Art and the Mind || Meaning-Based Theory of Depiction

National Art Education Association

Meaning-Based Theory of DepictionAuthor(s): John M. KennedySource: Art Education, Vol. 36, No. 2, Art and the Mind (Mar., 1983), pp. 12-14Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192654 .

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Meaning-Based Theory of 0Dpcto

J . J. Gibson (1966) wrote that "sensation-based" theories be- gin by assuming that for each

sensory channel there is a distinctive sensation. The growing child is said to have to learn to interpret sensations and con- struct percepts using memory materials. In contrast, an information-based theory like Gibson's argues that the senses discover the patterns in the sensory media that can tell us about the am- bient environment since they correspond to aspects of the environment.

A meaning-based theory, comple- menting Gibson's, holds that the per- ceiver distinguishes between what is in the environment and what it depicts, means, or represents. The impressions given by representational elements, the systems such as perspective governing arrangements of the elements and the pictorial metaphors communicating a point or message, the meaning-based theory claims, rely on universal capacities that do not have to be taught or in- culcated as conventions. Picture perception, the theory insists, involves the per- ceiver's impressions, choices, and pur- poses and cannot be explained by phy- sical characteristics of the display. Hence, the theory is a mentalist one.

We distinguish what is in the environment and what it can mean in many ways. We see a line on a surface and simultaneously the occluding bound of a ball. We see a flat surface and a pattern of lines whose perspective recedes into space. We see a sheet of paper and a dog with many tails drawn on it, which we take to indicate just one happily wag- ging tail. Thus theory needs to examine the element (the line, for example), the pattern (the perspective, for example), and the "indicators" (the metaphoric many tails).

Elements as triggers: The elements in pictures "trigger" immutable capacities and limits.

Lines in outline drawings can show us abrupt changes of depth or slant, to one side of the line as at an edge or to both sides as in corners or wires (Figure 1). They do not indicate the changes ab- stractly like symbols, for they enable the

John M. Kennedy

"We distinguish what is in the

environment and what it can mean

in many ways." i^-. A^-l -..:?^/ % iA- H ̂ e ?*...;^*<L--A *'?-,. ,.? A .

viewer to experience the changes. The lines trigger a pictorial impression of edges, background, and slant. In outline drawings, we actually see relief.

Contours too can depict abrupt change of depth or slant, and since they are divisions between light and dark or one colour and another, they give impressions of chiaroscuro (variation in illumination, shadow, and highlight). The capacity of contours to show chiaroscuro is not matched by lines, but then a single contour cannot show a wire (abrupt change in depth on both sides). Further, the chiaroscuro capacities of contours are the result of replicating not truly depicting: A division between black (left) and white (right) will not look reversed even if we know the shadowed side is to the right.

The powers and limits of the elements are present without tuition (Hochberg and Brooks, 1962) or familiarity with pictures (Kennedy and Ross, 1975); they are universal since cave art times at least (Kennedy and Silver, 1974) and may be species-specific (Cabe, 1980). Outline depiction of relief is "amodal" (not just in the visual modality) since it is effec- tive for congenitally blind people, for whom lines can create a foreground- background impression (Kennedy and Domander, 1982). Kennedy (1979) also argues there are pictorial brightness ef- fects at ends of lines and cusps in contours.

Why can elements give pictorial impressions? Convention? Familiarity with the referent? The junctions formed by

a network of lines? Gestalt grouping? Specific optic information? No - all of these are simply influences that make one pictorial use or another of an element probable. They are not what makes any pictorial impression possible in the first place. Using the line as the case in point, the proper answer is roughly as follows.

