Picture Act

Horst Bredekamp

THE PICTURE ACT: TRA DITION DITION,, HO HORIZON, RIZON, PHILOSO PHILOSOPHY PHY

1 . Imagines agentes and their Impact on Philosophy Viewers of Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man in the National Gallery in London, almost certainly certa inly a self-portrait of the artist ar tist (Fig. 1), 1), are invariably overwhelmed by the interplay between the indistinct fur fu r of the cloak, the photoreali photorealistic stic wrinkles around the eyes, and the tactile qualities of the shimmering fabric of the turban. The portrayed man observes the beholder with an intensity that fixes him wherever he stands.1 Nicolaus Cusanus reflects on this quality in a well-known passage of De Visione Dei that might almost refer to van Eyck’s picture: “Every one of you, from whichever place you may behold behold the picture, will wi ll think th ink the picture pict ure is looking solely at yourself.”2 After considering various options, Cusanus concludes that the picture is active in an autonomous way, responsive simultaneously to every gaze, ga ze, independent of the viewer’ v iewer’ss position and movements, and hence an embodiment of the multi-perspectivity of the Visione Dei. This alone characterizes the painting’s activity as theorized by van Eyck himself, who allows his painting painti ng to speak in the first person singular. singu lar. Along the lower lower edge of the frame, the picture declares: decl ares: “Jan van Eyck me fecit” ( Jan Jan van Eyck made me).3 1 2 3

Lorne Campbel Campbelll et al. (eds. (eds.): ): Renaiss Renaissance ance Faces. Van Eyck to Titian, London 2008, p. 178. “Et quisque vestrum experietur, ex quocumque loco eandem inspexerit, se quasi solum per eam videri” (Nikolaus von Kues, Opera omnia, vol. 6, ed. by Adelheid Dorothee Riemann, Hamburg 2000, 200 0, Praefatio, 3, l. 2f., p. 5). 5). Reinhard Reinha rd Liess: Zum Logos der Kunst Rogier van der Weydens. Die “Beweinung “Beweinungen en Christi” in den Königlichen Museen in Brüssel und in der Nationalgalerie in London, vol. 2, Münster/Hamburg/London 2000, pp. 772–775; Karin Gludovatz: Der Name am Rahmen, der Maler im Bild. Künstlerselbstverständnis Künstlerselbstverständnis und ProduktionsProduk tions-

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Fig. 1 Jan van Eyck: Portr Portrait ait of a Man in a Red Turban Turban,, 1433, oil on oak, London, National Gallery.

This recourse to the first person singular alludes al ludes to the fact fact that notwithstanding their non-organic materiality, pictures seem to be endowed with the capacity to act.4 No known culture, presumably, has failed to recognize this phenomenon of imagines agentes.5 Reflections on its universal validity are found in elaborations of a range of philosophical and biosemantic concepts,

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kommentar in den Signaturen Jan van Eycks, in: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte LIV (2005), pp. 115–175, pp. 126–133. Horst Bredeka Bredekamp: mp: Theorie des Bildak Bildakts. ts. Frank Frankfur furter ter Adorno-V Adorno-Vorlesungen orlesungen 2007 2007,, Berlin 2010, pp. 59–100; on van Eyck: pp. 81–85. With pointed irony, W. J. T. Mitchell has attr attributed ibuted the perce perception ption of pictu pictures res as being “alive” to: to: “primitives, children, the masses, the t he illiterate, the uncritical, the illogical, the ‘Other’” (W. J. T. Mitchell: What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago 2005, p. 7). For an early and lucid refutation of this position, see David Freedberg: The Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago/London 1989.

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Fig. 1 Jan van Eyck: Portr Portrait ait of a Man in a Red Turban Turban,, 1433, oil on oak, London, National Gallery.

This recourse to the first person singular alludes al ludes to the fact fact that notwithstanding their non-organic materiality, pictures seem to be endowed with the capacity to act.4 No known culture, presumably, has failed to recognize this phenomenon of imagines agentes.5 Reflections on its universal validity are found in elaborations of a range of philosophical and biosemantic concepts,

4 5

kommentar in den Signaturen Jan van Eycks, in: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte LIV (2005), pp. 115–175, pp. 126–133. Horst Bredeka Bredekamp: mp: Theorie des Bildak Bildakts. ts. Frank Frankfur furter ter Adorno-V Adorno-Vorlesungen orlesungen 2007 2007,, Berlin 2010, pp. 59–100; on van Eyck: pp. 81–85. With pointed irony, W. J. T. Mitchell has attr attributed ibuted the perce perception ption of pictu pictures res as being “alive” to: to: “primitives, children, the masses, the t he illiterate, the uncritical, the illogical, the ‘Other’” (W. J. T. Mitchell: What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago 2005, p. 7). For an early and lucid refutation of this position, see David Freedberg: The Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago/London 1989.

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THE P ICTURE ACT: TRADIT ION, HORIZON, PHILOS OPHY

which – while not necessarily related to one another and perhaps even mutually contradictory – agree that pictures act with an often uncontrollable semantic force. These theorems range from Aristotle’s concept of the intrinsic energy of forms6 and Lucretius’ conviction that seeing is a special form of being touched 7 all the way to Charles Darwin’s concept of an evolutionary panorama that is a gigantic theater of bodies as imagines agentes. It was meant as a radical alternative to the principle of the survival of the fittest.8 In an unsurpassed way, Darwin declared the visually impelled force of sexual selection to be an essential contributor to evolution.9 No less important importa nt was Darwin’ Darw in’ss avowal that although it would never reveal the reason for its existence, exi stence, this force ought to be described describe d and analyzed all the more precisely.10 Taking Darwin seriously, the imagines agentes belong to all phenomena whose effects are fully explicable, but whose reason for existence is and will probably remain obscure. Belonging to this realm in the natural sciences are gravity, the effects described by quantum physics, phy sics, and the interrelationship of time and a nd space. In cultural cultu ral terms, term s, the concept of imagines agentes is part of Ernst Cassirer’s “basis phenomena” (Basisphänomene). Notwithstanding their inexplicability, they must be considered whenever reflections on consciousness extend to the very ground of the problems it raises.11 The broad and profound framework of these thoughts reveal the misguidedness of every accusation that imagines agentes and their reflection in picture act theory are variants of animism.12 This kind of critique is grounded neither in essential philosophical ph ilosophical traditions t raditions nor evolutionary evolutionary theory theory.. Its vain but understandable vehemence stems from a painful inability to overcome a constructivist conceptualization of subjectivity and its world-defining telos. 6

