Wiesing The Visibility of The Image. History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics-Bloomsbury Academic (2016)

The Visibility of the Image
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The Visibility of the Image
History and Perspectives of
Formal Aesthetics
Lambert Wiesing
Translated by Nancy Ann Roth
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published in English 2016
Originally published in German as Die Sichtbarkeit des Bildes. Geschichte

und Perspektiven der formalen Ästhetik, Lambert Wiesing © Campus
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-3264-7
ePDF: 978-1-4742-3267-8
ePub: 978-1- 4742- 3266-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wiesing, Lambert, author.
Title: The visibility of the image : history and perspectives of formal
aesthetics / Lambert Wiesing; translated by Nancy Ann Roth.
Other titles: Sichtbarkeit des Bildes.
English Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016012989 (print) | LCCN 2016021740 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781474232647 (hardback) | ISBN 9781474233316 (pbk.) |
ISBN 9781474232678 (epdf) | ISBN 9781474232661 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Aesthetics, Modern–19th century. |
Aesthetics, Modern–20th century. | Art–Philosophy–History–19th century. |
Art–Philosophy–History–20th century.
Classification: LCC BH193 .W4713 2016 (print) | LCC BH193 (ebook) |
DDC 111/.85–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012989
Cover design: Catherine Wood

Cover image © Silke Rehberg
Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

Contents
List of Figures vii

Foreword to the New Edition (2008) ix
Introduction 1
1 The Beginnings of Formal Aesthetics:

Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898) 15
1.1 Formal logic as a model for formal aesthetics 15
1.2 The programme: A structural theory of the picture surface 22
1.3 Perspectives and problems in Herbartianism 31
2 Formal Aesthetics and Relational Logic: Alois Riegl (1858–1905) 39

2.1 Transitions on the pictorial surface 39
2.2 Kunstwollen (the will to art): Making unlike things the same 47
2.3 Intensional and extensional relational logic 57
3 The Logic of Ways of Seeing: Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) 69

3.1 The relational logic of an image 69
3.2 Formal and transcendental aesthetics 86
3.3 The conditionality of perception 93
4 From the Way of Seeing to Visibility: Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895) 107

4.1 The paradigms of formal aesthetics 107
4.2 Images produced technically: ‘For their visibility’s sake alone’ 125
4.3 The disappearance of artistic claims to truth 145
5 Phenomenological Reduction and Pictorial Abstraction:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) 157
5.1 Formal aesthetics and reduction 157
5.2 Visibility as quiddity 165
5.3 The abstract image 171
vi Contents
6 From the Formula to Formative Discourse:

Charles William Morris (1901–1979) 179
6.1 Images about images 179
6.2 Images as formulae 184
6.3 The formative discourse of fast image sequences 191
Notes 203
Bibliography 231
Index 253
List of Figures
1 Hergé. Image of the ship Sirius from the comic series Tintin, Red
Rackham’s Treasure, 1944
2 J. M. W. Turner, Staffa, oil on canvas, 1832
3 Vector and Raster (pixels). Illustration from the manual for Adobe
Illustrator 6.0, Adobe Systems Incorporated, 1995
4 Illustration from auto motor und sport, 1993
Foreword to the New Edition (2008)
From a contemporary perspective, I find it nearly incomprehensible: in The

Visibility of the Image, I use the expression Bildtheorie [image theory] only twice
(pp. 18 and 172), just in passing, and without any further consideration I speak
of the theory of the image, too, only twice (pp. 40 and 126). It irritates me that
these concepts are used so infrequently, because I am sure that if I were writing
the book today, they would appear dozens of times. At present I know of no
other concept that would describe the contents and intention of this book so
tellingly: in The Visibility of the Image I try to sketch out a theory of the image.
As I was writing the book in the early 1990s, however –it was first available
in bookstores in November of 1996 –‘Bildtheorie’ was not commonly used in
German intellectual discourse. Intensive research and thinking about images
and all their forms was underway in a wide range of disciplines, but it just was
not normally referred to as ‘image theory’. The term Bildtheorie, if it was heard at
all, had a completely different meaning, namely in the context of Wittgenstein’s
early understanding of a proposition. The concepts Bildwissenschaft [visual
culture] and ‘semiotics of the image’ were certainly available, although not yet
nearly as familiar as they are today. One tends to forget that people spoke of
Bilderkunde [the lore of images] in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet whatever con-
cepts were in circulation, the expression ‘Bildtheorie’ didn’t quite fit –at least it
was not present in my vocabulary. If Bildtheorie was used before the turn of the
millennium at all, I think I’m justified in saying that it had no specific use: it was
not positioned centrally, either as a title or in a definition.
How the situation has changed! Those with even a superficial interest in
images are continually running across the concept of Bildtheorie: it is used in
the titles and programming of essays, books, conferences and research projects –
usually as if the meaning is obvious. There are posts, courses of study and profes-
sorships dedicated to image theory: all these are phenomena of roughly the past
ten years. In a very short time, the concept of Bildtheorie has developed from
a peripheral term into a well-used programmatic category. It should be noted,
however, that I am thinking about the history of the term, and not about the
issues to which it refers. These are without a doubt much older, not to say almost
as old as philosophy itself: Plato had an image theory, but it was never designated
x Foreword to the New Edition (2008)
as such. It has rather been the custom to speak of Plato’s aesthetic –his theory of
mimesis or of art. We know that sometimes detailed, widespread reflections are
identified only in connection with a new discipline later –and this is not at all
rare in philosophy. The sudden rise in the popularity of the concept Bildtheorie
has a distinct parallel in the history of the concept of Erkenntnistheorie [episte-
mology]: a concept which was also late to emerge (in middle of the nineteenth
century), as the designation for an independent discipline, despite contributions
that reach back to antiquity. The pattern seems to be repeating itself with the
emergence of Bildtheorie, except that it has just happened recently.
With regard to the new edition of The Visibility of the Image, I ask myself
whether there is good reason to return to the concept of Bildtheorie now, and
why I use the term so much more frequently now. If it is more than a matter of
fashion, quickly forgotten, then some differentiation process must have begun
since the first publication of The Visibility of the Image. Grounds must have been
articulated on which Bildtheorie could be established as an independent sub-
discipline within philosophy, and this as a disciplinary project distinguishable
both from visual culture outside philosophy, and from semiotics and aesthetics
inside philosophy. These grounds must further have been persuasive and effec-
tive very quickly –at least quickly enough for concepts such as ‘Bildwissenschaft’
or ‘semiotics of the image’ or ‘aesthetics’ to appear to me now as perhaps not
exactly wrong, but not at all appropriate or even specific enough for the contents
of The Visibility of the Image. I hardly use them at all any more in describing the
intentions of the book, and would like to briefly explain the reasons.
First, the concept of Bildwissenschaft [visual culture]: in recent years it has
become a kind of catchall term for any kind of disciplined engagement with
images. Someone not wanting to be too specific might be better off speaking
in the plural, of ‘visual culture studies’ so as to signal a reference to the many
ways images are studied. No doubt The Visibility of the Image does contribute to
visual culture in this vague sense –although the term never appears in it, and
this seems right to me in light of recent developments in the area of visual cul-
ture in the narrower sense. But the inquiry I pursue in The Visibility of the Image
can be distinguished from the problem of visual culture: despite the range of
disciplinary traditions, themes and methods that were used at the time to found
a putatively new discipline, everyone agrees that visual culture embraces images
in all media and all historical forms as its field of research. Quite often one hears
it said that visual culture is clearly separate from art history on these grounds;
according to this view, art history is concerned exclusively with a few images in
museums, and that visual culture, by contrast, is concerned with all images. To
Foreword to the New Edition (2008) xi
me this opposition seems contrived and unnatural. Art history has to be at the
heart of visual culture, simply and convincingly because art history has been
engaged with the project the longest. The historical reasons art history cannot be
accused of having restricted its concern to artistically valuable images have been
stated clearly and repeatedly; the pertinent works of Gottfried Boehm, Horst
Bredekamp or Hans Belting come to mind. Their central argument goes: to draw
a boundary between an inherited art history and a putatively new visual culture
is not only incompatible with the history of pictorial theory in the history of art,
but also unachievable: since the history of art has always been a comparative dis-
cipline, it neither can nor will concentrate on a few images having the status of
art. An art history free of self-imposed obstructions must pay theoretical atten-
tion to all images, even if only to be able to notice what is extraordinary about
art; art history is, therefore, the true Bildwissenschaft. From this point of view,
it is confusing to call for a new discipline of Bildwissenschaft in order to expand
the restricted field of art history. More than a few art historians rightly reject
the programme of visual culture as an alternative to art history. Yet whatever
we may think about disputes about the field of visual culture, and whoever ulti-
mately takes responsibility for researching the ever-increasing body of images
human beings produce –whether a new visual culture, an old art history or an
art history as visual culture –the key point is that it is all only indirectly related
to image theory. In a disciplined study of images, the concern is always with
concrete things; real objects are to be researched, their origins, their psychologi-
cal effects, their medial conditions, their social and contextual meanings, their
historical contexts and many more basic empirical aspects, and it is exactly this
basic empirical orientation that in German sets Bildwissenschaft [visual culture]
apart from Bildtheorie [image theory].
The difference can be pinpointed with the following statement: both visual
culture and image theory are concerned with all images, but only image the-
ory is concerned with the question of everything an image is. The difference in
interests, themes and methods is enormous, especially with respect to the way
an answer is to be defended. A theoretical question about an image cannot be
answered through empirical observations, but only through philosophical work
on concepts. Someone who is researching an image has already categorized it
as an image. This is the critical difference: an image theory is not concerned
with that which has already been categorized, but rather with the categorization
itself, and that means: in image theory, the main concern is with the concept
of the image. One would like to know what is meant when something is called
an image, or which characteristics this something must have in order to be an
xii Foreword to the New Edition (2008)
image. It is about the way images relate to the world in principle. It is not the
concrete image that is of interest, but rather the image as a medium. In contrast
to visual culture, image theory pursues a fundamentally different –complemen-
tary, rather than competitive –form of inquiry, in which the concrete image
figures not as the object of research, but as an example for statements in princi-
ple about what it is to be an image. One could speak of image theory’s affiliation
with philosophy, which is appropriately indicated by the word ‘theory’. For a
discipline that designates itself a science is as a rule an empirical science; social
science or communication science comes to mind. ‘Theory’, on the other hand,
is a perfectly standard designation for subdisciplines of philosophy, as is the case
for the theory of consciousness or the theory of knowledge.
In short, the accelerating spread of image theory is the result of having rec-
ognized problems following on from a heightened concern with images in the
so-called iconic turn at the time, and of a need for philosophical reflection on
those problems. Yet that is just one reason, namely the one for the heightened
interest in the philosophy of the image at that time in the first place. Another
reason seems to me to be ultimately more important and noteworthy, namely
that contemporary interest in philosophical image theory is a critical response to
one extremely widespread understanding of the image. This means the follow-
ing: even before the boom in image theory, there were subdisciplines or at least
areas of research within philosophy that by tradition felt, and to some extent
still feel, that the philosophy of the image lies within their purview. I remember
well: when I showed my work on The Visibility of the Image to friends and col-
leagues at the time I was writing, most of them knew immediately: the topic
belongs in semiotics or aesthetics. These are two classical locations within phi-
losophy where categorical problems about the nature of images are addressed,
and these are exactly the disciplines that require image theory to explain how it
is different from them, and why an additional field of inquiry is therefore neces-
sary. Within philosophy, interest in image theory at that time actually arose from
a two-fold process of delimitation: one with respect to semiotics, and the other
with respect of aesthetics.
I would like to take up the differentiation of image theory from semiotics
first, for it seems a particularly clear case: From the standpoint of semiotics,
the establishment of image theory as an academic field is a broadly superfluous
and competitive development. Semiotics takes itself to be the central discipline
of the philosophical investigation of the image –and this for the following rea-
son: because in semiotics, there is a remarkable unanimity about the view that
all images are always and necessarily signs. From the assumption that all images
Foreword to the New Edition (2008) xiii
are signs, it follows that images are within the competence of the theory of signs.
A variant of this argument can be found in Nelson Goodman’s book Languages
of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (1968). As is clear from the subtitle
alone, the goal is not an image theory, but rather the design of a theory of sym-
bols. Since all images are symbols, there is no need for a special image theory,
only for a general theory of symbols to be adapted to images. The difference is
one of words only: it makes no difference to the argument whether a science of
signs is called ‘symbol theory’ or ‘semiotics’. Either way, images fall within the
competence of the discipline concerned with signs, because images are signs.
With this, it also becomes clear that the disciplinary alignment of images within
this science stands or falls with the premise of images really always having to be
signs or symbols. But this very premise was being challenged just as philosophi-
cal image theory was heating up. There is a relationship between, on the one
hand, resistance to the semiotic dogma of the status of images as signs and, on
the other, the rise of image theory as a disciplinary alternative. To put it another
way: the criticism of the idea that an image is necessarily a sign corresponds
to a doubt about whether semiotics or language theory as such could be suit-
able frameworks for philosophical reflection on the concept of the image at all.
The problem is whether treating images semiotically or language-theoretically
does not in itself imply a prejudice that is, from an image-theoretical stand-
point, doubtful: namely that it is critical for the image to have the character of a
sign. By this point it is clear that discussions about the status of images as signs,
discussions that are often heated, are not about marginal matters; rather their
resolutions serve to set the direction for future work. With The Visibility of the
Image I am trying to make a systematic contribution to this ongoing discussion;
my main thesis with respect to this issue appears on page 124–5: ‘The pure vis-
ibility of an image can be, but need not be a sign.’
In The Visibility of the Image, I take the view that images are not signs eo
ipso. This follows necessarily from the condition that signs always arise through
use. An object is a sign exactly at the point someone uses the object to refer
to something. This is the reason the concept of a sign is a prime example of a
concept of function: such a concept labels a function that something must serve
in order to be something. As a result, there can be no things that are signs in
themselves. That an object is a sign is no more observable in this object than
the fact that it is a gift. The same applies to images: they only become signs
through use. And yet –and this is the crucial point –objects do not become
images through use, which is the reason the concept of an image, by contrast
to that of a sign, is not a concept of function. Whether an object is an image
xiv Foreword to the New Edition (2008)
can be established through observation, in fact only through observation. For

being an image is a perceptible quality of things and not the result of a use of
things. Exactly this perceptible quality, which determines whether something
is an image, is what I try to describe in The Visibility of the Image: images are
different from normal objects in their visibility. So clearly I will have to suggest
a term for this special visibility of the image. I do this by reaching back to avail-
able categories and speaking of ‘pure visibility’, a term that first appears not,
as one often reads, in Konrad Fiedler, but in Benedetto Croce (although in a
review of a text of Fiedler’s). With this concept, the main thesis of this book can
be simply formulated: images are distinguished from other objects not through
their qualities as signs, but through their pure visibility. Visibility is, for any
visible thing in the world, a visibility ‘attached’ to substance, as the metaphor
goes on to say. That is, the visibility of something in the world is a sensible
characteristic of a substance that is present, to which, however, more than just
this one sensible characteristic is attached. If something can be seen, then this
same something can also be heard, smelt and tasted. Only with an image is
there a break in the accessibility of the same thing to multiple senses, so that it
is possible to see something in an image that is not materially present. What can
be seen in an image is not really present, but rather has an artificial presence.
This is the case only for an object that one believes he is seeing when looking at
an image. Now this image object is not the material image carrier, which may
consist of canvas or paper, but rather what Günther Anders calls the ‘phantom’,
that becomes visible on the image carrier: something that becomes visible, but
that cannot be tasted, smelt or heard: an image appears through the production
of something exclusively visible. Hence the suggestion that we speak of ‘pure
visibility’ –and this terminological suggestion still seems entirely appropriate
to me today, although in discussion I repeatedly noticed some strong aversions
to the word ‘pure’. It turns out that its double meaning is exactly what makes
it so appropriate; one meaning of ‘pure’ is simply ‘exclusive’. I owe my use of
the unconventional expression ‘only-visible’ (‘nursichtbar’ is unconventional
in German as well.) to Robert Musil (p. 131). But ‘pure’ also has the meaning
‘clean’ and ‘not dirty’, and this meaning, too, has a resonance in the context of
thinking about pure visibility. Compared to the visibility of the world, the vis-
ibility of the image is a visibility cleansed of brute materiality; the image makes
it possible to see a world unencumbered by physical forces. To speak of this
artificial visibility of the image as pure visibility is to imply that it is an advan-
tage for something to become visible in an image, cleansed of mundane traffic
in causes and effects.
Foreword to the New Edition (2008) xv
It is obvious that images can be signs; but before an image can be used as a
sign, it must show something that can then be used as a sign. Only then can there
be any use of this emerging image object as a sign. I believe I have described this
in The Visibility of the Image: ‘That an image can also be a sign is the product of
a subsequent use of pure visibility as a sign for that to which it bears some simi-
larity.’ (p. 124). Still, I have not actually pursued the task of analysing this subse-
quent use of the image as a sign any further. In The Visibility of the Image, what
is done to an image by using it to establish a reference to something remains
unresolved; I first tried to set out the principles of the retrospective use of images
as signs in the texts for Artificial Presence of 2005. It was not because of limited
time or space that this happened only later, in a second book, but because in The
Visibility of the Image I was not interested in the use of the images as signs, but
in just the reverse, namely in the idea that there are images that exist for their
visibility alone, and whose use as signs would be foreign to the purpose.
An image theory focussed exclusively on the visibility of the image is repeat-
edly accused of one-sidedness, of having overlooked many other aspects of
images; a problematic reduction is unavoidably bound up with such thematic
concentration: in a theory that reduces the image to one aspect, many important
characteristics, such as its materiality, its meaning, its historical context and its
producer’s intentions are ruled out. Such a reduction was exactly my intention,
and I defend it in The Visibility of the Image as an advantage for the following
reason: the image must be reduced to its essential aspect because it is about the
answer to the question of what an image is. But because it is about the necessary
aspects of image, the thesis of pure visibility does not imply that visibility is the
only noteworthy aspect of images, and most assuredly does not imply that this
is the only important aspect of art works –The Visibility of the Image is not a
theory of art. Who would seriously want to claim that in looking at art, it is the
pure visibility of what is depicted alone that matters, and that the materiality and
meaning of the work should be pointedly ignored? This book has a completely
different kind of purpose: it is an effort to explain what makes something an
image? In answering this indubitably special question, the materiality in any one
case and the possibly extant meaning of the object play no part. An object simply
cannot be identified as an image on the grounds of any particular contents or
on the basis of the materials or production techniques. Something is an image if
something is visible on it that is ‘only-visible’.
To define being an image as the production of pure visibility therefore does
not deny that other aspects of an image may be, and often are, far more impor-
tant for the observer in observing this image, even if they do not explain why
xvi Foreword to the New Edition (2008)
this object is an image: of course the unique attraction and value of many images
lies in the way the material has been handled, and one should not therefore
turn away from such an image; of course the use of symbols is a feature of many
images which one should not overlook; of course there are images that are val-
ued because they are supposed to be art –yet neither their materiality nor their
symbolism nor their status as art can explain why, for any particular image, we
are dealing with an image. In fact it is not so remarkable, and is well known in
other contexts, for the defining feature of something not to necessarily be the
feature that is of interest to someone: if you love a person, for example, then in
all probability you will not be doing it on account of the features this person has
which could be used to explain why the love object is a person. The same holds
for looking at images: the reasons something is an image should by no means be
the only reasons for looking at the image. There are such reasons, nevertheless,
and there are also images that are produced and looked at for these reasons. In
fact I am particularly concerned to show that this quality of physics-free, pure
visibility, attributable to any image, is in fact not always the reason an image has
been made or viewed, but that it is the case for some images, and in fact espe-
cially for those that figure among the new images of the twentieth century. The
Visibility of the Image advances the argument that new image forms arose in the
twentieth century that cannot be explained by way of technical changes in media,
but that can be approached through formal aesthetics: they can be interpreted
as attempts to produce asemantic images for the sake of their visibility. With
respect to these special formal images I am thinking of certain collages, certain
video clips, computer games and animations –and today they still seem to me to
be the most important examples. I would like to show, with these images, that a
formal image theory is not only equipped with a descriptive dimension, but that
it is also implicitly bound up with a kind of production maxim. In this book,
I have formulated that maxim as follows: ‘Stop trying to interpret visible reality
in the production of an image, and try instead to understand the creation of an
image as the building of an object in which visibility becomes an independent
form of being!’ (p. 125).
That is the place in the book –and I am glad to be able to say it is the only
place –where I needed to fill gaps in for the new edition: here a reference to
Jean-Paul Sartre is needed. It was clear to me that his position with respect to
the theory of images coincided in its central aspects with my own reflections.
But unfortunately it only occurred to me several months after the publication
of The Visibility of the Image that Sartre’s statement in What Is Literature? of
1948, about the contingent status of the image as a sign, was so similar, that his
Foreword to the New Edition (2008) xvii
view of asemantic images was a call to make images without semiotic function;
the following quotation should not have been omitted from The Visibility of the
Image: ‘The painter does not want to create a thing. And if he puts together red,
yellow, and green, there is no reason for the ensemble to have a definable sig-
nification, that is, to refer particularly to another object. [. . .] But, you will say,
suppose the painter does houses? That’s just it. He makes them, that is, he cre-
ates an imaginary house on the canvas and not a sign of a house. And the house
which thus appears preserves all the ambiguity of real houses.’* With this, the
key idea of this image theory is clearly formulated: the image is considered a
technique for producing a special kind of objectivity; it is not about appearance,
but rather about the production of being; with pictures things are fabricated
that are –in contrast to normal things –imaginary things, because they are not
subject to the laws of physics: for with images, and in fact only with images, a
human being can see things and processes that are physically impossible. It is
clear from just the simple fact that things visible in an image do not age. An
object that does not age does not exist in the world except in images. One can
only imagine such an object, or encounter it as a fantasy object presented in
an image.
The Visibility of the Image is concerned with a way of thinking about images
that does not make use of semiotics. This follows necessarily from the inten-
tion to defend the possibility of asemantic images. Still, as I said, this drawing
of boundaries within the book does not lead to using of the concept of image
theory as a replacement, and this for one simple reason: for me it was obvi-
ous that not only the historical theories introduced here but also the systematic
perspectives belonged in philosophical aesthetics. This obviousness has since
come to need explanation. For a turn towards the designation ‘image theory’
also involves a turn –in part especially forceful in just this respect –away from
philosophical aesthetics. It seems to me that most contemporary image theo-
rists, such as Klaus Rehkämper, understand themselves explicitly and emphati-
cally not to be aestheticians. This distancing of image theory from aesthetics
is not necessary, however, for unlike the case of semiotics, in which there are
substantial named reasons why image theory cannot be detached, there seem
to be no such reasons in aesthetics at all. The argument that is given for the
distancing goes: philosophical aesthetics is the science of perception and most
particularly of beauty and of art, just not the science of the image. But exactly
* Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature? (1949), trans. Bernard Frechtman, New York: Philosophical
Library, pp. 9 and 10.
xviii Foreword to the New Edition (2008)
with respect to the history of formal aesthetics the argument is hardly persua-
sive. For here, under the title ‘aesthetics’, image theory in its contemporary sense
was pursued –I remain committed to this understanding of aesthetics’ com-
petence in my systematic considerations as well, which is the reason the book’s
subtitle is History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics, rather than History of
Formal Aesthetics and Perspectives of Formal Image Theory. One of the places
where I speak about the theory of the image is a footnote, in which I look into
the extent to which the themes of image theory formed part of formal aesthet-
ics’ concept of the aesthetic; the contents of this footnote would now surely be
better-placed in the text itself: ‘The question of whether something is a work of
art seemed secondary to theoreticians of formal aesthetics. For this reason, this
book presents a history of formal aesthetics with the intention of representing a
theory of the image in all its material forms of appearance. So it is worth keep-
ing in mind: not every image is a work of art, nor is every work of art an image.
What is said about images need not hold for every work of art, and what is said
about works of art need not be valid for every image’ (pp. 40–41).
The turn to image theory at that time went hand in hand with a turn away
from aesthetics, a compensatory shift that probably can no longer be reversed –
nor does it need to be reversed. But we should not forget where the important
roots of contemporary image theory lie: in formal aesthetics! With the subse-
quent development of image theory in the background, the new edition of The
Visibility of the Image can be linked to an intention I did not have at the begin-
ning because it seem too obvious, namely to show that aesthetics is one of the
classical locations of image theory. Philosophical aesthetics has no reason not to
feel the discussion of image theory to be within its remit. On the contrary: just
as art historians rightly point out that there is a long tradition of serious thought
about images in their discipline, so can aestheticians refer to an equally long
tradition of image-theoretical reflection: The history of formal aesthetics is the
best example.
L.W.
Sendenhorst,
October 2007
Introduction
Hardly any other area of philosophy raises such diverse expectations as aesthet-
ics. Extremely heterogeneous phenomena are debated under the heading ‘aes-
thetics’. It has not been possible to define it exclusively as a theory of beauty or
high art for a long time. And even the original Greek understanding of aesthet-
ics as the study of perception is inadequate to embrace the entire spectrum of
contents currently under consideration in this field. To try to define the object of
philosophical aesthetics is to run into an apparently unavoidable tautology: aes-
thetics is the discipline concerned with the aesthetic.
In fact the concept of ‘aesthetic’ is being used more and more often not only
in theoretical contexts, but for the characterization of real objects. People speak
with great assurance of aesthetic experience, aesthetic objects and even of the
aesthetics of things. Aesthetics is such a broad field because there are aesthetic
aspects to be found in not only art and nature, but in people’s consciousness and
self-understanding and in ethical and theoretical claims as well. The term ‘aes-
thetic’ in no way refers to the same quality in each of these contexts, however: it
is not uncommon for talk about the aesthetic to function as another formulation
for stylish elegance, for the appearance of presence, for attention directed to the
act of perception, for the sensual presence of sense, and often just for the percep-
tion of something. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the spectrum of
meaning is wide and vague. But to think that such a multiplicity of meanings is
unanimously regretted would be an error. Even a passing glance at recent con-
tributions to philosophical aesthetics shows that two evaluations of the content
stand intractably opposed to one another.
On the one hand, there are those who find the current situation in aesthetics
completely unacceptable because the term itself has lost so much of its focus,
specificity, its very meaning through inflationary use. From this point of view,
aesthetics urgently needs to be realigned to its conceptual traditions, that is, to
2 The Visibility of the Image
be committed to a specific task and to treat only excellent phenomena as aes-

thetic objects: for example beauty, judgements of taste, the experience of nature
or art. In this orientation, the view is often taken that because the potential of
modernism’s great classical aesthetic concepts has not been exhausted, they
should serve as guiding examples.
From another orientation comes the assessment ordinarily characterized as
postmodern. In accordance with it, the very breadth of the concept aesthetics
offers an opportunity for future research: for semantic ambiguity, as the central
argument goes, need not be equivalent to uselessness. On the contrary: if the
breadth of the concept were taken into account, aesthetics would have a position
at the foundation of the sciences and humanities that it has never had before.
From this standpoint, any narrowing of the field of aesthetics to the study of
special aesthetic phenomena in the modern sense is an unjust and unjustified
expansion of one element from the broad spectrum of aesthetics into its over-
arching theme, keeping aesthetics from its current task of describing the con-
temporary function of aesthetic principles.
The dispute about the actual meaning of the aesthetic is significant: not only
is it a clear demonstration of how internally divided contemporary philosophi-
cal aesthetics is with respect to the way it understands itself; it shows at least
equally well where there is unspoken agreement. The agreement particularly
concerns the expectation of what an engagement with the history of aesthet-
ics should do now, for what reason and in what forms inherited aesthetics
have current relevance. In both cases, the history of aesthetics is regarded as
the development of theories with diverse tasks and methods, with which one
should be familiar so as to base one’s own work on the current state of research,
to avoid needlessly repeating what has been known for a long time, and not
least of all, to provide historical justification for one’s own approach. Now any
of these reasons would no doubt be persuasive independently and would be
enough to support further work in the history of aesthetics. But in light of these
expectations alone, one important dimension of philosophical aesthetics goes
unnoticed. Philosophical aesthetics has reflected theoretically not only current
aesthetic phenomena, whatever they may be, exactly, but it has also, through
conceptualization, affected actual events. We should be aware that more than a
few of the aesthetic positions that have come down to us sought to be more than
descriptions of current realities. Philosophical aestheticians worked in explicit
and implicit expectation of setting out the foundations for future developments
in the fields of art, society and culture. Many aesthetic theories are decidedly
utopian projects. That extends from Friedrich Schiller’s design for an aesthetic
Introduction 3
state to Kurt Schwitters’s visions of a Merzwelt [Merzworld]. Both are exemplary

cases of aestheticians wanting not primarily to describe something, but rather
to create the conceptual conditions under which aesthetic projects first become
communicable, and then should become historic realities.
Taking this literally fundamental dimension of aesthetics into account means
that in addition to the reasons already given for taking up the history of aesthet-
ics, at least one more can be added: the history of aesthetics is not only relevant
for learning the strengths and weaknesses of those aesthetic concepts already
worked out, but very particularly for discovering the intellectual foundations on
which aesthetic phenomena of the present rest. This approach to the history of
philosophy proves to be especially useful when philosophical means are used to
focus on the contemporary world of images, as is the case for the present work.
The image belongs to those aesthetic phenomena that have undergone a fast
and radical development in this century. New forms of images have appeared
both inside and outside the visual arts. One thinks of abstract images, different
from all earlier images in that they shows no object at all, or of digital images,
which permit an unprecedented manipulation of the depicted object as it is
being observed. Now these are in fact two very different pictorial forms, yet
one principal content can nevertheless be recognized equally well in each of
them: the discovery of new technologies for producing images does not in itself
explain why a new pictorial form comes into being. Abstract images needed
no technical invention at all, for the abstract image works with the traditional
means of the easel picture. This does not apply in the same sense to the digital
image, since its genesis is bound up with the earlier development of computer
technology. But even here, new technology in itself does not sufficiently explain
how digital images are possible. We need to be aware that even a new technology
initially presents nothing more than possibilities –these possibilities still need to
be used in order for genuinely innovative images to result from a new medium.
To put it another way: images, works of art in particular, come to be on the basis
of a particular conception of the image. Someone who thinks an image can only
be an image if it is possible to recognize an object on it will hardly be in a posi-
tion to make use of available technical possibilities to produce an abstract image.
Someone who thinks a film must tell a story will not make a video clip using
computer animation. So we can say technical possibilities can have an impact
on the production of new image forms only if the pictorial understanding that
in a logical sense permits it is already in place. Philosophical aesthetics affects
the production of images by establishing the conceptual conditions in which the
new images become thinkable.
Given this background, it becomes clear that the revolutions in the world
of images in the twentieth century present a challenge to contemporary philo-
sophical aesthetics. Of course it is an important topic in any case, one on which
the history of philosophy confers special authority among the many broad and
narrow understandings of aesthetics. But as long as one takes this route in his
or her effort to advance contemporary aesthetics, he or she will try to bring
an initiative based on the history of philosophy to bear on contemporary phe-
nomena. One then still faces the problem that what is significant for the history
of philosophy is not necessarily significant for the development of images, and
that a certain historical arbitrariness therefore always remains in the choice of
method. This can be avoided by looking at the image with the aesthetic values
of the Zeitgeist in which the image could develop in the first place. There is an
inner compulsion in a development, and it can be understood if it is possible to
refer it back to a project that prepared the development theoretically. In turning
to contemporary philosophical aesthetics with this expectation, one automati-
cally turns to the history of philosophical aesthetics as well, but this time not to it
alone, in order to adopt a suitable approach. Rather one goes further, to ground
the development of the image itself in aesthetic argumentation. So the image
is reflected in an aesthetic theoretically by showing which aesthetic is already
reflected in the thing itself.
Someone who looks at an image solely to inquire about the appearance
of something hardly needs to justify his action philosophically. If we want to
know how something looked, looks or could look, it is obvious that we will
refer to images. For a long time, depictions have proven to be an excellent tool,
informing us more quickly and more precisely than a thousand words about
things and events in the visible world. Images show sights and insights that are
not accessible to the naked eye, and that no communication in language can
convey. Without images –and this is a commonplace –human beings would
know less.
The situation changes, however as soon as we take into account that images
are not completely taken up with their capacity for depiction. Although it is con-
fusing to put the image’s special capacity for visual communication in question,
it is important to remember that images are neither made nor viewed exclusively
for information about objects. One of the noteworthy phenomena about deal-
ing with images is, rather, that they can be of high quality and worth looking at
even if the depicted events are trivial or banal. A visit to a visual art museum
can, like an evening of television, furnish ample evidence that the attraction of
images need not be bound up with objective information. Cézanne’s apples do
Introduction 5
not attempt to clarify information or narrate events any more than a video clip
on MTV does. So what do they show?
The shared intention of the studies presented here of the visibility of the
image is the reconstruction of a pictorial understanding that allows for images
not to be used as signs for things that are absent. It tries to answer the question
of what one can see in an image when one is not seeing depicted objects. When
images are viewed, even if their content is of no interest, their mimetic status
can no longer be taken for granted, as is always the case when images are serving
informative purposes only. Philosophical aesthetics is the quarter from which
we may expect help in understanding what images can do beyond simply depict-
ing. It seems clear that from this standpoint abstract images play a key role. The
abstract image is not a sign for an object because it does not even depict an
object –still, it is an image. And yet not only in art, but in many popular pictorial
forms as well –numerous video games come to mind –any relationship between
what is visible in the image and an extant or fictive reality is either irrelevant or
not given in the first place.
These studies rest on a sense that images in the twentieth century, having
been emancipated from the task of representation, are increasingly made and
viewed for their visibility alone. Hence the question: when and where did the
pictorial understanding develop that today makes it seem so natural to use
images without any view towards objective information? The answer, and with
it the main historical thesis goes: in formal aesthetics. The theses of formal aes-
thetics are to be reconstructed to show that in them, since the middle of the last
century, ideas were being discussed that lend themselves to interpretation as the
ground on which recent art and new media built their engagement with images.
If, along the way, an orientation takes centre stage that would otherwise hardly
command any attention at all at this point, it can be taken as an indication that in
philosophical aesthetics as a whole, it was not held to be too important whether
the approach being discussed and defended would endure in the immanent his-
tory of philosophy, or be meaningful for the realities with which aesthetics is
concerned.
Formal aesthetics developed in the nineteenth century in the school of the
philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), marking, from a contem-
porary standpoint, a fundamental turning point in the history of aesthetics. It
represents one of the first concepts with which philosophical aesthetics sought
to free itself from the metaphysical mooring that had until then been a given. It
belongs to a broader upheaval that operated under such slogans as ‘down with
speculative aesthetics’ (Hettner) or ‘aesthetics from below’ (Fechner), and that
developed alternatives to philosophical aesthetics that took extant philosophies,