Light to the eye from the natural environment is full of contrasts, divisions between light and dark, one colour and another. These contrasts are taken in and then sourced: Something in the pat- terned light we take in across time en- ables visual perception to determine "The source of this contrast is an edge", "The source of this contrast is a colour patch on a flat surface", etc. Taking in contrasts is merely "sensitivity." But the sourcing operation is "environmental perception." Its operations take the contrasts and identify their origins (corners, shadows, etc.). One little box of brain cells, we may crudely metaphorize, is fed the edges and corners, i.e. relief. Another little box is fed the shadows and illumination changes, i.e., chiaroscuro. Lines in outline drawings give us pictorial impressions by triggering the relief cells. They cannot trigger the chiaroscuro cells. Even if we recognize a line drawing of a shadow, it will not appear dark. But if we see an object drawn casting the shadow, it will appear in depth.

In sum, lines do not simply mimic the pattern of contrasts at the eye, for if they did, any source of contrasts could be shown equally well in outline drawings. Rather, lines act at the perceptual or sourcing level, and are only able to show some sources of contrasts, i.e., relief.

Patterns as catalysts: Lines and contours form patterns in pictures. Meaning-based theory holds that the patterns act like catalysts, that is as cir- cumstances allowing powers to be active without actually creating the powers in the first place. Catalysts only "set the stage" for an action to occur. The ac- tors are the elements.

Patterns suggest what referent is rele-

Art Education March 1983

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Fig. 1. Lines in outline drawings can create pictorial impressions of relief depth and slant, depicting the corners and occluding edges of flat-surfaced objects and the occluding bounds of rounded objects. When the lines stand for the margins of shadows, there is no pictorial impression of shading that would be an equivalent to the pictorial impression of relief.

Fig. 2. A pictorial pun on the line element. The line that frames the picture becomes an edge of shattering surface.

Fig. 3. A pictorial rune, a metaphoric device with no direct equivalent in language. De, a woman totally blind since birth, with no training in making outline drawings, drew a raised-line sketch of a car, with its motion indicated by curved spokes. De's device is not literal since she specifically noted that spokes do not really curve, but the curvature suggests the movement. Pa, a woman blind at age 2, drew a spinning wheel, suggesting motion with metaphoric curves to the spokes.

vant - what the element should mean, but the seeing of the referent is made possible by the element. Since the power of the element is not caused by the pattern, the same powers can be employed in lots of kinds of patterns, governed by any number of principles. Gestalt groupings, Gibsonian optical information, networks of junctions, perspective - all these principles have been found to be important. But of course we can also choose to draw a picture incom- pletely, in different styles, or so abbre- viated that a caption can be a major determinant of what is relevant (as in "droodles"). Indeed, our cultures have chosen quite a range of pattern-making principles, such as Australian aboriginal "transparency" drawings, Eastern

parallel perspective, cubism, etc., all of which violate the laws of projection from a vantage point.

The constraints on pattern-making are few, but there are some. In all cultures the same pictorial use of elements can be employed (cf. Kennedy and Silver, 1973, on cave art). And perspective is a privileged system, in that the closer the projection is to perspective, viewed from an appropriate vantage point, the easier it is to see the object and its setting without training in a convention (Kennedy, 1974; Willats, 1982). Not only are we geared to see relief in outlines, but if the pattern fits with projective geometry, it can more readily be seen displaying part of the environment (contra Hagen and Lewis,

1981). Pictorial metaphors and maxims: As

in any means of communication, once the elements, referents, and projection system are established, the rules can be broken intentionally to make a point. We are employers of rules, not their ser- vants. In language we violate literal use to say "Watching T.V. turns the mind to porridge." Just so, we can violate standard or literal modes of depiction and have a pictorial metaphor (Kenne- dy, in press a, b, c; Kennedy and Domander, 1981; Kennedy and Simp- son, in press).

Language has metaphors based on mass, geometry, and time. So too in pictures we can be carried away by our speech balloons, change our shape, and

Art Education March 1983 13

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have shadows that anticipate our aged posture.

Language has puns that play on language itself; so, too, pictures can play on picturing itself, either using the element on the paper (Figure 2), or the du- plicity of a pattern (which may be a head made up of many heads).

In addition to depiction's parallels for figures of speech, pictures also have "pictorial runes," metaphoric devices for which there are no clear parallels in language. Figure 3 shows wheels spinning by means of spokes that are curved or "more mixed up." In language we cannot say, "The spokes were curved or more mixed up," to readily communicate spinning. Thus, these are spe- cial to pictures.

