Constable: The Hay-Wain, National Gallery, London.
Reproduced with the permission of the National Gallery,
London. 144
Figure 17 John Constable: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, Tate
Gallery, London. Reproduced with the permission of the
Tate Gallery, London. 144
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am particularly indebted to my good friend and colleague, Paul Crittenden,
for the trouble that he has taken in reading and commenting on the various
drafts of this book. His interest in the topic as well as our many, often
protracted, discussions made the task of writing this book a very pleasant
and engaging one.
My thanks as well to Stuart Hampshire, Warden of Wadham College,
Oxford, and to Jane Osborn of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, whose detailed
comments on an earlier version of this work led to radical revisions and
improvements. Rom Harre of Linacre College, Oxford, supervised my
doctoral thesis which formed the origin of this work, and his comments
have done much to clarify my ideas and to correct mistakes. Rosemary
Novitz was the patient and willing sounding board for many of my
arguments. Her eye for detail and accuracy, and her uncanny ability to
find the weak points in even my most treasured arguments, helped make
this work very much more substantial than it would otherwise have been.
Professors Bernard Mayo and R.H. Stoothoff commented both copiously
and helpfully on Chapter Three, and I am grateful to Professor John Fisher
for his comments on Chapter One. He has very kindly allowed me to
reprint an expanded version of my article "Picturing" which appeared in
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in Winter, 1975. My thanks as
well to the editor of The British Journal of Aesthetics for granting me
permission to publish as part ofthis book certain material which is to appear
in his journal in Autumn, 1976.
Finally, I am grateful for the permission given me by the various museums,
galleries and libraries mentioned elsewhere, to reproduce the illustrations
which appear in this volume. lowe a special debt of gratitude to Mr D.V.
Sims of the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, for
arranging the reproduction and photographing of these illustrations.
New Zealand David Novitz
July, 1976 University of Canterbury
INTRODUCTION
Ours is the age of the picture. Pictures abound in our newspapers and
magazines, in storybooks and on the glossy pages of instruction manuals.
We find them on billboards and postage stamps, on the television screen
and in the cinema. And in all of these cases pictures inform us: they explain,
they clarify, they elucidate - and at times, too, they entertain and delight us.
Images on the television screen have all but replaced the printed word as a
source of information about the world; and nowadays, too, picture books
and comic strips are consulted much more readily, and with much less
intellectual effort, than the printed word. There can be little doubt but
that pictures have come to play a very important role in communication.
It strikes me as odd that, in what is nothing less than a visual age,
philosophers have had so little to say about the visual image and its use in
communication. Hardly anything has been done to explain the way in
which pictures are used to inform us; the way in which they influence our
thinking, our attitudes and our perception of the world. My aim in this
work is to fill this gap, and in so doing to provide a viable account of
pictorial communication.
There is, however, a widespread but mistaken tendency to think of the
philosophical enquiry into pictures and their use in communication as a
branch of aesthetics: a tendency, I think, which is to a large extent a product
of the history of the visual image. Before the advent of picture printing
in the 15th Century, pictures were comparatively scarce. They were usually
produced as works of art: semi-precious artefacts painstakingly created as
objects of beauty and as candidates for aesthetic appreciation. By contrast,
only a few of the pictures produced today are either regarded, or intended,
as works of art. They are usually produced in order to serve certain non
aesthetic functions - as advertisements or warnings perhaps; and the
philosophical problems which surround their use on these occasions have
very much more to do with the philosophy of language and epistemology
than they have to do with traditional aesthetics. Of course, there is no
XII INTRODUCTION
denying that such pictures may have aesthetic qualities and can be considered
from an aesthetic point of view. But questions as to the aesthetic qualities
of pictures are very different from questions about the picturing relation,
the practice of depicting, and the use of pictures to convey information.
In what follows I shall consider these latter questions, and for the most part
problems about the aesthetic dimension of pictures will be left on one side.
Description:Ours is the age of the picture. Pictures abound in our newspapers and magazines, in storybooks and on the glossy pages of instruction manuals. We find them on billboards and postage stamps, on the television screen and in the cinema. And in all of these cases pictures inform us: they explain, they c