rather than art works, as the starting point for statements about art. The shared
goal is the work of a ‘general art history’ with a positivist orientation. In this con-
text, aesthetics meant that one should respond to the perceptible qualities of aes-
thetic objects, rather than projecting philosophical theories on to them. Instead
of using aesthetic phenomena to plug gaps in a philosophical system that was
already in place, the objects themselves were to become the theme. The whole
movement –and this is the source of its lasting significance –introduces analy-
ses of images and of art that are genuinely phenomenological. We can speak of
the beginning of modern art history. The purely immanent approach of formal
aesthetics inevitably gives rise to an explicit double opposition; the programme
was actually to break with the two great theories of philosophical aesthetics that
prevailed in the nineteenth century: in opposition both to Kant’s analysis of aes-
thetic judgement as well as to Hegel’s linking of art to intellectual ideals, the call
to go ‘back to the things themselves’ develops –and that also means: back to the
visible.
The history of formal aesthetics is a history of the investigation of the vis-
ibility of the image. All formal aestheticians share the view that an image is an
object, an artefact whose diverse effects are achieved solely by covering a sur-
face with visible forms. These visible forms on the surface of the image are the
exclusive theme of formal aesthetics. The image is described as an object that is
distinguished from other things as well as from other signs through its visibility.
For in order to explain that an image can show more than an object, and is itself
more than just an object, then it really is appropriate to research visibility. The
visibility of an image represents a phenomenon sui generis. It is set apart in prin-
ciple from the usual view of something because it is not bound up with the pres-
ence of that something. The visibility of an object being looked at in the world
demands the presence of that object: one can only see what is there. But there is
an exception to this rule on the surface of the image. Images isolate. In an image,
the visibility of something is separated from its presence. Images are demateri-
alizations that transform things into pure visibility. In a photograph of Peter, one
does not see Peter himself, but only certain forms that are more or less similar to
him. Peter’s visibility has been detached from his existence in this image, which
is why what is depicted cannot be tasted or smelt, but only ever seen. This is sig-
nificant for images: in order to be an image, an image must show something on
its surface that is not there itself. Every image is a visible contradiction between
presence and absence. For this reason, it is only on picture surfaces that visibility
can be found without the ballast of some dependent substance: a photograph
Introduction 7
of Mount Everest is not heavy, and an image of the North Sea is not wet. Under
these circumstances, as trivial as they are fundamental, the main focus turns to
the question of what an image can do beyond depicting objects: if the objective
content is not of interest, the visible surface of the image itself is.
It is worth the effort to reconstruct the theory of the visibility of the image in
its development from the non-speculative aesthetic movement of the nineteenth
century to the phenomenology of the twentieth. Starting from Herbartianism,
one actually finds a series of philosophies that are systematically relevant from
the standpoint of the way they frame their inquiries, because they try to think
back from the picture surface. The overarching purpose necessarily entails
a commitment to concentrate on the reconstruction of those arguments that
in hindsight appear to be the principal elements of a common project, to use
images for their visibility. Since we have explicitly chosen to reconstruct not the
history of aesthetics itself, but a particular reasoning from the history of aesthet-
ics, the work of formal aestheticians will not be considered in its full breadth; we
will not be following all of the tracks that lead out from them. From the many
tracks that could be followed in the history of aesthetics, those will be selected
that seem particularly relevant to the modern world of images. With reference
to selected historical studies, each of the six chapters presents the genesis and
significance of one main idea in formal aesthetics.
The first chapter examines the issue of what understanding of a work under-
pins formal aesthetics. The Viennese philosopher Robert Zimmermann (1824–
1898) took up this problem. As a student of Herbart, he is to be credited with
having brought his teacher’s sketchy programme of formal aesthetics into a con-
sistent, systematic form. Zimmermann furnished not only the concept ‘formal
aesthetics’, but also a clear idea of the discipline to which aesthetics would need
to adhere, once it was free of metaphysical systems. Zimmermann designed for-
mal aesthetics in explicit analogy to formal logic. Logic provides an exemplary
demonstration of a purely syntactic way of using signs, that is, without regard to
objective content. The way Zimmermann applied this procedure to aesthetics is
to be reconstructed here in detail. It becomes clear that Zimmermann’s philo-
sophical obscurity stems from his thinking that philosophical aesthetics needs to
explain what beauty is. In fact formal aesthetics starts with a philosopher typical
of a transitional period: in the form of his inquiry, Zimmermann is firmly bound
to the eighteenth century –he is looking for the objective qualities of beauty. But
in his concept of a work he anticipates twentieth-century structuralist thought –
he looks only at visible relations on the surface. In the turn away from the ques-
tion of beauty, Zimmermann, and with him his noteworthy Allgemeine Ästhetik
als Formwissenschaft [General Aesthetics as a Science of Form] of 1865, were

forgotten. But Zimmermann need not be read as a theoretician of beauty. His
writings have an unexpected currency –especially in light of recent debate about
how the work of art is to be understood –because they can be grasped as an
effort to outline a non-idealistic concept of form. In fact the image is an object of
reflection on the grounds of its form alone in formal aesthetics. Zimmermann
is not trying to describe the concrete forms of particular works, as in art history,
but rather to describe the logical principles of pictorial form as such. With this
idea, Zimmermann set a course that leads beyond his own solution.
Zimmermann’s own student, the Viennese art theoretician Alois Riegl
(1858–1905), went on to develop aesthetics on the model of formal logic. This
helps to explain why philosophy lost sight of formal aesthetics: the first for-
mal observations of pictorial surfaces occur in the context of the founding of
art history. The second chapter interprets Riegl’s theory of style as a further
response to Zimmermann’s call for an aesthetics oriented towards formal logic.
From this perspective it becomes clear that Riegl’s formal aesthetics supple-
ments the relational logic that arose at the same time. The concerns of relational
logic substantially developed by August De Morgan and Charles Sanders Peirce
are analogous to those of formal aesthetics: the preparation of instruments for
describing structural formations. Both disciplines are about specifying the for-
mal qualities of relationships. But the categories of formal logic are not sufficient
for the special purpose of describing a pictorial surface as an immanent rela-
tional structure. The traditional means of relational logic, for example categories
such as ‘transitive’ and ‘reflexive’, cannot cope formally with the infrastructure of
a pictorial surface. The transitional categories Riegl developed, such as ‘optical’
versus ‘painterly’ or ‘haptic versus ‘linear’, refine formal logic for aesthetic pur-
poses, and so lay the foundation for formal aesthetics’ continuing engagement
with relational logic.
The third chapter follows subsequent work on the relational logic of the picto-
rial surface. The writings of the art theoretician Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945)
necessarily lie at the heart of the matter. It is particularly the case for his famous
book Principles of Art History (1915) which brought an entirely new depth to
Riegl’s structure-theoretical understanding of style, and enriched this under-
standing by several new categories for the formal description of immanent pic-
torial relationships.
Wölfflin’s thought still marks a turning point in the ways two central ques-
tions in formal aesthetics are answered. First, what logical dependencies exist
between the relational qualities of a pictorial form? And second, how are the
Introduction 9
logical relational qualities of the image related to human perception? The remark-
able thing is that Wölfflin gives one answer to both questions: the regularities of
immanent pictorial relationships correspond to forms of human perception. In
this way, Wölfflin brought about a fundamental change in the way formal aes-
thetics understands itself. For by undermining the difference between the form
of depiction and the form of perception, he subverted the opposition between
aesthetics as a theory of art and aisthetics as a theory of the senses. Because
Wölfflin was using the image to research perception, formal aesthetics comes to
serve aisthetics. The surface of the image lets us see structural connections that
can be grasped as principles of vision. From this point of view, Wölfflin makes
the image a unique instrument of cognition by virtue of its form. From just this
strong observation about form one can see that the form of an image is not
just an ornamental structure. Through its form, the image permits us to grasp
one aspect of our observation, one that is independent of the observed object
because it is entirely conditional. With this, the relationship between making vis-
ible and becoming visible through observation becomes the new theme of formal
aesthetics. Among the central tasks of this chapter is to foreground and discuss
Wölfflin’s more than terminological reliance on Kant’s concept of the form of
intuition. Only in comparison to Kant can we describe the typically neo-Kantian
development of transcendental aesthetics through formal aesthetics to a theory
of –as Wölfflin puts it –‘ocular conditions’.
Wölfflin’s art historical principles develop a logic of ways of seeing that is
needed and called upon just when consciousness exhibits a pictorial structural
coherence. Wölfflin made Kant’s transcendental aesthetics concrete, not least by
abandoning the idea of a transcendental subject. In historical perspective, the
step his formal aesthetics makes towards an understanding of consciousness has
a significance for the continuing development of phenomenology that is only
now being systematically examined. Abandoning any purely intentional under-
standing of human consciousness, Ferdinand Fellmann describes consciousness
as a medium whose functions and conditions at any particular moment can be
grasped only by way of an image. His call to use an image to grasp, through
form, something that cannot be described objectively because of its conditional-
ity and affectivity, forms the hermeneutic background for this work on the his-
tory of formal aesthetics.
The fourth chapter asks whether the formal observation of an image must
always be the observation of a way of seeing. With the possibility of using an
image as a cognitive instrument to recognize the conditions of perception,
attention turns to the infrastructure of the picture surface. But once attention
is focussed the surface, the initial motivation can disappear, and the surface can
also be viewed without hermeneutic interest. The development of the image in
the twentieth century, driven by art and new media, challenges us to investigate
the problem of what happens to a pictorial surface when it is free from the need
to depict a way of seeing as well. The basic interests and expectations of formal
aesthetics, the paradigms on which it draws for its arguments, can change: from
a way of seeing to visibility. This decisive step can be reconstructed in the writ-
ings of the Saxon philosopher Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895). Although his work
precedes Wölfflin’s, the formal aesthetic he outlined goes beyond an orientation
to a way of seeing. Wölfflin shaped the neo-Kantian understanding of an image
into a logic of ways of seeing; Fiedler in fact substantially developed the same
idea, but in the end also aspired to overcome it. With Fiedler it is possible to
demonstrate that the turn to a way of seeing is only a first step in the emancipa-
tion of the pictorial surface; he starts to make the surface absolute, but does not
complete the process. Of course an image of Turner’s not of interest for the ships
it depicts, but for the way the ships are seen. In art, when one is interested in
a way of seeing, attention is already focussed on the surface of the image. This
is where the way of seeing is constructed. One attends to the style of an image
because it shows how something can be visible. A conscious disregard of the
depicted object is not a misuse of the image in such a case, because such a use is
already implicit in it. A meaningful viewing of a Turner image is achieved when
it is not ships, but an order of the visible that can be seen.
But the possibility of using images for their sheer, pure visibility opens only
when an image is viewed neither for its depicted objects nor for its way of see-
ing. The most radical kind of formal pictorial understanding permits an image
to consist of its unique characteristics, its visibility alone. Inevitably, the ques-
tion will be: to what images does this formal aesthetic apply? What images are
viewed meaningfully when they are viewed for their visibility alone? Unlike
Wölfflin, who rightly turned to the traditional easel picture with his logic of ways
of seeing, this thesis about looking at the image for its visibility seems especially
suited to making the new pictorial forms of the twentieth century comprehen-
sible. With this idea as a guide, a path can be constructed that leads from avant-
garde experiments at the beginning of the century –especially Suprematism and
collage –through the theory of silent film and on to modern video clips. The
concern at all points is with pictorial experiments in which a formal aesthetic
point of view is explicitly reflected. Fiedler’s approach is elaborated to differenti-
ate among different types of visibility in images. The pure visibility of images
is conditioned by medium. The rigid visibility of an easel picture is different
Introduction 11
from the dynamic visibility made possible by film. Yet only with digital image
processing does a form of pure visibility become available that can be called an
independent entity –Fiedler speaks of a ‘form of being’ –because it permits
manipulation and, in the case of simulation, even interaction. Without moving
materials around, without danger or force, sheer visibility is available on screen
and eventually takes on contains qualities that are designed not to be visible,
qualities that video games and computer simulations exploit. Visibility begins to
exhibit behaviour and to enter into relationships of exchange with viewers, who
automatically become users. The pictorial surface is transformed, on monitors,
into a user surface.
These qualitative leaps in the development of new pictorial forms can be
clearly traced by attending to their visibility. When the interpretation of an
image, in the sense of formal aesthetics, is internalized through an image, pure
visibility takes on a level of autonomy unlike that of earlier images, one that
seems to characterize images of this century in particular because it applies to
both art and to new media. In both cases, it needs to be shown that the effort
to make visibility unconditional ends at exactly the point where the image is no
longer a sign for something, but is made and viewed as an object sui generis: as
an object, then, characterized by its being nothing more than visible.
This development introduces a change in the way an image is the understood
to be produced, the effects of which become increasingly noticeable and oppres-
sive. From the standpoint of a way of seeing, the production of an image that
is not primarily concerned with simple depiction of a visible reality is one of
the traditional tasks of visual art, one that can be associated with artistic truth
claims. But from the standpoint of visibility, the possibility of speaking mean-
ingfully about a formal truth vanishes; the image becomes a designed thing.
Instead of an interpretation of visible reality, new pictorial forms in this century
generate visibility alone, and with it an enrichment of visible reality with virtual
reality. These new forms cannot be either false or true, because they simply are,
without referring to anything. In this chapter, the constructions of virtual reality,
culminating in cyberspace, are treated as technical transformations of an under-
standing of pictorial visibility anticipated in formal aesthetics.
The fifth chapter pursues a philosophical analysis of the method that under-
pins the formal observation of an image. In formal aesthetics, the image, which
consists of a multiplicity of aspects and is implicated in a multiplicity of contexts,
is reduced to one surface. The really remarkable thing is that this reduction is
not considered a loss of the image’s multiplicity –as one would first think –but
a gain. In order to be able to understand the reduction immanent in the study of
visibility, it is necessary to examine the relationship between formal aesthetics and

phenomenology. The writings of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (1908–1961) examine and extend the connections between the problems
of reduction and visibility. His late essays in particular may be considered a fur-
ther development of the work of formal aesthetics, because they show clearly how
formal aesthetics always understood itself as a form of phenomenology avant la
lettre. The phenomenological idea of the ‘epoché’, a deliberate refusal of relation-
ships with objects, is the principle of the formal observation of images. Merleau-
Ponty’s interpretation of reduction and pictorial visibility takes us back to the
question of whether and how there can be pictorial forms that sensually reflect, in
the images themselves, the formal as well as phenomenological ways they should
be approached. Are there images that bear witness to having bracketed the world
out? Following on from the types of images specified in the previous chapter, this
requires an examination of images in which no object is visible at all. This is the
case for an abstract image. The abstract image can no longer be observed in any
way but the one formal aesthetics demands: there is no object to see. Therefore the
abstract image is to be interpreted here, in connection with Merleau-Ponty, as a
realized form of phenomenological reduction by means of painting.
The sixth chapter turns to the semiotic status of the pictorial surface. From the
standpoint of the theory of signs, the conclusions of formal aesthetics must have
a semiotic foundation. The key question is, Is an image that does not refer to an
object a sign, and if it is, in what sense? The abstract image can be understood
as a sign only if we are in a position to recognize a type of sign that describes no
object, either extant or fictive, which can specifically be a sign without any des-
ignated object. The semiotics of the American Charles William Morris (1901–
1979) is particularly concerned with this problem. The intention in turning to
these writings is to represent semiotic aesthetics –at least at the beginning –as a
variation of formal aesthetics using other means. Morris suggests a comparison
between the form of the abstract image and the language of mathematics or
logic. Zimmermann’s initial intention, to orient formal aesthetics to the methods
of formal logic, remains in evidence here, in Morris’s comparison between the
semiotic status of abstract images and algebraic formulae. But Morris’s theory
of signs does more than help to give a semiotic description of the non-objective
image in its traditional form as an easel picture. It goes on to develop a concep-
tual apparatus with which to reach a semiotic understanding of more recent
types of play with non-objective imagery.
Just as Morris, on the sign-theory side, charts a path from formator to forma-
tive discourse, there is a further discursive development for the abstract image as
Introduction 13
well. Morris encouraged, with good reason, a search for pictorial forms that can
be described, in semiotic terms, as formative discourse. These have to be image
sequences, for discourse always has a temporal dimension. In fact Morris’s con-
cept of formative discourse can be used to describe the relatively recent phenom-
ena of extremely fast image sequences. Surfing through channels on television,
driving an automobile through an image-rich world of advertisements, a person
sees ephemeral images that simply flit across the field of vision. The video clip
demonstrates what happens to images in a transport of speed, and media stud-
ies describe a tendency for faster and faster image sequences to shape recent
film, especially television production. Looking at this tendency from the point
at which it is aimed –a target neither achieved nor even desired –objective con-
tents disappear, and image sequences appear that take on an ambivalent semi-
otic status. It is a condition in which objective meaning is only suggested, not
achieved, in which pure visibility is presented not as a real sign for something,
but as a possible sign for signs. From a semiotic point of view, the totalizing of
visibility puts the medium in a condition Hans Magnus Enzensberger described
as a ‘null medium’.
These studies of the logic of formal aesthetics serve to articulate a theory
that led the step-by-step emancipation of pure visibility in the development
of the image. The theory of visibility is understood to be a contribution to
the phenomenology of medial worlds in which images are the dominant phe-
nomena. For more and more people, more and more of what is held to be real
comes from the viewing of images. The situation inevitably calls attention
to the image as one of the factors that shape contemporary forms of life. To
speak of a flood of images is anything but an original discovery. There can
hardly be any argument that images contribute substantially to making the
world a global village, in that the most distant events –in part simultaneous –
are familiar, as if they had happened just around the corner. But in assessing
this process, the following thought experiment is helpful: suppose there are
two people who live in comparable environments and who have access to the
same information at the same speed. The only difference is that in one world,
images are used for information, and in the other they are not. Although at
present it is difficult to believe that there would ever be non-visual media that
could transmit information as well as images do, this thought experiment
shows that even without a difference in transmitted knowledge, the world of
images is richer by one singular phenomenon. Images expand reality in a way
that is independent of any message, because their visibility is always more
fundamental than their legibility. Information transmitted through images is
more than the information alone. They still always have another aspect that
cannot be replaced by signs of the same value. For only with an image is the
legibility of a sign bound up with its pure visibility. No sign that is not itself
an image can substitute for this phenomenon. The phenomenon of pure vis-
ibility –in work on it as well as play with it –enters into human reality only
through images. For this reason, a world without images would be poorer
even apart from the loss of knowledge or insight: one could see only what
really is there, and everything that is not there would be condemned to invis-
ibility. Visibility would be inseparably bound to the hard and heavy world.
But since there are images, it is less and less often the case.
1
The Beginnings of Formal Aesthetics:

Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898)
1.1 Formal logic as a model for formal aesthetics
Giving up the work and contemplation of the work

An increasing number of philosophical aestheticians deliberately avoid saying
anything about the aesthetic object. For quite a few contemporary aestheticians,
the aesthetic object is irrelevant. This characterization applies to the aesthetics
of reception and to analytic aesthetics equally, if not in the same way. Both ten-
dencies can serve as examples of the way aesthetic objects are discussed as ‘sub-
stitutes’. The work in the traditional sense, as an object characterized by special
visible qualities, is deliberately circumvented.
The aesthetics of reception turns away from the aesthetic object by concern-
ing itself exclusively with the effect the aesthetic object has on the subject. The
aesthetic object is defined by the subject’s response to it. It is, as Hans Robert Jauß
emphasizes in Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, ‘the convergence of
work and effect that is the starting point for German aesthetics of reception’ (tr)
(p. 63). Even a brief glance at the movement’s key text confirms that it supports ‘the
relinquishing of an aesthetics of the work’ (tr) (ibid.). The aesthetics of reception is
not concerned with art objects, but rather with aesthetic experience in association
with them. It describes acts of consciousness, and in this way transforms philo-
sophical aesthetics into a subdiscipline of the theory of consciousness.1
In analytical aesthetics, the situation is not different in principle –at least
not if we keep this post-war movement’s original intention in mind.2 In this
context, language analytic aesthetics is concerned with so-called meta-aesthetic
problems rather than with works. This is documented with particular clarity
in the writings of George Dickie, a co-founder and key exponent of language

analytic aesthetics. According to Dickie, ‘aesthetics (at least philosophical aes-
thetics) is concerned only with the language and concepts which are used to
describe and evaluate works of art’.3 Aesthetics accordingly becomes a special
case of language philosophy. The insights of a well-developed language philoso-
phy are brought to bear on the language spoken in aesthetic reflection on art. So
aesthetics becomes a reflection on the language of other aestheticians, which is
to say meta-aesthetics.
Contemporary aesthetics’ turn away from the object is understandable when
it is seen as a reaction to the art of the avant-garde in this century. In order for
a theory of art to justify its relevance to the present, it is increasingly expected
to account for the avant-garde. Franz Koppe describes an ordinarily unspoken,
accepted background of contemporary aesthetic discussion: ‘If you discuss a
theory of art today with people who are familiar with what is currently happen-
ing in art, you can be sure that the theory, whatever its source, will be tested,
sooner rather than later, against the contemporary avant-garde. More exactly,
by whether a particular conception of art accounts not only for the traditional
inventory, but also, in fact above all for the oppositional avant-garde’s break with
tradition in modernity’(tr).4 Exactly this break with tradition pertains to the
understanding of a work, however. One of the hallmarks of the avant-garde is
a programmatic destruction of works. The many ready-mades since Duchamp
show, in a particularly crass way, that parts of contemporary art cannot be con-
sidered works in a traditional sense.5 The art of the avant-garde undermines the
visible difference between an ordinary object and an aesthetic object by dispens-
ing with composition and design, form and style.6 Parts of the so-called post-
modern art of the present take this project to extremes, and completely abandon
the idea that art needs a perceptible materialization in formal structures.7
With this background, it is understandable that reception aesthetics has
turned to aesthetic experience. It is founded –as is analytic philosophy’s turn to
language –on the following idea: if art produces no works, then aesthetics, too,
must get along without a specific understanding of a work. This is the argument
Rüdiger Bubner used in ‘Über einige Bedingungen gegenwärtiger Ästhetik’ [On
Some Conditions of Contemporary Aesthetics] of 1973, in any case, to defend
the project of a reception aesthetics based on Kant: ‘So aesthetic conceptions
that must work, unchanged, with the traditional category of the work, or that
just add up to an emphatic confirmation of the concept of the work, are the
least suited to contemporary art [. . ..] Modern art in particular has let us see
that philosophical aesthetics must appeal purely to aesthetic experience itself if
The Beginnings of Formal Aesthetics 17
it does not want to completely block access to the ways art has been manifesting
itself for some time’ (tr).8
Bubner’s idea is persuasive. Theories of aesthetic experience turn out to be
best suited to an art for which visibility is not important, which may, in the most
extreme cases, exist by declaration alone –but this is also the case for analytic aes-
theticians who argue in a similar way. This is the field of art that conforms to those
aesthetics that take the view, in essence: ‘The aesthetic is something that may not
finally be determined by looking at the object at all, but must rather be determined
by observing what happens inside us. [. . .] This lets us say at least that the aesthetic
does not constitute an area with ontologically specifiable qualities, but rather that
it depends on an attitude that subjects are in principle capable of having with
respect to objects’ (tr).* This is the way Birgit Recki supports a Kantian approach
to the artistic situation at present in Wie ästhetisch ist die moderne Kunst?’ [How
Aesthetic Is Modern Art?] of 1990 (pp. 107 and 109). The ways in which the avant-
garde changed the concept of the work therefore do not, for her, have any bearing
on the question of what is unique about aesthetics: ‘Modern art’, her thesis goes,
‘is always as aesthetic as we ourselves let it be –and for this reason is neither more
nor less aesthetic than the art of earlier epochs’ (ibid., p. 112).
In this evaluation, the approaches of reception aesthetics and language-
analysis come together. The latter approach, too, is suitable for any form of
work, because it contains a statement of the characteristics of a work. Nelson
Goodman’s famous essay ‘When Is Art?’ (1977) is typical in this respect. The
title is a formulation of the question Goodman thinks should replace the tradi-
tional question ‘What is art?’ With the new question, Goodman is expressing, in
a different way, the view that objects are only aesthetic objects as long as we see
them that way. The aesthetic depends entirely on the momentary attitude of a
subject or the current recognition of specific cultural institutions: ‘. . . .just as an
object may be a symbol [. . .] at certain times and under certain circumstances,
and not at others, so an object may be a work of art at some times and not at
others. [. . .] The stone is normally no work of art while in the driveway, but may
be so when on display in an art museum. [. . .] On the other hand, a Rembrandt
painting may cease to function as a work of art . . .’ (p. 67). This thesis of aesthet-
ics’ dependency on the situation can be pushed still further: Among Goodman’s
followers, there is controversy about the meaning of the visible formal structure,
whether the way an object is made can be set aside, not only for the question
whether an object is a work of art or not, but also for the much more basic
* Unless otherwise noted, italics in quoted material indicate emphasis in the original.
question of whether an object is an image as such, which does not need to be an

artwork. Drawing on language analytic considerations, the appearance of image
is declared to be a secondary consideration in deciding whether it is an image.
It says something about contemporary philosophical aesthetics that Oliver
R. Scholz can conclude, in his account of recent image theory: ‘The critical point
is not the way the objects are designed’(tr).9
The trend in non-speculative aesthetics in the nineteenth century

That which is held to be an advantage in dealing with difficult avant-garde art
by reception aesthetics and analytic aesthetics can turn out to be a disadvantage
if all aesthetic objects are treated in the same way with just the one set of tools,
perhaps ultimately suitable to a ready-made. The proposal to dispense with the
category of the work altogether, which can be referred back to practices within
the avant-garde movement, becomes unsatisfactory when art appears in works.
Neither the Kantian nor the analytical approach is able to understand what is
unique about aesthetic objects whose particular design stands out and which
continue to be aesthetic works despite all the destruction of works. The idea
that a group of objects could be an object of aesthetics on the basis of their
particular form of visibility hardly seems to be getting any attention any more.
An orientation to the avant-garde fails to take into account the underlying fact
that many aesthetic objects are trying to be some particular thing through their
form, that they were made to be seen, that they serve the sole purpose of try-
ing to show something. The elevation of the avant-garde to the standard for the
currency of an aesthetic has the effect of putting the philosophical observation
of formal properties in the background, although there will always be aesthetic
phenomena that are unique on the basis of their form.* It is possible to treat
a painting of Rembrandt’s, a collage of Schwitters’s and a video clip as if their
aesthetic qualities were grounded in the same structures –whether language
analytic or consciousness theoretical –as Duchamp’s urinal. But this does not
take into account the special quality of images, that even if they are not works of
art, they still have aesthetic value on the basis of their visibility. Even if everyone
* Peter Bürger completes this argument in Probleme gegenwärtiger Ästhetik [Problems in Contemporary
Aesthetics] with three additional ‘objections that can be raised against the effort to develop a contem-
porary conception of aesthetics from avant-garde movements’ (tr) (p. 201). The key objection goes,
‘For if today one can speak legitimately only of aesthetic experience, but no longer of works of art, it
also means that no contemporary artistic objectivation having the character of a work (whatever the
type of work it might be) would match the most advanced level of aesthetic consciousness. In other
words, the thesis implies a negative judgment of the whole of contemporary aesthetic production,
insofar as it does not lie within the context of the avant-garde Happening’(tr) (ibid., p. 204).
now knows that an object does not drift into an art museum on the basis of its
formal qualities, that which is visible in an image and in art remains a theme in
philosophical aesthetics, one that does not disappear just because some forms of
contemporary art developed into art without works.
The elements in contemporary philosophical aesthetics just addressed must
seem unattractive to anyone interested in a philosophy of the visible quali-
ties of images. On the other hand, they cast a positive light on movements in
nineteenth-century aesthetics that are usually undervalued today. Anyone who
has an understanding of objects and a decidedly phenomenological approach
will be in fundamental agreement with last century’s so-called non-speculative
aesthetics in at least in these respects. This movement carries a discussion of
possible ways philosophical aesthetics’ turn to the object could look. In light of
the situation just described, it is an inquiry with current relevance, and as such
prompts a fresh look at this movement.
Non-speculative aesthetics in the second half of the nineteenth century
expresses an opposition to German idealism. By mid-century at the latest, there
was a reorientation in aesthetics, as in philosophy as a whole, resting on the
hope that by taking over the inductive methods of the natural sciences, aesthet-
ics could achieve an unprecedented precision. A mode of observation staying as
close as possible to the particularities of the object and going into great detail
would displace the universalizing systematics of the early nineteenth century.
‘Precision’ is the key concept of an aesthetic trend that supports an empirical
approach to aesthetics, and that draws on the methods of various sciences as a
model for doing so. With this, the movement was reacting to an increasingly
obvious and unsettling discrepancy between the precise achievements of the
natural sciences on one side and stagnating philosophical theories on the other.
The short formula for the thinking of this aesthetic movement, which considers
itself non-speculative, is the fewer the philosophical assumptions, the more rig-
orous the knowledge. In short, in this movement there was unanimous support
for the view that Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895) put so succinctly in his first text,
‘Über die Beurteilung von Werken der bildenden Kunst’ [On Judging Works of
Visual Art] of 1876: ‘We will grasp the possibility of the greatest advances in this
knowledge without philosophical reflections’ (tr) (p. 17). This sentence expresses
the expectations of a whole generation of aestheticians. It represents the expres-
sion of an anti-idealistic turn in aesthetics for which there is evidence in many
places.10 One gets both an very early and a very representative impression of the
attitude that was new at the time in the opening passage from Eduard Hanslick’s
(1825– 1904) programmatic text Vom Musikalisch- Schönen. Ein Beitrag zur
Revision der Ästhetik der Tonkunst [On the Beautiful in Music. A Contribution
to a Revised Aesthetics of Musical Art] of 1854. There he writes: ‘This objective
movement [by which Hanslick means the anti-idealistic trend in philosophy as a
whole] could not forego an engagement in the study of the beautiful as well. The
philosophical treatment of aesthetics, an attempt to approach the essence of the
beautiful in a metaphysical way and to expose its vital elements, is a more recent
development. Now if a shift in the discipline should extend to the treatment
of aesthetic questions as well, replacing the metaphysical principle with a kind
of observation related to inductive methods of the natural sciences, and gain-
ing a powerful influence and at least temporary dominance’ (tr) (p. 1) –‘only
then could one hope that aesthetics would have nothing to fear from the trial by
fire of empiricism’ (tr) (p. 28) –in this way, the meaning of Hanslick’s thought
can be resolved with a single quotation from Hermann Hettner’s (1821–1854)
‘Gegen die spekulative Ästhetik’ [Against Speculative Aesthetics] of 1845, an
essay equally rousing in character.
Today, the psychological aesthetic of Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887)
is the best-known version of an aesthetic from the non-speculative aesthetics
movement. In fact psychological aesthetics can be seen as a prototype of non-
speculative approach, for it shows the movement’s distinguishing feature with
great clarity: aesthetics is detached from philosophy. This result is unavoidable if
aesthetics is made fully empirical. Fechner’s aesthetics provides an example of this.
He leaves no doubt that he intends to transform the basic questions of aesthetics
into empirical problems, so that they can then be answered using the experimen-
tal methods recently introduced into psychology. In Zur experimentellen Ästhetik
[On Experimental Aesthetics] of 1871, the great speculative systems are replaced
with the exact data of empirical research. With this, a pattern of thought comes
into view, one that is very clear in Fechner, but that implicitly informs aesthet-
ics in the second half of the century to an extent that should not be underesti-
mated. Fechner’s ‘aesthetics from below’, from Vorschule der Ästhetik [Preschool
for Aesthetics] has established itself as the name for this pattern of thought.
In the search for a science to serve as guide and model for non-speculative
aesthetics, hardly any discipline is overlooked.11 In his great, widely read
Philosophy of Art (second edition, 1873; two volumes), Hippolyte Taine emphati-
cally defended the view that aesthetics is ‘itself a species of botany, applied not to
plants, but to the works of man. By virtue of this, it keeps pace with the general
movement of the day, which now affiliates the moral sciences with the natural
sciences, and which, giving to the first the principles, precautions and direction
of the second, gives them the same stability, and assures them the same progress’
(p. 38).12 On the other hand, Georg Hirth, in Aufgaben der Kunstphysiologie [The
Responsibilities of a Physiology of Art] of 1891 –along with Grant Allen in
Physiological Aesthetics (1877) and Francis Galton in Hereditary Genius (1869) –
looks to physiology for the experimental methods that will provide precise
answers to aesthetic questions –an idea defended even by Nietzsche in his late
work.13 The view that problems of form can be seamlessly extracted from social
causes, a view amenable to H. Taine, is represented implicitly in the art criticism
of the writer and theoretician Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and explicitly in
Die Kunst als soziologisches Phänomen [Art as a Sociological Phenomenon] of
1888, a text from the estate of the philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau. Conversely,
Ernst Grosse’s view in his book Die Anfänge der Kunst [The Beginnings of Art]
of 1894 is that aesthetics should be pursued as a form of ethnology, and Caesare
Lombroso, in Genie und Irrsinn [Genius and Madness] of 1877 declares medical
psychiatry to be the model science for a future aesthetics.
Robert Zimmermann’s forgotten programme

