Toward a Syncretistic Theory of Depiction (or How to Account for the Illusionist Aspect of Experiencing Pictures)

Abstract

Depictions — to use this term as a general label both for two-dimensional representations such as drawings, paintings, photos, sketches … and three-dimensional representations such as puppets or sculptures¹ — are representations of a particular kind: pictorial representations, different from representations of other kinds, such as primarily verbal signs. Yet it is notoriously difficult to explain what makes depictions representations that depict their subject — that is, what the picture is about (either a particular individual, as in a painting of Canberra, or a generic topic, i.e. some instance or other of a certain kind, as in a painting of a romantic landscape) — or in other terms, representations that represent a given subject in a depictive way. In short, it is difficult to single out the mark of pictoriality.²