Visual Metaphor Author(s): Virgil C. Aldrich Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp.

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Visual Metaphor
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are My sculptures plastic metaphors.It's the same principleas in painting. Picasso Three important things are not yet sufficiently done relative to metaphor; showing (a) how it occurs outside language, not only in the visual arts but also in the perception of almost anything; and (b) how such seen metaphors are embodied in works of visual art, after providing the artist with the experience for such metaphorical expression; and (c) what constitutes a good metaphor, aesthetically speaking, in the light of the above considerations. Until these things are shown, the old prejudice will linger to the effect that aesthetic experience, with the metaphorical twists it gives things, is a "subjective" affair, tainting aesthetic judgments with its subjectivity- as if the metaphorical is an inner interpretive or imaginative response to external things that, strictly speaking, are represented without distortion only in literal portrayals of them as physical objects of "objective" observation. Though it is not linguistically articulated metaphor that I am primarily concerned about in this essay, some initial consideration of it in this form will set forth the strategy I shall follow later here, in connection with vision. Fortunately, the main points about metaphor in language- those that concern me because they can be shown, mutatis mutandis, to have a bearing on metaphorical seeing -have already been made by Owen Barfield in his "Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction."' It is on such pegs that the argument about visual metaphor is to be hung, so let us turn first to putting these in place for that subsequentuse.
VIRGIL

Philosophyof Art. 1Anthologized by Max Black in The Importance of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,Inc., 1962), pp. 51-71.

olina. He has articlesin numerous journalsand is the authorof philosophical

C.

ALDRICH is

Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Car-

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In general, says Barfield, the figurative mode of expression called metaphorical is "in between simile on the one hand and symbol on the other." The form of simile is: A is like B. This form of expression is not per se poetical, even where the content of A and B - the values for these variables--is rich with suggestion for poetic formulation. Then comes the metaphor, in the form: A is B, where this is false, literally speaking. Only the simile may be "literally" true, since it explicitly formulates a comparison. The resemblance is veiled and metamorphosed into a sort of identity in the metaphor (A in B). Finally, according to Barfield, there is the symbol or symbolic expression, at a greater remove from simile than metaphor. Its form is simply B. This is the symbol, whose "meaning" is A which, in a successful symbolization, is almost liquidated in the symbol B - caught up, assimilated, and transfiguredin it so that it is not readily distinguishablefrom B, though A is in principle identifiable as the "meaning" of B and thus to be conceptually distinguished from B. I shall have to introduce some refinements into Barfield's scheme for my purpose but, before moving on to that, let us see how he summarizes his analysis in the following quotation: ". .. when we started from the simile and moved towards the symbol, the criterion or yardstick by which we measured our progress was the element of comparisonparamount in the simile and very nearly vanished out of sight in the symbol. When, on the other hand, we move backwards, starting from the symbol, we find ourselves with another yardstick, viz., the fact of saying one thing and meaning another. The poet says B but he means A. He hides A in B. .. ." Thus does Barfield set the stage for the performance to follow - the analysis of the concept of "visible" metaphor, in relation primarily to visual art. What must be brought to light is the fact that figurative expression is linked with figurative perception at base, and that this is why any attempt to translate it literally and thus to refer it to nonfigurative, "observational"experience at base, must fail to preserve the "sense" of the original, though such "reduction" may serve other purposes- may even assist one finally to get the figurative sense without any equivalent, literal reformulation of it. Such are the points to be made in what follows. Barfield's insights into metaphor in language, coupled with those of Pablo Picasso with their direct relevance to the visual arts, give the clues for the correct analysis of metaphorical seeing.2 Let me present
2 The notion of "metaphorical seeing" as applied to poetic insight has been treated by Marcus Hester in "Metaphor and Aspect Seeing," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 25 (Winter 1966), 205-12.