The project of the Viennese aesthetician Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898) is
among the initiatives made within framework of non-speculative aesthetics that
are almost unknown today. Zimmermann figured prominently in the founding of
the anti-idealistic reorientation of aesthetics through his essay, widely acclaimed
at the time, ‘Die spekulative Ästhetik und die Kritik’ [Speculative Aesthetics and
Criticism] of 1854.14 His alternative suggestion for speculative aesthetics can be
reduced to the following formula: aesthetics will reach the desired level of preci-
sion when it orients itself to formal logic. Zimmermann’s statement of purpose
reads, ‘to the extent aesthetics is a science of form, it coincides with logic as a
science of form’(tr). This is the way Zimmermann formulated his programme in
1865 in his comprehensive, systematic principal work titled Allgemeine Ästhetik
als Formwissenschaft [General Aesthetics as a Science of Form] (§80).
Formal logic certainly has the same capacity as the natural sciences to pro-
vide a model of desirable precision. Zimmermann’s primary aesthetic con-
cerns are to this extent in fundamental accord with the hope that by means
of an empirical approach, aesthetics would become precise. His programme
is –as one can in turn read from an essay title –typical for the ‘Reform der
Ästhetik als exakter Wissenschaft’ [Reform of Aesthetics as an Exact Science]
of 1862. Yet because Zimmermann does not single out an empirical discipline
as his model –as is usual in the movement –he has a special position within
the non-speculative aesthetic trend that is worth noting. An understanding
of Zimmermann’s aesthetics requires awareness that formal logic is not an

empirical theory that creates knowledge from experiments. With formal logic
as a model, aesthetics could never –as in the case of Fechner –get to the point
of becoming an empirical discipline. On the contrary, formal logic is an a
priori discipline, and as a result, Zimmermann’s own guiding concept forces
him to shape his aesthetic accordingly. He himself expressly acknowledges
it: ‘aesthetics [. . .] is therefore not an empirical, but rather an a priori science’
(tr) (Formwissenschaft, §76).
Even this cursory look at the basic theses of Robert Zimmermann shows how
clearly he stands out within non-speculative aesthetics. Zimmermann takes up
an exceptional position. When the scientific euphoria of the second half of the
nineteenth century dies down, and with it the belief in the possibility that philo-
sophical aesthetics could be made empirical and resolved, that position becomes
noteworthy. If a promising approach is developed within non-speculative aes-
thetics, it is Zimmermann’s. He does not believe in the possibility of translating
philosophical problems smoothly into empirical inquiries. From today’s stand-
point, Zimmermann’s aesthetic, often dismissed as a curiosity, appears distinctly
progressive. For it responds in an anticipatory way to problems with making
aesthetics empirical, for example with psychologism, which didn’t actually
receive very widespread attention until the beginning of the twentieth century.15
The attraction of Zimmermann’s aesthetic is something almost contradictory.
Although Zimmermann basically stood for a non-speculative aesthetic, he nev-
ertheless does not talk about any ‘aesthetic from below’, if we take the metaphor
to mean a connection to experimental results. He wants to use logical precision
not to discuss individual images, but to talk about the logical qualities of works
as such; he is concerned with a ‘general science of art’ (tr).16 By this Zimmermann
means the prima facie, seemingly paradoxical ambition to unite apriorism with
the analysis of works. Zimmermann’s steps in working this programme out are
worth retracing.
1.2 The programme: A structural theory

of the picture surface
Formalism and Herbartianism

Robert Zimmermann should be considered the primary exponent of aesthetic
formalism. He took the view that the form of an object alone is responsible for
its aesthetic qualities. The founding premise of formalism is that in an aesthetic

theory, the content of aesthetic objects can be excluded as a matter of principle,
because content is aesthetically indifferent. From this point of view, aesthetics is
concerned only with the particular way something is made, only with the way
it looks.
These theses cannot be traced back to Zimmermann alone, nor are they new
in the nineteenth century. Formalism rather counts among the basic aesthetic
positions that can be traced, at least through their implicit variations, back to
antiquity.17 But it is no coincidence that formalism acquired its systematic fit-
tings in the nineteenth century –in the context of a movement opposed to ide-
alistic philosophies, a reflection on basic formalist ideas was almost inevitable,
since these were formulated in clear opposition to the idealistic understand-
ing of artistic beauty.18 This was the case for the philosopher Johann Friedrich
Herbart (1776–1841), particularly for his students. Herbart himself neglected to
state his formal aesthetics explicitly; in his work, there are only short passages on
aesthetic questions, and they are distributed throughout his entire philosophical
work.19 Even today the term ‘Herbartianism’ designates formalism in aesthetics
because a series of students took it upon themselves to work through and defend
Herbart’s fragmentary theory; this applies to Friedrich Conrad Griepenkerl
(1792–1849), Georg Eduard Bobrik (1802–1870), Otto Flügel (1842–1914) and
most particularly to Robert Zimmermann.20 Zimmermann’s philosophical life
work is marked by an increasingly strong identification with Herbart’s ideas. His
early publications discuss Herbart’s theoretical philosophy, but what is at first
an equally strong presence, that of the logician Bernard Bolzano, technically his
instructor in philosophy, diminishes steadily.* In his aesthetics, Zimmermann
finally comes to explicitly represent Herbart’s aesthetic views. He emphasizes
it right from the first pages: Zimmermann understands his Allgemeine Ästhetik
als Formwissenschaft of 1865 as the missing ‘systematic elaboration of aesthetics
from a Herbartian point of view’ (tr) (p. 5).
* Bolzano and Zimmermann had an informal teacher-student relationship. It arose from a close
friendship between Bolzano and Johann August Zimmermann, Robert’s father. Cf. Ed. Winter,
Bernard Bolzano und sein Kreis [Bernard Bolzano and his Circle]. It may have been decisive for
Robert Zimmermann’s intellectual. He was able to pursue and even resolve this position by devel-
opment that Bolzano passed along to him a strong fundamental rejection of Kant’s as well as of
Hegel’s philosophy drawing closer to Herbart’s philosophy and by developing a purely formal aes-
thetic. Bolzano’s ‘theory of science’ further acquainted Zimmermann with a formally very advanced
version of logic. Zimmermann even developed a short version of Bolzano’s logic for use in prepara-
tory schools. On the collaboration of Bolzano and R. Zimmermann in the field of formal logic,
see the Introduction for ‘Robert Zimmermanns philosophische Propädeutik und die Vorlagen aus
der Wissenschaftslehre Bernard Bolzanos’, ed. Eduard Winter [Robert Zimmermann’s Philosophical
Propaedeutic and Its Antecedents in the Scientific Theory of Bernard Bolzano].
Formalism versus idealism

The opposition between a Herbartian and an idealistic aesthetic crystallizes
around the question of the way the relationship between form and content in
an aesthetic object can be described. It is therefore concerned with what may
be the most frequently discussed question in aesthetics of the second half of the
century.21 Hardly any aesthetician can avoid taking a position on the relation-
ship between form and content in works of art. In this discussion, which even
today can be assessed only with difficulty, the various idealistic positions appear
far from unanimous, but they do coincide on one key point. For idealism, the
beauty of a form is based on the content expressed in that form, that is, on a
relationship that extends beyond the work, and not on a relation immanent to
the work. An idealistic understanding of beauty is bound up with the mean-
ing, the content of the work. This view runs like a red thread through the most
diverse variants of idealistic aesthetics, and can be documented in innumerable
places. Hegel’s statement in his posthumously published Aesthetics of 1835 is as
exemplary as it is explicit, ‘We called the beautiful the Idea of the beautiful. [. . .]
Therefore the beautiful is characterized as the pure appearance of the Idea to
sense’ (pp. 106 and 111). Even Schopenhauer, whose idealistic philosophy dif-
fers sharply from that of Hegel in other respects, leaves this basic idea untouched
in The World as Will and Idea of 1819: the principle ‘which makes it possible to
express the beautiful, concerns not the form but the content of phenomena, not
the how but the what of the phenomenon’ (§45, p. 287).
Aesthetic formalism advances exactly the opposite view. For Herbartianism,
the beautiful is an attribute of the form itself, of the ‘how’. The perceptible imma-
nent relations on the surface of the object alone are responsible for the quality
and beauty of an aesthetic object. Beauty depends on how the inner relation-
ships of the parts are arranged with respect to one another, how the object is
composed and structured. So for Herbartianism, beauty is a feature of the inte-
rior structure; today we would speak of a syntactic understanding of beauty.
But we must take care because although the formalist side of this argument
accused the idealist side of considering the form of the object to be unimportant,
this is not the case. Such a radical orientation to content cannot be attributed
to any historically significant idealist aesthetic. An aesthetic of pure content or
subject matter is problematic in any case because the perceptible appearance of
contents always depends on some formal configuration that makes the content
visible. This has by no means escaped idealist aestheticians’ notice. If, in ideal-
ist aesthetics, beauty is seen in the meaning of a work, it is still about a visible
appearance of this meaning –whether it is the idea of the beautiful in Hegel or

the of the will in Schopenhauer, both must become form in order to be beauti-
ful. The relationship of form and content is therefore grasped as a dialectical
relationship in idealistic aesthetics. In order to be content, however, the content
depends on its opposite; there is no pictorial appearance of contents without
pictorial form. Form and content are the two inseparable sides of a coin. This
is important in distinguishing between formalist and idealistic positions in the
question of form.
According to the formalist view, the problem with the idealist view is not
at all that form gets insufficient attention. What troubles the formal point of
view about idealism concerns the insurmountable independence of form with
respect to objective content. The discussion of beauty merely serves as a means
of demonstrating this independence of form. For formalism, idealist aesthetics
fail to recognize and to appropriately acknowledge the autonomous aspects of
form, which are always there, despite its use for all kinds of purposes. Formalist
aestheticians did not deny the relationship between form and content, however
often one still hears it.22 The counterexamples are too obvious: if we want to
depict a chessboard, the square fields may not appear round. The way an image
of something appears depends on the thing that is depicted. Yet the content does
not determine the form of an aesthetic object completely, not in all its aspects,
which is just what it comes down to for formalism. This partial independence
can be recognized, as Zimmermann points out, by taking beauty into considera-
tion. For if a form were to be completely determined by content, then any image
of an object that had ever been depicted as beautiful would have to be beautiful.
This is not the case, however. The same object can be equally recognizable in an
image that is either beautiful or ugly.
What formalism opposes is that despite all the dialectical recognition of the
importance of form in idealist aesthetics, the visible exterior is clearly under-
valued, since this exterior supposedly depends entirely on the purposes being
served. It is just a function and has no independent existence. Especially in
Hegel, one can see that form, for him, is understood only as a non-autonomous
moment of the real, as that which permits the content to appear. It is the means
to an end, and so stands in a functional relationship, as Hegel goes on to say
explicitly: ‘by a definite content the form appropriate to it is also made definite’
(Aesthetics, p. 13). With this, the priorities are clearly set: formal qualities do
not proceed from making as such, but rather from the appropriateness of form
to the idea that is realized in the making. Form should not emphasize its inde-
pendence with respect to contents, but should be fully given over to the purpose
of depicting contents. From the idealistic point of view, the best form is based
entirely on the purpose. This is exactly what Zimmermann finds impossible.
No level of suitability can guarantee that a form is beautiful. Any deliberately
constructed form has unique qualities that are not determined by this purpose
or content, despite that form serving a purpose or specifying content. Beauty
is an example of such a quality for Zimmermann. In the background, he keeps
a simple idea that any purpose can be served by multiple forms, of which only
a few are beautiful, which is why it is beauty that demonstrates the multiplic-
ity of appropriate forms, beautiful and not. In this way, beauty serves to mark
out a freedom of form with respect to purpose. It shows that a form, despite its
functional engagement, also has an aspect that remains indeterminate. When
it comes to beauty, forms are independent of content. One might also say: the
problem of beauty enables Zimmermann to identify an autonomous aspect
of forms.
Formal aesthetics: The observation of the visible form

If, from a historical standpoint, Herbartianism’s concept of form sets up the
opposition to idealism, from the standpoint of systems it sets up an analogy
to the concept of form in formal logic. Formal logic is an independent disci-
pline because logical form is an autonomous phenomenon whose validity can
be described independently of content. In this respect, formal logic handles
forms in an exemplary way, which Zimmermann wants to establish in aesthet-
ics as well. Formal logic is exclusively concerned with structures that can be
declared logical independently of content. The validity of the syllogism ‘Socrates
is a human being, and every human being is mortal, therefore Socrates is mor-
tal’ is a formal truth on which the content of the sentences has no bearing. For
this reason, logical forms can be declared logically true or valid in logical cal-
culations without any content. The content has no power to alter these formal
insights or even to make them invalid. Even the syllogism ‘Socrates is a dog,
dogs have five legs, so Socrates has five legs’ is formally correct. Zimmermann
takes this treatment of forms in logic as a model, except that rather than the
logic, he wants to describe the aesthetic qualities of forms, which have principles
independent of content. His aesthetic rests on the view that forms in themselves
have logical and aesthetic qualities. As disciplines concerned with forms, logic,
like aesthetics, should therefore study forms as such, without taking functional
content into consideration. Zimmerman’s primary interest is in defending this
claim to analogy. He therefore does not tire of asserting, ‘We keep running up
against the parallel [. . .] between aesthetics as one science of form, and logic as
another science of form’ (Formwissenschaft, §975).
In looking at Zimmermann’s project from this purely systematic perspective,
it becomes clear that he is trying to grasp the aesthetic autonomy of form, as
distinct from everything extra-aesthetic, by transferring the concept of form
through which the autonomy of the logical is assured in formal logic. One might
also say that Zimmerman wants to carry over, into aesthetics, the positive char-
acter logic has in formalism. For this reason it seems useful as well as natural
to designate Zimmermann’s programme in analogy to formal logic as formal
aesthetics and not as formalism –which is what at first happened with Otto
Flügel in Über den formalen Charakter des Ästhetik [On the Formal Character
of Aesthetics] of 1864, as well as with Zimmermann himself in his essay ‘Über
Lotzes Kritik der formalistischen Ästhetik’ [On Lotze’s Critique of Formal
Aesthetics] of 1868.*
Zimmermann’s orientation to formal logic makes it clear that the antago-
nism between formal aesthetics and idealism goes back to each aesthetic hav-
ing discovered something essential in the other. For one, the essential thing is
the surface appearance itself; for the other it is what lies beneath the surface.
The inevitable result of this disparity in evaluation is that formal aesthetics and
idealism promote diametrically opposed aesthetic concepts. Idealism sets out
an aesthetic of transcendence, and formalism an aesthetic of immanence; here
an essentialist search for the ideal and essential in aesthetics, there a positivist
adherence to the structures of the surface; here the aesthetic form is bound to
the unity of a hidden idea, there the aesthetic form is opened up into a multi-
plicity of visible relationships. Idealism tries to think form in its dependence on
content; formalism, by contrast, understands by form exactly those aspects that
are not determined by content. Only through such contrasts in argumentative
strategy does it become possible to understand the essential intention of formal-
ism. Of course Zimmermann’s formal aesthetics was still inhibited by a sense of
* The concept ‘formal aesthetics’ actually has the advantage over ‘formalism’ first, in emphasizing the
analogy to formal logic, and second, in dispelling the negative aftertaste of the concept of formal-
ism. This is why, by 1868, it was already natural for Hermann Lotze, in Geschichte der Ästhetik in
Deutschland [The History of Aesthetics in Germany], to refer to Herbartianism as ‘formal aesthetics’
(p. 246). Heinrich Wölfflin used the term ‘formal aesthetics’ in his dissertation Prologemena zu einer
Psychologie der Architektur [Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture] of 1886 (p. 21). The term
is in use at present in P. Gold, Darstellung und Abstraktion. Aporien formaler Ästhetik [Depiction and
Abstraction. Aporias in Formal Aesthetics] of 1991, and B. Dörflinger in Die Realität des Schönen
in Kants Theorie rein ästhetischer Urteilskraft. Zur Gegenstandsbedeutung subjektiver und formaler
Ästhetik [The Reality of Beauty in Kant’s Theory of Purely Aesthetic Judgement. On the Objective
Meaning of Subjective and Formal Aesthetics] of 1988.
obligation to explain what beauty is. But stepping back from what came with the
territory, we can see that quite apart from the problem of beauty, this is about
a change in perspective in the observation of a work, taking a lesson from for-
mal logic: a voluntary focus on form means a liberation from speculative ballast
and superfluous hypotheses. Formal aesthetics grasps the aesthetic object purely
as a structural entity, introducing into aesthetics a phenomenological-positivist
view that rules out any other deep, ‘underlying’ dimension. Zimmermann’s for-
mal aesthetics establishes a philosophy of the aesthetic surface. Zimmermann
correctly anticipated the effect his aesthetic would have on the idealistic point
of view: ‘Anyone who takes form to be a lifeless earthen vessel, containing the
supernatural content that warms and illuminates it from within can, in fact must
recoil from the first effort to locate the beautiful in the form alone, to retain the
shell that seems to “drive out” the spirit’ (tr) (Formwissenschaft, p. VIf).
In this formulation, too, Zimmermann draws subtle parallels between logic
and aesthetics. Possible objections to his approach invoke traditional objections
to formal logic. By putting ‘drive out’ in quotation marks, Zimmermann makes
reference to Goethe’s idealistic critique of formal logic in the scene in the study
in Faust (1808). There, Mephistopheles accuses the formal logicians of ‘. . . driv-
ing the spirit out of the parts’ (p. 199). Zimmermann is not treating this critique
as any cogent argument against formal logic or formal aesthetics, but on the
contrary as an expression of false expectation. He parries anticipated objections
to his programme, having expected them because he knows them as the usual
objections to formal logic. The decisive thing is above all his argumentative
strategy: he does not refute the objection to looking at form, but rather turns
the objection into its opposite; he turns it into praise. Purely formal observa-
tion of images does not drive the spirit out, but rather discovers the spirit in
an aesthetic object, just not where it was expected, for we identify it with the
form. To put it in another way, because beauty is wholly grounded in form, no
spirit –whatever that may mean –will be driven out if the aesthetic analysis
concentrates on forms. In keeping with Goethe, Zimmermann’s thesis notes that
the spirit of beauty is form, an idea Goethe would actually have been able to
support, and in fact himself advances in Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years of
1829: ‘Do not look for anything behind the phenomena; they themselves are the
lesson’ (p. 308). This matches Zimmermann’s general concern exactly: the sur-
face should become the essential thing, and serve exactly the function tradition-
ally served by ideas, contents or substances. So it is once again clear that formal
aesthetics does not break with pattern itself of evaluating something as essential.
Only in an aesthetic object, it values as essential exactly that which previously
counted as the exact opposite of essential: the surface structure. Put another
way: the most superficial becomes, paradoxically, the very core.
This change in attitude gives formal aesthetics a strong position in the history
of ideas, for the consequences of revaluing the surface are clear: anyone who stays
at a surface understood in this way must not be superficial in his aesthetics of
surface. Such reversals are more familiar today than they were in Zimmermann’s
times: ‘nothing is concealed’, Wittgenstein writes in Philosophical Investigations
(1953), ‘nothing is hidden’ (p. 135).23 In fact one gets the impression from reading
Zimmermann’s Allgemeine Ästhetik als Formwissenschaft [General Aesthetics as a
Science of Form] that in his defence of so-called empty forms he anticipated an
anti-essentialist position that is as familiar from analytic philosophy24 as it is from
recent twentieth-century phenomenology:25 ‘If some want to claim that the objects
that are simply forms should be dismissed as empty, they would be unaware that
the concepts of such a science that apply to such objects cannot be taken as empty.
Despite the objects of the concepts being ‘empty’ forms, the discipline itself would
not be empty. It would be a science dealing with content-rich concepts’ (tr) (§11).
The relational concept of form in Herbartianism

‘Relation’, possibly the most important basic concept in Herbartianism, also
needs to be seen in the context of these changes in perspective from an analy-
sis of content to one of form. By construing empty forms as immanent rela-
tions, it systematically thought out the appreciation of the surface, a guiding idea
for formalism. We will not fully grasp the Herbartian formal perspective if we
restrict ourselves to showing that formalists took the aesthetic object to be a
formal structure. Formal observation is only the first step in an energetic effort
to resolve the aesthetic object into a structure of relationships; in Herbartianism,
form does not yet constitute the endpoint of the formal reduction. Herbart and
Zimmermann do not regard forms in a gestalt-psychological way, as com-
plete unities or as organically self-contained forms, but rather, in a second
step, as set of relations.26 With this we come to the idea fundamental to all of
Herbartianism: Relationships within forms are, from an aesthetic standpoint, the
critical ones for forms. This can already be found in Herbart himself: ‘Aesthetic
judgements may only be passed on relationships; and the test of their accuracy
must be that the value of the relationships disappears as soon as the parts are
separated; conversely, [they] are reinstated when the context is restored’ (tr).27
One can actually say: Herbartianism can be recognized by the way it treats ‘form
as made up of aesthetic relations’, (tr) as Zimmermann put it right away in the
introduction to Formwissenschaft (p. vii). Herbartians identify form with the

inner relations of form –and this is meant to apply to later proponents as well,
who developed Herbartianism further in fundamental ways.* For every form
makes differentiations and sets diverse elements into relationships with one
another. This is why forms can be understood as relationships. Once again, Otto
Flügel notes this central point of the Herbartian concept of aesthetics with all the
clarity one could hope for –formal aesthetics is based on ‘identifying relation-
ship with form’ (tr).28
In this way, the goals of the Herbartian approach become increasingly
clear: formal aesthetics concentrates solely on the immanent relationships that
the parts of an image have to one another on the surface; neither the composition
as a whole, the organizing principles or the arrangement of the parts on the sur-
face is of interest to the formal aesthetician; it is rather the relationships between
the composed parts on the pictorial surface. The concern of formal aesthetics
is just the perceptible relationships in the syntax of the work, the planimetric
infrastructure. Form is not a vessel offering depth, but a network, just ‘outline
and colour on a plane or in space’ (tr), as it was expressed by the second genera-
tion of Herbartians, the most important of whom was Zimmermann’s student,
Alois Riegl.29 He, too, would defend, as the ‘main theorem’ of the principle he
called his formal aesthetic, ‘first, that an aesthetic judgement can be made only
about relationships, never about anything that is presumed to be simple’ (tr).30
With this last step in the argument, the identification of form with immanent
relations, Zimmermann presents an alternative to idealistic analyses of works.
In positioning Herbart’s aesthetic historically, he emphasizes Herbart’s relational
way of looking as having introducing a pattern of thinking into aesthetics that
revolutionizes scientific theory at the same time. The reduction of the aesthetic
object to the structure of the surface corresponds to a development in the history
of ideas for which Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) coined the phrase ‘from the con-
cept of substance to the concept of function’. This is to say that research in the nat-
ural sciences in the nineteenth century stops trying to explain accidental changes
with reference to an underlying substance, and tries instead to get along with
structures, relationships and functions. This is actually reliable: in all its guises,
* J. W. Nahlowsky is fully justified in objecting, as early as 1863 in his ‘Ästhetisch-kritische Streifzüge’

[Aesthetic-Critical Wanderings], that the Herbartian concept of form does not coincide with the
usual use of language: ‘Every form contains within itself certain simple relationships between similar
parts; but these simple relationships do not constitute a form in the true sense, rather they are parts
of a form. The actual form first arises in the binding of the individual relationships into a complete
whole’ (tr) (p. 414). The language problem can be solved by using the term ‘gestalt’ to refer to what
Nahlowsky here calls a form. Because of their relational concept of form, formal aestheticians did not
in fact concern themselves with gestalts.
formal thinking always tries to recognize a principle in the accidental. The way
things relate to one another is not explained by way of a unifying entity. Rather
the independence of the relata loses importance in favour of the very ways and
means of being together. The constancy and invariability of laws with which rela-
tionships are grasped take over those functions once served by substance. ‘The
identity toward which thought progressively tends’, Cassirer writes in Substance
and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity of 1910, ‘is not the identity of final,
substantial things, but the identity of functional orders and correlations’ (p. 324).
With this Cassirer astutely notes a turning point in nineteenth-century intellec-
tual history that applies to Zimmermann’s aesthetic as well: it is the expression
of a liberation from substantialism in the field of the philosophical observation
of works. It sounds like Cassirer, but it is in fact Zimmermann who concluded,
as early as 1858, ‘It is the same basic idea that takes both our theoretical and our
aesthetic awareness back to simple unison, to objective forms, and leaves aside
the objective something that can be found in the palpable parts of the unison as
theoretically unrecognizable or aesthetically irrelevant. Herbartian aesthetics can
only be purely formal; the objects of judgements of taste can only be relation-
ships, forms’ (tr) (Geschichte der Ästhetik, [History of Aesthetics] p. 768).
1.3 Perspectives and problems in Herbartianism
Preliminary remarks
From a contemporary perspective, Robert Zimmermann’s aesthetics gives the
impression of Janus: one face looks into the twentieth century while the other
into the eighteenth. Zimmermann’s aesthetics is a transitional theory. It com-
bines ideas that point towards the future with inquiries and hopes long since
out of date. This ambivalence deserves to be regarded as a fair judgement of
the beginnings of formal aesthetics. The resolution of the aesthetic object into a
mere structure of relations should be regarded as the aspect that points towards
the future; the defence of an objective concept of beauty appears to regress back
to a state of knowledge prior to Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790).
Perspective: A non-idealistic concept of the work

Zimmermann’s proposal for a relational way of looking at aesthetic objects,
disregarding content, has systematic significance, not least because art grew
closer to his formalist theses in the twentieth century. Much of the abstract art
of classical modernism even appears to be an explicit artistic transposition of
Herbartianism. The theoretical writings of Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) docu-
ment this with particular clarity. They leave no doubt that rigorously formalist
views figure in the development of the abstract image and especially of abstract
collage at the beginning of the century. We can observe this in one incon-
spicuous concept: for Schwitters, the critical category in a theory of abstract
images is the concept of indifference.31 Indifference is used to describe the way
form is related to content and materials in a collage. ‘It is a matter of indif-
ference whether the form depicts something or not’ (tr).32 Like Herbart and
Zimmermann, he does not deny a relationship between form and content, but
rather declares it to be aesthetically insignificant. The same holds for the mate-
rial that is used to realize the gestalt: ‘The material is as insignificant as I am
myself ’ (tr).33 Very similar characterizations of the relationship of material and
content to form can in fact be found in Zimmermann’s Formwissenschaft – more
than fifty years earlier: ‘There can be no question whether they [the forms] suit
the material; because they are indifferent to the material, they suit anything. It
is superfluous to ask whether the form is capable of transfiguring even indiffer-
ence; since any material, whatever it may be, is aesthetically indifferent, form
has no choice but to lend its lustre to matters of indifference’ (tr) (§73). Such
statements of Zimmermann’s clarify the extent to which collage corresponded
to the Herbartian concept of a work; the idea could even be pushed to the point
of maintaining that in its choice of rubbish, collage almost literally ‘lend its
lustre to matters of indifference’. But such speculation aside, collage must be
interpreted as an aesthetic engagement with art in the medium of art, whose
visible result is backed up by Herbartian views –and it is not just Schwitters’s
writings that confirm it: ‘Forget things’, Georges Braque, too, proposes, ‘Look
only at the relationships’ (tr).34
But further work on the reciprocity between formal work interpretation in
Herbartianism one hand and formal work production in classical modernism on
the other would be purely illustrative if there were no systematic consequences
for one of the two sides. In this case the consequences bear on the construction
of theory.
The predominant insight in philosophical aesthetics after the Second World
War was that purely visible form had become independent of content and mate-
rial, making it impossible to continue to work with idealistic categories in the
philosophical analysis of works. An image that exists for its pure visibility can-
not be described using the categories of an idealistic aesthetic; think of the
independence of the surface visibility in abstract collage, or even more clearly,

in a video clip. Theodor W. Adorno, in his Philosophy of New Music of 1949, may
have been the first to identify this problem and to present it as a challenge to this
area of aesthetics in the future: ‘The liquidation of art –of the closed art work –
becomes an aesthetic problem, and the increasing neutralization of the mate-
rial brings with it the renunciation of identity of content and appearance which
brings these traditional ideas of art to an end’ (p. 97). Adorno’s ideas can be put
differently: a formal aesthetic can underpin the production of works as well. To
the extent that images approach formal aesthetics’ understanding of works, that
is, that they themselves reflect it, they distance themselves from an idealistic
understanding of works.
In idealist aesthetics, a work must be the apparent form of an invisible truth;
there must be an identity between the content and the appearance of a work.
For this reason, any idealistic aesthetic must have the traditional understanding
of the work at its centre as an essential category. For such an understanding of
the work, the unity of content and appearance recurs, for all parts serve a pur-
pose, the appearance of an idea. The form’s relationship to the content is like that
of accidents to substance, which is how there can be metaphorical talk of sub-
stantialism or essentialism in the idealistic understanding of works: the idealist
aesthetic binds form to a truth, to content. The work in this way becomes the
ontological carrier of the content, for the idea must be realized in forms having
an external existence. In an exemplary way, Heidegger brings this understanding
of the work to a definition of the idealistic conception of art as such: ‘Art is the
setting-itself-to-work of truth’ (p. 19).35
With abstract collage, a development of the image begins that casts doubt
on this idealist understanding of the work through the visible means of art. The
form becomes independent and autonomous with respect to contents and mate-
rials. The purpose of the work is not the depiction of content, but the production
of a planimetric infrastructure. A collage does not serve the making-visible of an
absent idea, but the pure visibility of the present form. As long as the form of a
work is taken to be the way an idea looks, it is impossible to do justice to a work
that is purely a structure of relationships, with no unifying idea. This is why
idealistic aesthetics increasingly seemed problematic in principle for theoretical
reflections on the new pictorial forms of the twentieth century. There seems to
be agreement, even among theoreticians otherwise at odds with one another,
that the consideration of abstract works ultimately leads Zur Kritik der idealis-
tischen Ästhetik [Towards a Critique of Idealistic Aesthetics] –the relevant title
of the book by Peter Bürger published in 1983.
Responses to the limits of idealistic aesthetics must vary; there are at least
two ways. There is, first, the possibility that was there from the beginning, of
completely abandoning the analysis of the work and researching either the aes-
thetic experience or the language instead. Or a non-idealist concept of the work
might be constructed –one that would be in a position to theoretically support
the development of new pictorial forms as well. This is the route Peter Bürger
proposed in claiming that ‘a non-idealistic concept of the work would be, among
other things, one capable of thinking of form and content separately without
making a negative aesthetic evaluation at the same time’ (tr).36 –such an attempt
corresponds to the goals of Robert Zimmermann’s aesthetic.
So the circle closes between recent discussions of the work and the pro-
gramme of formal aesthetics in the nineteenth century. The critique of idealistic
aesthetics raises challenges that enable us to read a largely overlooked trend
in nineteenth-century aesthetics as a timely contribution to the contemporary
discussion. The understanding of the work represented in Zimmermann’s aes-
thetics can serve as a model for the attempt to turn the split between form and
content into something positive –a split that was always valued positively in
logic. From this standpoint, Zimmermann’s aesthetics, often dismissed as anti-
quated, appear in a progressive light. Formal aesthetics does arise within a para-
digm that takes the concern of philosophical aesthetics to be the presentation
of a persuasive theory of beauty; but it did not actually achieve a persuasive
theory of beauty. The noteworthy aspect of Zimmermann’s aesthetic is the idea
of reinforcing a subtle passageway through the question of the work: between
the idealist view of an aesthetic object as a manifestation of truth and its aes-
thetic absorption as just the occasion for a subjective encounter, there is a pos-
sibility of understanding the aesthetic object as a relational structure. The work
is not grasped as the apparent form of an absent object, nor is there any denial
or levelling of the difference between an aesthetic and non-aesthetic object.
Zimmermann proposes that an aesthetic work is a structure defined by its
immanent relations, and formal aesthetics is a structural theory of these surface
relations.
In anticipation of the structural approach, formal aesthetics turns imma-
nent relations into the essential feature of a work. A double opposition shapes
formal aesthetics: it rejects the Kantian conclusion, which also informs ana-
lytic aesthetics, that any attraction at all can function as an aesthetic object,
but simultaneously rejects idealism’s demand that an aesthetic object make
content visible. Kant’s analyses of aesthetic judgement do in fact get along
without substantial and normative statements about the object of judgement,
but here the aesthetic of the object changes to the subjectivity of the recipi-
ent –thereby undergoing exactly the same change that Herbart wants to
reverse. And yet it is exactly because it demands so much that Zimmermann’s
programme goes wrong nevertheless. With his understanding of a work,
Zimmermann in fact sets out a programme worth considering, but is himself
unable to resolve it into a persuasive form; it is not rare for a plan and its ful-
filment to part company, not rare for an idea to come to fruition first among
students. But before going into that, it is appropriate for historical reasons to
consider the second face of the Janus, the one that looks back to eighteenth-
century ‘Herbartianism’.
The problem of beginnings: The objectivity of beauty

