Matthias Esch
I. In this essay I will try to prove why the image and the word are not in opposition to each other and how this knowledge helps us generate a new approach to their relation (and dualism in general). I will do this by explaining why words and images are different, but while this is important for classification or art history, they are also strongly connected and the transition between these two is fluent. We as a recipient are a third element in this connection, with our thinking influenced by the different media, and yet with the possibility of changing our approach and our attitude towards the word/image relation. This is possible because the definition of word and image is not that clear, they can shift back and forth, and our perception, the contextualisation and customisation plays an important role in this. For me the interpretant by Charles Pierce is the figure of “connecting”. It shows how different points are connected through fluid variables and context. Unfortunately I will only be able to give a short introduction to the complex theory of Pierce. The element of the “us”, the viewer or recipient is able to change this connection to words or images through a different use of words and the understanding of their contextual role in their meaning, as well as trough an attitude W. J. T. Mitchell draws from Nietzsche’s “how to philosophize with a hammer”. In his philosophy Wittgenstein goes in a similar direction by forcing the reader through ideas and language games into a new way of dealing with language. While his philosophy itself is difficult enough to grasp, I believe that his idea of language in a specific context and therefore its thoughtful use is also the right tool to deal with images and their relation to words.
II. Iconology:
William J.T. Mitchell investigated the nature of the image in his Book ‘Iconology’ by comparing it with verbal language and by pointing out certain characteristics of the different mediums. Words and images are not just different for us, but rather opposite kinds and Mitchell points to the impossibility of unifying them in one aesthetic, term or semiotics, and the attempts of critics for theoretical unity. I’d say he also has in mind the various mechanisms human perception uses to process images and words. This intake is mingled together until it gets hard to separate. While the gap between the two mediums of image and words maintain, it separates and shows differences between the arts, which make it possible to discuss in the first place. Mitchell argues that, after Edmund Burke, difference between text and image leads to the two great rhetorical skills: ‘wit’ and ‘judgement’, which as Burke puts it ‘wit’, being “chiefly conversant in training resemblances”, and ‘judgement’ mainly concerned with “finding differences” (Mitchell, 1986 pp.48). My point is, these two criteria indications (text and image) might be important for classification, for critics and art history, but now it is time to put them aside to examine their correlation.
While there is a gap between the image and the word, there also connecting elements. These are connected over the gap, as every distance needs two marking points. In principle we think that if we compare poetry with painting we are using a metaphor, while claiming the difference between poetry and painting would be literal truth.We have to understand that our way and use of thinking is crucial in leading to the results we receive, or it can be “…instituted by figures of difference, figures of discrimination or judgement” (Mitchell, 1986 pp.49).
An example that our definitions are not false in the classic use of the word, but they can change over time, is that the term painting has changed in recent years. Also nowadays it might be a bit odd to speak about the idea of ‘paintings’ vs. ‘poetry’, I would agree that we prefer the more neutral and open terms ‘image’ vs. ‘text’. (Mitchell, 1986 pp.50). So, as Vilém Flusser argues, our perception is formed by a medium and vice versa.
Vilém Flusser:
In ‘Towards a Philosophy of Photography’ Vilém Flusser develops a media based history where he distinguishes between two essential codes: Images and Text. While there are many definitions or thoughts about the ‘core’ of these two points, for Flusser the main definition are the following: An image is a significant surface, directly linked (or a reduction of) the four dimensional human experience into a two dimensional surface (Finger, Guldin, Bernardo, 2011). Thinking linked to images is ‘circle based’, myth like, it helps us to bring world into an understandable form, render it, place images in front of it, so we can imagine it ‘vorstellen’ (placing in front of, imagine).
As the word ‘vorstellen’ already predicts, the image code tends to hide the actual world behind its image. We see, and I might say, therefore think, in the code of the tool we once used to get a hold on the world. To order this ‘mumbling’ ‘murmur’ thinking, and the hidden view of the world, by Flusser’s linear writing was invented: “In doing so, they transcoded the circular time of magic into the linear time of history“ (Flusser, 1984 pp.7).
Flusser argues that by the invention of the technical images man tries to make text imaginable again, changing the way of linear text based thinking to a new ‘murmuring’ text based thinking. He distinguishes classic images based on real conditions (as well as material) while technical images are text-code based (Finger, Guldin &Bernardo, 2011). Nevertheless, writing, or the word, has an effect on our way of thinking, it influences not only what we think, but also how. So while reading, we think linearly, looking at pictures (or numbers) in the ‘circles,’ in a more organic, lively form. In doing so it is possible that the fundamental incompatibility of ear and eye is bypassed by subjecting the eye under the ear, the letters managing to suppress the numbers. We must therefore assume that we also live through the organization of our human perception mechanism in two separate, actually incompatible “realities”.