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some of the latter first for inspection, then proceed to the statement of what they suggest - the "correctanalysis." It was to his mistress Francoise Gilot that Picasso said: "My sculptures are plastic metaphors. It's the same principle as in painting."3 He said this in reply to her asking why he used ready-made things mostly junked artifacts such as discarded baskets, pipes, vases, bicycle parts - in his sculptures, instead of molding his forms from some usual material for sculpting, say, plaster. His point was, in effect, that the metaphor in aesthetic perception and its objects is more conspicuous, salient, in compositions whose constituents are things each with an independent identity and name by itself, unlike the amorphous plaster that is not anything in particular until it is formed into something that can be seen as what it resembles. In short, the metaphor takes on a two-way thrust if, instead of molding plaster into the form of, say, a goat's ribs (rib cage), you put a wicker basket in the place of the ribs. Then there is a wicker basket to be seen as the rib cage and conversely, looking at the whole statue of a goat, you may see its ribs as a wicker basket--a compound metaphor with a two-way thrust. The thrust is in only one direction if the ribs are molded out of plaster. One sees only the formed plaster as a goat's rib cage. So Picasso used the wicker basket in his The Goat. Expatiating to Frangoise, he said, "I move from the basket back to the rib cage: from the metaphor back to reality. I make you see reality because I used the metaphor."4 In the same breath he said that he takes a vase and makes a woman's hip out of it. Thus does he reverse the usual metaphor involved in seeing a woman's hip as a vase, making it work "in the opposite direction" as well. The result is "a metamorphosis of each part that creates the whole." Such composition, however, exhibits metaphor with a vengeance or in amplified form, and its purpose is to force attention to the metaphorical element implicit in the aesthetic experience of seeing something as something else. Its point should not be mistaken as a denial or rejection of the simpler, one-way metaphors and the less arduous seeings-as they are involved in. It is time now to focus on the kind of perception seeing-as is, in general, to show what is metaphorical about it. One thing seems clear at the start. It is the difference between seeing that A is like B on the one hand, and seeing A as B on the other.
3 Fran?oise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (Signet Books, McGrawHill Book Co., 1964), pp. 296-97. 4Loc. cit. Photographs of The Goat are between pp. 176-77.

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A simile is exactly right as the report of the former, a metaphor of the latter. Yet, this difference is not such as to preclude a shift from one mode of perception into the other, in some cases; and in others they are even blended at first, such that a decision or choice must be exercised if the one or the other mode is to come exclusively into play. Some examples to clear all this up will help. Case 1. You see Mary (M) and Agatha (A) side by side at a party, and you see that M is like A. In such a situation, looking at both M and A, it is practically impossible to see one as the other, whereas you can't help seeing that one is like the other. Next day, you see M across the street and think that she is A. That is, you mistake M for A, thanks to the resemblance. This is still not seeing M "as" A in the special sense I am isolating out, as is shown by contrast with a case in which, seeing M across the street, you recognize her but musingly see her as A, whom you prefer. A's not being really present, and the similitude, assist in such perception. And a condition of its occurrence is that you do not think that M is A, which marks it off sharply from the case in which you mistook one for the other. Neither is this just to imagine M as A, which you could do with your eyes shut. To get the experience, you must look at M, believe she is not A, and see her as A. This difference between mistaking M for A - or even just noticing the resemblance- and seeing M as A is crucial, because, if spelled out, it shows the characteristic structure of all seeings-as and puts a finger on the essential of the aesthetic case. So I pause here to make the analysis of what seeing something as something else involves in general, before moving on to other specifically different sorts of examples. The next two paragraphs, given to this abstract schematization, are difficult to understand in the abstract, but they will be elucidated by the examples that follow. Seeing that something is like something else, or mistaking one for the other because of the likeness, involves a dyadic relation, viz., the relation of resemblance between them. But seeing one as the other involves a fundamentally or irreducibly triadic relation. There is (1) the thing whatsoever there to be seen, one way or another. Call this M. Then there is (2) what M is seen as. Call this A. So M is seen as A. The third factor is the elusive one, hard to differentiate from M and from A in the perception of M as A. But it is the crucial one for such perception, and whether or not it is "aesthetic"depends mainly on the prominence of this factor and on how it functions. The reason that distinguishing it from either A or M is a delicate job is that it is a