The early formal aesthetics of Herbart and Zimmermann suffer from the same
problem in that they try to answer a question that cannot be answered by means
of logic. The relational observation of aesthetic objects is developed so as ‘to
determine, in an exact way, what is beauty is’ (tr).37 Its aesthetic is normative,
and it turns to the work because ‘what is beautiful should be objective or matter-
of-fact’ (tr).38 The traditions of eighteenth-century empirical aesthetics make
themselves clearly felt. Here Herbart and Zimmermann share the basic assump-
tion that beauty is an ontological quality.39 One could even say that Herbart and
Zimmermann bring this tradition to a definitive conclusion, for they declare the
pleasure-experiencing subject to be unimportant for the evaluation of beauty.
Rather they contend that ‘aesthetic judgement, being objective, has a theoreti-
cally recognizable object’ (tr).40 As a result, for Herbart and Zimmermann, the
beauty of something can be judged even if it has not been perceived. They do
not shy away from any of the consequences they face as a result of this assump-
tion. Beauty is supposed to be a quality that is present if one knows that the
object meets certain criteria. These criteria for beauty ‘are universal, and are the
same for the disembodied intellect as they are for us sensible human beings’
(tr).41 –‘and this, in fact, as in any time, so too under any accompanying cir-
cumstances and in all connections and integrations’ (tr).42 In short, Herbart and
Zimmermann refine their understanding of beauty in keeping with the thesis
‘no real beauty is actually sensual’ (tr).43
The analysis of immanent work relations needs to be seen against this
background. According to Zimmermann, it is to be the means with which it
becomes possible to discover ‘aesthetic ur-relationships’, (tr)44 which are nec-
essarily beautiful. Herbart as well as Zimmermann believes that these are the
smallest components of the beautiful, ‘in which absolute satisfaction lies’(tr)

(Formwissenschaft, p. iv). If one knows these proportions, one knows which
object is beautiful without looking, for it is only as a result of these proportions
being present that ‘any material, if it is even capable of taking form at all, that is,
if it is homogeneous, either pleases or displeases’ (tr) (ibid., §76).
Although the very idea that beauty is an objective quality is more than doubt-
ful, and so the search for objective characteristics of beauty rests on uncertain
ground from the start, we should note that the real problem with Zimmermann
is an overestimation of logic. If Zimmermann had proposed to research beauty
using, say, the methods of perception psychology, we could readily have attested
to a practical meaning in the project. His study of form would then be a kind of
guide to good proportions –but certainly no philosophical theory of beautiful
form. But that is exactly what Zimmermann aspires to, which is his problem.
Zimmermann is not interested in showing, empirically, that the golden mean,
for example, is a balanced relationship, but rather believes he can recognize
forms that are necessarily beautiful just by thinking, by pure logic: ‘in whatever
forms a thing pleases or displeases, whatever that thing may be, it is neither the
eye nor the ear nor even experience that is capable of deciding, but thinking
alone’ (tr) (ibid., §75). One can see from the quotation: Zimmermann’s goal is
a logical calculus of beauty. He wants to turn beauty into a calculable topic in
a kind of mathematics or logic. At the end of his aesthetic there is to be a lim-
ited number of forms, the content of which is open to any interpretation at all.
Complex aesthetic phenomena can be made from, or alternatively, referred back
to these forms.
The danger of logicism

If we join Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) in using ‘logicism’ to designate an effort
to use logical methods to solve problems that fundamentally cannot be solved
by logical means, then Zimmermann’s aesthetics is an example of logicism.45
From a historical standpoint, it forms a counterpart to Fechner’s psychologism.
Zimmermann ignored the fact that knowledge of the beauty of something
requires concrete observation, and so is only attainable by empirical means.46
He further denied that the attitude of the person judging plays a crucial role in
the judgement of beauty. The question of beauty cannot be answered without
taking the subject into consideration. In this sense, his defence of an objec-
tive concept of beauty relapses to a point before the insights of the Critique
of the Power of Judgement. Finally, the whole argument rests on the tenacious
dispute of a basic fact, as Stephan Nachtsheim has already pointed out: ‘As true
as it is that certain structures can be transposed into qualitatively very differ-
ent elements (although different within limits), it is on the other hand not true
that the suitability of the elements for the form is indifferent, that the form is
only a structure of relations whose relata can be exchanged at will’ (tr).47 But
Zimmermann can make no concession here; he cannot admit even the small-
est influence of material on the beauty of the object, since a formal aesthetic
‘would be impossible if the material were not indifferent to the form’ (tr)
(Formwissenschaft, §74).
The reflections on Zimmermann show that for the formal approach,
logicism presents a problem in principle. In Darstellung und Abstraktion
[Depiction and Abstraction] (1991), Peter Gold was able to deduce that any
formal aesthetic lands in an aporia if logic ‘is made to serve as a decisive
principle of beauty’ (tr) (p. 47). In fact we must confirm that formal aes-
thetics is not suited to answering the question of beauty, for among its basic
assumptions is one that ‘any appeal to sensuality is discarded as inadequate
to beauty’ (ibid.). The visible form, which any formal aesthetic has to take as
an anti-idealistically promising starting point, finally returns to irrelevance
at Zimmermann’s hand, against his own intention. Since it is possible to
read Zimmermann’s title Allgemeine Ästhetik als Formwissenschaft [General
Aesthetics as a Science of Form] as ‘aesthetics as logic’, it can also be read as
the interesting paradox ‘aesthetics without aesthesis’. The basic aesthetic forms
are not associated with perception, either for Herbart or for Zimmermann.
They are defined in such a way that they can satisfy or dissatisfy without
having to be observed. Visible forms mutate into invisible ideas. This also
explains how the first part of Friedrich Conrad Griepenkerl’s Lehrbuch der
Ästhetik [Textbook of Aesthetics] of 1826 could be called ‘The Theory of
Ideas’, remarkable for formal aesthetics. But the basic aesthetic forms corre-
spond to an ‘idea of beauty’. This turns formalism into its opposite. When the
sensually beautiful turns out to be beautiful only on the grounds of relation-
ships that are not sensual, Zimmermann turns the beautiful into an imitative
appearance of intellectual ideas, and the artist into a Platonic seeker after
ideas: ‘Even for the artist, the beautiful is something given, not something
made by him’ (tr) (Geschichte der Ästhetik, p. 785). One could even claim that
for Zimmermann, beauty is grasped as the depiction of an idea of form: ‘What
presents itself to aesthetic judgement as pleasing or displeasing can do so only
because its forms are reproductions of the aesthetic’ (tr) (Formwissenschaft,

§77). At the end of Zimmermann’s line of argument are idealistic conceptions
that are just the opposite of those at the point of departure.48 And that raises
the question of how Herbartianism, as it develops after Zimmermann, frees
itself from objections that were initially justified, so as to unfold its own idea
of a theory of the visible work.
2
Formal Aesthetics and Relational Logic:

Alois Riegl (1858–1905)
2.1 Transitions on the pictorial surface
Preliminary remarks
In light of the aporias that entangle formal aesthetics as a logical theory of the
objectively beautiful, it is not surprising that formal aestheticians steer clear of
the question of beauty as they continue to pursue their goals. The strengths of
formal aesthetics do in fact lie at another level: relational observation’s potential
is to be sought not in the normative, but in the descriptive. Yet in illustrating
this, we get no proper support from Robert Zimmermann. It is rather his stu-
dent Alois Riegl, the Viennese art historian (1858–1905), to whom one can turn
to discover what is to be achieved through relational observation of the work.*
Riegl transforms the formal aesthetics of early Herbartianism into a philosophy
of style, and so becomes a co-founder of the Vienna School, which ‘remained the
last bastion of Herbartianism into the last third of the past century’.1 For system-
atic as well as historic reasons, it seems advisable to follow further developments
in formal aesthetics through Riegl.
* References for understanding the development from Zimmermann to Riegl can be found in
L. Venturi, History of Art Criticism, pp. 271–288. To date, matters relating to this relationship have
otherwise been confined to short footnotes. Part of the responsibility for this must surely belong
to Max Dvorák’s appraisal of the student-teacher relationship: ‘How could Zimmermann’s unpro-
ductive variations on an already antiquated Herbartian philosophy [. . .] have satisfied a progressive
intellect? If any trace of this teaching can be noted in Riegl’s writing, it is as a direct negation of its
theories and methods’ (tr) (‘Alois Riegl’, p. 280). Lorenz Dittmann, who has further provided good
critical insight into the discussion of stylistic and structural categories within formal aesthetics, once
rightly commented on this assessment: ‘Dvořák was wrong there’ (tr) (Stil, Symbol, Struktur [Style,
Symbol, Structure], p. 39).
‘Style’ instead of ‘beauty’

Riegl’s call to be one of the founders of the discipline of art history came in
no small part through his largely unprecedented way of holding the viewing of
art separate from questions of value or beauty.2 In the second half of the nine-
teenth century, the majority of aestheticians no longer considered beauty to be
an essential feature of art; this was particularly the case for Riegl. One could even
say that he tended towards an ‘elimination of the concept of beauty’.3 For Riegl,
aestheticians who try to explain what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is high
and what is low art, are pursuing idle questions. He was bored with the endless
debates about the rationalization of beauty in which his teacher had participated
so energetically, and advanced the almost defiant antithesis: ‘Everything that
exists is beautiful’ (tr) –although the exhortation might be completed in keep-
ing with his thinking as, not everything that exists has style.4
The substitution of questions of style for questions of beauty, which Riegl had
already advocated in his 1893 book, marks the first critical phase in the con-
tinuing development of formal aesthetics after Zimmermann; it marks a new
topic. For Riegl, the immanent relations of an aesthetic object do not determine
whether the object is beautiful or ugly, but rather what its style is. From this
point on, then, this is what is to be analysed by means of Herbartian observation
techniques. Riegl retains Herbartianism’s basic insight, that what is aesthetically
critical in a form is its immanent relations.5 But Riegl also recognizes that this
understanding of form only becomes meaningful if another problem is pre-
sented. He specified this problem: it is the transition of forms, between parts of
the surface. Riegl brings formal aesthetics in exclusively to investigate the ‘con-
nection among all objects represented in a picture’ –as he writes in Spätrömische
Kunstindustrie [Late Roman Art Industry] of 1901 (p. 12). The whole gestalt of
forms, the composition of forms, is to be bracketed out. The style of something
can only be described, for Riegl, through the ‘relations of the parts between one
another and between the whole’ (ibid., p. 58). The meaning of this idea becomes
especially apparent in its application to images.*
* Riegl himself drew his formal insights not so much from images as from utilitarian objects and orna-
ments, specifically from the ‘late Roman art industry’, which, in the conventional art historical view
of the time, had no artistic value at all. From later essays (to be examined later), it becomes clear
that Riegl’s considerations are most definitely intended for images. The choice of a comic image to
illustrate the difference in the aesthetic quality of immanent relations in what follows here may well
be appropriate to Riegl, for whom the formal modes of observation and with it the history of art was
not a theory of high art. The question of whether something is a work of art seemed secondary to
theoreticians of formal aesthetics. For this reason, this book presents a history of formal aesthetics
with the intention of representing a theory of the image in all its material forms of appearance. So
Formal Aesthetics and Relational Logic 41
Although external factors largely determine an image, it retains possibilities

for variation in the transitions in the process of becoming visible. Even if two
images consist of the same material and depict the same object from the same
perspective, they are visually distinguishable in their immanent relations. The
syntactic structure of the surface is not fully established in the semantic relation-
ship of one part of the image to a depicted object or part of an object that lies
outside the image, for it is unthinkable that an image would just depict an object.
The objects depicted and the perspective chosen do in fact determine the forms
on the pictorial surface. In moving around an object with a film camera, steadily
changing the perspective on the object, the forms on the surface of the screen
change steadily. But this aspect of the form, which can be called the variation
of gestalt or of viewpoint, is not of interest to formal aestheticians. They direct
their attention to formal possibilities within a stable point of view. This relates to
transitions. The immanent relations in an image can be more similar in images
of different content than in images with the same content, which is particularly
clear when two images with the same content are held side by side: the identity
of the object helps to see the variation in its forms of appearance.
The pictorial examples reproduced as Figures 1 and 2, from the Belgian comic
draughtsman Hergé (1907–1983) and from the English painter William Turner
(1775–1851), respectively, show a comparable object from a nearly comparable
perspective: a profile view of a travelling ship. There are objective differences,
for example in the weather shown. But these differences can be set aside, for the
essential thing is the planimetric infrastructure of these images is completely
different. They construct the visibility of comparable views of a comparable
thing in different ways. From a formal point of view, the differences in composi-
tion, the size of the ship, the lighting and the viewing angle are not significant
to the aesthetic differences of these images. The constructed views are different
not primarily in their being different views, but in constructing the same view in
different ways.* The transitions in the images are different: in one case they are
painterly, in the other haptic.
it is worth keeping in mind that not every image is a work of art, nor is every work of art an image.
What is said about images need not hold for every work of art, and what is said about works of art
need not be valid for every image.
* In the twentieth century, Roman Ingarden (1893–1970) repositioned this idea at the centre of his
phenomenological aesthetic. He writes, in a very similar vein, ‘One and the same object, for exam-
ple, a material thing, such as a tree, a table or a chair –presented in the same visual properties with
respect to its form, color and lighting, and seen from the same side –can be brought to appearance
in aspects reconstructed in different ways. But it is not a matter of those differences between aspects
that result when we perceive one and the same thing from the same side, but from different distances
(thus with a different visual angle), with either the same or changed lighting. For then we experience
Painterly and haptic
The most important basic so-called art historical principles are painterly and
haptic. They refer to visible qualities of a transition of forms. The connection of
things in an image –for example, the relation between the ship and the back-
ground, or that between the sky and the water –is achieved haptically with
Hergé; it would be comparable to the way Dürer or Ingres would have painted
the picture. Turner, on the other hand –like Rembrandt, Renoir, and many
others –connects the object to his forms in a painterly way. That is to say, with
painterly transitional relations, the relata keep visibly flowing into one another.
The relationships therefore appear to be ephemeral, indistinct and analoguous.
A painterly form has only transitions that are ‘as much one thing as another’.
With painterly relational structures in images, visual inspection alone cannot
order each transitional area to one of the relata that are separated by these tran-
sitions. One cannot see the exact place where one part of a form ends and a
neighbouring one begins. The shapes and figures on the pictorial surface are
bound into a visual unity with their surroundings. For haptic structures, exactly
the reverse is the case. A relation is haptic when the relata are independent. The
forms on the surface are figures set apart from their environment, figures whose
beginning and end can be seen exactly. The relationship between the parts of
the form is discrete, isolating and digital. In this case, the relata are singular,
independent and sharply delineated with respect to one another; one could even
say that every point in a transition from one shape [gestalt] to the next belongs
to either one or the other. A contour line marks the ‘no-man’s-land’ between the
fronts with maximum precision.6
It may be clear that both concepts, painterly and haptic, are metaphors.
Painterly does not designate a quality of painting, nor does haptic designate one
of touch. Rather a relation is painterly exactly when the formal relationships
among the relata are as if they had been painted, even if they have been realized
in a completely different medium; obviously there are painterly photographs. The
same holds for the haptic. This metaphor proposes that a relation can, formally,
be such that it is as if it could be touched. The relations in the image are taken
to be plastically ‘graspable’; there is a definite, mathematically comprehensible
different aspects of the same thing. Rather, it is a matter of different ways of constructing one and
the same aspect; these different ways of construction thus bring to appearance the same objectual
properties, with the same Objective lighting conditions and subjective capabilities of perception, in
the same arrangement and in the same foreshortening. In spite of this “sameness”, the ways of the
aspect’s reconstruction in painting can distinguish themselves to a great extent from one another’
(Ontology, p. 61).
place where the object ends and the environment begins, as there would be for
an object in space.
The metaphor of the haptic is well chosen. The forms in haptic represen-
tations actually can be interpreted in such a way as to symbolize values and
knowledge that only a sense of touch can convey. It then follows that we should
speak of optical images in connection with painterly images; as for example
in Adolf Hildebrand’s (1847–1921) well-known text Das Problem der Form in
der bildenden Kunst of 1893.7 The basic conceptual opposition ‘optical-haptic’
or, as Riegl usually says, ‘optical-tactile’, makes terminological sense because
it employs a coherent metaphor for the senses. Talk about an optical repre-
sentation signals that the transitions from one part of an image to another is
conceived in such a way that the producer uses just the sense values and infor-
mation that an eye can perceive, that cannot be grasped: that is, light, colour
and shadow.* The orientation to light is prominent in painterly images, because
this kind of depiction sets out to bring the visible relata into unity; the image
refers to what all relata have in common, to light and colour. Limiting a repre-
sentation to the pure reproduction of the appearance of colour therefore nec-
essarily results in a painterly representation, in which the relata are visible in
more unified than divided ways.
The content in a haptic representation, correspondingly, presents itself in
just the opposite way. Its pictorial surface has only relata that are divided in
such a way as to make the beginning and the edge of something perceptible by
touch. The division can be indicated by means of a line, which is why Heinrich
Wölfflin (1864–1945), the author of Principles of Art History (1915), which fun-
damentally advanced formal aesthetics in Riegl’s sense, suggested the concept
of linearity for haptic depiction. This basic conceptualization has the advantage
of clarifying, in language, that only a contour line can show a sharp and precise
transition between forms (Wölfflin’s terminology as well as his thought corre-
sponds to Hergé’s reference to his style as ligne claire8). A haptic representation
must work with lines and is in this sense related to a drawing –although there
are also painterly drawings, one example that comes to mind is Rembrandt.
* Sculpture and architecture can certainly be painterly as well, namely when they engage shadows and
light in making transitions. In a sculpture, the pupil of a human eye can be drilled in: in this case the
eye is reproduced in a painterly way, for the representation is making something visible that cannot
be felt. If an artist represents the pupil with three drill holes –as one finds in the work of Bernini –he
heightens the painterly aspect of the sculpture further by showing that he is concerned only with the
production of a diffuse shadow in this position, and not with the depiction of the round form of
the pupil. Cf. Ph. Schweinfurth, Über den Begriff des Malerischen in der Plastik [On the Concept of
the Painterly in Sculpture].
But the reverse situation can be imagined only with difficulty. Mathematical
constructions cannot be painted, only drawn. A representation of reality that
can be construed as scientific, that is based on the measureable, ‘objective’
object, is possible only with linear images. Conversely, images that support
technical construction and exact calculation must be linear relational struc-
tures. For a technical drawing is about something, not about the way something
appears. The painterly representation, on the other hand, makes an impres-
sionistic representation of reality possible, one focussed on the subjective and
optical appearance of the object. So the formal differences between painterly
and linear correspond to different interests in the object, which for Wölfflin
are the essential critical criteria for representation forms: ‘We need to go back
to the basic difference between linear and painterly depiction, that which was
already recognized in antiquity: the former presents things as they are, the lat-
ter as they appear to be. This definition sounds somewhat coarse and will be
almost unbearable to philosophical ears. Is not everything appearance? And
what sense is there in wanting to speak of a depiction of things “as they are”?
These concepts nevertheless have their perpetual right when it comes to art.
There is one style that, being objectively inclined, grasps things according to
their solid, palpable condition and wants to assert them as such, and in contrast
there is another style that, being more subjectively inclined, bases its represen-
tation on that image in which visibility really appears to the eye and that often
bears so little resemblance to how we imagine the actual shape of things to be’
(Principles, p. 102).9
In fact there is less difference between the painterly and linear if it is inter-
preted ‘sensually’ as optical or haptic, and not only in that transitions are con-
tinuous in one and discrete in the other. If we take painterly representation to be
optical, and a linear one to be haptic, this leads to a restriction in the processes
of depicting various kinds of information. Certain visible phenomena cannot
be depicted at all in a strictly haptic image –if the metaphor can be taken lit-
erally. In this context, Hergé’s representation is almost a prime example of an
image that consists entirely of tactile values: shadows and clouds do not occur,
and although the trawler is travelling at full speed, no exhaust fumes, no smoke
rises from the chimney. This is not an oversight, but the internal consistency of
an image showing only those indicators that can be grasped: shadows, vapour
and clouds then do not exist. Even the colours are then used as if the object is
not seen.
Hergé’s world is a world of the blind made visible. Nothing in his images
appears in the colourful way it appears in the world. Colour is used in a purely
conceptual way, as if a painter who could not see had asked someone who
could see what colour the object had, and had received only the answer: ‘sky
is blue’. As a result, the sky in the image is just a blue surface. This blind way
of using of colour becomes significant if the person being asked had answered
that the object is plaid. For then the squares cannot be painted as they would
be seen. Rather the figure, graspable and grasped within contour lines, is filled
in with the pattern, flat, with no indication of space. There are many examples
in Hergé’s work; the stylistically perfect representation of Captain Haddock’s
plaid sakkos in The Adventures of Tintin: The Seven Crystal Balls of 1943 comes
to mind.
Turner is no less consistent in this respect, and so his style sets a different limit
to what can be represented. With Turner, the smoke from the steamer is visible,
almost too clearly visible, but cannot be distinguished from the ship’s metal hull,
in its materiality and solidity; seen purely optically –seen, one should say more
exactly, from a distance, the soft smoke and the hard steel are, as Turner presents
them, indistinguishably black.
Limits to ways of representing

From what has just been said, it is clear that art historical principles do not des-
ignate any firm characteristics. Both optical and painterly are limit values that
are only ever approximately attainable in a concrete representation –but for log-
ical, as well as for practical reasons, as the art historian Edgar Wind emphasized
in his essay ‘Zur Systematik der künstlerischen Probleme’ [On the Classification
of Artistic Problems] of 1925: ‘The purely optical, that has nothing of the haptic,
that is, no formal boundaries, is as completely amorphous as light itself ’ (tr)
(p. 449). Turner’s image itself lets us anticipate this last step towards complete
dissolution of the image in coloured patches that flow into one another. It is an
extremely painterly representation, and a short step would be enough make it
completely abstract.10
It is not different with an extremely haptic representation. Both forms of
representation are, at their extremes, equally close to abstraction, if not in the
same way. Wind writes, aptly, ‘The purely haptic, the formal, that lacks any opti-
cal specificity is completely abstract, a geometric figure’ (tr) (ibid.). The haptic
image consists entirely of hard external boundaries of a form being made vis-
ible; the painterly representation, by contrast, consists entirely of internal struc-
tures. Yet the haptic image’s conception of the visibility of contours leads, in the
extreme case, to a result very similar to that of the painterly image: that is, the
dissolution of the image into meaningless patches of colour, in this case into
purely monochrome patches. The larger the unity that is represented by tactile
means, the larger the patches of uniform colour; the more comprehensive the
contour line is, the larger the shape [gestalt] it encloses. The haptic, too, presents
a limit value for imagery.
Hergé’s representation of the sky gives an indication of such an abstract limit
value; there, the sky is a purely monochrome surface and so only conditionally a
visual representation of the sky. In any case, if one were to cut this sky out of the
image, it would not be recognizable as a part of the image that represents the sky,
although this is entirely possible with images that are stylistically less extreme.
With Hergé we get only a flat blue clipping. Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985),
in her Philosophy in a New Key of 1942, pointed out earlier that this is the case
for any part of an image: ‘The areas of light and shade that constitute a portrait,
a photograph for instance, have no significance by themselves. In isolation we
would consider them simply blotches’ (p. 94). This is undoubtedly an accurate
conclusion. But we should add, for completeness, that there is a relational rule
governing the size of these areas: the more extreme a style is in its way of con-
structing painterly or linear transitions on the surface of an image, the larger the
areas will be that in isolation are no longer recognizable as part of the image.
This makes it clear that the painterly and the linear provide, in addition to a
means of describing empirical characteristics of a pictorial surface, logical limit
values that may be sought but that can never be finally attained if the image is to
still show anything at all.
Riegl’s theory of aesthetic transition clearly exceeds an interest in real
relations in real works and aims at an inquiry about principles. He pursues
the idea that visible possibilities for variations available to an image through
‘shape and color on the plane and in space’ (Late Roman Art Industry, p. 9) are
in fact infinite, but may be limited to a few logically specifiable extreme values.
In this way Riegl steers formal aesthetics away from the question of beauty
towards that of style, and understands this as the special task of describing and
delimiting the area of uncertainty that is available to processes of representa-
tion. For him, the theory of style is not a theory of art historical epochs but
a transcendental theory about the possibilities of making something visible.
From a philosophical standpoint, his aesthetic takes up the question: What are
the structural elements in a representation that are in fact in a representation,
but that do not themselves represent anything? It is worth describing this step
from the actual to the logical, from real surface relations to their thinkable
possibilities more closely.
2.2 Kunstwollen (the will to art): Making unlike

things the same
The double appearance of all things in nature

In order to understand the significance of a pair of basic art historical principles,
it is important to recognize that the distinction between haptic and painterly
transitions applies to no specific pictorial medium. The principles are concerned
with formal characteristics that can ultimately only be grasped paradoxically.
This is about differentiations that are, on the one hand, present only if a relation
is represented in such a way as to be visible in the first place, differentiations
that are, on the other hand, presumed to be independent of a particular medium
of representation. Riegl describes the possibilities of form medially, but with-
out thinking of a specific medium. This perspective makes his investigations of
works relate to the image at the level of principle. Riegl’s concerns have become
easier to understand today, for in the philosophy of the Frenchman Michel
Foucault (1926–1984), a comparable project has found great acclaim.
With his famous concept of discourse, Foucault opened up that aspect of the
process of stating something that art historical principles describe for the process
of making something visible. The parallel can be quickly formulated: discourse
makes speech possible for Foucault, as style makes becoming visible possible for
Riegl –both are transcendental categories. Discourse turns every statement into
more than a mere statement with a particular content. Foucault’s programmatic
challenge, in The Archaeology of Knowledge of 1969, to describe ‘The Formation
of Enunciative Modalities’ (p. 55) in fact corresponds to the formal aestheticians’
call to describe the stylistic formation of pictorial modalities. Foucault even con-
firms this in an analogous way: ‘Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but
what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this “more”
that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is this
“more” that we must reveal and describe’ (ibid., p. 54). The same holds for formal
aesthetics. It, too, sets out to describe this ‘more’ in images. It no longer seems
remarkable that Foucault and Riegl further agree that it is the immanent rela-
tions that determine the formation of a discourse: ‘But what properly belongs to
a discursive formation . . . is the way in which these different elements are related
to one another . . . It is this group of relations that constitutes a system of con-
ceptual formation’ (ibid., p. 66). These thoughts can be applied to images. This
bundle of relationships constitutes a formation visible within a system; with this
we come to an understanding of the Herbartians’ concept of a work.
Both Riegl and Foucault are in fact trying to reach generally valid, logical
principles by way of relational description of a single, individual case –whether
of discourse or of the image –which can itself be grasped as discourse according
to Foucault. This fundamental claim within Riegl’s formal analysis of style nev-
ertheless needs firmer support. This can be found in his philosophically decisive
essay ‘Naturwerk und Kunstwerk’ [Work of Nature and the Work of Art] of 1901.
Here he develops the idea that in pictorial representation –in whatever medium
it may occur –it is inevitable for apriori reasons that the relations represented
take on visible qualities that they would not have had if the content of the rep-
resentation had been formulated conceptually. Riegl describes the production
of an image as a process that always presents the producer with problems that
he can resolve only through a deliberate determination. Without decision, no
image can be created. The production of a visible depiction of an absent object
is like a kind of inquisition. An answer must be found to the problem Riegl
calls the ‘double appearance of all things in nature’(tr) (p. 67): ‘Natural objects
reveal themselves to the human sensorium as isolated figures, but also as bound
[. . .] into an infinite whole with the universe. They have limiting edges, but flow
more or less smoothly into their environment’ (tr) (ibid., p. 60). There is an inex-
act condition, like a visual puzzle, ‘between individual self-containment on the
one hand, and dissolution into the environment on the other’ (tr) (ibid., p. 67).
Natural objects provide no information about how their transitions should or
must be seen, and for Riegl they are stylistically neutral: ‘Both tendencies have
been there from the beginning’ (tr) (ibid., p. 61).
One could say that for Riegl the exact form of nature is largely indistinct. He
discovers an idea that has been defended since, particularly by the phenom-
enologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his essay ‘Eye and Mind’ of 1961. Painters
have always known, as Merleau-Ponty argues, much as Riegl does, ‘that there
are no lines visible in themselves, that neither the contour of the apple nor the
border between field and meadow is in this place or that, that they are always
on the near or the far side of the point we look at. They are always between or
behind whatever we fix our eyes upon’ (‘Eye and Mind’, p. 183).11 In fact, Riegl
starts –as does Merleau-Ponty –from a polymorphous state of being, which
is the reason a realistic depiction of nature is internally contradictory. Nature
does not have one form that is to be captured. The real can be visible in mul-
tiple ways that are equally realistic. The polymorphous character of nature, its
indeterminacy, makes a multiplicity of realistic images possible –as Riegl sees
exactly: ‘each style of art strives for a true representation of nature and noth-
ing else and each has indeed its own perception of nature in that he views a
very particular phenomenon of it (tactile or optical, Nahsicht, Normalsicht, or

Fernsicht)’ (Art Industry, p. 226, n.117).
Yet here Riegl’s real interests make themselves felt: this polymorphism of
identical things is subject to firm, logically conceivable constraints. Extreme
forms in which the indeterminate condition of an object can be made visible
can be grasped with pure logic. Transitional forms can therefore be approached
using a different line of argument. ‘Two extremes are thinkable in this con-
text: on the one hand, the greatest isolation of individual natural objects with
respect to all others, and on the other hand the strongest connection among the
same things’ (tr) (‘Naturwerk’, p. 60). Riegl’s word ‘thinkable’ in the last quotation
is especially significant, for it defines his aesthetic understanding. ‘Thinkable’
confirms the aprioristic claim of formal aesthetics, a distinguishing feature of
this development since Zimmermann. Riegl, like his teacher Zimmermann,
insisted that for aesthetics ‘thinking alone has to decide’ (Formwissenschaft,
§75). It is this basic self-understanding that came from Zimmermann’s pro-
gramme and was sustained in Riegl’s art theory, although in his case with the
result that it is problematic to address Riegl as an art historian, at least if we
understand art history in the usual way, as an empirical discipline that is con-
cerned with specific works in time and space. For art history, the relevant ques-
tion is not what is ‘thinkable’, but what is historically real. Riegl’s theory aims at
a level different from that of the art historian. Empirical art history becomes, as
Zimmermann claims, a description of works as such, that is a general science
of art. That means, as Ernst Cassirer rightly saw, ‘The individual phenomena
are meant to be nothing more than the paradigmatic illustrations of this differ-
ence [between linear and painterly]; in no way do they aim to ground them as
such.’12 Conversely, the principles prescribe nothing about individual appear-
ances, either.
Riegl does not presume to anticipate the concrete way something has been
made through formal logic. In contrast to Zimmermann, Riegl’s aesthetics
are not normative. ‘The conceptual pair [. . .] (optical and haptic values) refers
to a region of the visible that we could call the level of elementary values: it
designates those values that must be brought into balance in order for a vis-
ibly formed unity (“figure”) to come into being at all’ (tr).13 This formulates the
intention underpinning Riegl’s theory of style: the search for an apriori theory
of how artificial visibility comes about. Formal aesthetics is concerned not with
empirical, but with logical possibilities that become available when a material
medium is selected for the generation of forms. Art historical principles do not
describe ‘the ways and means artistic problems are solved, but rather how they
are posed: rightly understood, they are anything but labels that can somehow be
attached to concrete objects. Rather their essential antithesis indicates not a dif-
ference in style appearing between two observable phenomena within the world
of appearances, but to a polarity outside the world of appearances between two
theoretically definable principles. [. . .] As surely as the art historical principles
must appear only in the form of absolute antitheses, then, they are just as surely
unconcerned with “characterizing” works of art themselves –and as surely as the
art historical principles of characterization are exclusively directed toward art
works themselves, they just as surely do not appear in absolute oppositions, but
in a smooth gradation: the poles in the one case indicate a polarity established
beforehand that will not appear as such –in the other case there has been a com-
pensation between the poles, for which there are not two, but infinitely many
different possibilities’ (tr) (ibid., 53f.).
In light of this concern, we can understand the reasons Riegl’s reflections on
style are not bound up with a description of phenomena, such as those asso-
ciated with such concepts as ‘expressionism’, ‘Baroque’ or ‘Renaissance’. Riegl’s
aesthetics are not concerned with any given styles, but rather with their logi-
cal requirements, with the conditions of possibility of a style, one might say.
Riegl’s theory of art is ‘transcendental-art theoretical’ (tr) (ibid., p. 65), because
he understands aesthetics –as he learnt from his teacher –to be a ‘theoretical-
aprioristic discipline’ (tr).14 With Riegl, Herbartianism’s programme of turn-
ing aesthetics into an aprioristic science is achieved, although not in the form
Zimmermann had first thought.* In the development of formal aesthetics, the
turn away from beauty and towards style leads to the discovery that there can
be no artistic formulation without decisionism. Any form, by virtue of being a
visible form, presents a resolution to problems that can be logically specified, but
that cannot be logically resolved. Their resolution requires a determination. This
is the reason Riegl sees every form as the expression of a principle he designates
a ‘will to art’. The concept makes reference to one of the important philosophical
roots of his theory.
* This may also be the reason Zimmermann’s aesthetics has hardly any following today: more than a
few theories sustain interest because students have shown what can be made of them. Zimmermann
would surely be better known in philosophy, then, if his approach had been transformed into a
theory of visibility. But in a sense Riegl, with the programme of non-speculative aesthetics, really
did bracket aesthetics out of philosophy and present it as an independent science. Riegl transforms
Zimmermann’s formal aesthetics into a general science of art –with the result that it drops out of
philosophers’ field of vision and precipitates the widespread but false view that formal aesthetics
both flourished and ended with Zimmermann. It is not the case. Zimmermann’s thought is only the
beginning of the history of formal aesthetics.
Visibility and Kunstwollen (the will to art)