“Word and Image”
Mitchell often draws parallels to art history as a source for the separation between words and images in representation, presentation and symbols. Then there is the separation in our perception of eye and ear, and this represents how deep seated and wide spread, how manifold the problem is.
Mitchell describes the words I read or you are reading now, as verbal signs. They are also visible marks on the paper, read out loud audible sounds with background noise or in silence . Already inhabited is a dualism of eye and ear, the “visual” or “aural” Gestalt, or the articulated sign in language. And there is the possibility to shift from one way or another. Usually while reading we concentrate on the meaning of the words, but it is possible to analyse the form and typography of its letters which would be more a visual intake, demonstrated clearly in calligraphy (Mitchell, 1989 pp.51-52). So basically words can also be images, they are both, but mostly we fail to see it that way.
The same potential lies in visual images, we can learn the way of reading a certain style of paintings, and Mitchell (1989 pp.51) refers to the philosopher George Berkeley (1709) who argued that eyesight is a complex, learned technique, a “visual language”. The duck rabbit image game illustrates that it is possible to sell two things in one, shifting back and forth. As in (1989) ‘Ut Pictura Theoria’ Mitchell argues in (1996) ‘Words and Images’ that for example art historians defend their territory from interventions through “literary imperialism.” This defensiveness again holds back the possibilities if we mix and investigate word and image (Mitchell, 1996 pp.52). Art history cannot treat words as pure instruments or use images only for textual decoding, the relation between words an images are (not only for them) a central feature of self understanding.
Or as Lessing puts it:
painting and poetry should be like two just and friendly neighbours, neither of whom indeed is allowed to take unseemly liberties in the heart of the other’s domain, but who exercise mutual forbearance on the borders, and effect a peaceful settlement for all the petty encroachments which circumstance may compel either to make in haste on the rights of the other. (Lessing, 1776 pp. 116)
The difficult situation of definition and description is shown in the relation “word/image” which is the name of a problem and a problematic (Mitchell, 1996 pp.53). A common explanation would be the difference between the two senses, words are meant to be read aloud or spoken and therefore heard, the image is supposed to be seen, representing the visual appearance of an object. But of course this is not as clear as it seems. A simplified image of a tree could be easily read as something else, only if we give it the label tree it is fixed in this context. As a hieroglyphic inscription however, a whole different range of symbolic meaning might occur. To realize this fluent core problem is very important and refers directly to Wittgenstein and his theory of the use of words in context.
The Image of a tree in a hieroglyphic inscription is part of the language domain. This means not that there is no difference between words and images—the difference is not simply the distinction between hearing and seeing (Mitchell, 1989 pp.56).
The contextualisation might be clear through the claim that images signify by virtue of resemblances (imitation), words are signs that signify through convention (pp.56). Just as with images, they can change after time and use. Again the problem is that resemblence or conventions are not enough to identify the differences between words and images. Conventions are subjected to many influences and some Images resemble nothing, a Marc Rothko painting for example (it resembles though, convention, a Marc Rothko painting).
Mitchell points out these two different points:
- Some Image resemble or represent anything
- Resemblance is not a sufficient condition for images
- to do their “work” they have to intersect with language through custom and convention
An abstract painting is a representative sample, in the language game “abstract art”, it is a visual form with meaning, although it does not represent anything. While it is difficult to find a basis for the distinction between words and images, this does not mean issues like resemblance are irrelevant. But again, it shows this difference cannot be stabilized by a simple definition, or a static binary opposition. Mitchell calls it a “dialectical trope” (Mitchell, 1989 pp.57).
Abstract Painting and the Repression of Language
In the (1989) ‘Ut Pictura Theoria’ Mitchell discussed the circulating idea that abstract art (especially in modernism and Abstract Expressionism) is repressing language.From a historic point of view there are many examples of the dualism or “sister arts”, painting and poetry but Mitchell focused first on the role of art historians, or generally speaking who else could have an interest in a narration that represents abstract art as repression of literature and verbal language. A well-known example would be Clement Greenberg and his call for pure painterly form. So while there seems to be a historic reason for the brawl between these two arts, Mitchell (1989 pp.360) argues the blurred quasi-philosophical discourse is mainly present in “art theory”, which became the property of a group of priesthood-like circle that were allowed to speak.