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"function" of both. Both M and A are transfigured (transformed) or "expressivelyportrayed" in this third factor, though in different senses as we shall see. Call it B. It (B) is a sort of image of A (what M is seen as), an image that M embodies or "bodies forth." Thus the attitude of the percipient to what he thus experiences is like his attitude to an image he simply has, meaning that the logic of the report of the seeing-as experience is like the logic of image-reports. You take the speaker'sword for what he sees in this manner - though criticisms are in order with a view to what he may be missing or be "blind" to. Finally, let us say that B is the "content" of the seeing-as experience, that M is its "material," and that A (what B is the image of or what M is seen as) is its "subject-matter." Then we may also say either that (1) the content (B) is the material (M) seen as the subject-matter (A), or conversely, (2) this content (B) is the subject-matter (A) bodied forth by the material (M). It was in view of this sort of phenomenon that I spoke of a reciprocal "transfiguration"of A and of M in B - an interanimation of M and A that presents itself for visual prehension in the form of the "content" B which is the "anima" or soul of this affair. In view of this, the subject-matter as such (A) and the material as such (M) drop from notice, in favor of the content (B) -the embodied image in which M and A are transfigured or "expressivelyportrayed." (That concept will be analyzed later, where it will be distinguished from the concept of "descriptiveportrayal.") So much for the abstract schematization. I must now bring it to life with examples. First, consider again Case 1, in this framework. Case 1 again. Mary is the material (M) of the experience of seeing her as Agatha, who is the subject-matter (A). Notice, you do not see Mary as the content (B) or as the embodied image of Agatha. You see her as Agatha (A). What happens in this perception is that the figure of Mary comes alive - is animated - not with Agatha in person (A) but with an image (B) of her. This is figured or bodied forth in the pattern of some of Mary's qualities -contours, movements. Both Mary (M) and Agatha (A) momentarily disappear from attention in favor of the embodied presentation (content B). Yet, in a case like this, A is the dominant factor. Bringing Barfield's scheme back into use, we might say that here A (Agatha) is the "meaning" of B (the embodied image of her), and that in this nonaesthetic sort of seeing something as something else, the meaning A is so salient that the content B is, so to speak, at its mercy. Moreover, B is at the mercy of the material (Mary) that so casually or fortuitously bodies it forth,

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under no controls. That is why, in this sort of seeing-as case, one so readily slips out of seeing-as altogether into thinking about Agatha (A). So B (image, content) here is on the verge of disappearing in favor of M (material, Mary) which then functions like a sign that refers to A (Agatha), on the strength of the resemblance of M to A. Then M just "reminds"the percipient of A, like a description. And this sort of perception turns on the dyadic relation of similarity, not on the triadic one involved in seeing M as A -the one that features B (content). This suggests that, if B is to be amplified and secured against the threat of such dissipation into A or M, M (the material) must be arranged under controls, subordinating A (Barfield's "meaning of B") for the sake of B itself. Were Mary to act on stage the part of Ophelia in Hamlet and to play it well, such securing of the content - Ophelia as bodied forth in the controlled action - would be effected. And there would be an (aesthetic) advantage in Ophelia's not being a live woman at home in her apartment two blocks away like Agatha. Case 2. Curiously enough, seeing a cloud as a woman's head with hair windblown comes more readily than seeing a live woman you know as another live woman you know. The moral of this is that one must be cautious about how he makes resemblance a necessary condition of seeing-as. There can be too many points of resemblance between M and A to invite such seeing, and it is one of the most difficult things in philosophy of art to say just how any resemblance functions, aesthetically speaking. The cloud is like a woman's head only with respect to shape, and not very much like even on this count. Yet, for seeing-as, it has an advantage over Mary, who is like Agatha in innumerable (aesthetically irrelevant) ways- given also the advantage of the natural stage-setting of the sky that aptly distances the cloud for seeing-as experience. Moreover, the woman's head it is seen as is "a" woman's head, meaning that the noticed head is nothing at all in particular apart from the content (B) realized "in" the cloud. So there can be no question of resemblance here in the usual sense of two things, each with its own identity of which "M is like A" could be said. So one more naturally exclaims, pointing at the cloud: "Look, a woman's head with hair blowing!" (The metaphor M is A, where A's identity is determined by B.) But even here, there is an option. One might remark, instead, on how like a woman's head that cloud is in the sky (M is like A). Then, in this comparison (simile), there would be an implicit reference to (description of) another element--any or some woman's head

