Wollheim, Wittgenstein, and Pictorial Representation

Pictorial representation is one of the core questions in aesthetics and philosophy of art. What is a picture? How do pictures represent things? This collection of specially commissioned chapters examines the influential thesis that the core of pictorial representation is not resemblance but 'seeing-in', in particular as found in the work of Richard Wollheim.

We can see a passing cloud as a rabbit, but we also see a rabbit in the clouds. 'Seeing-in' is an imaginative act of the kind employed by Leonardo’s pupils when he told them to see what they could - for example, battle scenes - in a wall of cracked plaster. This collection examines the idea of 'seeing-in' as it appears primarily in the work of Wollheim but also its origins in the work of Wittgenstein. An international roster of contributors examine topics such as the contrast between seeing-in and seeing-as; whether or in what sense Wollheim can be thought of as borrowing from Wittgenstein; the idea that all perception is conceptual or propositional; the metaphor of figure and ground and its relation to the notion of 'two-foldedness'; the importance in art of emotion and the imagination.

Wollheim, Wittgenstein and Pictorial Representation: Seeing-as and Seeing-in is essential reading for students and scholars of aesthetics and philosophy of art, and also of interest to those in related subjects such as philosophy of mind and art theory.

Gary Kemp is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is the author of Quine versus Davidson: Truth, Reference and Meaning (2012), and What is this thing called Philosophy of Language? (Routledge, 2013).

Gabriele M. Mras is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the WU Vienna, Austria. Her writings include Naturalismus, Reduktion und die Bedingungen von Gedanken (2002) and Wahrheit, Gedanke, Subjekt (2001), and she is co-editor of Conceptus: Journal of Philosophy.