It should be clear that without the knowledge of old myths or biblical stories old master paintings can not be “seen”. Nevertheless (despite the different ideas of “true” painting “seeing” or “reading”) this is a necessary connection between the art movements from modernism onwards and written theories (Mitchell, 1989 pp.356). While the early abstract artists build their art on manifestoes they wrote, Abstract Expressionism relied on critics like Greenberg, while after that the Minimalists begun with writing their own manifestoes again. Maybe it is overlooked or caused by a wrong use of words, the fact is that abstract art itself is not repressing language because it is creating a new (visual) language with no literary features to be oppressed (Mitchell, 1989 pp.360). Or, back with Biblical narrative, Greenberg claims that in traditional painting the narrative is what gives us pleasure by reproducing the inherent stories. This could be as well applied on abstract art (Mitchell, 1989 p.366), the description, theory or story is separated from the painting and known only to an elite of intellectuals art critics or theoreticians (instead of people that could read and were familiar with the Bible).
The problem here is again the idea that, even though a painting (an image) and his theory (the word) are different and separated they are an opposite entity. It shows that we can not ignore the sometimes bloated in favour of the “pure” painting, because we can not get one without the other (Mitchell, 1989 pp.367). An abstract painting, is part of the elaborate language game named “abstract art”, which is a function of it and includes the discourse around it. As Mitchell suggests:
to work through the visual verbal matrix that is abstract art, focusing on those places where this matrix seems to fracture its grid-like network of binary opposition (word and image) and admit the presence of something beyond the screen.
Interpretant:
The interpretant is a key factor in Charles Peirce’s theory of the sign and as I think inhabits an important part in the problem I am trying to point out in this essay, I think Mitchell uses “the viewer” as the recipient in his writings, even though he does not immerse in it. Anyway I want to include a short introduction of the concept of “the interpretant” in this essay.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives an overview of Charles Pierce Theory of Signs and his basic sign structure. He classified the sign in three inter-related parts, a sign, an object, and an interpretant. As I mentioned before I am interested in the latter, but for a basic knowledge I will try to elucidate the three parts.
The first element of the complete sign, is “the sign”. Actually the idea is not that complicated, there is the sign as a whole, but we are interested in the signifying part (which is not the whole), Peirce calls the first element by a variation of names, from which the most logical one seems to be “sign-vehicle”. Again, only parts of a sign are signifying, a common example for this is a molehill. Not every every part of a molehill signifies the mole, the colour or the type of the soil does not. It is the mound (we recognise as a molehill) in connection to a mole, the physical connection between these two parts, which is the “sign vehicle” (Atkin, 2013).
The second part is the object. Here again we are only interested in certain aspects of it, only certain elements are enable to fulfill the conditions for a successful signification. Speaking of the molehill, which is the sign, and the object of this sign which is the mole. Whether the mole is big or small, albino, male or female is not important for the signifying function of the object. Again the physical connection between the molehill (sign) and the mole (object) is important, if the molehill should be able to signify the mole, it must show this physical presence (Atkin, 2013). The relationship between the sign and the object is one of determination, a condition of successful signification.
The “Sign Theory” of Charles Peirce is a complex and branched theory, and so is his innovative and important concept of the interpretant. I outline his theory and especially the interpretant because I believe that it plays a major role in the approach (not necessary in the understanding) towards the “word/image” relation. Therefore it is unfortunate that I cannot specify the parts of Peirce’s theory in more detail. Peirce also classified three different types of the interpretant, depending on which features of the object our understanding is focused on. In his later years he introduced many more types, nuances and classifications so this is enough for now.
Nevertheless I think it is important to gain a knowledge of the basics of his theory. The interpretant is a dynamic factor in communication, and therefore especially important in the seemingly static word/image dualism. The interpretant is the transformation of the sign in relation to us. David Savan suggested calling the interpretant “the translatant” (Savan, 1988 pp. 41) since its function is the development, or the translation of the original sign. In connection with us it can also be defined as the understanding we reach of a sign/object relation. Like the object, the interpretant is determined through the sign by certain features in which the sign signifies its object to generate, change and shape our understanding. Smoke (the sign) can not exist without fire (the object) and we and our knowledge of this are the interpretant.
An attitude:
In his (1996) What do Pictures Want?, Mitchell illustrates the approach and the origin of his investigations. He focuses on the image and not on the artist or the recipient. By doing so asking “what does the image want?” in order to examine its power and reason from a different point of view. Images are objects that are marked with human characteristics. They possess a physical or virtual body, communicate with us, return a look or remain silent (Mitchell, 1996) pp.48) over an “Abyss that can not be bridged by language” (Berger, 1972). Mitchell considers the fetish of giving objects a human touch as an incurable symptom, but in order to gain an understanding of these symptoms it also might be possible to transform these into less pathological, damaging forms:
… in short, we are against objects, and especially against images, caught up in magical, pre-modern acts, and our job is not to overcome that attitude, but to understand them, to work through your symptomatology. (Mitchell, 2012 pp.48-49)
What Mitchell writes here is less a guide than the description of an attitude: it is not possible out of our relationship with images to overcome this quasi-magic relationship. But if the ubiquity of the idea of ‘inspired’ images is established in our culture, how can we handle it?