Riegl’s reflections, and with them the underlying thinking of formal aesthetics
as such, arise against the intellectual historical background of the philosophy
of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). One might even say that this was where
the development took place. Schopenhauer introduces the concept of visibil-
ity to philosophical and art theoretical discussion in the second book of The
World as Will and Idea of 1819. But his lasting, systematic achievement is not
only to have, with this concept, given philosophy a topic that is still current
today, but also in having recognized the connection between will and visibil-
ity. For Schopenhauer, ‘will’ by no means designates only the human capacity
and freedom to make decisions. For him, will, in addition to being a principle,
can be taken to underpin everything that exists, because no object ultimately
provides, of itself, a complete, rational justification for its existence. ‘This
that withholds itself from investigation’ (Will and Idea, §24, p. 157) is what
Schopenhauer designates as will: ‘For in everything in nature there is some-
thing of which no ground can ever be assigned, of which no explanation is
possible, and no ulterior cause is to be sought’ (ibid., p. 161). With this insight
into the fundamental indeterminacy of everything, it is only reasonable that
for Schopenhauer the process of visibility, too, should consist of essentially
two components: the first component can be explained according to the law of
causation, and the second, which is not determined by causes, can be under-
stood only as manifestations of a principle of the will. The first component
comprises factors such as the material and the content of an image, as well
as the specific purpose it is meant to serve. The second component includes
the form. This means no visible form is causally or functionally determined
to the extent that it could only look the way it looks. Schopenhauer positions
this formulation prominently: ‘Only the appearance, the becoming visible, in
this place, at this time, is brought about by the cause and is so far dependent
on it, but not the whole of the phenomenon nor its inner nature. This is the
will itself, to which the principle of sufficient reason has not application and
which is therefore groundless’ (ibid., p. 179). This idea persists in formal aes-
thetics as a basic idea that is formulated again and again in various ways. To
put it pointedly, it is as if Schopenhauer were speaking when Panofsky writes,
‘It is in the nature of an artwork to have the double quality of being on one
hand determined de facto through temporal and spatial conditions, and, on
the other hand, ideally, of constituting the timeless and complete solution of
problems set a priori’ (tr).15
Formal aesthetics got its resistance to any sort of causal explanation from
Schopenhauer. Formal aesthetics is also inherently anti-psychological as well
as anti-materialistic. With respect to Riegl, this becomes especially clear in his
explicit opposition to Gottfried Semper’s theory of style. His entire theory is based
on the view that a visible form cannot be fully explained and calculated either
through psychological reflections on the production process or through physi-
cal reflections on the medium. In depiction, something autonomous is always
left to specify, something he calls Kunstwollen in deference to Schopenhauer,
and whose manifestations he binds firmly to the aesthetic qualities of imma-
nent relations: ‘Human beings do not bring anything to the natural object that
is to be reproduced, but only emphasize the features that isolate or connect the
elements and at the same time suppress the others, depending on whether the
Kunstwollen is oriented toward the appearance of the isolated individual figure
or toward that of its connection to its surroundings’ (tr) (‘Naturwerk’, p. 61). In
contrast to idealism, the aesthetic object appears as a visible set of relationships
imbued with decisions, rather than as a manifestation of an intellectual ideal.
Artificial forms are therefore always the expression of an inexplicable will, an
idea that Schopenhauer, too, formulates: ‘If the whole world as idea is only the
visibility of the will, the work of art is to render this visibility more distinct’ (Will
and Idea, §52, p. 345). It might also be said that art shows what can be willed
when the visibility of things is at issue. In this way it becomes a visible expression
of a principle that cannot itself be specified: ‘There can be only a metaphysical
guess about how the aesthetic drive to see natural objects reproduced in works
of art as either emphasizing or suppressing either the isolating or connecting
features is determined, a guess that an art historian must resist as a matter of
principle’ (tr) (‘Naturwerk’, p. 63).16
To whatever extent the content of a depiction may determine its form, a pic-
ture of Peter must still make Peter recognizable in its forms. No content and
no medium can fully determine the process of making something visible. The
process of giving something a form is never free of will, randomness and con-
tingency.* Through wilful decisions, an unavoidable indeterminacy, that is, an
* Schopenhauer’s principle, that visibility has two bases of determination, recurs in the work
of Heinrich Wölfflin as well. He transforms this idea into his theory of the ‘double root of style’
(Principles, p. 83). The same considerations appear again here: forms are determined by causes that
can be scientifically examined, as well as by initial conditions that can be logically described. With
the help of psychology, it is possible to examine the artist’s state of mind that has produced this
specific expression; the material causes of its coming about can be followed empirically. However,
the conditions of possibility of expressing something in a form at all are logically constrained. As a
result, any representation in art not only depicts an object, but also always exemplifies the language
that has been chosen for the depiction. Wölfflin actually expands his thoughts about the principles
explanatory gap in coherent rationalization, is bridged, and in this way, inde-

terminacy is converted into definition, which is to say, form. Such decisions,
inscribed in the process of formulation, can also be seen as Erich Rothacker
(1888–1965) does, as the dogmatism immanent in all cultural phenomena; deci-
sionism is always a performance of dogmatism. Yet in the process of cultural
development –and images are part of this –dogmatism is not only a dubious,
irrational vernacular, but also a principle, anthropological and transcendental in
equal measure, that makes visual cultural phenomena possible: form can only
come about through dogmatic decision.
Rothacker did not neglect to emphasize that his concept of dogmatism
exactly fulfils the function Wölfflin –although he might also have designated
Riegl –ascribes to the concept of style. In this sense, the opposition of ‘lin-
ear’ and ‘painterly’ means, ‘There are just two possibilities. But in active life, a
painter, etc., must know what he concretely wants, and then he develops a style
that can only be explained dogmatically’ (tr).17 Rothacker calls it ‘painter, etc.’,
and it pinpoints the issue. Rothacker’s dogmatism and Schopenhauer’s will are
immanent not only in every image, but in every fabricated form that serves a
purpose: there are always multiple possibilities for the way the form of some-
thing that fulfils a purpose can look. Style, one might say by way of generalizing
the observations presented here, is life’s answer to the confrontation with una-
voidable indeterminacy.
In every artifact there is a will that is responsible for a part looking as it does.
‘Sensible’ reasons (price, purpose, machines, materials, etc.), for example, can
never completely account for the form of clothing –some decision is always
left over that turns any piece of clothing, by way of its form, into the visible
expression of a will to this form, to the expression of a language.* For if there is
no final justification for one of the possible ways of giving form, then one must
turn to style, which in turn is itself nothing other than a manifestation of will
and dogmatism. This idea runs like a red thread from Schopenhauer through
by identifying them as languages. The basic principles describe various languages for making some-
thing visible, which are the conditions under which something ‘can be said to be’ visible at all: ‘the
painterly and linear are like two different languages in which one can say virtually anything’ (ibid.,
p. 93).
* For Leibniz, this was actually the difference between artifacts and living things. For him, living
things are the only structures whose forms are entirely determined by purpose. In this context, by
1714 in his Monadology, Leibniz had already clearly described indeterminacy in the developments of
artificial forms. ‘Because a man-made machine isn’t a machine in every one of its parts. For example
a cog on a brass wheel has parts or fragments which to us are no longer anything artificial, and bear
no signs of their relation to the intended use of the wheel, signs that would mark them out as parts
of a machine. But Nature’s machines –living bodies, that is, are machines even in their smallest
parts, down to infinity. That is what makes the difference between nature and artifice, that is between
divine artifice and our artifice’ (§64).
Riegl and Wölfflin to Rothacker, through their transcendental observations of

the conditions of possibility for visibility as such. They come to agreement about
each artificial form being the expression of a non-rational principle, simply by
virtue of having become visible at all.18 There is no avoiding dogmatism in the
visible, unless one abandons the visible in favour of a conceptual medium. The
statement ‘a sailing ship on the open sea’ reproduces the objective content of the
images of Hergé and Turner without taking a position regarding the stylistic
qualities of the transitions between the ship and space.
Here we can see that concepts escape the stylistic demands of images.
Conversely, we see that images cannot depict an object without a style. Style is
not something added on, that could also be left out. There is no image with a
lot of style or none at all, because nothing can be made visible without the will.
Style is the principle that resolves the inevitable indeterminacies about mak-
ing something visible. The extraordinary thing about this principle is its own
visibility. The aesthetic quality of the relations on a pictorial surface is a visible
phenomenological characteristic. This becomes clear if we follow up on Ernst
Cassirer’s suggestion: ‘The result of our logical analysis of the concepts of style
assumes its full significance only when we compare it with the result of the phe-
nomenological analysis. What emerges is not only a parallelism but a genuine
reciprocal determination’ (p. 73).19
Phenomenology of relations
Kunstwollen, Riegl’s key idea, manifests itself, he writes, in the way ‘the plane
relations –perceivable in height and width’ are built up (Art Industry, p. 59).
Riegl takes the view that the Kunstwollen achieves visible expression in the style
of the work. With that he makes the assumption –which he himself considers to
be unproblematic –that the relations of a work are a perceptible phenomenon,
rather than the product of interpretation. Riegl is actually of the opinion that an
aesthetic object appears ‘directly to sense perception as a self-contained unity’
(tr) (‘Naturwerk’, p. 61), that is, that the relations between the forms can be seen
just as well as the figures and gestalten. Riegl’s reference to ‘perceivable plane
relations’ is not gratuitous. It is crucial, for it indicates that Riegl has a phenom-
enological understanding of relations. At least phenomenologists typically take
the direct visibility of relations as a starting point.
One finds the phenomenological understanding of relations set out with
exceptional clarity in the work of the Münster philosopher Alfred Brunswig
(1877–1927), a phenomenologist almost completely unknown today. In his book
Das Vergleichen und die Relationserkenntnis [Comparison and the Recognition

of Relationships], published in 1910, Brunswig gives a comprehensive phenom-
enological analysis of the ‘direct perception of relationships’ (tr) (p. 14), sum-
marizing the results as follows: ‘Impartial phenomenological analysis shows,
conversely, that forms are directly perceptible objective objects, and that grasp-
ing them is largely independent of grasping elements of the formed whole’ (tr)
(ibid., p. 177). Even diverse ways of making transitions on the pictorial surface
are a directly observable quality. Edmund Husserl (1850–1938) himself empha-
sized, in Erfahrung und Urteil [Experience and Judgment] of 1939: An ‘aware-
ness of transgression as something discreet must be sharply distinguished from
an awareness of continuous transgression’ (tr) (p. 179). Both forms of transition
‘are therefore different kinds of observable unity’ (tr) (p. 173). Whether a transi-
tion is painterly or linear can be seen, as can the condition of its being red or
blue. Both are equally original. This is why Husserl speaks of the ‘comprehension
of relationship and its basis in passivity’ (tr) (p. 171).20
As parallel as Riegl’s views are to phenomenology, it would be wrong to inter-
pret them as a firm anticipation. Rather formal aesthetics has recourse, as does
phenomenology itself, to a classical view of English empiricism that was being
rediscovered by philosophers in many places at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Kant’s thesis of consciousness of relations being based on an act of intellec-
tual synthesis having stood almost unchallenged among German speakers until
then.21 But formal aesthetics had a purpose in turning back. The idea of direct
perception of formal transitions really sets up just one more step in a systematic
argument, namely the idea of the visibility of a pre-conceptual rationality.
Visibility as pre-conceptual rationality

The significance of the thesis of direct visibility of relations to images becomes
clear when it is applied to images. There it means that the Kunstwollen’s decision
to bind things into a unity or differentiate them through transitions can be seen
by observing the image, with no further process of reflection. It can be seen in
the image whether a surface has a painterly internal structure or is internally
monochrome, without visible relations. This in turn means, however, that one
can speak of pre-conceptual acts being visible on the surface of an image. For
this argumentative step, the phenomenological thoughts of the direct perception
of relations must be linked to the classical definition of the concept Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844–1900) gives in his posthumously published work ‘On Truth and
Lying in a Non-Moral Sense’ of 1873. There he writes, ‘Every concept comes into
being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent. Just as it is certain

that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that
the concept ‘leaf ’ is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily’
(p. 145).
This in fact characterizes the essential thing about a conceptual achieve-
ment: concepts put objects together while ignoring their individual features.
Because different things are considered the same –and every object is different
from every other as a matter of principle –the possibility arises of introduc-
ing one common linguistic expression for these more or less forcibly equalized
things. This is the reason Nietzsche rightly noted that concepts are based on
an ‘equalization of unequal things’ –and not only concepts, but also forms on
pictorial surfaces. The intellectual action of making unlike things equal is inher-
ent in every pictorial representation of objects by means of visible forms. The
construction of concepts and the construction of forms are based, for Nietzsche,
on one and the same intellectual principle: ‘Like form, a concept is produced by
overlooking what is individual and real’ (ibid., p. 145).
On the surface of an image, a form either combines two things into one or
differentiates between two things; it makes something the same or sets it apart.
In short, to make something visible is inevitably to produce identities out of
similarities, and to create differences in between identities. This intellectual dif-
ference in the aesthetic process of making something visible is the basis for the
fundamental difference between painterly and linear forms. Painterly forms
bring unlike things together into one; Turner combines the smoke and the hull
of the ship into one visible unity. Linear forms, on the other hand, differentiate;
Hergé makes the ship and the background into two things that are visibly dis-
tinct. Yet the variations of light in the sky that Turner carefully distinguishes are
reduced to a single colour by Hergé.22 By means of varying styles of depiction,
different things are made visibly the same or visibly different. What this concept-
like capacity achieves is –based the phenomenological insight into the direct
visibility of relations –immediately visible in the image. Diverse styles therefore
turn out to be the products of diverse thinking. So one can say that images, in
their visible, immanent relations, ‘tend toward concepts’ (tr) as Gottfried Boehm
so aptly put it.23 Images initiate a conceptual equalization of unlike things by
making sameness visible in diversity, and conversely by making difference vis-
ible in sameness. They show what can be the same and what can be different, and
in doing so, make a pre-conceptual move visible. This is why Nietzsche saw no
opposition between logic and aesthetics; they are two interlocked phenomena.
For him, logic is as artistic as the artistic is logical.24
Variations in style specify variations in thinking, and in fact thinking that can
readily be compared to a corresponding conceptual rationality. A clear, linear
style of depiction is informed by a rational energy, of the same type as that which
produces scientific concepts. In an image of Dürer’s as in a mathematical proof,
unlike things are made the same in such a way that there is no room for play,
no moment of doubt, no blurriness. Only either-or differentiations are admis-
sible. In their rationality they are allied to style. The range of elements to which a
scientific concept refers has a linear boundary, while in other contexts concepts
defined in an open, ‘painterly’ way are appropriately and productively applied.
Here we see that Riegl’s typology of visible, immanent relations between parts of
an image can be carried over to the invisible relations between concepts, so as to
classify scientific thinking as haptic thinking.
Hermann Nohl (1879–1960) was the first to articulate this idea at the
beginning of this century. In his study Stil und Weltanschauung [Style and
Weltanschauung] of 1920, he describes ‘which typical designs of the visible
world may be distinguished and how they correspond to the typical philosophi-
cal understanding of reality’(tr) (p. 23).25 From this point of view we see even
more clearly that Riegl’s concerns go far beyond those of an art historian. The
basic principles he set forth applies not only to visible artefacts, but also to all
representations of relationships in and to the world.26 Painterly and linear are
different types of rationality immediately visible on a pictorial surface.
2.3 Intensional and extensional relational logic
Preliminary remarks
The assertion that art historical principles are logical categories is inexact inas-
much as the word ‘logical’ is ambiguous. By comparing formal aesthetics to rela-
tional logic, which also developed in the second half of the nineteenth century,
we can clarify the sense in which art historical principles can be called logical
categories with precision, and in which respect they differ from traditional logi-
cal categories.
Relational logic and its need for completion

Relational logic is a subdiscipline of formal logic, which arose as logic was devel-
oping an algebraic footing.27 In Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity of 1910, Ernst Cassirer shows how, as the natural sciences divested
themselves of concepts of substance, traditional Aristotelian logic became inad-
equate. Aristotelian logic is not in a position to describe immanent relations in
structural forms. When it comes to stating the logical characteristics of relations,
it fails, and ‘the Aristotelian logic, in its general principles, is a true expression
and mirror of the Aristotelian metaphysics’ (p. 4). That is to say, Aristotelian
logic treats relations as characteristics of a substance. Relations have a dis-
tinctly subordinate position to substance, not to mention that relations could
never become a category that would function as an alternative to the concept
of substance. Within the framework of Aristotle’s view of ontology, a logic that
could engage with the modern sciences would be out of the question. Hence
Cassirer’s view that ‘exact science had here reached questions for which there
existed no precise correlate in the traditional language of formal logic’ (ibid.,
preface, p. iii).28
Relational logic may be interpreted as a response to this situation. It develops
the missing logical instrumentation required to describe phenomena without
using the categories of substance and accident. For there to be a purely structural
description of formal structures –and relational logic is a form of structural-
ism29 –the logical characteristics of relationships had to be defined unambigu-
ously, a relational calculus worked out for describing structures within relational
complexes with mathematical precision. The task fell to relational logic.
This mathematical foundation for a structural mode of observation is sub-
stantially developed in the works of August De Morgan (1806–1871), Ernst
Schröder (1841–1902) and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914),30 who establish
the premises that have retained their validity. The key relational logical catego-
ries in this model are the concepts of ‘transitivity’, ‘symmetry’ and ‘reflexivity’.
They typify purely formal characteristics of relations. A relation is transitive if,
for a, b and c, it is given that when ‘aRb’ and bRc’, this also always also implies
‘aRc’ (‘aRb’ indicates that the relation R is given between a and b). An example of
transitivity is the relation of parallelism: if line a is parallel to line b, and line b is
parallel to line c, then line a is also parallel to line c. A relation is symmetrical if
the relata are interchangeable, if ‘aRb’ also makes ‘bRa’ possible: if, for example
a is as old as b, then b is also as old as a. A relation is reflexive if the relata could
be the same, if ‘aRa’ is a thinkable relationship: the relation between a murderer
and the victim is a good example of reflexivity, because a murder can also be a
suicide.31
Since relational logic provides the formal tools for the logical description of
complex relational structures, there is no immediate obstacle to using these tools
on aesthetic relational structures. Why should we not also ask about the rela-
tional logical qualities of the connections among things depicted in an image? It
may seem unusual to submit an aesthetic object to relational logical classifica-
tion. But it is a good way of showing how formal aesthetics is related to relational
logic. Think back on the examples given above, on the images by Hergé and
Turner. We can see that relational logical differentiation does apply to the aes-
thetic relations in both images –we also see, however, that they are insufficient
for aesthetic relations. The following reflections make this clearer:
If we apply the categories of relational logic to the figure-ground relation, it
will first be transformed into the conceptual form ‘aRb’. ‘aRb’ means: the ship
a is located in front of the background b. Then, using the insights from for-
mal aesthetics, we identify this relation R as ‘asymmetrical’, for the relation does
not permit the order of the relata to be changed; the statement ‘the ship is the
background of the sky’ is false. Another relational logical characteristic of this
relationship is its intransitivity. This is to say: if someone is depicted in front of
the hull of the ship, and this ship in turn is located in front of a background of
sky and water, then this background is not a background for the person, because
there no transition between person and sky. A figure-ground relationship is not
reflexive, either, because no figure can function as a background for itself. With
that, the most important formal characteristics of this relation are covered from
the standpoint of logic.
So a relational logical observation of two images that are identical in terms of
content and composition gives the following result: the structure of these depic-
tions is the same. Hence it becomes clear that the structures responsible for style
cannot be grasped by means of relational logic. The tools are too crude. Formal
differences determined by style simply do not register, they fall through the fil-
ter; for relational logic, the relation ‘aRb’ in the depiction by Turner is formally
identical to ‘aRb’ in the depiction by Hergé –as it would be identical to the rela-
tion in any representation at all. An aesthetician cannot accept this. Stylistically
different representations are always –as Wölfflin explicitly says –‘a completely
different structural system’ (Principles, p. 310). The aesthetics of art historical
principle can be read as a response to this situation. One who is not prepared to
interpret the two images under consideration here as structurally identical has
the task of improving relational logic. What is formally the same and formally
different depends on the differentiating tools that are available. Riegl there-
fore sharpens relational logic’s potential for differentiation to meet the specific
demands of pictorial representation. Relational logically identical relationships
can be differentiated more subtly with art historical principles. This is because
Riegl takes the style of a structural relationship to be an inescapable quality

of any relational structure. The relation ‘aRb(Turner)’ –the notation intended to
mean ‘with Turner’ –would be asymmetrical, intransitive, irreflexive, paint-
erly. Conversely, ‘aRb(Hergé)’ would have the logical characteristics: asymmetrical,
intransitive, irreflexive, linear.
Against the backdrop of a changed conception of logic in the second half
of the century, Riegl’s introduction of art historical principles was as obvious
a consequence as it was a necessary one. The need for completion is immedi-
ately noticeable, because the specific formal characteristics of an aesthetic object
cannot be grasped using relational logical categories; to speak in this way is to
completely miss what is specifically aesthetic. Then the question arises of how
this can be, and exactly what ‘specifically aesthetic’ is. For this cannot be over-
looked: for one thing, relational logic is not doing anything different from what
Riegl does with the art historical principles. In both theories, possible formal
characteristics of relations are specified. In both cases a set of tools are devel-
oped for describing relational structures. But why, finally, does relational logic
ignore or overlook stylistic differences in structure? The key question for the
relationship between formal aesthetics and relational logic goes: What is the dif-
ference between establishing that a relation is transitive, and establishing that it
is painterly?
Sense and reference in images

In order to recognize the difference between art historical and relational logical
principles, it is advisable to bring the fundamental difference between concepts and
images up to date. It can be done with reference to a fundamental distinction in
modern semiotics that Gottlob Frege (1848–1945) undertook to make in his essay
‘On Sense and Reference’ of 1892. For Frege, there are ‘three levels of difference’
in signs (p. 213). A sign can set itself apart from another sign in three ways: ‘The
difference may concern at most the conceptions, or the sense but not the referent,
or, finally, the referent as well. The difference lies either in the sense only, or in the
reference but not in the meaning, or finally in the meaning as well’ (ibid.).
The first possibility for differentiating between two signs consists of two signs
referring to two different objects. Then the meaning of this sign, in Frege’s sense,
is variable; for him, the meaning corresponds to the extension of the sign. But
two signs with an identical meaning can also differ from one another, in their
sense, in fact, by which Frege understands the –as it is often said today –inten-
sion of a sign; this is the second possibility of a difference between signs. Signs
may refer to the same object, but do it in different ways. Signs that present the
object differently distinguish themselves in sense by calling attention to differ-
ent characteristics of the object. The way of giving the same meaning is different
between ‘morning star’ and ‘evening star’ –to draw on a famous example of
Frege’s –although the meaning, which is to say the star that is meant, is identical.
For Frege there is a third possibility, that signs distinguish themselves through
the sort of notion their users have of them, although their sense and their ref-
erence are identical. Although signs may have identical sense and reference,
different people will nevertheless associate them with various notions. This is,
however, a purely subjective difference in signs and their effect, which cannot be
grasped conceptually.
With this outline in place, it is possible to regard stylistic difference as differ-
ences in the intension of the pictorial sign. For the concept of intension must –as
Gottfried Gabriel already confirmed –‘reach far enough to include all nuances
of content’ (tr).32 A depiction of the same object by Hergé and Turner has the
same extension, but depicts the object differently, so that the intension of these
pictorial signs is not identical. Frege’s scheme is applicable to all signs –not only
conceptual signs. The difference in sense with respect to two stylistically dif-
ferent images is a special kind of sense difference, however, that cannot have a
concept. It therefore is advisable, as Gottfried Boehm, too, suggested, to speak of
a specific ‘pictorial sense’ that he too associated with the quality of the immanent
relations: ‘Images always contain more potential for connecting their individual
elements than is required to read only their “content” ’ (tr).33
With that, a substantial difference between concept and images is exposed.
Images distinguish themselves from concepts in enabling a wider spectrum of
ways in which meaning may be given. We need to recognize that the spatial
perspective in which an object can be depicted admits infinitely many pictorial
descriptions of one and the same object, but that beyond this within it is possi-
ble to undertake another infinity of differentiations in the infrastructure within
each of these perspectives. This two-tiered structure of pictorial intension has
been described by Hans Jonas (1903–1993) in The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a
Philosophical Biology of 1961: ‘There are many, equally recognizable, visual shapes
to the same object, as a result of relative position and perspective: its “aspects”;
each of these enjoys an independence from the variation of size due to distance;
and independence from variations of color and brightness due to conditions of
light; an independence from the completeness of detail, which can merge and
disappear in the simultaneous wholeness of an object’s view. Through all these
variations of sense the form remains identifiable and continuously represents
the same thing’ (p. 162). This is the first step towards chancing the intension of a
pictorial sign. One shows the same object from different spatial positions. In this
way, the same object always takes a different gestalt in the image. But the decisive
thing is, as Jonas continues, that ‘through all these variations of sense the form
remains identifiable and continuously represents the same thing’ (ibid.)
This second form of the ‘sense variations’ is exactly what constitutes a specific
pictorial sense that is not given to the concept. Frege’s example should clarify
it: because the concept of ‘morning star’ as well as ‘evening star’ can refer to
Venus, the extension of this sign is identical, despite the difference in intension.
But at the moment aesthetic phenomena are taken into consideration, things
become more problematic. In a pictorial medium, it is possible, keeping to one
intension, to attempt to differentiate a kind of ‘second’ intension. This is the case
when various artists produce images of the evening star. It would even be the
case if the same star were merely photographed using different lenses. This is
exactly what Frege overlooks in an example he uses to explain sense and refer-
ence: ‘Somebody observes the moon through a telescope. I compare the moon
itself to the referent: it is the object of the observation, mediated by the real
image projected by the object glass in the interior of the telescope, and by the
retinal image of the observer. The former I compare to the sense, the latter to the
conception or experience. The image in the telescope is indeed one-sided and
dependent of the standpoint of observation; but it is still objective inasmuch as
it can be used by several observers’ (‘Sense and Reference’, p. 213).
According to this comparison, sense corresponds only to a perspective condi-
tioned by location. But this is insufficient. As Frege correctly sees, the ‘real image
projected by the object glass’ is always a projected image, which means, exactly
for this reason, it can be projected in any perspective in different ways, which
is to say it can appear in different perspectives in very different ways. There is
an indeterminacy in polymorphous nature that permits a multiplicity of images
without a change in viewpoint. It is worth remembering that even lenses have
specific depictive characteristics, which could no doubt be exchanged for others,
but never eliminated. Promotional brochures for lenses and telescopes normally
include an image showing how the optical system in question depicts an object
from a specific perspective, and this for good reason. We could say then that
these images show the manner in which an object is given with a lens. In short,
they show sense.
The possibilities for variation within a given perspective proliferate if the pro-
cess of depiction is subject to artistic considerations. Still, even here the main
idea remains in place: The style of an image can be recognized as a form of
intension all its own, one that permits differentiations in access to an object that
are not given for a concept if that concept is grasped as a mathematical function.
To realize comparable stylistic differentiation on a conceptual level, we must
switch to metaphorical or poetic language.
Frege was fully aware of the special form of stylistic sense in poetry, for he
writes: ‘To the possible differences here belong also the coloring and shading
which poetic eloquence seeks to give the sense’ (ibid., p. 213). But Frege takes
the view that these possibilities for differentiation in the way an object is artisti-
cally mediated are not objective, that is, not to be found in the sign. According
to Frege, there are no features of the work that account of the differences in
intension determined by style; for him, style is a subjective projection of the
receiver: ‘Such coloring and shading are not objective, and must be evoked by
each hearer or reader according to the hints of the poet or speaker’ (ibid.). Frege
speaks only metaphorically of ‘coloration’, but in doing so he aligns stylistic dif-
ferences with irrational and subjective variations in imagination.34 He appears
not to notice that by saying that these variations in imagination follow the ‘wave
of the poet’ he is contradicting himself: a poet –like a painter –can only wave by
means of his work, that is through objective nuances in the sign. Frege’s colora-
tion manifests itself in the image as visible style.
Types of relational logic
In clarifying the initial problem, namely the relationship of art historical prin-
ciples to relation logical classification of relationship, the semiotic distinction
between concept and image proves helpful. According to Riegl, stylistic differ-
ences appear as variations in the formal characteristics of relations; the observ-
able transitions vary. For Riegl, stylistic differences are definitely objective,
grounded in the relational differences in the work. These cannot be grasped
through relational logic, however, because it is oriented exclusively to a concep-
tual medium which is free of images’ stylistic constraints.
That which is a liberation for the one is a loss for the other. An aesthetician
simply passes over the structural differences in relations determined through
observation. Relational logic assumes that by formalizing a relation to the term
‘aRb’, no significant characteristic is lost. This is only the case as long as we remain
in the realm of conceptual languages and scientific contexts, however; these
are, as language analytic philosophy says, non-intensional contexts. An English
and a German statement can therefore be replaced and translated as ‘aRb’, but a
pictorial representation of this relationship cannot be –it lies in an intensional
context, which is to say that no extensional equivalent sign can substitute for
this representation. We can conclude from this that the formalizations that have
been so successful in logic offer no appropriate access to aesthetic phenomenon,
because formalization obliterates crucial aesthetic structural characteristics.
But Riegl –followed by Wölfflin –draws a different conclusion; for him
Zimmermann’s idea of positioning formal logic as a model is preserved. Riegl’s
distinctive achievement is not to turn against a formal logical mode of observa-
tion in aesthetics, but rather to grasp the problem as an occasion to improve the
formalism of logic in keeping with the special demands of aesthetics. To this end,
Riegl supplements relational logic by introducing an intensional typology: art his-
torical principles sort relations into types according to their various ways of being
aesthetically given. The principles establish types of structures that carry mean-
ing, but that have no objective meaning in themselves. Art historical principles
expose the very structural qualities that are destroyed by formal logic. Whatever
the object of an image, its reference, its meaning, its denotation, none of it matters
to typing according to art historical principles. This result initiates a clarification
of the relationship between relational logic and formal aesthetics: the mode of
intensional observation Riegl developed specifically for images overturned rela-
tional logic’s way of going about classification. Relational logic operates exten-
sionally, as its co-founder Charles Sanders Peirce made unmistakably clear.
Relational logical characteristics are specified when the relations are grasped as a
class of pairs, or when more than two objects are related to one another, as a class
of triplets, quadruplets, and so on. Stated as a generalization: extensionally, a rela-
tion is the class of ordered n-tuplets. There is no further consideration of way we
relate to these n-tuplets. The beginning of Peirce’s text ‘The Logic of Relatives’ of
1883 is typical for this extensional conception of relational logic: ‘A dual relative
term, such as ‘lover’, ‘benefactor’, ‘servant’, is a common name signifying a pair of
objects. Of the two members of the pair, a determinate one is generally the first,
and the other the second; so that if the order is reversed, the pair is not considered
as remaining the same. Let A, B, C, D., etc., be all the individual objects in the
universe; then all the individual pairs may be arrayed in a block, thus:
A:A A:B A:C A:D etc.