7 8 9 10 11 12

Ari stotle: Rhetor Aristotle: Rhetoric, ic, ed. and tran trans. s. by Franz Sieveke, Munich 1980, 141 1411b 1b 25, p. 193. Cf. Valeska Valeska von Rosen: Die Enargeia des Gemäldes. Zu einem vergessenen Inhalt Inha lt des Ut-pictura-poesis Ut-pictura-poesis und u nd seiner Relevanz für das cinquecentes ci nquecenteske ke Bildkonzept, in: Marburger Jahrbuch für f ür Kunstwissenschaft Kunstwissensc haft 27 (2000), pp. 171–2 171–208. 08. Lucretius developed this conviction in book IV of “De rerum natura,” namely lf. 54–64. On this concept and the Lucretian tradition of chance images: Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 317–322. Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, London 1871 (facs. repr. Princeton 1981), vol. I, p. 61. Cf. Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 309–316. Darwin: Dar win: The Decent of Man, and Select Selection ion in Relation to Sex (as fn. 8), p. 249 249.. Peter Dear: Laminates of Time. Darw Darwin, in, Classification, and Selection, Uppsala 2014, pp. 21–27. 21–27. Ernst Cassirer: Zur Metaphy Metaphysik sik der symbolischen Formen, ed. by John Michael Krois, Nachgelassene Manuskripte und Texte, vol. 1, Hamburg 1995, p. 156. Beat Wyss: Renaiss Renaissance ance als Kultur Kulturtech technik nik,, Hambur Hamburgg 2013, pp. 145f. 145f.;; Whitney Davis: A General Theory of Visual Culture, Princeton 2011, pp. 185f. The refutation of these kinds of critique became the offspring of a new foundation of the picture act, see Sascha Freyberg/Katharina Blühm in the t he present volume. volume.

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The description of active pictures as imagines agentes derives from the earliest known Roman treatise on rhetoric. To characterize pictures that act, the unknown authors coined the term imagines agentes.13 In early modern times, the qualities of imagines agentes were described by the Latin vis, virtus, facultas, dynamis, and the German terms Kraft, Tugend, and Wirkung.14 The praxis of mnemonics and the activation technique of imagines agentes can be traced back to the ancient cultures of Egypt. 15 There, such active images comprised a multitude of mobile sculptures (Fig. 2), from the ‘singing’ colossi of Memnon to the statues of state of the Late Antique Corpus Hermeticum. The most famous of its texts, the Asclepius, includes a vivid report of living statues, fashioned by human hands, that ruled and pacified communities: “I mean statues that have life breathed into them, full of spirit and pneuma, that accomplish great and mighty deeds, statues that can read the future and predict it through priests, dreams and many other things, which weaken and heal men, create sadness and joy for every individual according to his merits.”16 Thomas Hobbes, who founded modern state theory, refers to this context when he draws on imagines agentes – and in particular the Egyptian statues mentioned in the Asclepius – when conceiving his central work, the Leviathan.17 The imagines agentes come to embody the commonwealth that would lead the citizens toward peace. According to Hobbes, all contracts remain empty words to those entering into them “when there is no visual power to keep them in 13 14 15 16

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Rhetorica ad Herrennium, ed. and trans. by Theodor Nüßlein, Düsseldorf/Zurich 1994, III/37, p. 176. Karl Möseneder: Paracelsus und die Bilder. Über Glauben, Magie und Astrologie im Reformationszeitalter, Tuebingen 2009, pp. 73–162. Jörg Jochen Berns: Schmerzende Bilder. Zu Machart und Mnemonischer Qualität monströser Konstrukte in Antike und Früher Neuzeit, in: Roland Borgards (ed.): Schmerz und Erinnerung, Munich 2005, pp. 25–55. “Statuas animatas, sensu & Spiritu plenas, tanta & talia facientes, statuas, futurorum praescias, easque forte vates omnes somniis, multisque aliis rebus praedicentes, imbecillitatesque hominibus facientes, easque curantes, tristitiamque pro meritis” (Hermès Trismégiste: Corpus Hermeticum, ed. by Artur Darby Nock, trans. by André-Jean Festugière, Paris 1980, vol. 2, Asclepius, VIII, 24, p. 326, lines 4–8). In Hobbes’ ideal list of books, the number of editions of the Corpus Hermeticum is surpassed only by Euclid’s Elements. See Arrigo Pacchi: Una “Biblioteca Ideale” di Thomas Hobbes: il MS E2 dell’ Archivio di Chatsworth, in: Acme XXI/1 (1968), pp. 5–42; Karl Schuhmann: Thomas Hobbes und Francesco Patrizi, in: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie LXVIII (1986), pp. 253–279. See also: Gianni Paganini: Hobbes’s “Mortal God” and Renaissance Hermeticism, in: Hobbes Studies 23 (2010), pp. 7–28. Hobbes used an Italian encyclopedia which contained the complete Corpus Hermeticum, see Francesco Patrizi: Magia Philosophica, Hamburg 1593. The text on the living statues appears on p. 69. On identifying the edition see Horst Bredekamp: Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies, in: Patricia Springborg (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, Cambridge et al. 2007, pp. 29–60.

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Fig. 2 Statuette of a Striding Man, probably reign of Pepi II, about 2246-2152 BCE, wood with some polychrome, 35 × 8,5 × 8,5 cm, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums.

awe.”18 The phrase “keep them” refers to an active force that is indispensable to the formation of a state. Abraham Bosse’s frontispiece to the Leviathan belongs to this class of pictures (Fig. 3),19 which convert the traces of memory into signs of action.20 Another philosopher of picture activity as relevant as Hobbes and no less inexhaustible is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. This is shown first by his concept of 18 19 20

Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan, ed. by Richard Tuck, Cambridge 1991, XVII, p. 117. Bredekamp: Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies (as fn. 17), pp. 33ff. Thomas Hobbes: De Corpore, II, 1f., in: id.: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, vol. 1, ed. by William Molesworth, London 1839–1845, pp. 14f.

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Fig. 3 Abraham Bosse: Leviathan, frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, London 1651.