He avoids the examination via the desire of the image as done by Freud, Lacan and Zizek, preventing presumptions about the nature of the image in order to return to the original question of “what does the image want?”( Mitchell, 2012 pp.92). So he uses the introductory pages of Nietzsche’s “Twilight of the Idols” to develop an attitude, to do something that he calls “critical idolatry” (Mitchell, 2012 pp.44). Nietzsche recommends asking questions with his “hammer” in his preface to the “Twilight of the Idols ” (Nietzsche, 2008 pp.3-4). Use it like a tuning fork (the critical language) to make idols sound. No idlers, but “eternal idols” (that is, indestructible) are those who, like images, receive much of their power through their silence. This playful scanning furthermore avoids the inevitable doomed attempt to destroy the graven images, which naturally only grow through efforts to demolish them. The relationship between word and image is a living form. The distance between the two is nourished by the inner logic of the pictures, the specific function of the font and its impact on us. It can only be tested by a playful, free approach, and this “sounding” is the appropriate way to examine the relationship of these two elements.
Wittgenstein’s Imagery and what it tells us
The problem—or for this essay benefit—with Wittgenstein is that he is not providing us with an easy philosophical system, a method or a clear body of definitions. I say benefit because as I collated so far, the solution or handling of the relation of Words and Images requires more than that. Instead the Austrian-British philosopher might be able to cure us from the need for such impossible definitions.
While literary critics use the word “image” in many different ways, Wittgenstein announced that the “meaning of a word is its use” (Wittgenstein, 1973 pp. 43), therefore there are endless variations of the word “imagery”. To end the confusion, we must end the temptation to think that there must be a specific or general thing devoted to the term ‘imagery’ and to differentiate our use of it (Wittgenstein, 1973 pp. 362). Through Wittgenstein’s language games we overthink our way of talking and on a long-term basis, our way of thinking. While the meaning of the word ‘imagery’ by no means is attached to a picture in our mind, we could differentiate its meaning through “family resemblances”. A term does not necessary need a true essence, but underlying features or “fibres” connected through the “family resemblance”.
Mitchell’s purpose is to suggest how Wittgenstein’s criticism helps us to examine the relationship between the different uses of the term “imagery” (Mitchell, 1988 pp.361). He points out that Wittgenstein’s family of resemblances is more a group of affiliation rather then filiation and calls his treatment of images in the in the manner of a Wittgensteinian family, iconoclastic—as is the idea of destroying the image of dualism, or a pair of the “word image” relation (Mitchell, 1988 pp.363). Mitchell goes on about Wittgenstein’s idea of the “inner” and “outer” image and the act of drawing or describing them as an act of translation (in opposite to the stated claim that they were there all along). He summarises the question of inner image, translation and meaning like this:
…the meaning of expressions is immanent in them; it does not reside in some queer medium called “thought” that gives life to signs that would be dead without them. If I am asked to “give the meaning” of some expression I have uttered, there is no point in pointing to my head and saying, “the meaning is in there.” (Mitchell, 1988, pp.367)
III. Conclusion
The word and the image are in opposition because of certain features they occupy. The Idea though we have of the “word/image” relation is strongly influenced by our perception and the use of definitions, ergo the use of our words. The source for this idea of dualism can be partly found in history, but it is also connected to the mentioned perception mechanism and customisation. This dualism is a problem because actually words and images are not clearly separated. They can shift back and forth, influenced by our perception, and the contextualisation and customisation. Actually the relation is a fluent one, words can turn into images, while images have certain language features.
Words and Images have influence over our way of thinking, but it is this way of thinking that we have to change to a certain extent, adapting to the knowledge of more inter-connected definitions as well as replace the idea of a dualism and two opposite entities. We as the third part in this duo are the recipient in Mitchell’s theory, and the person to which the interpretant of Charles Peirce is addressed to. We are a crucial element in the relation between the two mediums, but we have to change our approach towards it to fully grasp the dynamic connection of words, images, contextualisation and meaning making. The interpretant helps us to understand the complexity of “connecting”. It shows how different points are connected through fluid variables and context. We are a connecting element, we are as well a fluent entity, and a sign (an image or a word) can only be understood in the process of it being interpreted in communication. Besides gaining knowledge of the situation we have to analyse a new approach towards the “word/image” problem, like Mitchell’s interpretation of “philosophize with a hammer”. As he argues some things itself are not to change, like our relationship towards images, but by knowing about there can be a therapeutic cure. So is Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophy; through his word games we internalise a kind of truth and as I think, his ideas of language games and family resemblances as well can help us to get rid of many philosophical questions, as well as the word/image “problem”, and a static view on dualism.
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