B:A B:B B:C B:D etc.
C:A C:B C:C C:D etc.
D:A D:B D:C D:D etc.
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
‘A general relative may be conceived as a logical aggregate of a number of
such individual relatives’ (p. 195).
With respect to this difference –relational logic undertakes an extensional clas-

sification and theories of art historical principle undertake an intensional clas-
sification of relations –the main idea of formal aesthetics may be formulated as
follows: Relations that are the same for a formal logician can vary for an aesthe-
tician, because unlike the logician, the aesthetician does not abstract from the
way something is visibly given. In extensional observations, it does not matter
whether one is concerned with an image or a concept, for what is at issue is not
the medium, but the reference. This is why categorizing an aesthetic object by
means of relational logic never seems to work, for what is specifically aesthetic
lies not in the reference, but in the concrete forms of an object, in its transitions,
in the ways and means its relations convey content.
With this we can answer the questions with which we began, about the sense
in which art historical principles can be considered as logical categories. With his
aesthetics, Riegl exposes the structures that formal logic stopped short of grasp-
ing, but for which the effort to make relation logical distinctions remains mean-
ingful. These formal differences are not relevant as long as logic is exclusively
oriented to conceptual language. There we do not encounter stylistic types of rela-
tions. But as soon as the observation comes to include the pictorial way in which
relations are given, a field of new logical differentiation opens. The theory of art
historical principles is an extension of relational logic into the realm of aesthetics.
The aesthetic grounding of relational logic

Art historical principles subvert the opposition between logic and aesthetics
by being equally concerned with aesthetic and logical differences. There are
grounds for both ways of reading. That there are aesthetic differences between
a painting by Hergé and one by Turner is supported by the idea that the infra-
structure in each case is perceptible; the images have different styles. That we are
concerned with a logical difference is supported by the idea that the main pos-
sibilities the artists had for depiction were grasped a priori; the images show dif-
ferent ways of thinking. It was, once again, Erwin Panofsky who recognized this
double, logical-aesthetic character of the art historical principles, maintaining
that they ‘first, possess apriori validity’ and ‘second, apply not to unobservable,
but to observable things’ (tr).35
And it was not only from the art theoretical side that this double charac-
ter was noticed. Charles Sanders Peirce, too, assumed the identity of logical-
aesthetic aspects in relation logical principles. For Peirce, relational logic is not
only one subfield among others within formal logic; relational logic had a special
position for him, which he described in ‘The Logic of Relatives’ of 1897: ‘Now in

studying the logic of relatives we must sedulously avoid the error of regarding it
as a highly specialized doctrine. It is, on the contrary, nothing but formal logic
generalized to the very tip-top’ (p. 299). This implies that for Peirce relational
logic is engaged with the formal principles of logical thinking as such. Any form
of rational and logical thought is built up from relationships. Relational logic is a
logic that works meta-logically, that is, with existing logical forms.
The relational logician Wilhelm Burkamp (1879–1939) of Rostock, now
unjustly fallen into obscurity, put this idea at the centre of his reflections: ‘We
can order relationships that are specifically logical among [. . .] kinds of rela-
tionships. The implication is a relation, which is as a rule an asymmetrical
relation, whose reflexivity is right for any relatum; the disjunction is an intran-
sitive, symmetrical relation, whose reflexivity is right only for a true relatum
etc. [. . .] So the whole of formal logic has a relation logical character, both in
its specifically logical concepts as well as in its specifically logical relationships’
(tr).36
Relational logic’s reason for taking a special position becomes clear in light
of the claim that it is meta-logical: it is a formal theory about the formal
conditions of possibility for logic. It sets out to describe, by logical means,
which formal structures comprise formal logic. Even De Morgan studied
the relations between subject and predicate in a syllogism, which lets us
see that from the start of the development of relational logic these currents,
like Herbartianism, rest on the idea: it is the relations in forms that matter –
whether they are logical or aesthetic.37 Yet for Peirce relational logic’s meta-
logical character is not the only reason for its special position. He himself
sees that the reduction of logical form to its immanent relations in logic puts
a phenomenon at issue that has an aesthetic, which is to say here a percep-
tible character. According to Peirce, an extremely generalized logic suggests
a bridge to the aesthetic, which he even cast as a relationship of depend-
ency: ‘logic needs the help of esthetics’38 By seeing variations of relational
logic in any form of logic, he sets up the idea with which he tries to give the
whole of logic a foundation in aesthetics. For Peirce, logic gets help from aes-
thetics, for relational logic deals with observable phenomena. It is especially
clear in the relation logical category of symmetry: it describes a phenomenon
that is as logical as it is aesthetic. This is, for Peirce, what accounts for rela-
tional logic’s special, double position: it takes on not only meta-logical but
also proto-logical functions. On the one hand, Peirce reduces complex forms
of logical thinking to –as Wilhelm Dilthey would express it –‘elementary
logical operators’ (tr).39 On the other hand, he tries to give the immediate,
intuitive visibility of logic an aesthetic foundation in observation. This is the
help that logic needs from aesthetics.40
With this, the relationship of relational logic to formal aesthetics crystallizes
further into a mutually supplementary relationship.41 In both disciplines it comes
to a subversion of the opposition between logic and aesthetics, and with it to a
convergence in many aspects. Relational aesthetics faces the challenge of basing
its categories entirely on logical differences, and relational logic considers its
categories to be based in observation. This does not mean that a fundamental
difference cannot retained in the complementary relationship. Yet the mutually
supplementary relationship lets formal aesthetics and relational logic appear as
two sides of a coin: in art –we can read Riegl in this way –there are logical dif-
ferences to be seen. In logic –we can read Peirce in this way –there are aesthetic
differences we can think.
3
The Logic of Ways of Seeing:

Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945)
3.1 The relational logic of an image
Preliminary remarks
Ascertaining the characteristics that are specific to relations, such as transitivity,
symmetry or reflexivity, is just the first part of what a modern relational logic
has to do. The logical characteristics of relations are ultimately meant for a more
far-reaching purpose, which Günther Patzig formulated as follows: ‘A relational
logic is responsible for determining which structures are capable of bringing
diverse forms of relations together, and for developing arguments that permit
us to draw other relations and characteristics of the relata from the specific rela-
tions that lie before us’ (tr).1 Relational logic first comes into its own when it is
describing the logical coherence among several relations. That is, the system of
categories of logical relational characteristics serves to ground a second step,
the development of theorems about relationships. ‘Theorems about relations’ is,
in any case, the way Rudolf Carnap, in his Einführung in die symbolische Logik
[Introduction to Symbolic Logic] of 1954, designated a possible way to draw, from
certain formal characteristics, a conclusion about a relation to other formal char-
acteristics. The following dependencies, for example, are valid between relations:
1. Transitive, symmetrical relationships are reflexive.
2. Asymmetrical relations are irreflexive.
3. Among transitive relations, the asymmetrical ones are irreflexive, and vice
versa.2
If the comparison between formal aesthetics and relational logic in the last chap-
ter concluded that both disciplines are concerned to the same extent, if not in the
same way, with the formal characteristics of relations, the question arises whether
the second aspect of relational logic might also have its counterpart in formal
aesthetics. Stated concretely, the question goes: Are there logical theorems about
the mutual dependencies of aesthetic relational characteristics in formal aesthet-
ics as well? Is it possible to logically deduce, from just the knowledge that the
quality of a transition in a representation’s immanent relation is linear or rather
painterly, other formal characteristics of the surface infrastructure? Heinrich
Wölfflin’s study Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style
in Early Modern Art of 1915 appears to answer just this question. Therefore we
can, with Wölfflin’s help, try to develop the parallels Riegl introduced between
formal aesthetics and relational logic. Perhaps more than any other aesthetician,
Wölfflin focussed on the question of the logical force of the painterly and on all
aspects of ‘pictorial form’.3 With this concept, Wölfflin turns to a problem known
also from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1921–1922).
Both start from a relational concept of the image: ‘What constitutes a picture is
that its elements are related to one another in a determinate way’ (p. 10). But for
Wittgenstein this does not imply a description of the empirical structures between
elements of an image in specific cases. For him, as for Wölfflin, the concern is
with logical possibilities, the possibilities in principle for relationships between
parts of an image –and it is exactly these possibilities that Wölfflin calls ‘pictorial
form’ and Wittgenstein calls ‘representational form’: ‘Let us call this connexion of
its elements the structure of the picture, and let us call the possibility of this struc-
ture the pictorial form of the picture’ (ibid.).4 In order to determine the pictorial
form or the representational form, Wölfflin expanded the system of art histori-
cal principles with four additional conceptual pairs. These are plane – recession,
closed –open form, multiplicity –unity, and clearness – unclearness. The following
content needs to be linked to these concepts.
Plane – recession
With the conceptual pair ‘plane –recession’ Wölfflin is once again concerned with
a relational characteristic of an image, specifically ‘which can be arranged next to
or behind one another’ (Principles, p. 169). There are two extremes in the way the
spatial relation between two objects can be reproduced in a pictorial represen-
tation: things can be positioned near one another on a plane or one behind the
other in space.5 Of course these extremes allow for countless transitional forms –
as do linear and painterly; any angle of oblique-diagonal ordering is thinkable. But
at ‘a point where the contents of the picture can no longer be grasped as planar
The Logic of Ways of Seeing 71
sections, [there] the nerve center has shifted to the relation between front and rear
parts’ (p. 157). This is the crucial point in Wölfflin’s argument: no pictorial depic-
tion of two things is thinkable unless the two things are related in some way within
the spectrum of spatial possibilities, between being next to one another (i.e. on a
plane) and one being behind the other (i.e. in recession). This is logically impos-
sible. It becomes clear, then, that we are dealing with a characteristic of pictorial
form that is recognizable a priori: space is a form of representation.*
The limits of pictorial abstraction

Wölfflin’s conceptual pair ‘plane –recession’ again emphasizes the basic terms of
art historical principles. The principles are not concepts for describing empirical
characteristics, supporting a stylistic account of specific historical works. What
is philosophically significant about them is that they expose the a priori formal
characteristics of a representation. We are dealing with constraints a depiction
must fulfil, for logical reasons, if it is to depict anything. This is the case for the
first conceptual pair, painterly and linear: a form can only be visible if the transi-
tions take on a value between the painterly and the linear. Any work of art is,
accordingly, a unique resolution between opposites that are recognizable a pri-
ori. A depiction can nevertheless make two things visible only if the things can
be ordered between ‘recession’ and ‘plane’. We can know this about any depiction
without having to see it. It is a purely formal-logical knowledge of the logic of
pictorial representation.
From these reflections, it becomes clear that the art historical principles
define those aspects of pictorial representation that pictorial representation can-
not disregard. Formal aesthetics rest on the belief that images can abstract many
things in representation –but not everything. What is logically unique about an
image is not so much its capacity to abstract in the process of representation, as
those characteristics from which it cannot abstract. It is possible to denote an
object in a pictorial representation without that pictorial description giving any
information about the size, colour or materiality of the depicted object. But in
an image, it is impossible to denote two objects in relation to one another at all
without making a specific spatial order visible. This is a basic difference between
images and conceptual language. Within a system of conceptual symbols, there
is no difficulty in remaining spatially neutral in relation to two objects: ‘Stan and
* At this point, a reader familiar with Kant’s philosophy may already have understood why it is neces-
sary, in what follows, to compare Wölfflin’s theory with Kant’s transcendental aesthetics as well.
Oli are over there!’ With an image, on the other hand, it is clear a priori that this
is impossible. Any image of Stan and Oli depicts a specific spatial relationship.
It follows from these reflections: images are fundamentally more restricted
than concepts in their capacity to abstract. There is nothing that cannot be
abstracted in conceptual language; this is why there are no principles of lan-
guage. In pictorial language, however, there are several things that cannot be
abstracted; this is why there are art historical principles whose completeness
cannot be confirmed. Wölfflin himself considers it entirely possible that his sys-
tem of art historical categories could be expanded. A conceptual pair of pictorial
categories is always indicated when it can be used to describe a kernel of pictorial
depiction that cannot be abstracted. The kernel is related to the intensionality of
the pictorial sign, that is, to the way the image arranges a reference to something.
The art historical principles set out the characteristics that we know, a priori,
will be present in any pictorial description. We could say that Wölfflin, with his
conceptual pair ‘plane’ and ‘recession’, specified a logical, intensional quality of a
pictorial reference: ‘then here, too, we shall obtain two representational types as
different from one another as the linear and painterly styles’ (p. 157).
Closed form –open form
The same holds true for the second conceptual pair that Wölfflin intro-
duced: closed form and open form.6 Wölfflin is dissatisfied with the terms, but
does not want to replace them with others, ‘because their generality describes the
phenomenon better than tectonic and atectonic and they are more accurate than
the roughly synonymous strict and free, regular and irregular, and so on’ (p. 204).
With this sentence, Wölfflin is implying that the forms of an image always stand
in some relation to the central axis of the depiction: that is, to the symmetry of the
image. For this conceptual pair too, then, an aesthetic object is described in terms
of a kind of relational grid. Open form is recognizable in that ‘pure symmetries
disappear’ (ibid., p. 205). As a result, the aesthetic object does not appear to have
been so rigorously thought through. On the contrary, the tectonic pictorial form
is based on a regular, symmetrical ordering of pictorial parts. ‘In mechanics this
contrast is referred to in terms of stable of labile equilibriums’ (p. 125).
In consideration of the symmetrical-asymmetrical, we are in fact concerned
with two relational logical possibilities for any form of image. The content of a rep-
resentation can be conveyed in such a way that the image either is or is not oriented
to a central axis –whether this be vertical or horizontal. It should be noted, in any
case, that there are always more asymmetrical than symmetrical possibilities for
putting the parts of an image in order. This is the reason Wölfflin points out that the
closed-symmetrical formulation creates the impression of having been deliberate.
One can only agree: according to the laws of probability, a symmetrical organiza-
tion of pictorial parts would occur far more frequently if the separate elements were
randomly distributed: ‘Ultimately it is not about the verticals and horizontals, the
frontal views and profiles, tectonics and atectonics, but rather whether the visibility
of the figure, of the whole image, seems intentional or not’ (p. 206).
With this Wölfflin arrives at the real meaning of ‘closed’ and ‘open’: There are
two forms of representation that differ from one another in that in the closed form,
the content is presented as if all relations of the parts to one another had been cal-
culated; in the open form, on the other hand, the content is depicted as if the order-
ing of the parts had been left to chance. The closed form is the one in which the
relations of the parts to one another can be reduced to a concept: with this pictorial
form, we can say that the parts are symmetrical to one another, the parts frame in
a triangle, the parts form a square, or similar things. Language can describe the
composition in terms of shape. With the open form, conversely, the forms of an
aesthetic object do not relate to one another in any conceptually graspable way; as
a result, the composition is less prominent, or at least not so rigorous. With this
situation in mind, Christiane Schmitz aptly finds that ‘in this apparently paradoxi-
cal reversal, a work would be “closed” just when its principles of construction are
openly available, and conversely “open” when the availability is closed: closed form
correlates with open formation, closed formation with open form’ (tr).7
Multiplicity – unity
The third pair of art historical concepts Wölfflin introduced is called multiplicity
and unity. Again it is about categories for describing the immanent relations in pic-
torial syntax. This time we are concerned, as Wölfflin already expressly says in ‘Das
Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst’ [The Problem of Style in Visual Art], a
talk given in 1911, with ‘the way in which the parts relate to the whole’ (tr) (p. 576).
Since Wölfflin is convinced that ‘two different forms of artistic unity’ (tr) are think-
able (p. 577), even the opposition between ‘multiplicity’ and ‘unity’ is actually inex-
act. ‘Multiplicity versus unity’ is a shortening of ‘Multiple Unity and Unified Unity’
(Principles, p. 234). A multiplicity of parts is given if each individual figure can be
isolated, if the forms that relate to one another are separate, self-contained shapes
and if they do not blend into an amorphous whole: ‘The whole comprises a system
of independent parts’ (p. 310). In a unified unity, conversely, the parts of the repre-
sentation may be ‘conceived only as a unity’ (tr) (‘Problem des Stils’, p. 577).
With this pair of concepts, Wölfflin is once again concerned with a phenom-
enological description of pictorial relations. With the categories ‘multiplicity –
unity’, he is making the same distinction Edmund Husserl takes up in the third
Logical Investigations of 1901 with the title ‘On the Theory of Wholes and Parts.’
There, Husserl divides the parts that make up a whole into dependent and inde-
pendent objects: ‘Contents of the former sort can only be conceived as parts of
more comprehensive wholes, whereas the latter appear possible, even if nothing
whatever exists beside them, nothing therefore bound up with them to form a
whole Contents of the first sort are thinkable only as parts of a comprehensive
whole’ (Vol. 2, p. 439). If the parts are dependent, the whole is unified, and if the
parts are independent, the whole is multiple.
The criterion Husserl uses to recognize dependent and independent image
forms as such is worth noting, and particularly applicable to images: It is the
‘inseparability of non-independent parts’ (ibid., p. 439). Conversely, an inde-
pendent part is identifiable, for Husserl, by being ‘separably presentable’ (ibid.,
p. 439, italics in original). In fact this phenomenological difference in style
is shown clearly in the pictorial examples introduced above, by Turner and
Hergé. With Hergé, the ship can be cut out of the picture without difficulty
and the part then recognized as a ship independently. The immanent relations
have the quality of ‘wholes which are broken up, or could be broken up, into
pieces –in their case talk of members or of articulated structure alone comes
natural. The parts are here not merely disjoined from each other, but relatively
independent, they have the character of mutually-put-together pieces’ (p. 437,
italics in original). With Turner, conversely, it would first be difficult to detach
parts –the exact beginning of an individual form cannot be found –and sec-
ond it would bring no recognizable result. A ship cut from Turner’s picture
would be just an unclear daub of colour. The conceptual pair ‘multiplicity and
unity’ is closely related to the last of Wölfflin’s conceptual pairs, ‘clearness and
unclearness’.8
Clearness – unclearness
Like all the pairs of principles, the pair ‘clearness and unclearness’ is not meant
to be evaluative, but purely descriptive. It describes the difference that relations
between two forms can make from an ‘acme of clarity’ to something that ‘retains
some indeterminateness’ (Principles, pp. 198–199). In a clear image, the parts
can be established as elements, which is impossible in an unclear image because
fluid transitions cause the formal elements to merge.
Relational logical rules for images

What is philosophically critical in Wölfflin’s five-paired system of art historical
principles is the coherence among them. This is already indicated in the last two
pairs of concepts. We see immediately that multiplicity in design will necessarily
go hand in hand with clarity in form. Nevertheless, Wölfflin himself was never
as clear with regard to the manner of the principles’ coherence as one might
have wished. The first explicit inquiry was undertaken in the context of research
on Wölfflin. In his research on ‘coherence with respect to Wölfflin’s reflections’,
Meinhold Lurz comes to the conclusion: ‘What mattered to Wölfflin was that if a
concept on one side of his conceptual pair applies to an art work, the same side
of all the others should apply to it as well. There should be no instance of a con-
cept’s opposite side suddenly intervening. If, for example, an image is painterly, it
cannot be clear, and if it has an open form it cannot give the effect of multiplicity’
(tr).9 This does actually match Wölfflin’s intention, as indicated in the follow-
ing: ‘The linear-plastic category is as closely associated with the compact strata
of space in the planar style as the tectonic-closed category is naturally related to
the independence of parts and consistent clarity. But imperfect clarity of form
and the effect of unity among depreciated individual parts will combine of their
own accord with the flowing, atectonic category, and are best accommodated in
the realm of impressionistic, painterly apprehension’ (p. 306).
With this conclusion we can confirm the structural affinity to theorems of
relational logic that we suspected at the beginning. With Wölfflin, the parallels
between formal aesthetics and relational logic are taken a step further. He wants
to find those ‘theorems about relations’ that would make it possible, on the basis
of the formal transitional quality of a relation being painterly or linear, to come
to a conclusion about the presence of other formal qualities of the infrastructure;
just as it is possible to conclude from the relation being asymmetric that it is also
irreflexive. The strength of Wölfflin’s understanding of his aesthetics as a kind of
formal logic becomes clear when the coherence of the principles are brought to
bear on two formulae of relational logic:
1. Any representation with linear transition is, in its syntactic relationship,

planar, closed, multiple and clear.
2. Any representation with painterly transition is, in its syntactic relations,
recessive, open, unified and unclear.10
In bringing Wölfflin’s theory to bear on these two statements, the key prob-
lem abruptly appears: Why can there be no instance of, as Meinhold Lurz put
it above, ‘a concept’s opposite side suddenly intervening’ (tr)? Here the answer
must be: for logical reasons –only then does Wölfflin’s project take on not only
art historical, but also philosophical importance. If the correlation between a
principle (such as ‘linear’) and the other principles on the same side (such as
‘clear’, etc.) is historically specific to Renaissance representations, then it is a
purely contingent correlation that could be thought differently and so could not
be a logical one. But this is exactly Wölfflin’s target, and this is exactly the way
we should understand the metaphors of ‘naturally related’ and ‘combine of their
own accord’ used in the last quotation: The relational qualities of an image have
a logical coherence. Although Wölfflin, as an art historian, makes a specialty of
historical styles, his reflections are directed towards a pictorial logic. His insights
develop from historical examples, but apply to the constraints, in principle, of
‘pictorial form’. They appear to be historically determined because they are logi-
cally necessary. In his essay ‘Norm and Form’ of 1963, Ernst H. Gombrich made
explicit reference to it: ‘But what strikes one about these co-ordinates is that they
are not independent, either logically or historically’ (p. 94). Wölfflin extends
the idea Herbart and Zimmermann introduced into aesthetics, that aesthetics
can be pursued as an a priori conceptual science. Empirical and historical con-
texts do not matter here, as Wölfflin himself writes, ‘since we are only interested
in explaining concepts’ (Principles, p. 45). For an art historian to make such a
statement is completely unbelievable. It shows how forcefully logic governs the
theory of art historical principles.*
It remains to discuss the validity of the theorems Wölfflin formulated. The
logical dependence of a linear or painterly transitional quality is easily deduced
for the last two principles: Only in the presence of hard transitions is it possible
to give a representation of something that is clear, that is, in which there are no
indeterminate places. Multiplicity, too can be deduced logically: Only when the
parts of a representation are delimited in a clear and linear way can there be a
* The rigorous logicity of the pairs of art historical principles –whether Riegl’s or Wölfflin’s –is
not only systematically but also historically critical, for it indicates the defeat of psychologically
grounded principles, which came to a peak with Nietzsche’s ‘Apollonian’ and ‘Dionysian’. More than
a few of Wölfflin’s contemporaries did not see this logical kind of justification as any justification
at all. The following passage from Oskar Wulff, for example, is characteristic: ‘Only where are the
concepts supposed to have gained their universality? […] Such a claim can be defended with only
two means of proof: through the discovery of the same forms of intuition in a style-historical paral-
lel, that is, through comparative observation, or by tracing it back to its psychological roots. Wölfflin
brings none of this to bear’ (tr) (‘Kritische Erörterungen zur Prinzipienlehre der Kunstwissenschaft’
[Critical Considerations of the Theory of Art Historical Principles], part 1, p. 8). The choice of two
ways Wulff offers is incomplete: in addition to the historical and the psychological ways to ground
principles, the logical enters with formal aesthetics. This is the reason formal aesthetics since Riegl
and Wölfflin is as much an expression of anti-psychologism as of anti-historicism, as phenomenol-
ogy is for Husserl.
pictorial surface with a multiplicity of independent figures. Conversely, a paint-

erly quality of transitions leads logically to a more fundamental unclearness. ‘The
archenemy of the painterly is the isolation of individual form’ (p. 148). A paint-
erly quality of transition directed towards connection and not towards isolation
of the individual forms will in principle produce a unification of the pictorial
elements. This logical correlation of transitional qualities and independence of
the parts was also introduced by Husserl as an explicit theorem in his Logical
Investigations of the relations between parts and the whole: ‘One may affirm
that: two contemporaneous sensuous concreta necessarily form an ‘undifferentiated
whole’ if all the immediately constitutive “moments” of the one pass unbrokenly over
into corresponding constitutive “moments” of the other’ (p. 450. Italics in original).
The situation is similar with the conceptual pair ‘closed –open’. A mode of
representation giving the impression that parts of the image are in a closed rela-
tionship of dependency must be a linear and clear form of representation, since
this is the only way tectonic structures can be made visible. With an extremely
painterly style, no symmetry can be established at all, for one cannot determine
exactly where the middle of this transition would be: this middle would not sin-
gle itself out in the form of a visible line.
The only pair of concepts for which the dependency of the one concept can-
not be logically deduced from the other concept on the same side is ‘plane –
recession’. Wölfflin’s theorem is hasty in this regard. For it is entirely possible
to think a representation in which all parts are organized absolutely beside one
another on a plane, but in which the transitions are nevertheless painterly and
the overall impression unified and unclear. The fact that it is possible to think of
such a case suffices as an argument against purely logical coherence.
Still, we need to add that although it is not possible to deduce planarity from
the linearity of a representation, it is possible to deduce dependency. Linear
form in transitions tends towards a planar form of organization, because the
overall formal impression enables us to see that the image contains only haptic
information. The placement of objects behind one another in a representation
leads to things on the horizon becoming smaller, due to perspectival foreshort-
ening. A situation that can only be seen, but not touched, must be represented
in this way. A linear image is the representation of a tactile reality. It follows
that it will have to avoid emphasizing optical foreshortening –which is why it
tends towards a planar organization. ‘And if it seems as though the recessional
style does not necessarily belong to this family, one can point to the fact that its
recessional tensions are built exclusively upon optical effects that only have any
significance for the eye, not for the sense of plasticity’ (p. 306).
Pairs of art historical principles as computer controls

In characterizing the ways and means planarity and linearity correlate in images,
one reaches a point that is relevant to the reciprocal logical dependency of the
art historical principles as a whole. For in one key aspect, the relational logical
dependencies within one form of image differ from those generated in relational
logic. The reason is that aesthetic characteristics such as painterly, multiple, and
so on can have visible gradations. Qualities such as transitivity and reflexivity, on
the other hand, are either there or not; there are no gradations.
In tracing the formal logical-aesthetic dependencies between various rela-
tional qualities in an image, the dependencies carry only imaginatively idealized,
extreme values: it is in fact impossible for an extremely painterly representation
to be a multiple representation, and impossible for an extremely clear repre-
sentation to be a painterly one. But it is entirely possible for an image that is
painterly to some extent to still clearly show multiplicity –Renoir’s images are
exemplary in this respect. This dispels the worry that if the principles on one
side determine the other principles on the same side, there would be just two
types of image. When the relational features of the pictorial parts do not lend
themselves to extreme values, a space of in-between, of play opens, which per-
mits infinitely many forms of images. If this were not the case, the differentiated
combinations of relational qualities that the art historical principles describe
could not exist. Furthermore, a change in one relational quality would neces-
sarily change every other relational quality in equal measure –as if transmitted
through a gear mechanism. But in their middle values, the reciprocal dependen-
cies of the aesthetic relational qualities are not so strict, as can readily be seen
with computer-assisted image processing.
The art historical principles are an answer to the question: how can the form
of an image be changed if the reference is supposed to remain unchanged?
Computer-assisted image processing asks the same question once again. For
here the logical dependencies Wölfflin described in an image return in the form
of controls. ‘How can the form of an image be changed?’ becomes a question
whose answer is expressed as a control.
Even a normal television has a control with which just one quality of the
immanent relations in the image can be gradually changed: the contrast con-
trol. When the image processing is computer-assisted, it becomes possible to
manipulate every surface quality of the image with a control. The computer
transforms specifically the infrastructure of the image, the very aspect of the
image Wölfflin’s art historical principles describe. In computer-assisted image
processing, the spectrum defined by any one art historical conceptual pair can
be paced off with no gradations by moving a control. In a sense, Wölfflin’s theory
can even handle the so-called morphing on the screen, something he himself
could not yet have even considered: One can feed the image by Turner and the
one by Hergé into the computer and give it a command to calculate an indeter-
minately long series of images that transform these two styles into one other.
The correlation between the art historical principles and digital imaging
becomes still more fundamental when we consider that two modes are gener-
ally recognized in computer-generated images –that is, those that are not only
manipulated, but actually produced in the computer: so-called raster graphics
and so-called vector graphics. Before a mark can be made on a screen, the user
must decide which mode he will use for the drawing. This decision is una-
voidable. The thesis of formal aesthetics, that the choice of a pictorial language
precedes, in a logical sense, each representational process, appears in digital
image processing as an option of painterly or linear that really does precede the
process of representation: The raster uses the painterly and the vector image the
linear as pictorial language. So it is not surprising that users’ manuals for com-
puter drawing programmes have returned to precisely those comparisons of
images that are familiar from the texts of formal aesthetics. The manual for the
programme Adobe Illustrator 6.0, for example, compares a bicycle in the paint-
erly pixel mode with one in a linear vector mode (see Figure 3) –just as Wölfflin
compares nudes by Dürer and Rembrandt. In didactic hindsight, the example
from the manual actually goes beyond Wölfflin’s comparisons in Principles of
Art History. The goal Wölfflin pursues with his theory alone, of directing the
attention of the formal aesthetician to the immanent relations in the image,
is pursued visually as well in the users’ manual. Using two levels of enlarge-
ment of a selected detail, it directs attention to the exact point where the formal
differences between the images arise: namely the transitions. Such an image
would need no changes to satisfy Wölfflin’s Principles of Art History; here, too,
the principles would fulfil the purpose for which they were made, namely to
facilitate access to the formal observation of images by showing, exactly, what
formal aesthetics is observing in the image.
But before we push the parallels too far, we must also note that Wölfflin did
not have the images he compared and put under the magnifier of relational anal-
ysis specially prepared, although it would have been no problem to have suitable
illustrations made. But this is exactly what is crucial about Wölfflin’s compari-
sons: he demonstrates them on works of visual art. In this way, the works in par-
ticular and art in general acquire an epistemological function. Because Wölfflin,
with his many famous confrontations between Renaissance and Baroque images,
exposed a dimension in works of art that today, with computer-generated
images, has become a matter of setting the controls, one can see in retrospect
the purpose formal art theory and visual art served in the development of new
pictorial forms. A pictorial understanding was worked out which, in an elemen-
tary sense, prepared the way for digital image processing. The quintessence of
Wölfflin’s theory is that art shows and formal aesthetics thinks the possibilities an
image has for depicting an object. Since digital image processing sets out to be a
universal medium, offering all representational possibilities as available options,
one can say that knowing the possibilities for representation is a logical pre-
requisite for the conception of digital image processing. Only someone familiar
with the possible ways images can show things could design a programme that
offers these representational possibilities. This is the reason visual art and formal
aesthetics appear, from a contemporary point of view, to lay groundwork that
make the subsequent development of digital computer graphics conceivable.
Building on the basic difference between the raster-and vector modes, the
relational logical aspects of an image that Wölfflin grasped with his other prin-
ciples can also be adjusted using supplementary controls. The level of openness
and gradations of depth can be changed for an individual image in any pictorial
language. It is even possible to create an image, in whatever pictorial mode one
chooses, that approaches the style of an image that would, from a relational logi-
cal standpoint, be closer to the opposite mode. For in each mode, the transition
from one pictorial part to another can be marked with a line, but can also dis-
pense with line altogether, or can be softened into continuity. The contrast can
be heightened in such a way as to produce two visible parts from a unity; it can
also be reduced to the point where two parts blend into one form. In computer-
assisted image processing on a monitor, that which form compounds into a
unity in an image is dynamic. Any point in the object to be depicted can furnish
grounds for a visible differentiation in the form of a transition, and conversely,
every differentiation in a form can be suppressed. Internal differentiations on a
surface can be gradually made less or more visible. So making non-equivalent
things equivalent and making differentiations in identical things becomes of
question of adjustment [Einstellung] not –as Nietzsche would have it –in the
attitude of a person, but in the setting of a control.
Depending on the Einstellung, the tectonic structure of an image can be sys-
tematized or dispersed. For example if a face is represented on the monitor, the
fine asymmetries found in any face can be gradually removed or enhanced. And
the image continues to be a recognizable representation of one and the same
person. Depending on the setting of a control, there will be a higher or lower

incidence of exact symmetries and relations between forms that disclose geo-
metric figures, for example squares, triangles or circles. The same manoeuvrable
pictorial dynamics apply to the gradation of parts in space: the representation
of an object on the computer screen permits itself to be shunted from planar to
recessional ordering. If the control is no longer operating on the pictorial form
as a whole, the pictorial possibilities become absolutely unlimited. Any details of
the image may be arbitrarily defined as unities, whose relational structures can
then be manipulated separately –each with separate controls as the need arises.
In this way, an object can, according to its position in space, take on, say, differ-
ent transitions, degrees of clarity and internal differentiations. It is not unusual
for things in the background to be depicted in a more painterly way than things
in the foreground. But this is only one possible way in which the manner of
manipulation can change according to position. The image can be divided into
infinitely many sections, all independently transformable.
This brings us to the special kind of logical dependency in the relational qual-
ities of images as such. Merely adjusting the contrast control produces a change
in multiplicity and unity. High contrast renders fine internal differentiations
invisible, that is, we get many surfaces that are in themselves monochrome. But
if the contrast control is at zero, it is logically impossible for any multiplicity to
be visible at all, because no differentiating contrast is given. The logical impos-
sibility of uniting extreme multiplicity with extremely low contrast appears on
the computer screen in the form of a pictorial disruption. Controls set at oppo-
site extremes produce signal noise. But as long as the controls are set at middle
values, there is unlimited scope for play with pictorial form.
A change in one aesthetic relational quality does not correspond to a propor-
tional change in the others. One control is not directly linked to the effects of the
others. Rather the other qualities adjust –belatedly, so to speak –only in extreme
changes. This gives rise once again to indeterminacies within the reciprocal
dependencies of relational qualities in pictorial form. This means that although
combinations of relational qualities are logically determined at their extremes,
there is a possibility of intentional choice of at middle values. Even if a particular
mode has been selected, the way that mode is used makes it possible to interpret
the basic decision in many ways. So images that are comparable with respect to
their transitions may still vary in terms of being closed and open. The relational
logic of pictorial form is a logic of limit values for a free space, and as such typical
for logics of the indeterminate. What is indeterminate in pictorial form cannot
and should not be completely carried over into the determinate. This also holds
for the immanent dependencies in the infrastructure. In every pictorial form

there is a logically indeterminate remainder, even with respect to the constella-
tion of its various relational characteristics. Within this field of play with middle
values, there are aesthetic differences in the effects produced depending on which
control one is using. It shows that in the middle range, the controls do not assert
themselves so rigorously, that changes made by one control have the same effect
as those made by another. The changes only ‘cut’ later. This is the logical space of
play that supports the stylistic plurality of pictorial representation.
Principles of colour relations: Colour contrast –colour convergence