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the coup d’oeil,21 according to which the overwhelming wealth of pictorial objects can be presented to the mind and impressed on it “as if in play and in a single gaze, without the circumlocution of words.”22 Leibniz wrote these words in relation to his Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis . In this fundamental treatise, he argues for the preconceptual but nonetheless superior (with respect to abstract thought) insights of artists.23 No less astonishing is his introduction of the concept of petites perceptions, which are either so slight or so enduring that they cannot be perceived sensually, yet all the same allow insights into virtually cosmic relations. One of his examples is the sound of the rising and falling of ocean waves, which become imperceptible to hearing at a certain moment even though it remains possible to feel the rhythm of ebb and flow, and hence to remain connected to the phases of the moon.24 Leibniz’s confidence in the consciousness-forming force of the environment was by no means limited to the natural surroundings; instead, one of his lifelong pursuits was the concept of a Theater of Nature and Art in which instruments and pictures would be essential. This theater was conceived as a picture-active laboratory where museological objects would assume an equally important role as thought organs, characteres, as embodied in models, instruments, and illustrations.25 No less instructive is Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova (editions of 1725, 1730, and 1744).26 In this treatise, the theorem that man is able to understand only that which he himself has produced is presented in such a fundamental way that its validity has become enshrined as the “Vico Axiom.”27 21

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23 24 25 26 27

Thomas Puttfarken: Roger de Piles’ Theory of Art, New Haven/London 1985, pp. 39f., 102f.; id.: From Central Perspective to Central Composition: The Significance of the Central Ray, in: Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 21 (1986), pp. 156–164. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, ed. by the Prussian and later German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, Berlin 1923ff., series IV, 3, no. 116, p. 785, l. 5–7. For this concept see Horst Bredekamp: Die Erkenntniskraft der Plötzlichkeit. Hogrebes Szenenblick und die Tradition des Coup d’Oeil, in: Was sich nicht sagen läßt. Das Nicht-Begriffliche in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Religion, ed. by Joachim Bromand/Guido Kreis, Berlin 2010, pp. 455–468. Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (as fn. 22), series VI, 4, A, no. 141, p. 586, l. 19f.; Horst Bredekamp: Die Fenster der Monade. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ Theater der Natur und Kunst, Berlin 2004, pp. 108f. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Nouveaux essais, introduction, in: Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (as fn. 22), series VI, 6, p. 55, l. 5f. Cf. Bredekamp: Die Fenster der Monade (as fn. 23), pp. 243–245. Ibid., pp. 87–110. Giambattista Vico: La scienza nuova. Le tre edizioni del 1725, 1730 e 1744, ed. by Manuela Sanna/Vincenzo Vitiello, Milan 2012. Ibid.: edition of 1730, p. 480f.; edition of 1744, p. 894f. Cf. Ferdinand Fellmann: Das Vico-Axiom: Der Mensch macht die Geschichte, Freiburg/Munich 1976; Karl Löwith: Vicos Grundsatz: verum et factum convertuntur. Seine theoretische Prämisse und

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Fig. 4 Antonio Baldi after a design of Domenico Antonio Vaccaro: Frontispiece of Giambattista Vico’s La Scienza Nuova, Naples 1730.

The picture-theoretical problem emerges from Vico’s inclusion of an immensely complex frontispiece that refers to this very autonomy of emblematic hieroglyphs, without which no adequate reflection is achievable (Fig. 4). According to Vico, nature – being created by God – lies outside of human cognitive capacities, which can range only within the compass of that which they themselves have produced. The frontispiece is both an exemplar and a rejection deren säkulare Konsequenzen, in: Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Jg. 1968, 1. Abhandlung, Heidelberg 1968, pp. 24–28.

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of this conviction. It was fashioned by human hands, yet brings forth a field of explanandum that does not immediately reveal itself, but instead dictates the conditions of its own comprehension. The emblematic hieroglyphs engender a sphere that is indispensable for world cognition; its own semantic force, however, not only possesses illustrative qualities, but a surprising and captivating pull as well. For this reason, Vico – like Hobbes in the Leviathan before him – prefaces his work with a description of the frontispiece.28 This ekphrasis is the

Fig. 5 Jean-Michel Moreau: Image from the cycle to “Pygmalion: Scène Lyrique” by J. J. Rousseau, engraving, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek.

product of the bridge position between man and nature that is assumed by the frontispiece: manmade, yet at the same time as inexplicable as nature itself. This is the very ambivalence that systematically gives rise to the sphere of the picture act: an autonomous field within the cosmos made by man. Through various contradictory movements, the 18th century as a whole brought about the triumph of the myth of the imagines agentes. The first tendency, stimulated by the seemingly autonomous movements of automata, hoped 28

Jürgen Trabant: Cenni e voci. Saggi di sematologia vichiana, Naples 2007; Thomas Gilbhard: Vicos Denkbild. Studien zur Dipintura der Scienza Nuova und der Lehre vom Ingenium, Berlin 2012 (Actus et Imago 3).

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or feared that the humanoid products of ingenious engineers would encapsulate the human being in its fullest sense.29 The Freemasons’ belief in animated matter, as enacted by the acting and speaking statue in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, corresponded to this model from the opposite side. In Don Giovanni, it is the statue of the Commendatore that “seems to live, seems to hear, and seems to want to speak.”30 The third element was introduced by the sensualist movement which – in its most extreme form – prompted Étienne Bonnot de Condillac to define the human being as a statue come to life. 31 It was in this intellectual climate that the myth of Pygmalion became one of the epoch’s most famous narratives.32 Its perhaps most impressive formulation is found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Pygmalion. In the decisive scene, the statue’s latent potential comes to the fore when it is transformed into a human being (Fig. 5), allowing an imago agens to become fully animate and sentient.33 Inspired by divination, which is not identical with superstition but represents a semantization of the environment,34 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy has bequeathed an unsurpassable framework to embodiment theory by claiming that all forms of materialization of the spirit have “lives of their own.”35 In a shaped environment, the mind acts dynamically through its own embodiment, drawing from this reservoir to produce artworks that are more than mere reflexes of the artist’s own investment. No better formulation of the picture act as related to imagines agentes can be found than Hegel’s description in the Aesthetics: “It is the completely subjective skill which in this objective

29 30 31 32 33

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Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 130–133. “Par vivo! par che senta! / E che voglia parlar” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni. KV 527. Il dissoluto punito o sia Il Don Giovanni. Dramma giocoso in due atti. Libretto von Lorenzo Da Ponte, Stuttgart 1986, II, 11, p. 136). Etienne Bonnot de Condillac: Traité des sensations, Tours 1984 [1754], chap. 4/9, p. 266. Andreas Blühm: Pygmalion. Die Ikonographie eines Künstlermythos zwischen 1500 und 1900, Bern/New York/Paris 1988; Victor Stoichita: The Pygmalion Effect. From Ovid to Hitchcock, Chicago 2008. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Pygmalion, Scène lyrique, in: Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, Paris 1961, pp. 1224–1231, p. 1226. Cf. Rainer Warning: Rousseaus Pygmalion als Szenario des Imaginären, in: Mathias Mayer/Gerhard Neumann (eds.): Pygmalion. Die Geschichte des Mythos in der abendländischen Kultur, Freiburg im Breisgau 1997, pp. 225–270, pp. 237f. Wolfram Hogrebe: Metaphysik und Mantik. Die Deutungsnatur des Menschen (Système orphique de Iéna), Frankfurt/M. 1992, pp. 155f. Shaun Gallagher/Anthony Crisafi: Mental Institutions, in: Topoi 28 (2009), pp. 45– 51, p. 49; Ivan A. Boldyrev/Carsten Herrmann-Pillath: Hegel’s “Objective Spirit,” Extended Mind, and the Institutional Nature of Economic Action, in: Mind & Society 12/2 (2012), pp. 177–202.

