When we try to understand what a picture represents, how we experience the picture, I argue, plays a key role in determining the content the picture represents. More specifically, I argue that understanding pictorially represented content requires two tasks—visually grasping the picture’s design (an image) and interpreting what the design represents (what it is an image of). Neither task is done without the other, meaning that the viewer’s success in the former—visually identifying the image—depends on their success in the latter—determining (...) what the image is of. Because of this interdependence, I argue, when the viewer succeeds in understanding the picture, they find their interpretation of the picture perceptually convincing. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that pictorial styles are individuated in terms of different degrees of determinacy. For example, Morandi’s still-life etchings and Monet’s cathedral paintings embody different styles in that in the former, shape properties are differentiated in a fine-grained manner, and in the latter, coarse grained. I develop this view by critically examining John Kulvicki’s analysis of how we interpret pictures. According to Kulvicki, we rarely interpret pictures as differing in terms of features that belong to the vehicle (...) of representation—that is, the design-content relation. Rather, he thinks that we individuate pictorial styles in terms of the content that each picture represents. Contra Kulvicki, I argue that we interpret the vehicular features of pictures in light of our knowledge of picture production, and that the diversity of pictorial styles involves both content and vehicle. (shrink)

The aim of my dissertation is to show that artistic innovation in picture-making contributes to our philosophical understanding of pictures. Advancement in pictorial art, I contend, is a manifestation of a unique possibility in which the vehicle and the content of pictorial representation are united. My primary example is Chuck Close’s pixelated portrait. Close’s pixelated work is produced in such a way that its success in representing a face depends on the visual construction his viewers undertake. To grasp a face (...) represented (the content) we need to visually grasp the pattern of shapes and colors that represent the face (the vehicle). Following a historical case study—focusing on the 16th Century in Italy—where depictive practice and theory reflect and possibly trigger each other’s development (Chapter One), the unique experience Close’s work occasions is put into dialogue with philosophical questions about depiction. I challenge, with Close’s work, the idea that the vehicle of pictorial representation is a flat surface with marks on it. Instead, I argue, the vehicle of pictorial representation itself is an image. That we experience the vehicle—which I call ‘design’—as a surface feature is, I argue, responsible for a pictorial illusion (Chapter Two). I then attempt to resolve a spatial tension within the pictorial experience: our awareness of the picture (a tangible object) and what it represents (a scene we ‘see’ in the picture). When the viewer’s visual grasp of the picture’s design is combined with their understanding of what it stands in for, the experience has a twofold structure (Chapter Three). I further discuss whether there is a kind of property—referred to as an ‘inflected property’—that we can experience only through pictures. I propose that Close’s pixelated face is an instance of such a case (Chapter Four). I end with a discussion of pictorial interpretation. I propose that we take the notion of ‘seeing-in’ as a method for understanding pictures and discuss the distinctive phenomenology that a successful interpretation of a pictorial representation can bring about (Chapter Five). (shrink)