If one thing stands out about Wölfflin’s aesthetics –and it becomes especially
clear in the context of controls –it is that the art historical principles are not
used to investigate the colour of an aesthetic object.* This is in fact more than
a little surprising, since colour is widely understood to be an essential formal
attribute. In everyday language, at least, the difference between an image painted
in gaudy colours or in subdued pastel tones would be viewed as a formal one.
One and the same object can, in fact, be visually depicted in one and the same
perspective with markedly different colouration. This supports the contention
that with colour, we are dealing a formal aspect, and not with the content of the
image. Rococo and Baroque images can sometimes be distinguished only on the
basis of their colour. So there is a question about why colour was bracketed out
of the relational logical system of Wölfflin’s art historical principles. The answer
to this question is as simple as it is telling. For Wölfflin, colour is not a formal
quality of an image. It is not for technical reasons alone that the visual examples
in Principles of Art History are reproduced in black and white. Colour is unim-
portant as a logical consequence of Wölfflin’s concept of form.
Wöllflin’s understanding of form is that of Herbartianism; for him, form is the
same as relation. For Wölfflin, as for Herbart and Zimmermann, formal quali-
ties are exclusively characteristics of the infrastructure. The consequence is that
a formal quality can be described only using relational concepts. A monovalent
predicate is not, from a Herbartian standpoint, concerned with anything formal
at all. The predicate ‘have-a-colour’ is a monovalent predicate. Having a colour
* Even the art historian and colour theorist Erwin Strauss, who studied under Wölfflin, objected that in
implicit in Wölfflin’s aesthetics is a dubious proposal not to talk about colour. He reports this from a
conversation: ‘Wölfflin thinks that it is beyond the competence of an art historian to speak of colour’
(tr) (Koloritgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Malerei seit Giotto und andere Studien [Investigations
in the History of Atmosphere in Painting since Giotto and Other Studies], p. 9).
is not a quality of a relation, but at most a quality of the relata in a relation. It

follows, then, that Wölfflin did not pursue colour in his art historical principles,
for the principles were meant exclusively for the understanding of characteris-
tics of immanent pictorial relations. The colours of the ‘patches’ that appear in
such immanent relationships on a pictorial surface are inconsequential for the
aesthetic quality of this relationship: ‘And here it is of no consequence whether
these patches speak as color or as areas of light and dark’ (p. 100). We must inter-
pret this to mean that for Wölfflin, colour does not take part in way the form is
made, but rather fills the form in, in an aesthetically unimportant way. Colour is
the antithesis of form; colour belongs to the mimetic content of an image. That
is, the particular colour in which something is reproduced is not determined by
the pictorial language, but by the object depicted.
Even if it seems far-fetched at first glance, Wölfflin’s rejection of colour as
an aspect of form is based on an impressionistic understanding of colour after
all. Impressionism had a well-founded theory of colour at its disposal, as Max
Imdahl showed in his pertinent study Farbe [Colour] of 1987. Its key feature
is the ‘de-conceptualization of vision, which itself rest on an absolutization
of colour vision’ (tr) (p. 26). The impressionist image appears as a liberation
from the logic of the image. The purely painterly representation is not meant
to be a way of representing, but to free the image from any way of representing
in pursuit of an immediate vision of things, with no conceptual preparation,
no calculation. Impressionism is defined by the belief that there is –as the
art theorist John Ruskin had claimed –an ‘innocent eye’ and that the task of
painting comprises a ‘vision that sees colour alone’ (ibid., p. 24). Max Raphael
(1889–1952), too, the philosopher of art so critical to these frameworks, con-
firms these views of impressionism with his study Von Monet zu Picasso [From
Monet to Picasso] of 1913: ‘Everything that was scaffolding and as such a
transmitter of intellectual stimulus was taboo; one stuck with the accidental’
(tr) (p. 98).
But art historical principles are meant to describe and conceptually grasp
exactly this ‘scaffolding’ of pictorial depiction, an expression for the intellectual
prerequisites of pictorial depiction. So this makes it clear: With his principles,
Wölfflin addressed those qualities of the image that the Impressionists were try-
ing to overcome by making an image from colour alone, without form. Despite
all the differences in the implications of the pictorial concepts, there is still a
common understanding of colour in the background. For Wölfflin and for the
theory of Impressionism, colour –as Raphael said –is something ‘accidental’.
The difference is that Wölfflin is trying to purge the image of accidents by means
of the principles, and the Impressionists, conversely, are trying, in their works,
to reduce the image to the purely accidental and ephemeral.
But as we can quickly confirm, the opposition is asymmetrical. With his
theory, Wölfflin was claiming to be able to describe the language of any image,
including that of an Impressionist image. From the standpoint of the theory of
art historical principles, the theoretical claims implicit in Impressionism appear
to have failed.* It is impossible to make an image that escapes pictorial logic.
Impressionist painting holds tight. In its works, it remains fixed in a pictorial
understanding according to which an image is supposed to interpret the appear-
ance of visible reality. The representation occurs in a pictorial language that itself
in turn becomes the real purpose of the representation. It is painterly language
that Impressionists use, and expose. But the crucial thing is painterliness is an
art language that can be realized independently of any particular kind of colour.
‘Painterly and colorful are two quite different things’, Wölfflin insists (Principles,
p. 132). This is the reason the painterly image form is not, for him, the liberation
of the image from all pictorial language, but rather the realization of an interpre-
tation of visible reality.
Still one wonders whether the view that prevailed in the second half of the
nineteenth century, that colour was the opposite of form, is tenable.11 One of
the notable things about Wölfflin is that he undogmatically points out matters
that tend to refute his own position. The next part of the quotation makes this
clear: ‘Painterly and coloured are two completely different things, but there is
painterly and non-painterly colour.’
Apparently Wölfflin sees that the colour in an image, too, determines what
language the image speaks; and in fact colour is never completely neutral in
terms of structure. The colour of the relata among transitions, too, determines
the aesthetic quality of a transition. Colour is a factor that affects the image
structurally. In this respect, there was a basic development in the way colour
was understood after Wölfflin, which Heinz Paetzold clarified in the following
way: ‘Colour should not be considered something self-contained, but always a
relational phenomenon’ (tr).12 So a painterly transitional quality is determined
not only by the breadth of the segments that flow continuously together, that lie
between the relata of the transition, but also by the colour tonality of the relata.
* This theoretical failure is not necessarily significant for the practice of art. Imdahl rightly points out
that the belief in an innocent eye can still define the self-understanding of a direction in painting,
even when, as we now know, that it is, as E. H. Gombrich says, a pure myth. We must in general
take note: However obsolete a theory may be from a philosophical perspective, it can nevertheless
facilitate noteworthy works of art.
For example it is considerably easier to see a continuous transition between

colours that are not complementary than to see one between colours that are.
Complementary colours cannot flow together in terms of colour at all, because
they are defined exactly as colours between which there is no coloured, only a
grey colour transition. The linearity of even a sharp, discrete juxtaposition of
surfaces can be suppressed or heighted through colour contrasts. Colour con-
trast is a relational quality determined by colour.* ‘Having a complementary
colour’, for example, is a divalent predicate for a colour contrast, for a colour is a
complementary colour only for another colour. So this predicate does have the
aesthetic features of a visible relation, something formal, we could also say in the
Herbartian sense. This predicate applies to structural characteristics and not to
the way the form is filled in.
If colour contrasts really share responsibility for the quality of immanent pic-
torial relations, the question arises, one that Wölfflin could only touch upon, of
whether colour should not be among the principles after all. Here again Wölfflin
indicates a direction he did not follow: ‘Even the coloration of the world itself
is not fixed; it can be interpreted one way or another’ (Principles, p. 135). The
colour used in an image is not completely determined by the object depicted;
here, too, there is an indeterminacy that a Kunstwollen can engage. So it always
comes down to a decision about the light in which to reproduce the colour of
an object. Whether a shadow is permitted to change the local colour or just to
make it darker is a question that can be resolved only by choice. In processes of
depicting, there are ways of seeing the colour of an object. The colour of a given
formal element in an image can be interpreted. Just as the qualities of transition,
the unity, the spatiality, the coherence and clarity can be transformed detached
from a referent object that is unchanged, Wölfflin also sees that ‘as with line . . .
color here also takes an a life detached from its objects’ (ibid., p. 135). If this
emancipation of colour is given, and if Kunstwollen determines colour, it seems
that looking for a conceptual pair for colour would be worth the effort after
all. Here, again, it is helpful to refer to computer-assisted image processing. The
comparison between art historical principles and controls for computer-assisted
image processing can be turned the other way: starting from Wölfflin, one can
recognize in the monitor controls a possible way of technically transposing his
* The most important colour contrasts are:1. the so-called polar contrast between all primary colours
(red: blue, blue: yellow, yellow: red), 2. the so-called soft contrast between all secondary colours
(orange: green, green: violet, violet: orange) and 3. The so-called complementary contrast between a
primary colour and one particular secondary colour –namely the one at the opposite point on the
colour wheel (red: green, blue: orange, yellow: violet). Cf. H. Küppers, Die Logik der Farbe [The Logic
of Colour], and E. Marx, Die Farbkontraste [Colour Contrasts].
pairs of principles. But is it also possible to start from thinkable controls, and
then ask whether they correspond to any pair of principles.
The first control that comes to mind in this context is the colour control.
Yet the colour control does not change the structure of an image, at least not
the form as it appears on television monitors. It is easy to imagine a slightly
modified colour control, however, that would change the colour of an image
relationally. This would be the case for a control for colour contrast. Such a con-
trol would, according to the setting, produce a convergence of the colour tones
at one extreme, and a contrast in the colour tones at the other extreme.13 The
image is transformed so that identical colour tones in various parts of the image
would be changed in different ways, so that from a relational standpoint, the
same change for the entire image would produce more or less colour contrast.
The criterion that controls the way the colour is changed in a given place would
not, then, be the colour at that place, as it is for the colour control in a televi-
sion. There the change is determined by the information in one specific place.
The criterion for change in colour contrast is one element’s relationship to its
surroundings. So depending on the way the control is set, the computer must
look for a way the colour relationships between the relata can be changed so as
to heighten the colour contrast or make the colours converge. The more extreme
the setting, the more potential solutions there will be that ignore local colour
completely. The lower the colour contrast realized in the image, the more paint-
erly it will be; complete convergence, however, brings a monochrome destruc-
tion of the image. Another pair of conceptual principles can be drawn from the
extreme positions of the colour contrast control: colour contrast versus colour
convergence.
3.2 Formal and transcendental aesthetics
Preliminary remarks
In order to pursue the philosophy of art historical principles further, we need
to examine Wölfflin’s relationship to Kant’s philosophy. The concern is not only
to note the systematic achievements of formal aesthetics. Historically, too, the
decisive next step in the development of formal aesthetics occurs in a discussion
of the theory Kant formulated. Wölfflin considers his own relational logic of the
image to be a supplement to Kant. Still, and this may seem surprising at first
glance, the issues were not debated in reference to Kant’s aesthetic as such, to
Critique of the Power of Judgement of 1790, but rather referred to Kant’s episte-
mology in the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781 (CPR). It is typical of aestheticians
who consider themselves philosophers of the aesthetic object to turn to Kant’s
theoretical philosophy. For an aesthetics oriented towards works, which includes
formal aesthetics, the analysis of aesthetic judgement Kant provided offers no
points of access; the subject matter is too diverse: one line of thought concerns
itself with objects, another with validity claims for judgements of taste –there
is no overlap. But as soon as Kant’s epistemology is taken into account, the situ-
ation changes. The principles can be understood as supplementing particularly
the ‘transcendental aesthetics’ –Kant’s first lesson in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The identity of representational forms and forms of intuition

Wölfflin’s neo-Kantian thesis goes: ‘One can treat them [the art historical prin-
ciples] as forms of representation or as forms of perception [which can be called
forms of intuition or Anschauungsform too]: nature is seen in these forms and it
is in these forms that art represents its content’ (p. 98). With this claim, Wölfflin
fundamentally extends the scope of formal aesthetics. From the visible forms in
which images depict an object, that is, representational forms as such, Wölfflin
draws conclusions about the invisible forms in which human beings see reality,
that is, in which they see. In this respect Wölfflin is clear: for him, Velásquez
did not simply represent the world in a painterly way: ‘but Velásquez saw them
in such a painterly way’ (p. 108). That is to say that in his paintings, Velázquez
formulated a statement about his own ways and means of seeing: ‘Velasquez had
such an eye, one attuned to appearance’ (p. 127).
With Wölfflin, the issues in formal aesthetics become more complex. He pro-
poses an interrelationship between perception and representation, and so ushers
in a new phase in the history of formal aesthetics. Its basic idea goes: The way a
human being sees things, his perception of the visible world is, like a pictorial
representation, a medium that models the visibility of something –but with the
difference, that pictorial representation is a visible medium and perception an
invisible medium. What in perception becomes visible invisibly, in conscious-
ness, occurs visibly in pictorial representation, made visible on the pictorial sur-
face. The externally visible representation in a material picture therefore has a
kind of visibility advantage over perception, which is an immaterial representa-
tion in consciousness; the picture has a double visibility: And Wölfflin uses this
very visibility advantage methodologically to investigate perception. He assumes
one typically phenomenological idea. ‘The mystery of visibility’, Bernard
Waldenfels writes, can in the end only be researched ‘because the process that
makes something visible is itself generated from the visible, and because the
image in which something becomes visible itself steps into the visible’ (tr).14 This
is exactly the reason Wölfflin transfers the relational logic of pictorial represen-
tational methods over to perception, identifying forms of representation with
forms of intuition. The claim of his logic becomes more comprehensive; it is a
logic of seeing, not only of painting. In this way, the concept of representational
form or pictorial form takes on a new dimension. It refers not only to possi-
bilities for material depiction, but to ways of seeing as such, which for Wölfflin
means ‘a specific conception of visibility’ (p. 134).
Comparisons between image and eye are usually regarded with scepticism
today. But before we criticize Wölfflin, we must see exactly what he was try-
ing to do. For he was not contending that human perceptions were images at
all; of course it is completely absurd for an eidolon to appear via perception in
consciousness, as Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus imagined it in antique
philosophy. Yet the substantive incomparability between material images and
perceptions should not lead us to overlook the benefits of a structural compari-
son. For in light of the invisibility of the perceptual process of becoming visible,
the visible image offers the only possible way of gaining insight into the medi-
ally determined structures of perception. Even before knowing the details of
Wölfflin’s reflections, it has to be clear that this is not about a material interpre-
tation of perception as ‘images in the head’, but concerns contemporary think-
ing about how to make methodological use of the ‘relation between becoming
visible in perception and making visible in visual art’ (tr).15 The structural laws
of making something visible on the pictorial surface are used to get a look at
the invisible organization of a perceptual process. This is a turning point in the
history of formal aesthetics. If formal aesthetics before Wölfflin was simply the
observation of works, he did not abandon the effort; rather he made it serve a
purpose: The relational observation of the work is associated with goals that had
been foreign to formal aesthetics until then. One can also say: art is treated as a
mode of episteme, for a relational logic of perception is to be derived from the
relational logic of the image. Wölfflin broadened the understanding of ‘aesthetic’
in the formal aesthetic movement to the meaning one associates with the origi-
nal Greek concept of aesthesis.
As paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, formal aesthetics is a theory of
perception for Wölfflin, despite its engagement with works of art. This is what
is so particularly attractive about his aesthetic understanding. Wölfflin identi-
fied the theory of art with the theory of perception –that is, aesthetics with
aisthetic –by proposing art as a means of studying the structures of percep-

tion. One can say: Wölfflin understands aisthetics as the task of aesthetics. Very
early on he gives a ground-breaking response to an issue that should, according
to Heinz Paetzold, be declared the central question of an Ästhetik der neueren
Moderne [Aesthetics of Recent Modernity]: ‘How can a person think methodi-
cally about a theory of the senses enmeshed with aesthetics?’ (tr) (p. 20). It is
a late confirmation of formal aesthetics to have its key idea defended afresh
today: ‘The arts show what it means to have experiences in the medium of the
senses’ (tr) (ibid).*
The relational structure of perception

Wölfflin achieves this objective of expanding the formal aesthetics of works
into a theory of perception by orienting himself to both the content and the
terminology of Kant’s transcendental aesthetics. With this theory Kant, too,
outlines a theory of perception in the original sense of aeisthetics. He leaves no
doubt about this: ‘I call a science of all principles of apriori sensibility the tran-
scendental aesthetic’ (CPR, p. 173). The basic idea of transcendental aesthetics is
that perception and passive mirroring should be recognized as two phenomena
that are incomparable in principle. Kant categorically excludes copy theory of
any sort from perception. Observations of perception are determined by prin-
ciples that are established not through a visible object, but rather through the
* The decisive point in Wölfflin’s thinking, then, is not about erasing the difference between the con-
cepts ‘aesthetic’ and ‘aisthetic’ or even saying that the philosophical disciplines aesthetics and aist-
hetics cannot be distinguished. Here there is a relatively simple difference: Aisthetics has nothing
whatever to do with human perception; it is a theory of the senses. Aesthetics, on the other hand,
studies just those phenomena that are related to art issues or to questions of beauty. So aesthetics is not
necessarily directly concerned with art at all, although in aesthetic issues there is always a connec-
tion to question of art. (On the conceptual difference between ‘aesthetics’ and ‘aisthetics’ see M. Seel,
‘Ästhetik und Aisthetik’ [Aesthetics and Aisthetics]) But that which can be clearly distinguished in
conceptual terms can be objectively bound together –one such relationship is familiar, for example,
from the disciplines of physiology and psychology. So aesthetics is concerned with, among other
things, so-called aesthetic perception, that is, the special perception of special things such as works
of art or the beauties of nature. To this extent, aesthetics is sometimes a branch of aisthetics; there
are many fluid transitions between aesthetic and aisthetic issues. (On the intertwining of aesthetic
and aesthetic inquiries see W. Welsch, ‘Erweiterungen der Ästhetik’ [Extensions of Aesthetics]). It
is therefore appropriate to redouble precautions in using the terms ‘aesthetic’ and ‘aisthetic’: On the
one hand, the traditional conceptual difference between ‘aesthetic’ and ‘aisthetic’ should not be lost,
on the other hand this conceptual differentiation between two disciplines should not cause us to
overlook the objective penetration of issues of perception into problems in representation and vice
versa –as we conceptually distinguish between the disciplines of physiology and psychology, yet still
can see how their subject matter is linked. It is pointless to try to decide whether the investigation of
the interdependence of perception and art to be a topic in aesthetics or in aisthetics. Discussion of
this matter could be advanced considerably by suppressing the use of the concept of aesthetics and,
in those places where it is meant, speaking instead of the ‘theory of the senses’ or ‘the theory of art’
respectively.
forms of intuition themselves. In Kant, it goes: ‘The undetermined object of

an empirical observation is called an appearance. I call that in the appearance
which corresponds to sensation its matter, but that which allows the manifold
of appearance to be ordered in certain relations I call the form of appearance.
Since that within which the sensations can alone be ordered and placed in a
certain form cannot itself be in turn a sensation, the matter of all appearance
is only given to us a posteriori, but its form must all lie ready for it in the mind
a priori, and can therefore be considered separately from all sensation’ (ibid.,
B34, pp. 172–173).
With the concept of the form of intuition, then, Wölfflin is reaching back
to the central term of Kant’s transcendental aesthetics, and he allies himself
with Kant’s basic thinking in terms of content as well: ‘visual perception is not
a mirror’ (p. 305). The inevitable phenomenality of the world is borne out in
such statements –Wölfflin puts ‘the world’ in quotation marks for a reason
(Principles, p. 319). For he agrees with Kant that reality cannot be grasped as
it actually is through perception, but only in forms that come from the subject.
Reality as one massive static pole, to which we refer by way of perception or pic-
torial representation, evades visibility because even in perception –before there
has even been any conceptual interpretation –it is reasonable to make a distinc-
tion between the way something looks and the way it is, the appearance and
the thing in itself. The external world, which resists and even obstructs actions,
is accessible to visual perception only in a mediated, which is to say a medial
way. Human sensibility is not in a position to overcome the phenomenality of
reality and arrive at the thing in itself. The aesthetic writing of Konrad Fiedler,
in particular, set these ideas of Kant’s at the centre of a neo-Kantian aesthetic,
and in this respect were surely part of Wölfflin’s intellectual background,16 as we
can see immediately from the following quotation: ‘The decisive turning point
for the mind in search of knowledge comes at that moment when facts, appar-
ently endowed with perfect reality, reveal themselves in deep reflection to be
deceptive appearances, where one sees that the human capacity for insight is not
confronted by a completely detached external world, like a mirror with respect
to the object whose image appears in it, but rather that the so-called the external
world is the forever changing, constantly renewing result of an intellectual pro-
cess’ (tr).17 In short, because generating perceptions is a hidden formative activ-
ity, Kant considers it necessary, as Wölfflin does, to specify forms of intuition.
For, as Wölfflin writes, with reference to Kant, ‘the observation of nature remains
an empty concept if one is unaware of the forms through which that observation
is made’ (Principles, p. 309f.).
There is still more common ground with respect to understandings of the

form of intuition. Neither Kant nor Wölfflin understands these forms that organ-
ize and facilitate perception as specific figures; nor are the forms empty vessels
into which one tosses the stuff of sensation, as it were, thereby giving it a shape.
When Kant speaks of the ‘form of intuition’ (CPR, B38, p. 174), he, like the for-
mal aestheticians of Herbartianism, means only relational conjunctions, organi-
zational structures.18 Form is just ‘that which allows the manifold of appearance
to be ordered in certain relations’ (CPR, B34, p. 173). This gives us a basic idea
to keep in mind, common to formal and transcendental aesthetics: as something
is being seen, what is perceived takes on relations that were not initially given,
but rather that arise solely from the medium of perception. This subjective pro-
cess of formulation is comparable to a pair of glasses through which the world
is seen –except that unlike sunglasses, these do not colour the world, but rather
relationally structure it. This is what Wölfflin means when he writes ‘visibility
crystallizes for the eye in certain forms’ (p. 310). Clearly these forms need to be
defined; here, too, Kant is still heading in the same direction as Wölfflin.
Space as a form of intuition

For Kant, there are two subjective forms of intuition: the constraints of the
senses for Kant are space and time. This is to say that everything that is given
in perception is to be found in spatiotemporal relations. A visible object always
has extension, and several objects have relations of being near, above, behind, or
after one another. These relations are of a perceptible kind –although they tell
us nothing about the content of a perception, but rather only about the ways the
things in the perception appear. For Georg Mohr, the forms of intuition describe
‘constraints unique to receptivity’ (tr) in perception.19 This is a convincing inter-
pretation in that it illuminates Kant’s medial conception of the capacity of per-
ception. Unique conditions of receptivity are medial conditions: space and time
are the inevitable media in which perceptions are made. Just as the colour of
objects cannot be depicted using black and white film, so the human capacity
to perceive allows for no visibility of space-or timeless things, or any fourth
dimension. The medial conditions of possibility are not given in either case.
Clearly space as a form of intuition has high priority in the description of the
mediality of visual perception. In the Critique of Pure Reason, space is ‘the form
of all appearances of outer sense, that is, the subjective condition of sensibility,
under which alone outer intuition is possible for us’ (CPR, B42, p. 177). Time,
however, is for Kant the form of intuition that makes shifting ideas, feelings or
representations –even representations of space possible in the empirical subject

himself. But the crucial thesis with respect to space notes, ‘Space is not a empiri-
cal concept that has been drawn from outer experience’ (ibid., B38, 174). Kant
makes several arguments for the a priori character of space as a form intuition.20
In fact there is supporting evidence in that we cannot imagine there being no
space, although we can very easily imagine an empty space. If space were an
empirical property of an object, we would be able to imaginatively abstract from
this property; we could imagine an object without spatial extension. But this is
exactly what is impossible in principle. For Kant, space is not something that can
be abstracted from perception, and so it is not something abstracted at all: ‘We
cannot, for example, imagine spatial and non-spatial elephants in the way in
which we can imagine elephants which are grey and elephants which are not’ –is
the way Stephen Körner explained Kant’s argument.21
There continues to be a structural affinity between formal and transcenden-
tal aesthetics on this point, for the art historical principles, too, describe the
limits of abstraction in pictorial representations. The art historical principles
name characteristics that are known a priori to pertain to the visible. We can
no more imagine an elephant that does not contrast with its environment than
we can image an elephant without space. Without immanent contrasts there
can be no visibility of anything. Wölfflin emphasizes this even in his disser-
tation ‘Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur’ [Prolegomena to
a Psychology of Architecture]: ‘It is a conditio sine qua non that every thing,
in order to be distinct, must set boundaries with respect to its surroundings’
(tr) (p. 25).22 The same argument Kant gave for the apriority of space applies
here: The quality of the transition cannot be abstracted from experience, for the
form would not be visible at all without a quality from the spectrum between
linear and painterly, and so the representation would not be a representation.
Having a quality of transition is for Wölfflin as space and time are for Kant, ‘the
a priori formal condition all appearances in general’ (CPR, B50, p. 180).
When, with this in the background, we consider that Wölfflin’s formal aes-
thetics set out to be a supplement, a neo-Kantian variant of transcendental
aesthetics, it appears logically necessary for one of the pairs of principles to rec-
ognize Kant’s forms of spatial observation. This happens in the conceptual pair
‘plane –recession’. ‘Space’ is the overarching concept for the boundaries indicated
by ‘plane’ and ‘recession’. In order to perceive something, as to depict something,
the parts of the visible must have spatial relationships to one another; that is, it is
logically necessary for the relationships to lie somewhere between the extremes
of one being plainly adjacent to the other, and one being plainly recessional,
behind the other. The notion that everything visible is spatially ordered cannot
be derived from the visible, because the visible itself only becomes visible by
means of these forms of intuition. So we can see that in analysing the structures
of pictorial representation as it applies to the idea of space, Wölfflin takes a dif-
ferent route to the same conclusion reached by Kant –although at this point the
structural affinity between Kant’s and Wölfflin’s theories of forms of intuition
comes to an end.
3.3 The conditionality of perception
Differences in interest
The reasons Kant and Wölfflin have to go their separate ways becomes clear
when we reflect on their intentions. The interest that attracted transcendental
aesthetics to forms of perception is different from any formal aesthetics could
call its own. The difference in names is suggestive in itself: a transcendental the-
ory is per definitionem concerned with justifications, while a formal theory is
concerned with descriptions. As transcendental philosophy, the Critique of Pure
Reason sets out to define the conditions of possibility for scientific knowledge,
and transcendental aesthetics, as part of the project, is obliged to fit within the
general framework.
Returning, difficulties notwithstanding, to Wölfflin’s metaphor of ‘glasses’
mentioned above, we can say that transcendental aesthetics is about a pair of
glasses we wear whenever we look at the world, glasses that make mathematical
insights applicable a priori to all visible objects. The strategy for proving this is
based on the following idea: Mathematical laws that apply to perception in its
pure form must apply equally to all things in this form –which all perceived
things are. From Kant’s transcendental claim we can conclude that his forms of
intuition are general, static and ahistorical. Although Kant always took perception
to be a medium that takes its formative effect in the process of making some-
thing visible, he saw no possibilities for variations in this formative process; The
medium stays the same and has no individual features. For Kant, the space-glasses
through which one sees the world first, cannot be removed, and second, cannot
be changed. This is essential for Kant’s understanding of the forms of intuition.
For him it is the only way to explain why the laws of geometry do not change.
Perception is in fact made, but as far as its formal character goes, always in the
same way. The result is that this formation can be taken as empirical reality, for
it can neither change nor be suspended. Kant declared it in the famous passage
in Critique of Pure Reason: ‘Our expositions accordingly teach the reality [. . .] of
space in light of everything that can come before us externally as an object, but at
the same time the ideality of space in regard to things when they are considered in
themselves through reason, i.e., without taking account of the constitution of our
sensibility. We therefore assert the empirical reality of space’ (CPR, B44, p. 177).
Formal aesthetics has a different understanding of forms of intuition. It con-
siders forms of intuition to be individual, dynamic and historic. Wölfflin leaves
no doubt about it: ‘In other words, the content of the world is not crystallized
into some unchanging form for visual perception’ (p. 305). With this it imme-
diately becomes clear that the efforts of transcendental philosophy to reach the
ultimate ground of knowledge are alien to formal aesthetics. Rather than a par-
ticular way of seeing, its interest lies in the multiplicity of possible ways of see-
ing, ways in which the world can be seen; so, too, then, in perspectives that are
completely unsuitable for scientific justification. For Wölfflin, the way of seeing
the world that permits scientific description is one way of seeing, among many
others –an important one, certainly, but still not the only one.
Living mirrors
The interest in the plurality and dynamics of observational forms is especially
clear at that point in Wölfflin’s argument where he explains his ‘real’ reason
for resisting the idea of likening pictorial representation and a perception to
a mirror. That a forming underpins the view of something in a pictorial rep-
resentation and in a perception is just one thing that argues against the mirror
metaphor –and actually not an important one: Mirror reflections, too, can eas-
ily present things with distorted relations. A curved mirror, for example, dis-
torts the infrastructure of the visible; a concave mirror makes everything appear
wider than it is. In the nineteenth century, a highly polished black surface was
called a black mirror or ‘Claude Lorraine’s mirror’, because it gave visible reality
the kind of appearance that was familiar from the artist’s paintings.23 Mirrors can
change the immanent relations of the visible in the most diverse ways; in this
respect they are entirely comparable to pictorial representation.24 So there must
be another argument against the mirror comparison. Wölfflin pins it down: ‘And
if it has been compared to a mirror that reflects the changing picture of “the
world”, then this analogy is doubly misleading: comparing the creative labor of
art to a reflection is not a good analogy. If we are to permit the expression at all,
we should have to bear in mind that the structure of the mirror itself has always
been subject to change’ (Principles, p. 319).
Wölfflin’s idea is clear: The process of representation is comparable to mir-
roring only if the material that constitutes the mirror is changeable. There is an
idea that Schiller formulated in his famous poem ‘The Artists’ of 1798 that needs
to be taken seriously: ‘Till from the image on the water glassed /The likeness
rose –and Painting grew at last! (‘The Artists’, p. 76). In fact a rigid glass mir-
ror does suggest that the structures in which the visible takes shape are stable.
A glass mirror has no dynamic representational grammar, but even in the mirror
image in the waves, the order of the visible begins to shift. For Wölfflin, the really
important difference between a mirror and the way human perception works is
that the glass (the material of conventional mirrors) is fixed. He cannot grasp
‘representational grammar’ if he starts by thinking the mediality of perception is
always the same: ‘visual perception is not a mirror that always remains the same;
it is a living faculty of perception’ (Principles, p. 305). Up to the first comma,
this sentence of Wölfflin’s might have been quoted above to establish parallels
between Kant and Wölfflin; after the comma the differences begin. Although
their basic positions leading to a rejection of the comparison between percep-
tion and a passive reflection are the same, Wölfflin’s understanding of percep-
tion still differs fundamentally from Kant’s. According to Kant, too, perception
is determined by form, but it still is no ‘lively observational force’, that is, it is
not the observational force of a biological entity in a dynamic interactive rela-
tionship to its environment. Here we encounter a distance between Kant and
Wölfflin, the latter initiating a tradition completely foreign to Kant: The tradition
that goes back to Nikolaus von Kues, of perception as a living mirror.25
The metaphor of a living mirror is used to convey the idea of the immanent
dynamics of observation. The individuality of a living, embodied human being,
with his own special, changeable, situation- specific characteristics, impairs
ideal constructions of perceptual function, so that only distorted variants ever
become real. The world is not visible to human beings in just one way that way
that can further be scientifically constructed. Even Leibniz –in a letter to Nicolas
François Remond –emphasized that it makes no sense to assume that all human
beings have the same modalities of perception: ‘The perceptions of beings can
be simultaneously distinct in regard to only a few things, after all, they are more
significantly shaped by the positioning, or viewpoint, so to speak, of the mirror,
so that one and the same universe is reproduced in infinitely varied ways by as
many living mirrors, each depicting it in his own way’ (tr).26
This is what lies behind the neo-Kantian theory of art historical principles. It
sets out to determine the logical limits of the polymorphism of visible worlds.
Here, formal aesthetics is assigning value to an idea that is generally consid-
ered awkward from the standpoint of scientific theory. It is worth noting, in any
case, that in his The New Organon [Novum Organum] of 1620, Francis Bacon
describes scientific activity as an effort to make individual perception resemble
a fixed and flat mirror. For Bacon, exact science begins with the death-knell of
the living mirror: ‘The assertion that the human senses are the measure of things
is false; to the contrary, all perceptions, both of sense and mind, are relative to
man, not to the universe. The human understanding is like an uneven mirror
receiving rays from things and merging its own nature with the nature of things,
which thus distorts and corrupts it. [. . .] But as men’s minds have been occupied
in so many strange ways that they have no even, polished surface available to
receive the true rays of things, it is essential for us to realise that we need to find
a remedy for this too. [. . .] just as an uneven mirror alters the rays of things from
their proper shape and figure, so also the mind, when it is affected by things
through the senses, does not faithfully preserve them, but inserts and mingles
its own nature with the nature of things as it forms and devises its own notions’
(pp. 41 and 18–19). A description of the same state of affairs may be evaluated
in two opposing ways. For Bacon, the biological organization of perception ‘dis-
torts and corrupts’ ideal scientific vision. For Wölfflin, the same inevitable dis-
tortion of a single, one-to-one depiction in processes of visualization opens the
possibility for art to speak of a living human being’s powers of comprehension.
In this way human visual perception is freed from its passive role of delivering,
neutrally at best, the mere materials for further cognitive processing. It escapes,
and acquires a rationality of its own.
Fiedler’s neo-Kantianism once again provides support for Wölfflin’s argu-
ment in this regard. Among the fundamental achievements of Fiedler’s aesthetic,
in any case, is a description of sense perception as a spontaneous faculty, which
not only passively delivers material to the understanding, but which constitutes
a complete form of rational activity in itself.27 The duality of sense perception
and intellectual conceptualization disappears with Fiedler, since ‘in every sen-
sual perception there already is mental activity’ (tr).28 This ‘decisive transforma-
tion’, which Fiedler made with Kant, sustains Wölfflin’s concept of perception.29
So it follows that there are two forms of perception in Wölfflin that are pre-
sented purely as categories of understanding with Kant: unity and multiplicity.
For Wölfflin, an observation without unities or multiplicities is as unimaginable
as a perception without any spatial ordering of parts –the same holds for any
image. Unity does not depend on an act of conceptualization, but is achieved

by sense perception itself. In these forms of intuition, Wölfflin shares the view
that the founder of gestalt psychology Christian v. Ehrenfels presented in his
epochal essay ‘Über “Gestaltsqualitäten” ’ [On Qualities of Gestalt] (1890) ‘that
the conception of space-and sound gestalten comes about without our involve-
ment, without any intellectual act being specially directed toward them’ (tr)
(p. 14)30 The smallest elements of perception are, accordingly, not free atoms of
perception, but unities and multiplicities of unities.31 Forms of intuition are in
this sense already forms of thinking; they describe the immanent rationality of
an perception and confirm the gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim’s succinct
formulation: ‘Visual perception is visual thinking.’32
The conditions of the eye