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Fig. 6 Charles Sanders Peirce: Sketches and notes, undated, pen, ink, and pencil on paper, Cambridge, MA, Harvard-University, Houghton Library, MS 1538.

way presents itself as the skillfulness of the instruments themselves, due to their liveliness and apparent ability to bring forth objecthood through themselves.”36 A final philosophical strand for which reflections on the picture act played a role before the turn of the 20th century is Pragmatism – at first glance opposed to Hegel, but extremely close with regard to the picture act question. William James, for instance, understood the shaped environment as that which is meaningful and which approaches the beholder. Here, he established a broad framework within which the picture act may be considered as a special case. 37 The most radical position was held by Charles Sanders Peirce, whose philosophy is encapsulated by the dictum “I do not think I ever reflect in words.”38 Despite frequent claims to the contrary, it is not based on static processes, but instead on

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Gottfried Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, II, vol. 14, Frankfurt/M. 1970, pp. 228f. (my trans.); Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 271f. William James: Pragmatism, London/New York/Toronto 1946. Charles Sanders Peirce: Studies in Meaning, 1909, MS 619, p. 8. Cf. Franz Engel/ Moritz Queisner/Tullio Viola: Einleitung. Viertheit: Peirce’ Zeichungen, in: id. (eds.): Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce, Berlin 2012 (Actus et Imago 5), pp. 39–50, p. 44.

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a dynamic semiosis of icons that shapes their “diagrammatological” dimension.39 Peirce produced tens of thousands of sketches that reveal his thought processes through seemingly independent movements of the pencil (Fig. 6).40 Peirce, then, has defined the very essence of picture act theory: “a great distinguishing property of the icon is that by the direct observation of it other truths concerning its object can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction.”41 Peirce has therefore been deemed the most authentic pioneer of picture act theory.42 Reflection on imagines agentes was reactivated in the mid-20th century by new formulas that served as modern equivalents. Significantly, various disciplines were involved. In 1947, the sociologist Henri Lefebvre coined the phrase L’image est acte,43 and was followed by Philippe Dubois, a theoretician of photography who in 1990 used the term image-act to characterize the active quality of this medium.44 Fundamental attempts to focus on the agency of artifacts, albeit limited by their linguistic framing, were developed by the ethnologist Alfred Gell.45 Literary historian Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht shaped a new approach to the world of objects by putting an end to the self-reflective tautologisms of 39 40

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Frederik Stjernfeld: Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Boderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics, Dordrecht 2007. John Michael Krois: Image Science and Embodiment or: Peirce as Image Scientist, in: Ulrich Ratsch/Ion-Olimpiu Stamatescu/Philipp Stoellger (eds.): Kompetenzen der Bilder, Tübingen 2009, pp. 201–215; Engel/Queisner/Viola: Einleitung. Viertheit (as fn. 38). For drawing as a medium of extended mind see Rebekka Hufendiek: Draw a Distinction. Die vielfältigen Funktionen des Zeichnens als Formen der Extended Mind, in: Ulrike Feist/Markus Rath (eds.): Et in imagine ego. Facetten von Bildakt und Verkörperung. Festgabe für Horst Bredekamp, Berlin 2012, pp. 441–465. Charles Sanders Peirce: That Categorical and Hypothetical Propositions Are One in Essence, With Some Connected Matters (c. 1895), in: id.: Collected Papers, vol. 2, Elements of Logic, ed. by Charles Hartshorne/Paul Weiss, Cambridge 1932, § 279, p. 158. The frame and the consequences of this statement are discussed in John Michael Krois: Enactivism and Embodiment in Picture Acts. The Chirality of Images, in: id.: Bildkörper und Körperschema. Schrif ten zur Verkörperungstheorie ikonischer Formen, ed. by Horst Bredekamp/Marion Lauschke, Berlin 2011 (Actus et Imago 2), pp. 273–289. John Michael Krois: Eine Tatsache und zehn Thesen zu Peirce’ Bildern, in: Engel/ Queisner/Viola (eds.): Das bildnerische Denken (as fn. 38), pp. 53–64, pp. 63f. (“These 9”). Cf. also the fundamental critique by Mirjam Wittmann: Fremder Onkel. Charles S. Peirce und die Fotografie, in: ibid., pp. 303–322. Henri Lefebvre: Critique de la vie quotidienne, II, Fondements d’une sociologie de la quotidienneté, Paris 1961, p. 290. Philippe Dubois: L’Acte photographique et autres essais, Paris 1990, p. 13. For a more comprehensive history of these formations see Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4) pp. 48f. Freedberg: The Power of Images (as fn. 5); Alfred Gell: Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory, Oxford 1998.

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deconstruction, pleading instead for an object-reflection of presence.46 Seminal attempts to analyze the phenomena of active pictures have been developed, among others, by the art historians Georges Didi-Huberman,47 W. J. T. Mitchell,48 Gottfried Boehm,49 and Hans Belting.50 With a point of departure in an interest in iconoclasm that extends all the way back to the 1970s, one shared with Martin Warnke and the author of the present essay, finally, the art historian David Freedberg has developed all of the aspects of the “power of images” that were seminal for the conceptualization and dissemination of the theory of the picture act.51

2. Spheres of the Picture Act (Bildakt) These diverse impulses towards reflections on imagines agentes are responses to the conditions of our times. No social theory and no philosophy of our epoch will arrive at its pulsating heart if it fails to take the activity of pictures into account. Each day, myriads of images are transmitted around the world by mobile telephones, television screens, the Internet, and print media, as if this high-tech civilization wished to pupate itself inside a cocoon (Fig. 7). It hardly seems possible for our view of the world to remain uninfluenced by this development; rather, an intermediary image sphere creates interference between the environment and the discerning and acting self, largely defining the potentials and limits of action. This involves opportunities for imaginative play as much as it does the destructive blurring of boundaries between video games and reality.52 It is in this framework as well that picture act theory as described in the present discus-

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht: Production of Presence. What Meaning Cannot Convey, Stanford 2004. Georges Didi-Huberman: Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde, Paris 1992; id: L’Image survivante. Histoire de l’art et temps des fantômes selon Aby Warburg, Paris 2002. Mitchell: What Do Pictures Want? (as fn. 5). According to Gottfried Boehm the picture is “Faktum” and “Akt” (Gottfried Boehm: Repräsentation – Präsentation – Präsenz. Auf den Spuren des homo pictor, in: id. (ed.): Homo Pictor, Munich/Lipsia 2001, p. 13). Hans Belting: Die Herausforderung der Bilder. Ein Plädoyer und eine Einführung, in: id. (ed.): Bilderfragen. Die Bildwissenschaften im Aufbruch, Munich 2007, pp. 11–23. Freedberg: The Power of Images (as fn. 5). I am indebted to David Freedberg for many fruitful ideas and comments, some of relevance to this article. This manifests itself in its darkest form in the periodically recurring mass shootings. The most recent publication on this much-debated phenomenon: Armin Himmelrath/Sarah Neuhäuser: Amokdrohungen und School Shootings, Bern 2014.