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which happens to be like the cloud in certain quite general respects. The comparison's reference to this disqualifies it as the expression of seeing M as A, since it indicates something outside M and thus invites attention to this A as the referent of M. Thus B as content is liquidated. So in cases of this more sketchy sort too, where something surprises one by incidentally appearing as something else, the content (B) is at the mercy of the material (M), and even of the subject-matter (A) insofar as the resemblance of M to "some" A or other tempts one to reminiscence or to think about women, out of the seeing-M-as-A experience. Case 3. In this third case, one sees, let us say, a Matisse drawing (M) as a woman's head (A). I spoke above disparagingly of a mere outline (shape of the cloud) being the vehicle (M) on which the appearance (and disappearance) of content B depends; a case of B at the mercy of M. There is a significant reversal of this in the case of the Matisse sketch. Picasso said that when Matisse "draws a line on a piece of white paper ... it doesn't remain just that; it becomes something more."5 What happens in such a case is that the material (M) is exquisitely arranged under the control of what is going to appear as the content (B) of the experience of seeing the arranged material (M) as its subject-matter (A). A master artist pre-visions the content to be realized by the appropriate manipulation of the material that is to be seen as something. Thus does the content become the dominant factor, the controlling one, in the aesthetic case. Before the content (B) is realized, it is the "idea" of the artist, an aesthetic potential calling for embodiment. To "think" aesthetically is to be aware of, or have, ideas in this sense. Such thinking continues, of course, during the operation of embodying the idea, until it is "realized" as the content (B) of the experience of seeing the arranged material (M) as the subject-matter (A); and the idea will naturally be modified by the character of the material in the process of getting embodied. But, still, in such cases, M and A are in principle "at the mercy" of B. The main point, however, that emerges out of these considerations is that material (M) and subject-matter (A) meet in the content (B) where they in some sense fuse and lose their separate identities in favor of the fusion. This is why, in such an aesthetic case of seeing M as A, the report of the perceptual experience not only has the form of metaphor: "M is A," as does the report of any seeing-as experience; but involves, in addition, the subservienceof A (subject-matter) to B (the
Op. cit., p. 265.

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content) - indeed, A is liquidated in B, without, however, losing its status as "the meaning of B" and thus remaining distinguishable in principle from B. This, in Barfield's scheme, makes of B a "symbol" which, it will be remembered, is the farthest removed from mere simile at the other end of the scale, with "metaphor" in between. But symbol here is continuous with metaphor, such that metaphor and "seeing" it are still involved. The difference is that, in the symbolic case, the "meaning" or subject-matter (A) is so assimilated into the symbolic content (B) as to be veiled by it. (Such "veiling" will be explicated later.) In this case, if either A or M (material) are noticed at all, each in its own right, they are considered critically, to ascertain how well they satisfy the demands of B in which they are expressively portrayed. And obviously one cannot criticize thus unless he first prehends the content (B), or gets some inkling of it in the composition. Barfield spoke of A, the meaning of B, as B's "soul," and he pictured this soul as too conspicuously standing out apart from B in an unsuccessful composition- not assimilated into B and transfigured by it. This is to say that the subject-matter or "meaning" is the soul of the content. But I submit that, for the aesthetic case, putting it the other way around or reversing it is better. The content is the soul of the subject-matter, which latter becomes soulful (meaningful) by assimilation into the content. The work of art puts this soul on exhibit. This notion of the content "on exhibit," does it mean that one sees it? Is it visible, in any sense? Certainly one sees it neither as one may simply see Mary (material, M) per se or Agatha (subject-matter, A) per se, nor in the sense that one sees Mary-as-Agatha- though this comes close. Though B is the content of seeing-as perception, it is not per se either simply "seen" nor itself "seen as" anything. Is it then a tertium quid that turns out to be a surd factor, itself invisible? Of course one is "aware" of it as ingredient in some visual experiences, but it does not follow from this that it is itself seen - as, in seeing an angry person, one does not, strictly speaking, see the anger per se. I think Wittgenstein's indecision over whether seeing-as ("aspect" experience) is a form of perception or not6 was owing to his meaning by "aspect" something rather like what I mean by "content," though he did not work explicitly with the triadic scheme presented here. I suggest that seeing something (M) as something else (A) is certainly a sort of visual perception. One must look at M to prehend the content. The delicate
N.J.: Prentice-HallInc., 1963), p. 51.
6 See the quotation and comment in my Philosophy of Art (Englewood Cliffs,