To establish the point of a pictorial metaphor, we often use "maxims" (readily changeable rules), e.g., "Rab- bits are used to stand for timidity, Spring or fertility. If a sketch has a rab- bit drawn inside a man's head, the man is portrayed as timid, the best fitting of the three referents."

When we look at a picture, we often bring to bear idiosyncratic maxims, much that we have been taught, and an awareness of an individual's styles. It

would be easy to miss the universals in this mix. But there is much that is indeed universal.

The meaning-based theory holds that the powers and limits of elements are untaught and immutable. No training is necessary for a line to give a child a pictorial impression of relief, provided the child can perceive flat and curved sur- faces and their boundaries. And no training whatsoever can make outline give a pictorial impression of chiaroscuro. Also, a perspective picture, be-- ing based on the everyday geometry of the environment, can be perceived ac- curately without training in a convention. Finally, the theory holds that since in every culture people communicate, recognize intentions, and notice delib- erate violations of rules, pictorial metaphors can often be understood without needing to be explained; indeed they can be invented by people unfamiliar with pictures (Kennedy, 1982). I

John M. Kennedy is associate professor of psychology in the Division of Life Sciences, Scarborough College, Univer- sity of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

References

Cabe, P.A., "Picture Perception in Non- human Subjects," in M.A. Hagen, ed., The Perception of Pictures, Vol. 2, N.Y.: Academic Press, 1980.

Gibson, J. J., The Senses Considered as Per- ceptual Systems, Boston: Houghton- Mifflin, 1966.

Hagen, M.A. and Lewis, N., "Drawing Development: Motoric or Cognitive?", Psychonomic Society Meeting, 1981.

Hochberg, J.E. and Brooks, V., Pictorial Recognition as an Unlearned Ability, American Journal of Psychology, 1962, Vol. 75, pp. 624-628.

Kennedy, J.M., A Psychology of Picture Perception, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1974.

Kennedy, J.M., "Subjective Contours, Con- trast and Assimilation," in C.F. Nodine and D.F. Fisher, eds., Perception and Pictorial Representation, N.Y.: Praeger, 1979.

Kennedy, J.M., "Haptic Pictures," in W. Schiff and E. Foulke (eds.), Tactual Perception, Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1982.

Kennedy, J.M., "Form Perception, Depic- tion and the Blind," M.P. Palmarini, ed., The Laws of Form, Rome: Feltrimelli, in press.

Kennedy, J.M., "Metaphor in Pictures," Perception, in press.

Kennedy, J.M., "Syllepsis, Catechresis and Pictures," Zeitschrift fur semiotik, in press.

Kennedy, J.M. and Domander, R., "Blind People Depicting States and Events in Metaphoric Line Drawings," Psycho- nomic Society Meeting, 1981.

Kennedy, J.M. and Domander, R., "Picto- rial Foreground-Background Reversal Reduces Tactual Recognition by the Blind," Psychonomic Society Meeting, 1982.

Kennedy, J.M. and Ross, A.S., "Outline Picture Perception by the Songe of Papua New Guinea," Perception, 1975, Vol. 4, pp. 391-406.

Kennedy, J.M. and Silver, J., "The Surro- gate Functions of Lines in Visual Percep- tion: Evidence from Antipodal Rock and Cave Artwork Sources," Perception, 1974, Vol. 3, pp. 313-322.

Kennedy, J.M. and Simpson, W., "For Each Kind of Figure of Speech There is a Pic- torial Metaphor - A Figure of Depic- tion," Review of Research in Visual Arts Education, in press.

Willats, J., "What Do the Marks in the Pic- ture Stand For? The Child's Acquisition of Systems of Transformation and Denotation," Review of Research in Visual Arts Education, 1981, Vol. 13, pp. 18-33.

Art Education March 1983

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Art and the Mind || Meaning-Based Theory of Depiction