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sion understands the active and activating force of shaped form, be it latent53 or instead effective through the actual or memory-driven processes that are evoked by pictures, and which then result in human action. If the threads offered by the ancient concept of active pictures, the late medieval multi-perspectivity with regard to pictures, the founding theory of the modern state, the picture-active elements found in philosophy from Leibniz to Vico, from Hegel to Peirce, and finally various 20th-century returns to these traditions are taken up, an actualized systematization becomes possible. Three fields evolve: the schematic, the substitutive, and the intrinsic picture acts. The schematic picture act shapes the first of these areas because it is connected with the body as the basis of all modes of semantic performance. 54 Therefore the

Fig. 7 TV screens, 2013.

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Horst Bredekamp: Die Latenz des Objekts als Modus des Bildakts, in: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht/Florian Klinger (eds.): Latenz. Blinde Passagiere in den Geisteswissenschaften, Göttingen 2011, pp. 277–284. Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 101–169.

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adjective schematic does not reflect the Kantian definition of the term schema and its later variations,55 but instead the Greek definition of schemata, according to which these forms provoke an imitation of the presented actions – an effect Plato first remarked upon in Egyptian art.56 This field touches upon all areas of artistic enlivenment as it appears in living pictures, as enacted from the late medieval era all the way up to the present, e.g. in Spencer Tunick’s tableau-vivantperformances of 2011 (Fig. 8).57 No less essential are the automatons constructed as far back as ancient Egypt. In their mechanical originality, 16th century automatons such as the Monk from Munich (Fig. 9) or 18th century humanoids such as Pierre Jaquet-Droz’s writing and drawing children present an almost unsurpassable quality of “acting” artifacts that remains a model.58 Playing a

Fig. 8 Spencer Tunick: The Naked Sea Project, 2011, Tableau vivantPerformance, Israel, Photograph by Casey Kelbaugh.

55 56

57 58

Ulrich Gaier/Ralf Simon (eds.): Zwischen Bild und Begriff. Kant und Herder zum Schema, Munich 2010. Platon: Nomoi, 656d, in: id.: Werke in acht Bänden. Griechisch und Deutsch vol. 1, ed. by Gunther Eigler, Darmstadt 2005, 8/1, pp. 86–89. Cf. Jan Assmann: Viel Stil am Nil?, in: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht/Ludwig Pfeiffer (eds.): Stil: Geschichten und Funktionen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurselements, Frankfurt/M. 1986, pp. 519–537, p. 520, and Maria Luisa Catoni: Schemata. Communicazione non verbale nella Grecia antica, Pisa 2005, pp. 294f. Nicole Moses/Jennifer Becker: Spencer Tunick – The Naked Sea Project, Israel 2011, in: Kunst 1111 “Nachhaltigkeit” (2011), pp. 11–17. Alfred Chapuis/Edmond Droz: Les Automates des Jaquet-Droz, Neuenburg 1949; Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 124–140.

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Fig. 9 Automaton, Figure of a Preaching Monk, detail: head, about 1560, iron and cottonwood, Munich, Deutsches Museum.

decisive role in the contemporary life sciences are hybrid organisms and combinations of organic and inorganic forms of the kind that have preoccupied humanity at least since Leonardo da Vinci’s attempts to construct mixed organic beings. Recent developments in synthetic biology are deeply implicated in pictureactive art theory.59 In contrast to the schematic picture act, which is determined by a dissolution of the boundary between artwork and organism, the substitutive picture act is produced by the reciprocal substitution of picture and body: bodies as pictures, pictures as bodies. The paradigm of this model is given by Christ’s vera icon, the portrait visible on the Veil of Veronica that displays not an image as such, but instead particles of the Savior’s body: just as the body has become an imago, the picture has become a legitimate substitute for the corpus.60 As shown

59

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Frank Fehrenbach: Compositio corporum. Renaissance der Bio Art, in: Vorträge aus dem Warburg-Haus, vol. 9, Berlin 2005, pp. 131–176. On the hybrid art of our times see Ingeborg Reichle: Art in the Age of Technoscience. Genetic Engeneering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art, Vienna/New York 2009; Suzanne Anker/Sabine Flach (eds.): Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice, Bern et al. 2013. Herbert L. Kessler/Gerhard Wolf (eds.): The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, Bologna 1998.

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Fig. 10 Martin Schongauer: The Procession to Calvary, 1475–1480, copper engraving, Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung.

by Schongauer’s engraving, the imago is a picture solely by virtue of the fact that it contains particles of the body of Christ (Fig. 10).61 61

Gerhard Wolf: Kreuzweg, Katzenweg, Affenweg, oder: Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, in: Christoph Geissmar-Brandi/Eleonora Louis (eds.): Glaube Hoffnung Liebe Tod, Vienna 1995, pp. 438–443.

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Fig. 11 J. Barner/R. Al-Hellani/A.D. Schlüter/J.P. Rabe: Macromolecule with a DNA molecule, 2010.

According to this model, all forms of substitution follow one of two vectors: from picture to body or from body to picture. It can be performed as a fullfledged presentation of an absent person in a picture. That is why the substitutive picture act can function both in a healing and analytic as well as in a destructive and iconoclastic way.62 In the first sense, substitutive pictures pervade virtually all fields of the natural sciences. It is nanotechnology – the most invisible technology of them all – that is impelled with the greatest force toward a visualization of its electrical stress analyses. Currently, the capacity of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to pick up and move objects of study is being used to assemble molecules (move), to fuse them by means of ultraviolet radiation (connect), and finally to analyze them by means of tension (prove) (Fig. 11). Here, the microscope actively shapes the observed object: the picture acts in a form-giving and procreative, substitutive way.63 The same is true of medicine, where imaging technologies have been dominant in both diagnosis and treatment (Fig. 12) for some time now. Given their emotional impact, MRI-sequences of beating hearts seem not only to show this essential organ, but to actually embody it. This amounts to more than mere symbolism. The translation of information concerning the physical, chemical, or biological states of human beings into mimetic pictures produces figures that are as complex as they are fragile, and which are moreover indispensable diagnostically – which is why physicians refer to them as “pictures in action.” In this

62 63

A pioneering work that covers both sides is, once again: Freedberg: The Power of Images (as fn. 5). Horst Bredekamp: In der Tiefe die Künstlichkeit. Das Prinzip der bildaktiven Dis junktion, in: id./John Michael Krois (eds.): Sehen und Handeln, Berlin 2011 (Actus et Imago 1), pp. 206–224.