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question concerns this content (B). Does one "see" it? I officially introduce the notion of "prehension"here, in terms of which I answer: one prehends the content or "aspect," in seeing something (the material) as something else (the subject-matter). Call this "visual prehension" to distinguish it from, say, auditory prehension- prehending the content of a musical composition (hearing M as A)-and to drive home the fact that looking at and seeing something is at least a necessary condition of such prehension, if not identical with it. One "sees" M-as-A while "prehending"B. These general considerations, tacked on to Case 3, will assist and abbreviate the treatment of the following cases. Case 4. Picasso's Venus du Gaz7 is a "statue" that is simply a burner taken from an old-fashioned gas stove and, without any touching up, erected on a block of wood. It has appendages that allow it, in the upright position Pablo gave it, to be seen as a woman. Such trouves (Duchamp also liked them) pose a special question about seeing-as perception and the aspect- or content-prehension it involves, together with the relation of titles to this. The Venus is not a work of art- though it may, like almost anything, appear as an aesthetic object if looked at in the right way. Without the title, it is as likely to be seen as a man - even more likely as an ostrich or as the front end of a horse - except perhaps for the sexual suggestion of the burner's midsection. Nobody would see it as Venus without the title. Even then, given this title, a grave doubt arises about the appropriatenessof calling this a case of seeing-as. It can, of course, be imagined to be Venus, as one imagines a seen triangle to have toppled over onto its present base from another one of its sides; one does not see it as having done this (Wittgenstein). But it may, even without the help of a title, be seen as "a woman." (Calling it Venus does not really specify the visual experience beyond this indefinite description.) In such a case, however, the material (M) is certainly not arranged for the sake of the content (B) that, with the title, emerges for prehension. This was the point of saying that it is not a work of art. As for the point of exhibiting such a trouve for aesthetic experience, it is the occasion it gives the viewer to triumph over the gross material by a transfiguringlook at its shape - in a way that makes it become "something more" than a mere shape of a gas burner, like the line drawn by Matisse. This must be achieved for the Venus du Gaz without the help of arranged material. The triumph in
7

Photographed in Gilot and Lake (op. cit.), between pp. 176 and 177.

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such cases is therefore not on the side of the "statue." It is the triumph of the visual prehension that transfigures the figure without the assistance of material arranged for the purpose into a work of art. This involves more than simply noticing a schematic resemblance of the material to the subject-matter ("a woman"), or even a casual seeing the former as the latter. It requires an educated look that demands (or commands), realizes, and features a content or "aspect," in the seeingas experience. However, granting all this, the upshot is that such aesthetically untampered with materials are featured primarily as occasions for practicing or exercising the sculptor's or the painter's eye, and for emphasizing with a vengeance the fact that visual prehension does not depend on likenesses, except in a very oblique and problematic way-even where there is obvious likeness of material to the subject-matter. But to make the point in this extreme way, with the help of trouves, involves a kind of overstatement. In this respect, such cases may be, and often are, thought of as visual jokes. Consciousnessof this is frequently indicated by the titles. It is quite clear that Picasso was amused by his visual joke, La Venus du Gas. One is to smile at it--without overlooking the importance of the point for aesthetics that such jokes drive home; i.e., the triumph of the metaphorical seeing of such disparate things (M and A) metamorphosed into one thing (B). (M "is" A, expressivelyportrayedin B.) Case 5. Instead of seeing one live woman as another live woman we know (Mary as Agatha), let us try to see Leonardo's painting Mona Lisa as La Gioconda, the wife of the Florentine gentleman Francesco del Giocondo. In Case 1, acquaintance with the original (Agatha, subject-matterA) was the necessary condition of seeing the representation (Mary, material M) as the original. In short, acquaintance with A here gives rise to seeing M as A. No such condition obtains in this fifth case. We have never seen Francesco's wife. Neither is there any independent, antecedent image of her derived from legendary or mythical sources, which makes this case different from that of the gas Venus where there is ample previous illustration serving as subjectmatter (A) and contributing to the prehended content (B) of the experience of seeing the gas burner as the goddess. Therefore, what serves as subject-matter (A) in the Mona Lisa case is something that illustrates the concept of "a woman with a subtle (sly? knowing?) smile, a look of feminine self-sufficiency and enigmatic invitation on her complacent oval face, etc." This is what one