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Fig. 12 MRT sequences of beating hearts, about 2005.

respect in particular, they are endowed with a proximity to life that makes us hesitate to call them pictures at all.64 The destructive side of the substitutive picture act starts with an iconoclastic attack on the picture with the intent of destroying the depicted person. In its most extreme and destructive form, it is enacted as the mutilation and killing of persons in order to allow them to become pictures.65 This last element is founded in the fact that, in times of asymmetric warfare, pictures have become the basic condition of war. The destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan, resolved upon in February of 2001,66 was the prelude to a series of alternating 64 65

66

Harun R. Badakhshi: Körper in/aus Zahlen. Digitale Bildgebung in der Medizin, in: Inge Hinterwaldner/Markus Buschaus (eds.): The Picture’s Image. Wissenschaftliche Visualisierung als Komposit, Munich 2006, pp. 199–205, p. 204. Godehard Janzing: Bildstrategien asymmetrischer Gewaltkonflikte, in: Kritische Berichte, 33/1 (2005), pp. 21–35; Jörg Trempler: Vom Terror zum Bild – Von der Authentizität zum Stil. Gedanken zur historischen Begründung authentischer Bilder, in: Wilhelm Hofmann (ed.): Sprachpolitik – Bildpolitik. Beiträge zur sprachlichen und visuellen Kommunikation in der entwickelten Demokratie, Münster 2006, pp. 117–135; Peter Geimer: “Wir müssen die Bilder zeigen.” Ikonographie des Äußersten, in: Thomas Macho/Burkard Wolf/Karin Harrasser (eds.): Folter. Politik und Technik des Schmerzes, Munich 2007, pp. 119–132. Finbarr Barry Flood: Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum, in: The Art Bulletin LXXXIV/2 (2002), pp. 641–659.

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Fig. 13 Blasting of the Buddha sculptures of Bamiyan, March 2001, CNN.

attacks that used images as weapons, in the course of which names such as Abu Ghraib inscribed themselves into collective memory (Fig. 13).67 Asymmetry has become the rule in contemporary warfare, by definition involving wars that exploit pictures and images. It has hence become necessary to speak of a civil war of pictures in which the latter have become more than mere instruments of war: they actually fuel it.68 The intrinsic sphere that emerges from the form’s independent force marks the – from a formal perspective – supreme instance of the picture act. It refers to the externalization of the energetic quality of the shaped gestalt in the process of its shaping. Its most elementary motive is a consequence of the artist’s 67

68

Birgit Richard: Pictorial Clashes am medialen Gewaltkörper: Abu Ghraib, Nick Berg und Johannes Paul II., in: Birgit Richard/Klaus Neumann-Braun (eds.): IchArmeen. Täuschen – Tarnen – Drill, Munich 2006, pp. 235–255; John Limon: The Shame of Abu Graib, in: Critical Inquiry 33 (2007), pp. 543–572; Stephen Eisenman: The Abu Ghraib Effect, London 2007; W. J. T. Mitchell: Der Schleier um Abu Ghraib: Errol Morris und die “bad apples,” in: Ingeborg Reichle/Steffen Siegel (eds.): Maßlose Bilder. Visuelle Ästhetik der Transgression, Munich 2009, pp. 51–65; Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 227–230. Herfried Münkler: Symmetrische und asymmetrische Kriege. Der klassische Staatenkrieg und die neuen transnationalen Kriege, in: Merkur 664 (2004), pp. 649–659.

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self-reflection regarding the active elements of his own artistic products: the self-evolvement of the autonomous form.69 The densest element of this energeia is the point, which oscillates between nothingness and the line, and is thus permanently active as an affective raptus.70 The dynamic latency of the point, as formulated by Leonardo, can be traced all the way to Roland Barthes’ theory of the punctum and even to nanotechnology, as defined by Richard Feynman.71 The line is the second element of an irresistible force that not only expresses meaning but also shapes the contents of imagination and factual processes through a mixture of mimesis, chance, and the unconscious. It is the medium of a thinking that not only expresses but also develops ideas through an interplay between expression and the self-evolvement of the line. From Albrecht Dürer’s marginal drawings for Maximilian’s prayer book72 to William Hogarth’s definition of beauty,73 a single line of thought extends to Charles Sanders Peirce’s plethora of drawings, through which he shaped his ideas.74 However, the employment of the drawing hand does not end there, but continues into the era of digital simulation, as evidenced by Frank Gehry’s endless scribbles, whose force of the drawn line is enlivened in the third dimension and used to shape buildings, which even in their finished form preserve the line’s energetic latency.75 The third element is color. An example of what is at stake here is the reverse of Albrecht Dürer’s Hieronymus in the National Gallery in London (Fig. 14). To this day, any plausible explanation for this painting, with its rapidly brushed, enigmatic eruption of color, is lacking.76 All evidence points toward a free play of color that was initiated and so to speak permitted by Dürer. 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76

Beat Wyss: Vom Bild zum Kunstsystem, 2 vols., textvolume, Cologne 2006, pp. 36–39. Cf. Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 231–306. Frank Fehrenbach: Licht und Wasser. Zur Dynamik naturphilosophischer Leitbilder im Werk Leonardo da Vincis, Tübingen 1997, pp. 322f., p. 330. Wolfgang Schäffner: Stevon, der Punkt und die Zahlen, in: Wolfgang Schäffner/ Sigrid Weigel/Thomas Macho (eds.): “Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail.” Mikrostrukturen des Wissens, Munich 2003, pp. 201–217; Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4) pp. 249ff. A fundamental study on one of the most impressive examples: Irving Lavin: Il Volto Santo di Claude Mellan: Ostendatque etiam quae occultet, in: Christoph Frommel/Gerhard Wolf (eds.): L’immagine di Cristo dall’acheropita alla mano d’artista. Dal tardo medioevo all’età barocca, Rome/Vatican 2006, pp. 449–491, pp. 463–473. Friedrich Teja Bach: Struktur und Erscheinung. Untersuchungen zu Dürers graphischer Kunst, Berlin 1996, pp. 273–302. David Bindman: Hogarth and His Times, London 1997, pp. 168f. See above, fn. 40. Horst Bredekamp: Frank Gehry and the Art of Drawing, in: Mark Rappolt/Robert Violette (eds.): Gehry Draws, London 2004, pp. 11–28. Jean Michel Massing: Dürer’s Dream, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986), pp. 238–244; Elisabeth Heitzer: Das Bild des Kometen in der

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Fig. 14 Albrecht Dürer: Saint Jerome, verso, about 1496, oil on pearwood, London, National Gallery.

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Thereafter, this principle never yielded its grip on painters – at the latest once Titian and Rembrandt had begun to spread pigment on canvas without the mediation of a painting tool, modeling the painting as if it were a self-evolving relief.77 This practice was radicalized in the 18th century by Alexander Cozens,

Fig. 15 Alexander Cozens: “blot” drawing in progress for “Hannibal Passing the Alps”, verso, about 1776, black ink on crinckled paper, London, Victoria and Albert Museum.

who produced almost abstract, energetic pictures, such as Hannibal Passing the Alps, which displays the free play of a creased piece of paper and the blots of color on its surface (Fig. 15). In William Turner’s work, this seemingly automatic discharge of spuming color energy leads climactically toward a materialization of crystal-like grains: painting becomes body.78 This tradition reaches all

77

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Kunst, Berlin 1995, pp. 83ff.; Hanho Jeon: Meditatio mortis. Zur Ikonographie des heiligen Hieronymus mit dem Totenschädel unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Lissaboner Gemäldes von Albrecht Dürer, Münster 2005, pp. 102ff. Daniela Bohde: Haut, Fleisch und Farbe. Körperlichkeit und Materialität in den Gemälden Tizians, Emsdetten/Berlin 2002, pp. 173–177; Yannis Hadjinicolaou: Malerei auf Stein, steinerne Malerei. Die Farbgestaltung bei Spranger und de Gelder, in: Joris van Gastel/Yannis Hadjinicolaou/Markus Rath (eds.): Paragone als Mitstreit, Berlin 2013 (Actus et Imago 11), pp. 211–235, pp. 218–231. Raphael Rosenberg/Max Hollein (eds.): Entdeckung der Abstraktion. Turner Hugo Moreau, Frankfurt/M. 2007.

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Fig. 16 Jackson Pollock at work in his studio, 1950, photography.

the way to Jackson Pollock, who repeatedly expressed the conviction that he was an organ of the work process: “I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life in its own. I try to let it come through” (Fig. 16).79 The abundant production of pictures that can be subsumed under the three spheres of schematic, substitutive and intrinsic picture acts forces us to fundamentally rethink the problem of pictures and perception: they should be understood less as objects of alienation than as agents of awareness-building.

79

Charles Lachman: “The Image made by Chance” in China and the West. Ink Wang Meets Jackson Pollock’s Mother, in: The Art Bulletin LXXIV/3 (1992), pp. 499–510, p. 508.

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3. Pict ure Act, New Phenomenology, Ph ilosophy of Embodiment Pursuing this larger aim, reflections on the picture act phenomenon have come to represent an independent strand of contemporary cultural theory. They play a role in a tendency of thought that has emerged from diverse roots which have joined together in an attempt to overcome the Cartesian dualism of mind and body in all its varieties in order to understand the body and its interaction with the environment as an essential determination of intelligence and consciousness.80 Picture act theory is embedded in particular in today’s reformulation of phenomenology as practiced in the tradition of Edmund Husserl. His kinaesthetic consciousness, which emerges from the semantic determination of an ambience,81 has been converted step by step into an acceptance of the environment as a decisive factor for the development of consciousness. This includes Martin Heidegger’s being-in-the-world82 as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s intentionalité motrice.83 Of special significance in this context was Wolfram Hogrebe’s recent rehabilitation of the intuitive and mantic procedures of world-confidence, which led to a philosophy of a scenic cognition (szenische Erkenntnis) that is based in the primary senses but is nevertheless genuinely conceptual.84 And finally, these attempts to avoid interpreting the environment from an exclusively human perspective have led to the development of several varieties of Maurizio Ferraris’ and Markus Gabriel’s “New Realism.”85 This does not imply the acceptance of a naked world “in itself,” but of different signifying fields which, in their individual qualities (not unlike Hogrebe’s scene), are determined by the objects that belong to them and their interrelations.86 But they reveal themselves through their compositions and the semantics they offer in a 80 81 82 83 84 85

86

Joerg Fingerhut/Rebekka Hufendiek/Markus Wild (eds.): Philosophie der Verkörperung. Grundlagentexte zu einer aktuellen Debatte, Berlin 2014, also for the following. Edmund Husserl: Ding und Raum (Vorlesungen 1907), in: Husserliana, vol. 16, The Hague 1973, pp. 154–203. Julian Kieverstein (ed.): Heidegger and Cognitive Science, Basingstoke 2012. Sean Kelly: Merleau-Ponty on the Body, in: Ratio 15 (2002), pp. 376–391; cf. Fingerhut/Hufendiek/Wild: Philosophie der Verkörperung (as fn. 80), pp. 29–32. Wolfram Hogrebe: Riskante Lebensnähe. Die Szenische Existenz des Menschen, Berlin 2009. Maurizio Ferraris: Manifesto del nuovo realismo, Bari 2012; Mario De Caro/Maurizio Ferraris (eds.): Bentornata realtà. Il nuovo realismo in discussione, Turin 2012; Markus Gabriel: Auftakt eines Neuen Realismus, in: Paul Boghossian: Angst vor der Wahrheit. Ein Plädoyer gegen Relativismus und Konstruktivismus, trans. by Jens Rometsch, Berlin 2013, pp. 144–156. Markus Gabriel: Warum es die Welt nicht gibt, Berlin 2013, p. 113.