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sees the painting (M) as (M as A) - a "realization"or illustration of a concept. But, then, what is the content (B)? The answer is both problematic and crucially important. The first point to be noticed is the mistake of thinking that seeing M as A includes seeing the woman in the painting "as complacent, pensive, etc." But one does not see people "as" being in this or that state of consciousness. One sees pensive, sad, or complacent people. That is, the feeling or state of mind whatsoever is a characteristic built into the person. Thus what one sees (say) a painting of a woman as -its subject-matter--is (say) a complacent, a worldly-wise woman. One does not see it first simply as a woman, and then this woman "as complacent" or not. Of course, the state of consciousnessshe is in may not be clearly exhibited, either in real life or in the painting. But it is a mistake to suppose that aesthetic or "critical analysis" of the work of art focusses on the "feeling" that is an ingredient in its subject-matter- or in what it is to be seen as. Thus education for aesthetic vision (prehension), focusing on content, is not primarily an affair of answering such questions as: is the pictured woman sad, pensive, etc.? Is the (sculpted) Laoco6n crying out? Such are not (primarily) the questions answered by aesthetic analysis of the content of the work. It is the partial recognition of this fact that has misled some aestheticians into supposing that there must be another set of "peculiarly aesthetic emotions" (Ortega y Gasset) disclosed by such analysis not of the subject-matter but of the content. However, this issue deservesa separate essay. But, again, how is content (B) to be distinguished from subjectmatter (A) in the case of a thoroughly "representational"or "realistic" portrayal such as the Mona Lisa, where, for the beholder, A is not the woman who posed for Leonardo but "a woman with ..." and where this indefinite description is itself derived from the definite description "the woman seen in the picture"? (This is why I called A here an "illustrated concept"; "conceptualized illustration" would do as well; so would "schematic image." "Concept" by itself will not do, since nobody sees anything as a concept.) Let us say that the content B is to be distinguished from A by identifying it with "the woman prehended in the picture." This leaves A, the schematic image of "a woman with ... ," sticking out like a sore thumb from B or at least loosened from it and tempting the beholder to go on to develop it in imagination, if the picture is looked at primarily with "real life" demands for recognition, recollection, and anticipation. So in this view of B, the subject-matter A tends to stand out

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from B as its "meaning," and the content B is therefore not a "symbol" (Barfield) in this experience of it, since it does not "contain," assimilate or transfigureA. This still involves visual metaphor - the picture (material M) is seen as "a woman with . ." -and the report of it is the metaphor "M is A." But B is at the mercy of A in this nonaesthetic prehension of B. But if M is not looked at primarily for the sake of recognition of the content with the help of a concept, B emerges more freely in its own right and the question of its meaning A becomes one about what it "expresses" or shows (not "represents"). And once this question is asked, consideration of the character of the material (M) expressed in B also becomes relevant, fusing with the consideration of the character of the subject-matterA, both sorts of "characters"being put on exhibit by the artful manipulation of M. Thus is the interanimation of the characters of M and A achieved and presented in B. Aesthetic analysis of B then proceeds in such terms as "unified," "balanced," "out of place," "delicate," "recessed,""heavy," "inconsequential,"and the like. These together give the "meaning" or meaninglessnessof the composition as a whole. They apply at once to the color and contour characteristics of the material and to the characteristics of the subject-matter (the feminine qualities), since the former body forth the latter, fusing in the content. Prehended this way, the content B qualifies as a symbol, since its meaning A is implicit in B and therefore disputable, in such terms of aesthetic criticism as the above, where "criticism" includes interpretation and evaluation. The art critic is not concerned with the sort of interpretation that answers questions about, say, how the woman in the picture feels or what her intentions are. The gist of these remarkswill emerge more clearly in considering the next and last case. Case 6. Look, finally, at "the woman in the picture" that Bonnard painted, the picture he called The Yellow Shawl.8 This is our occasion to explicate further the sense in which the "character" of subjectmatter (A) and of material (M) "interanimate" one another, under the proper management of the material. The notions of B as visual "symbol"and of "expressiveportrayal" are connected with this notion of interanimation, so clarifying it will elucidate these others. The woman is the one on the left, not the wearer of the yellow shawl. Her head and throat, above the mauve-turquoise dress that repeats the rhythms of the checkered table-cloth, go unnoticed at first glance
8

Skira,1949),p. 110.

In History of Modern Painting from Baudelaireto Bonnard, Vol. I (Geneva:

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because they blend with the ruddy brown panelling of the wall in the background. This recessesthe head by a color, not a linear, device. But this recessing depends partly on the brown area being seen as a wall in the background. So here color (M) and subject-matter (A) interanimate one another in a content (B) that cannot be simply reported either by "a brown patch showing glazing and scumbling" or "a woman's head" or "portion of a wall." Moreover, the character of the material M is made conspicuous by showing the brown overlaid on warm yellow beneath. No such use of the character of the material is made by Leonardo in Mona Lisa. It is muted - made almost invisible - in favor of the content B, such that B is left more expressive of the character of the subject-matterA. This constitutes it a more realistic or representational work of art. But a great artist never quite prevents the magic of the material (M) from shining through to vivify the content, even in such works where no explicit transfigurationof A by M is permitted. However, the artist's love of his material and the feel he has for its character eventually had to move him on to impressionism, expressionism, and formalism in his work. On the whole, the result was a more equitable expressive portrayal of "character," both from the side of material on the one hand and of subject-matter on the other; with occasional lapses into favoring one at the expense of the other. This is the story of modem (and current) art. (Except "op" or optical art, which is primarily for the sake of staggering subjective effects on the beholder of certain [sometimesmobile] color and contour arrangements - e.g., the visual vertigo they can produce. Such arrangements,on this count, are not expressive portrayalsat all, so are not works of fine art.) It is time now to take a final look at this notion of "expressive portrayal." Just using it as I have above, without formal preliminaries,has cleared it up considerably. A technical point emerges first. The content (B), which in a good work of art (visual or not) functions as a symbol "hiding" both A and M in it (Barfield), is not itself expressed by the work. Rather, it itself expresses ("shows") the character of M and of A. It is the expression of these. The artist, managing the material, puts them on exhibit for prehension in the form of the content B. Before his work, he "intuits" the content that is going to be - potentially already is -the expression of M and A, in transfiguring fusion. The second thing to notice is the difference between expressive and "descriptive" portrayals, considering clear-cut cases. (In some cases,

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the same portrayal may function expressively or descriptively, depending on the way it is looked at.) A descriptive portrayal does not feature content - has no content. So one does not look at a description to find (prehend) in it its meaning, since the meaning here is what it refers to or is about. To get the sense of a description, one must have something beyond it in mind whose character is not put on exhibit "in" the descriptive portrayal itself. What is the upshot of all this for visual metaphor? The answer is that it quite commonly occurs in the general form of seeing anything (M) as anything else (A). In all such cases, a content (B) emerges for prehension, a factor that is a "fusion" (or function) of A and M. So simile does not do as the report of the experience of B. Metaphor is required. In the common, non-aesthetic case, the content is meager, vacillating, at the mercy of both M and A. In the aesthetic case, the material (M) is managed for the sake of the content (B), putting it on exhibit as the expressionof the characters both of the material itself and of what it is to be seen as, the subject-matter of the composition. Thus, in the aesthetic case, subject-matter and material are at the (expressive) mercy of the content. "Content," in the general sense, is rather like "aspect" in Wittgenstein's sense; so the terms are interchangeable in this use.