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way that surprises the beholder and moves him to change his convictions and his knowledge, and in a way that startles and entraps him. In this sense, the principle of asymmetrical corrections states that opinions can be changed through things, whereas things can be changed through opinions only to a lesser degree.87 Pictures and objects that unite to form semantically specified ensembles play a marked role in this asymmetric “opening towards the world.” 88 Reflections on the picture act strive to provide all of these efforts with a sharper outline, insofar as they discern qualitative elements in the very zone that is manmade, shaped in a special sense that is proper to the outside world: to be autonomous as something external while nonetheless approaching the beholder semantically. In effect, the contemporary philosophy of embodiment presents a testing field for reflections on the picture act. In its variants on the embodied, extended, enactive, and embedded mind, the philosophy of embodiment aims for a comprehensive rehabilitation of the body, symbolic artifacts, and the environment as agents in the constitution of consciousness. 89 But this can hardly be carried through without reflecting upon imagines agentes. An important source is a basic insight that emerges from embodied mind theory, namely that perception is by no means passive, but is a highly active process that involves the vision, the body, and movement.90 Pointing in the same direction is the concept of vehicle externalism, according to which memnonic devices and public signs participate in constituting action and hence must be considered in their determination.91 As a consequence, external vehicles act as enabling potentials that surpass the intended aim.92 This holds true as well for the concept of the enactive mind, according to which an organism’s autopoietic self-organization brings about a structural entanglement with the environment. In effect, the degree to which the ambience is shaped ( gestaltet) has an influence on the process of sense-making, which determines cognition as a process of 87 88

89 90 91 92

Maurizio Ferraris: Documentality: Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces, trans. by Richard Davies, New York 2013, p. 318. Paradigmatic here is Wolfram Hogrebe: Die Wirklichkeit des Denkens. Vorträge der Gadamer-Professur, ed. by Jens Halfwassen/Markus Gabriel, Heidelberg 2007, pp. 11–35, and related to this, pp. 61–78; id.: Beuysianismus. Expressive Strukturen der Moderne, Munich 2011. Fingerhut/Hufendiek/Wild: Philosophie der Verkörperung (as fn. 80), pp. 65–91. Alva Noë: Action in Perception, Cambridge, MA 2004. This conforms to a basic concern raised by Robert Vischer: Über das optische Formgefühl. Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik, Leipzig 1873. Andy Clark/David Chalmers: The Extended Mind, in: Analysis 58 (1998), pp. 10–23; Andy Clark: Material Symbols, in: Philosophical Psychology 19/3 (2006), pp. 1–17. Fingerhut/Hufendiek/Wild: Philosophie der Verkörperung (as fn. 80), p. 72. Cf. Richard Menary (ed.): The Extended Mind, Cambridge, MA 2010.

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forth-bringing (enactivism). This conception of a sense-giving tie between organism and environment also suggests a picture-active faculty.93 This holds true in particular for the idea of a semantic offer made by an environment that displays no representative functions, but instead simply approaches, presenting and offering itself.94 But as yet, no systematic distinction has been made between the environment in general and the special form of the picture. This applies as well to research into mirror neurons, which seem predestined to provide picture act theory with an experimental foundation.95 It becomes all the more pressing, then, to cease to regard pictures as exceptional, and to see them instead as foundational for a theory of perception.96 The blind spot of the philosophy of embodiment is the unconscious legacy of the hostility towards the body and toward pictures against which the philosophy of embodiment itself so vehemently revolts: a deficient sensibility for the specific forms of artifacts and the resulting absence of a distinction between environment and artifact. By failing to focus on the problem of form, which affects a pictorially-shaped environment, the philosophy of embodiment falls short of its own most radical potential: to understand the organism not only through its reaching out into the environment, but also by means of its interplay with an ambience that leaves its own impression on the organism. By virtue of such a bipolar field of resonance, the focus on the first person singular and its constructivist centering might be overcome through a reflection on an interplay with active pictures. For this reason, John Michael Krois tried to develop a philosophy of embodiment in connection with picture-act-theory.97 In this sense, picture-act-theory is a philosophy of embodiment that has transgressed its self-created borders.

93

94 95

96 97

Francisco Varela/Evan Thompson/Eleanor Rosch: The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge, MA 1991. In an enactivism that is both lived and experience-controlled, images could play a central role insofar as they are able to mediate between both levels. See Evan Thompson: Sensorimotor Subjectivity and the Enactive Approach to Experience, in: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2005), pp. 407–427. James Gibson: Wahrnehmung und Umwelt, Munich 1982. Cf. David Freedberg/Vittorio Gallese: Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience, in: Trends in Cognitive Science 11/5 (2007), pp. 197–203, and the critique put forward by Shaun Gallagher, entitled Aesthetics and Kinaesthetics, in: Bredekamp/Krois: Sehen und Handeln (as fn. 63), pp. 99–113. Freedberg’s forthcoming book on this matter (2014) promises a solution of the problem. A splendid attempt to establish this claim has been made by Joerg Fingerhut: Das Bild, Dein Freund. Der fühlende und sehende Körper in der enaktiven Bildwahrnehmung, in: Feist/Rath: Et in imagine ego (as fn. 40), pp. 177–198. Krois: Bildkörper und Körperschema (as fn. 41).

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4. The Ego of Shaped Forms The term “picture act” as developed here understands the world of shaped forms as an entity that approaches the beholder with autonomous force. It can be called the Ego of shaped forms. Because the relationship between artifact and beholder is never linear, it can only be described as an ongoing interplay of responses. But

Fig. 17 Hopi snaker, 1924, photography, Washington, Library of Congress.

in contrast to constructivist theories that (albeit fruitfully) locate the energy of shaped forms in the eye of the beholder, the picture act presupposes a surplus of the artifact that goes beyond the receiver’s expectations and capabilities prior to this confrontation.98 At stake is not a transfer of the speech act concept into the visual sphere, but instead its inversion. The speech act relies on beings that change the world through their linguistic activity, while picture act theory 98

Mitchell: What Do Pictures Want? (as fn. 5), passim; Frederik Stjernfelt: Diagrammatology (as fn. 39), pp. 90f. Marion Lauschke frames picture act theory in the wider context of closely related approaches: Marion Lauschke: Bildakt-Theorie, at http://www.gib.uni-tuebingen.de/netzwerk/glossar/index.php?title=Bildakt-Theorie (10. 07. 2014).

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claims that the recipient of shaped forms is both the subject and object of their active and activating force.99 There is no need to emphasize that Aby Warburg’s concept of the pathos formula – as an alternative to Plato’s cave allegory – plays a fundamental role for picture act theory. The human being who uses his own body to distance himself from the fear of death and who symbolizes the deadly power of the snake with a thunderbolt in order to produce a “contemplative space” within which pictures acquire superiority: this model remains foundational for reflections on the picture act phenomenon (Figs. 17, 18).100 It was developed further by

Fig. 18 Altar of Sands of an Antelope Priest in Cipaulovi, book illustration after a drawing by Jesse Walter Fewkes, 1894.

Edgar Wind, a student of Ernst Cassirer’s.101 In his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer developed the concept of symbolic pregnance (symbolische Prägnanz), which proposes taking each shaped object not just as a medium of a

99

100 101

John L. Austin: How to do Things with Words, Cambridge, MA 1962; John R. Searle: Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida, in: Glyph 1 (1977), pp. 198–208. The argument is discussed more broadly in Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 4), pp. 48–56. Ibid., pp. 293–306. See the article of Franz Engel in the present volume.

Picture Act

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