Although Wölfflin transformed two of Kant’s categories of understanding into
forms of intuition, and so gave Fiedler’s ideas about the intellectual basis of all
perception a solid grounding, this is still not the primary interest he was pursu-
ing with his theory of forms of intuition. Wölfflin’s reflections partially overlap
with gestalt psychology, but this common ground was not his actual intention.
This rather comes into view when we notice that Wölfflin’s concept of forms of
intuition consists exclusively of polar oppositions. For Wölfflin, ‘the’ form of
intuition or ‘the’ form of observation do not exist, as he stated clearly –f urther
on in the glasses-metaphor: ‘There are no eyeglasses that work for everyone’
(Principles, p. 323). But there are limits to deformability, limits of possible
orders of visible. By ordering his forms of intuition as a spectrum, Wölfflin is
describing the possibilities between which every visible gestalt conceived by
living human beings can oscillate. This confirms Andreas Eckl’s interpretation
of formal aesthetics as well: We need to ‘understand Wölfflin’s principles as fur-
ther conceptual differentiation of this ‘transcendental aesthetics’. The conditions
of possibility for ‘forms of objects of the senses’ were grasped conceptually in
terms of a system, and in fact in such a way that due to the possibilities of vari-
ation, the polar boundaries of the maximum perceptual variations are desig-
nated’ (tr).33 So Wölfflin was in no way trying to turn the account of possible
forms of intuition into a Sisyphean task, but to rein it in through some key
data, recognizable a priori. ‘The poverty of language takes its revenge here. One
would need a thousand words to give every transition a name. It is always a
case of relative judgments: in comparison with one style, another may be called
painterly’ (p. 112).
Wölfflin’s relationship to Kant keeps becoming clearer: Their theories of forms

of intuition do not stand in opposition to one another; rather Wölfflin’s more
penetrating interest turned to a phenomenon of perception that had remained
outside Kant’s reflections: to the unique formal conditions that spatial observa-
tion could produce in the empirical life of a person. He was concerned with possi-
bilities of variation beyond those that had seemed invariable to Kant. The subject
matter of Wölfflin’s formal aesthetics is –as he said himself –the ‘states of the eye’
(ibid., p. 98). With the concept of conditions, an aspect of a perception is being
described that can change without the perception ceasing to be the perception of
a particular object. And it is exactly in this unintentional respect that perceptions
are at their most dynamic and individual. By now we can see that Wölfflin’s recov-
ery of Kant’s concept of forms of intuition had a purely methodological intention,
as was usually the case in neo-Kantianism. His intentions were his own, quite
detached from Kant’s. It is possible to reduce the difference between the concepts
of forms of intuition in Kant and Wölfflin to a formula: The conditions of Kantian
forms of spatial intuition are Wölfflin’s forms of intuition.
It is crucial that conditions can be of a bodily as well as mental sort. The
concept of condition undermines the body-mind opposition, and it is exactly
in this way that Wölfflin’s theory of forms of intuition acquires a specifically
neo-Kantian perspective that was never anticipated in Kant: When we consider
conditions of perception, we assume that physical and mental components par-
ticipate equally in the process of perception. It goes to the heart of Wölfflinian
aesthetics when Gottfried Boehm confirms: ‘So Wölfflin tried to grasp the
psycho-philological (anthropological) organization of human beings as a new a
priori.’34 Conditions include passing configurations as well as long-term disposi-
tions. Both can fundamentally affect and change the quality of a perception to
the same extent. Interests, moods, emotional states, illnesses (psychological or
physical), deliberate changes of mind or fixed traits of character, all contribute to
a perception being not just an perception of something, but always the percep-
tion of something under the conditions of a particular moment.35 Drugs have an
especially marked effect on the formal modality of perception. Aldous Huxley
gave a detailed description of perception on a mescaline high in the report that
has since become a classic namely The Doors of Perception of 1954.
But the situation need not be extreme for a perception to take on conditions,
rather a condition is always given, because there is no situation without a cor-
responding kind of state of mind. Visual perceptions change their internal con-
stitution continually in their interactive play with the perceivers’ surroundings.36
We know that the world looks different in dangerous situations than it does in
moments of contemplation. Some knowledge of a thing also makes that thing look
different, raising concern and lending emphasis. A connoisseur sees an object dif-
ferently from a layman. The same thing holds for cultural influences.37 It has long
been known in psychology and physiology that seeing involves acts of selection and
preference that change according to attitude, interests and affect. By 1887, with-
out knowing the results of modern research in perception, Fiedler had claimed,
‘Anyone who sees in perceptual representation just the intellectual mirror image of
something present to the senses should be taught about the endlessly complicated
psychophysical events that underpin ‘the design of a perception’ (tr).38
The formulation ‘the design of a perception’ in fact precisely defines the sub-
ject of Wölfflin’s aesthetics. Wölfflin is concerned with a logic of possibilities for
giving form to perceptions, and from a contemporary perspective that means, he
makes ‘the way free for the development of a medial theory of consciousness, one
that measures meaning not solely with reference to objects, but also and primar-
ily by the way they are given in conditions of consciousness’(tr).39 For Wölfflin,
‘the design of a perception’ comes about through what he metaphorically calls
the ‘condition of the eye’. This closes the circle from his concept of perception
to his understanding of style and image. For Wölfflin’s concept of style is itself
concerned in turn with nothing other than –Erich Rothacker saw this in his
review of Principles of Art History –‘understanding the condition of the image’
(tr) (p. 170). We can therefore say, just as the style of an image determines the
condition of its pictorial surface, so does the condition of the eye inform the style
of a perception. Both stylistic phenomena adhere to the same relational logic.
Interests of the philosophy of life

To really get at the difference between Wölfflin’s and Kant’s theories of obser-
vational forms, we would have to say, they are dealing with different subjects.
Wölfflin is concerned with an embodied subject, whose vision can never be
suitably described without reference to this embodiment. It is only on the basis
of this assumption that there would be any possibility of writing a history of
perception, of its life and metamorphoses.40 Wölfflin has this provocative objec-
tion to Kant: ‘Seeing involves the entire person’ (tr).41 Banalities come into it as
well: a transcendental subject cannot be short-sighted –a person certainly can
be. A transcendental subject cannot get drunk, but forms of intuition blur for
drunken human beings all the same. Wölfflin ties the idea of forms of intuition
introduced by Kant to an anti-Kantian understanding of the subject. Wölfflin
describes the conditions of possibility for perception by a living, embodied
human being, for whom perception depends on a unity made up of psychic and
organic components in equal measure.42 The theory of forms of intuition he is
developing conceives of a subject that rises above the division between body
and mind. This very turning away from the purely transcendental subject can be
placed in the tradition of the philosophy of life.
In his On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters (1795),
Friedrich Schiller was critical of Kant’s work for not having taken the inevita-
bility of individuality in aesthetic perception into account: ‘For man is not just
Person pure and simple, but Person situated in a particular Condition. Every
Condition, however, every determinate existence, has its origins in time; and
so man, as a phenomenal being, must also have a beginning, although the pure
Intelligence within him is eternal’ (Eleventh Letter, p. 75). Judgements of this
kind led to an increase in the number of thinkers to whom the transcendental
subject appears as it does to Schiller: More and more often one reads –even as
early as 1816 in Herbart’s A Text-Book in Psychology, for example –the claim
that ‘the attention must be directed toward changing conditions’ (p. 2). Overall,
the development is inversely proportional: As the conditionality of human
beings gains attention, appreciation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy stead-
ily declines. With Schopenhauer, this tendency is so far progressed that Kant’s
philosophy appears to him as a theory of ‘a winged Cherub without a body’
(p. 129).43 It is not surprising to find this cynical critique in Schopenhauer. His
thinking cuts deeply into nineteenth-century intellectual history. Along with
Friedrich Nietzsche, he is the central protagonist of a philosophy of life. He out-
lines an understanding of subjectivity best-known through its characterization
in Wilhelm Dilthey’s ‘Introduction to the Human Sciences’ (1883): ‘The veins
of the perceiving subject as constructed by Lock, Hume and Kant carry not real
blood, but the diluted juice of reason as a mere act of thinking’ (XVIII, p. 50).*
* Here we should note a typical discrepancy between two disciplines. In art history, Wölfflin is
simply presented as an art historian who was among the most famous students of Dilthey’s. In
‘Reinterpreting Wölfflin’, J. Hart outlines what was in fact a systematic relationship between Wölfflin
and Dilthey. In philosophy, hardly anyone notices that one of the most important art historians of the
twentieth century understood himself to be a student of Dilthey’s; Wölfflin never studied art history,
either; he studied philosophy. (So the situation resembles the case of Zimmermann and Riegl.) The
bare facts are as follows: Wölfflin studied philosophy in Berlin with Dilthey for two semesters from
1885, and in the winter semester of 1885–1886 joined the seminar ‘Logic and Epistemology Theory’.
This is where his first outlines of an aesthetic were developed and presented. Wölfflin’s doctorate
was planned with Dilthey, but actually took place with Johannes Volkelt in Munich for reasons that
are not entirely clear. Nor should we forget that Wölfflin was Dilthey’s colleague at the Humboldt
University in Berlin from 1901 until Dilthey’s death in 1911. The monograph Heinrich Wölfflin, by
M. Lurz, is helpful with details about the biography and the intellectual development in Wölfflin’s
work. See also the dissertation Heinrich Wölfflin: An Intellectual Biography, in this regard especially
the sections ‘Berlin and Dilthey’, pp. 73–90, and ‘Evolution of the Dissertation’, pp. 90–95.
One could almost take it for granted that from this standpoint, the special con-
ditionality of perception would have to be identified as the topic of a modified
transcendental philosophy. This is the case with Dilthey: ‘The sensually per-
ceptible also contains, even apart from the infinite variability of its contents,
differences in the manner in which the contents are present for me.’44 These
differences need to be described, and this in fact –as Wölfflin in turn could
learn from his teacher Dilthey –by means of a structural theory of ‘immanent
relationships’ and ‘internal relationships’ (tr) (ibid). Since it is only the quality
of an internal structure that is of interest in a formal consideration, it does not
matter which causes are responsible for the differences in the structures. This is
a basic idea: it is impossible to distinguish between important and unimportant
factors that affect conditionality. Everything that has an influence on a condi-
tion is equally important, just because it has an influence –even if the condition
is determined by someone’s culturally absolutely meaningless exhaustion, as
in Ludwig Klages elaborated in ‘Vom Wesen des Rhythmus’ [On the Nature of
Rhythm] of 1934. Once it has been acknowledged that there is no perception
without conditions, even exhaustion must be taken into account: ‘The appear-
ance of the table [. . .] changes constantly: it changes with the direction from
which I see it, with the distance, illumination, it even changes with the condi-
tions of my person, since I see it differently fully rested than I do at moments of
disabling exhaustion. It is never exactly the same for two people, because it is
unthinkable that two people would feel impressions that were identical in kind
(qualitatively). [. . .] So the world of appearances is in a continual state of change
and flight’ (tr) (p. 504f.).
In short, the illusion of the subject as a clear mirror is foreign to both move-
ments –that of the philosophy of life and that of formal aesthetics. But this
would not be especially noteworthy in itself if the formal aesthetics of Wölfflin
were not conceived as a neo-Kantian aesthetic. In fact one can see from Wölfflin
that the neo-Kantian aestheticians who attach themselves to the Critique of Pure
Reason clearly distance themselves from Kant in regard to their understanding
of the subject –and this from the very beginning.45 At least there are formula-
tions that call for an aesthetic in Wölfflin’s sense even in the founding documents
of neo-Kantianism, in Otto Liebmann’s (1840–1912) treatise Über den objektiven
Anblick [On the Objective View] (1869): ‘Now to our problem! How do we see
objects? Let us take a living, healthy human being –not a statue –as a given. Say
he has opened both eyes, and it is day’ (tr) (p. 67).46 Formal aesthetics is, from
a historical standpoint, a reaction and an answer to a question posed right at
the beginning of neo-Kantianism: ‘How do we see objects?’ ‘We’ are not those
transcendental subjects undoubtedly meant by ‘statues’, but human beings who

are alive and bound up with history: ‘The formal theory of art is the systematic
effort to historicize transcendental subjectivity’ (tr).47
Aesthesiology
The orientation of Wölfflin’s formal aesthetics towards the philosophy of life
means that his continuing development of the theory of forms of intuition can-
not be, as it is in Kant, part of a Critique of Pure Reason. If Wölfflin’s theory
of forms of intuition is part of a modified transcendental philosophy, then it
is also part of an ‘anthropology of the senses’ as the concept was introduced
in 1923 by the neo-Kantian Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985) in ‘Die Einheit der
Sinne’ [The Unity of the Senses]. Plessner’s goals correspond to Wölfflin’s, for
he, too, is working out a philosophy ‘that relies on Kant, but only for its way
putting questions, being opposed to Kantian philosophy in its inclinations and
results’ (tr) (p. 18) He calls this philosophy ‘aesthesiology’. With the terminol-
ogy, he makes a reasonable suggestion for a way the connection between logic
and aesthetics sought in Herbartianism might be expressed in language. But he
furthermore drew a clear picture of the way aesthesiological descriptions of per-
ceptions would have to look: in aesthesiology, immanent structures of observa-
tion are interpreted as ‘the fusion of several kinds of perceptions and several
kinds of comprehension’ (tr) (ibid., p. 162). This actually offers a possibility of
visually describing the influence of conditionality on perception. To say it with
Wölfflin’s glasses-metaphor: we wear not just one pair of glasses, but in fact sev-
eral. Conditionality is a formation that works as if there were additional filters
even before the Kantian spatial-glasses, filters that then, consolidated, determine
the structures of perception.
With this image of multiple glasses we gain access to an explanatory model
that turns up again in various places among Wölfflin’s followers. The Finnish-
German philosopher Hermann Friedmann, acknowledged by Plessner alone in
the end, but entirely forgotten today, raises the question in this context in Die Welt
der Formen [The World of Forms] of 1925, ‘whether we might still discover spe-
cific a priori organized relationships in the world of sensibilities itself, to which
transcendental philosophy has no far not extended’ (tr) (p. 39).48 With these
additional a priori organized relationships Friedmann is thinking, in sympathy
with Wölfflin, of the art historical principles. He considers ‘progress in transcen-
dental philosophy to be possible’ (tr) (ibid., p. 40), if the art historical principles
are always interpreted as the description of a ‘subform’ of the ‘main form’ space
(ibid., p. 41).* For the subforms, too, that is, the stylizations embedded in every
perception, have an a priori character. But it is of a kind different from the one to
which Kant laid claim. It namely concerns the fact that an immanent stylization
can change, but cannot disappear. Here we can see that in formal aesthetics, the
ephemeral, in its ephemerality becomes a kind of fundamentum inconcussum.
Seen as a whole, the changeability of human beings, a condition of living, is an
unchangeable certainty. To put it in another way, the idea goes: the subforms of
perception are as inevitable as the main forms; as soon as one thing is seen next
to another, this happens in an aesthetically mediated form. For Friedmann, every
effort that tries to grasp the ‘main form’ space without a specific subform –on
its own without conditions, so to speak –is doomed to failure. Any project of
describing the main forms independently ends with ‘the main forms becoming so
empty, that they finally are not forms any more’ (tr) (ibid., p. 41). In short, there
is no such thing as a form of spatial perception in itself. Even a form of spatial
observation appears only in particular and historical circumstances.
The emancipation of purposeless perception

From the perspectives presented here, the mistrust with which transcendental
aesthetics is met in formal aesthetics is understandable. From the standpoint
of formal aesthetics, Kant’s theory appears to be an attempt, doomed to failure,
to describe human spatial perception without describing a particular phenom-
enological style. All Kant himself says about the kind of infrastructure in his
form of spatial intuition is, ‘All things are next to one another in space’ (CPR,
B43, p. 177). That is undoubtedly correct, but also says very little, in light of the
many aesthetic possibilities known from images about ways things can be near
one another in space. Kant’s reflections remain unsatisfying in two respects. On
the one hand there are –as Plessner says –‘spaces in every style’ (tr),49 while
on the other, Kant’s descriptions of space are hardly neutral with respect to the
stylistic possibilities for things being near one another in space. A very clear and
firm conception of the ‘how’ of being close to one other of is implicit in Kant. It
appears obvious to Kant that things-being-near-one-another means a discrete
and clear things-being-near-one-another.50 Kant’s understanding of space as a
form of intuition mediates the visible as a representation in which the transitions
are sharply delineated, there are many parts, and each place is clear and distinct.
* The concept of ‘subform’ is in accord with ideas developed above in connection with the use of
Frege’s distinction between sense and reference in images, that style can be understood as a second
intensional differentiation.
Even an unclear and blurred object would appear in this form as clear and not
blurred, because it could be clearly recognized as a blurred object; this is familiar
from a sharply focussed photograph of a diffuse cloud. The very ambiguities that
would prevent such recognition are not to be found in Kant’s forms of intui-
tion. It resembles a system of mathematical coordinates. There is nothing about
fuzzy horizons, essential for human observation; there is no sharp focus or any
blurriness in the distance. The infrastructure has no weighting or particularity.
Each point is of equal value in a grid structure. Had Kant wanted to represent his
understanding of the form of intuition, Dürer’s images would have been helpful
to him.
Kant’s unannounced style of his forms of intuition is grounded in the purpose
he expects perception to serve: It must make everyday life possible, and this
includes scientific investigation of the world. What Wölfflin saw applies to Kant
as well: ‘The great opposition between linear and painterly styles corresponds
to a fundamentally different interest in the world’ (p. 109) –and Kant’s inter-
est is clear. He sets out to explain the calculability of the natural world and not
to give a phenomenological description of an emancipated observation. This is
why each point in the space of his form of perception has to be a clear point on a
screen. Stefan Majetschak examines this detail in Kant closely in his essay ‘Welt
als Begriff und Welt als Kunst’ [World as Concept and World as Art]. Kant’s
reflections in transcendental aesthetics do not address ‘perception as percep-
tion, but arrange the given “to serve judgement” ’ (tr) (p. 279). Kant’s approach
does not permit a transition from one part to another to draw from an inex-
act, impressionistic transitional realm, from this-as-well-as-that. Form needs to
inhibit this, and it does so by means of its implicit style: ‘One who looks scientifi-
cally at a representation of perception will not reach clarity about its perceptible
condition to the extent that he transforms everything into a concept, and from
the point where he begins the examination, he is no longer dealing with the rep-
resentation of perception, but with the concept of it’ (tr).51
Although Kant applies the concept ‘Anschauung’ to all sense perception –
hence, tactile and acoustic as well –and so gives a first impression of addressing
all sense perceptions as visual perceptions, the situation is closer to the reverse.
A stylistic interpretation of his understandings of perception makes it clear that
Kant treats the visual world as a tactile world: ‘The activity of seeing follows a
model of touching that makes use of a virtual stick’ (tr).52 Here, the tradition of
Cartesianism lives on, as the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty
came to understand in his study ‘The Eye and the Mind’ of 1961: ‘The Cartesian
concept of vision is modelled after the sense of touch’ (p. 170). This is not
remarkable: For knowledge of a form that can be calculated comes only through

the sense of touch.** But this technically useful way of looking at of the visible
world is constructed as well.*** Obviously it is not a disadvantage from a scien-
tific standpoint, since to decide the success of actions and techniques, one need
not know whether the visible world has ever been seen by a human being as it is
projected in the construction. If the world is to be calculated mathematically, it
is not –nor should it be –seen bodily, but is rather constructed in a style. This
constructed quality and with it the artificiality of technically serviceable vision
only becomes noticeable as such when other styles of visibility, from art, assert
their right to show the world. For a self-reflection on one’s own style –as Adolf
Hildebrand says –‘will never be carried out and followed through in natural sci-
ence, because singling such a thing out only has meaning for artistic activity’.53
Once the immanent style of scientific vision has been reflected aestheti-
cally, the status of the sort of undertaking Kant imagined in the Critique of
Pure Reason changes, in fact in a way that Ernst Cassirer pinpointed with all
the clarity one could wish in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms [1923]: ‘Thus
the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture’ (p. 80). The following
idea is a cornerstone of neo-Kantianism: Once we recognize that a scientifi-
cally useful and calculable way of seeing is the way people see under particular,
certainly special, but still not immutable conditions, it becomes necessary to
expand the structure of transcendental philosophy: ‘Along with the pure func-
tion of cognition we must seek to understand the function of linguistic think-
ing, the function of mythical and religious thinking, and the function of artistic
perception, in such a way as to disclose how in all of them there is attained an
entirely determinate formation, not exactly of the world, but rather making
for the world, for an objective, meaningful context and an objective unity that
can be apprehended as such. [. . .] As long as philosophical thought limits itself
to analysis of pure cognition, the naïve-realistic view of the world cannot be
wholly discredited’ (ibid., pp. 79–80).
** An idea that can in turn be found analysed with particular clarity in Konrad Fiedler: ‘The more
precise we want our knowledge to be, however, the less we rely on our sense of vision, and the more
we rely on the sense of touch; and when we speak of the form of an object in the truest sense, we
are no longer speaking about the participation of vision at all, but rather referring to the tangible,
measureable, calculable form. This becomes our standard for the accuracy of vision, and we ask our-
selves whether we see the form as it behaves in tactile, graspable reality; should this be the case, we
are convinced that we have an accurate and complete visual representation of the form of the object’
(tr) (‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’ [The Origin of Artistic Activity], p. 148.
*** Hegel had already formulated this objection to Kant in the Phenomenology of Spirit, 1977
[1807]: ‘The actual is not something spatial, as it is regarded in mathematics; with non-actual
things like the objects of mathematics, neither concrete sense-intuition nor philosophy has the
least concern’ (p. 26).
It is as if he had been familiar with these sentences, so definitely is Wölfflin’s

formal aesthetics a continuation of formal aesthetics after the loss of scientific
ordering structures’ priority –with one subtle difference: Instead of describing
structures in which the world is seen to be calculated, formal aesthetics describes
structures in which the world can be seen. It is interested less in realities than in
possibilities: ‘Just as one can make out all kinds of words in the tolling of bells,
so the visual world can be laid out in a number of different ways, and no one
can say that one of them is truer than the others’ (p. 111).54 For Wölfflin as for
Cassirer, modes of perception beyond pragmatic demands are of equal value in
principle: ‘A purely optical perception of the world is one possibility, but nothing
more’ (p. 111). If perception frees itself from all services and purposes, then the
criterion for better or worse ways of seeing disappears, then the role of evalua-
tion and use value of ways of seeing is taken over by purely formal work on its
immanent logic. This freedom is not the least of what sustains art: something is
shown in order to show that this, too, is a way of showing.
4
From the Way of Seeing to Visibility:

Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895)
4.1 The paradigms of formal aesthetics
Preliminary remarks
Formal aesthetics, and this applies to all its versions, is concerned per definitionem
exclusively with the way an aesthetic object is made. This kind of aesthetic reflection
can, however, have diverse motivations and be bound up with very different goals.
The impulses and expectations that lead someone to contend that the content of an
image is unimportant have changed several times in the history of formal aesthet-
ics, not continuously, but in phases of shared interests and underlying perspectives.
It is therefore appropriate to identify paradigms for the formal consideration of the
image. The aesthetic writing of the Saxon philosopher Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895)
achieves this in a way that remains exemplary today. Anyone wishing to explain the
meaning of a formal pictorial observation should take his work as a guide. Fiedler
differs from both the early Herbartians and the theoreticians of art historical princi-
ples in that he does not establish any concrete categories or legitimate rules of form.
Fiedler’s reflections are rather at a meta-level. He wants to illuminate the basis, the
limits, and perspectives of the formal approach. There is, finally, a question guiding
his reflections that asserts itself even now in regard to ordinary engagement with
mass media, especially television images: Why do people look at images even if
their contents are considered unimportant or even banal?
By stating the inquiry in this way, it becomes clear that for Fiedler, the formal
observation of an aesthetic object is by no means obvious, but rather urgently
needs justification. If you look at an image in order to learn something about the
way an object looks, you will hardly need any further justification for such an
encounter with the image. Images long since established themselves as a medium
that is usually faster and more precise than any other medium at giving informa-
tion about objective matters of fact: A brief look at an image says more than a
thousand words. But it is exactly this obvious use of images that formal observa-
tion disables, deliberately rendering it meaningless. So there must be some other
impetus that explains how pictorial observation can elevate the infrastructure
of the pictorial surface to the sole concern of an aesthetic: how can an aesthetic
treat the surface of an image as an absolute, on what grounds is it permissible?
At various places in his work, Fiedler discusses three possible answers to this
question. By fitting these places together, we find three fundamental beliefs and
two changes in belief, that is, the work undertakes two paradigm changes in the
development of formal aesthetics.
From beauty to a way of seeing

The first paradigm of formal aesthetic can be quickly defined. Herbart and
Zimmermann turn to the surface structure of aesthetic works –as we saw here in
Chapter 1 –because they believe that ‘the elements of beauty can only be found in
form and relationships’ (tr).1 Fiedler formulates Zimmermann’s concerns accord-
ingly. For him, this kind of formal aesthetic stands for a paradigm of beauty. Formal
analysis serves the investigation of beauty. The immanent relations in a work are
meant to support an objective concept of beauty. The content of an image may be
disregarded, because it makes no difference to the beauty or ugliness of the image.
This kind of formal aesthetics is often rightly considered aestheticism.
The first paradigm change in the logic of formal aesthetics’ internal develop-
ment –traced here in Chapters 2 and 3 –can be stated as follows: Instead of iden-
tifying form with beauty, it equates form with content; so for formal aesthetics,
beautiful form turns into symbolic form. This fundamentally new orientation
is described in Fiedler’s papers. In the history of formal aesthetics, form never
ceases to be an absolute; all that changes is the phenomena bound up with this
form-made-absolute. This is the reason Fiedler is able to simultaneously defend
and criticize Zimmermann’s relational approach: The beginnings of formalism
‘seem to rest on a rather one-sided conception of aesthetic pleasure [. . .] which
does not recognize that the content as well as the form has an aesthetic value [. . .]
Nevertheless’, Fiedler continues, ‘one feels drawn to the formal aestheticians in
one respect. [. . .] The essential artistic value of the form consists of the insight
conveyed and brought to expression through the form. The real artistic content
of the artwork therefore lies in the form’ (tr) (ibid., pp. 22 and 23).
From the Way of Seeing to Visibility 109
To regard the form as the actual content –that is the central theme of Fiedler’s
first book, On Judging Works of Art, which appeared in 1876. In this essay he
develops a typical neo-Kantian perspective for formal aesthetics: ‘In a work of
art the Gestalt-forming activity finds its way to an externalized completion.
The substance of such a work is nothing else than the Gestalt-formation itself ’
(p. 56). Later philosophers of art historical principles are merely fleshing this
idea out in the end. They are representing the paradigms of symbolic form that
Fiedler introduced to formal aesthetics.
Art historical principles are not grounded in the same way, but are grounded
to the same extent on an understanding of symbolic form.2 For Riegl, form is by
no means simply aesthetic surface decoration that may be beautiful or ugly, but
rather the symbolic expression of a unique and historical Kunstwollen.3 This was
the case for Wölfflin as well: Form as such is a depiction of forms of intuition
and modalities of perception. Clearly Riegl and Wölfflin differ in regard to their
views of what pictorial form as form exemplifies –Wölfflin replaces Kunstwollen
with forms of intuition; yet this difference plays itself out on shared ground,
for formal aesthetics does not provide grounds for opposing to semiotic under-
standing of the image in either case. Emil Utitz confirmed this as well in an essay
of 1929 that remains pivotal today, ‘Über Grundbegriffe der Kunstwissenschaft’
[On the Principles of Art History]: The principles pursue a ‘systematic unifica-
tion of meaning and form. [. . .] art history becomes intellectual history, without
abandoning the analysis of form in any way; for this intellectuality is revealed
only in forms’ (tr) (p. 42f.).4
Wölfflin’s formal analyses of art typify and represent the paradigm of sym-
bolic form to the extent that they provide an extremely detailed elaboration of
neo-Kantian perspectivist thought that can hardly be found anywhere else. His
aesthetic seems to make an idea described by Fiedler concrete, to interpret pic-
torial form as a cognitive instrument. The content of symbolic form is clear to
Wölfflin: perspectives and viewpoints; he himself speak in the terminology of the
philosophy of life, of the ‘conditions of the eye’. In this way Utitz’s vague concept
of ‘intellectuality’ is made concrete and specific in the neo-Kantian sense. This is
just one possibility, however. There is undoubtedly a plethora of non-objective
data that could be represented in the form of an image. The expression of moods,
feelings and emotions occurs largely in the form of images. But Wölfflin shaped
the paradigm of symbolic form exclusively into a theory of ways of seeing. The
presupposition of his formal aesthetic states that the image refers, by means of
its pictorial form, to modalities of perception. The paradigm of symbolic form,
too, is a paradigm of a way of seeing.
With the shift from a paradigm of beauty to a paradigm of a way of seeing,

fine art becomes cognitive art, and formal aesthetics enters into the tradition of
the founder of aesthetics Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.5 This was the way to
refute the widespread view that formal consideration of an image can deliver no
recognition of content beyond what is immanent in the image. Wölfflin’s aes-
thetic yields exemplary analyses of solely the form of work, but nevertheless
opens a perspective beyond what is strictly immanent in the work, for form as
form contains –as Max Bense would put it –‘Formmitteilung’ [communication
through form] (tr).6 In the opposition frequently constructed between formal
and semiotic understandings of the image, especially in recent language analytic
philosophy, no account is taken of a level of meaning available to the image which
coincides with the image’s form. For the paradigm of symbolic form, it is neces-
sary to describe, in addition to the objective meaning, another meaning that one
can only get by looking at the image formally. It takes just one example to show
that the paradigm of a way of seeing is taken for granted in viewing images more
often than one would immediately assume. That form becomes content, that an
image shows how it shows, is by no means a trait specific to works of art.
The depiction of a way of seeing

In a magazine article about the dangers of visual impairment in road traffic, there
is an illustration by Reinhard Schmid that is reproduced in this book as Figure 4.
We are dealing with an image of great formal complexity. In the foreground,
spanning the whole horizontal axis, is a special pair of glasses that opticians use
for refractions, that is, to determine the degree of short-or far-sightedness. In the
upper right we see a hand drawing a glass lens out these glasses’ special holder.
Behind the glasses we see a street scene with two rows of cars seen from the back.
What is significant about this image is not the depicted objects at all; these
are banal. The photograph is notable because it is a good example of a type of
image in which however completely we can conceptually grasp and count up
the depicted things, we still cannot grasp the image’s actual content. For the
intended meaning of this illustration apparently lies at a non-objective level. The
image is not primarily about the depiction of objects, but about the depiction
of two different ways of seeing: About the way a near-sighted person sees things
without glasses on the one hand, and about the way he sees them with glasses
on the other. The image is about the physiologically conditioned modalities of
visual perception. The whole street scene is reproduced in a fuzziness that cor-
responds to a near-sighted person’s vision. The only clear, ‘normal’ view comes
through the left lens of the glasses. The glasses’ frame itself is reproduced in high
definition as well, for it is located so far in the foreground that the distortions of
near-sightedness are not yet noticeable.
This image is helpful for the present inquiry inasmuch as we can readily see
from it how an image can be a sign with two fundamentally different mean-
ings: In different ways, but to the same extent, the photograph refers to automo-
biles and to one way of seeing, namely near-sightedness. So we can say that the
image has both an objective and a non-objective meaning: It depicts things, on
the one hand, and near-sighted vision on the other.
The two meanings of an image, the objective one and the non-objective
one, may be complementary, but are logically completely independent of one
another. In this example, there is an associative relationship: the objective refrac-
tion glasses are appropriate for the visual fault of near-sightedness. But in prin-
ciple, a depicted object in an image that refers to a way of seeing merely stands
for objects as such. It is appropriate to the content of the article that a street
scene is depicted. But any other object could have been shown to depict near-
sightedness. For the crucial thing is that the choice of particular objects does
not affect the depiction of ways of seeing. Rather it is the quality of the imma-
nent pictorial relations in the depiction of these objects, that is, the form in the
Herbartian sense. In this sense, the pictorial example actually consists of two
images: the depiction of near-sightedness by means of fuzzy transitions in the
parts of the form, and the round image in a rectangular image, delineated by the
frame of the glasses, that normal vision depicts with exact transitions. The image
was made by montaging three photographs: the glasses, the street scene ‘sharp‘,
and the street scene ‘fuzzy’ were photographed separately and then collaged,
supporting the idea that in this image, we are dealing with several images in one.
The logical purpose of this pictorial example should be clear: a purely for-
mal observation can reveal a non-objective pictorial content. Although a viewer
may be concerned solely with the quality of the immanent pictorial relations,
he reads a symbol all the same and gains an insight into a near-sighted person’s
way of seeing. One could also say: The illustration shows why Wölfflin intro-
duced works of visual art. Neo-Kantian perspectivism in aesthetics represents
an attempt to make formal and cognitive interests converge. This is achieved by
applying the idea that the infrastructure of an image can correspond to the infra-
structure of a perception even for works of visual art. Art takes on a special cog-
nitive obligation. In the end, the paradigm of the way of seeing carries over into
art an idea that is elsewhere deemed obvious without much discussion. For the
paradigm of the way of seeing turns works of art into unintended illustrations
for an unwritten book on the optics or psychology of rare modulations in per-

ception or even of eye diseases. So behind this paradigm lies an understanding
that is also found in recent phenomenology, that an artist’s studio is nothing
other than a ‘kind of vision laboratory’ (tr).7 One could also say: The artist is
understood as a psychologist of perception by other means.
In the context of perception psychology, images are often produced and used
for observational cognition on the grounds of their non-objective level of mean-
ing.8 The phenomenon of so-called adaptive filtering is discussed exclusively
using images with this cognitive function. With this background, one can say
that for neo-Kantians, art appears as the depiction of adaptive filters, that is,
of the interpretational achievements inherent in visual processes –and in fact
very much as the depiction of filters that are currently being rediscovered in
perceptual psychology. In the relevant research of Ingo Rentschler, ‘non-linear’
and ‘linear filter functions’ again assume a key role in the internal structure of
perception, giving Wölfflin’s theory a late confirmation. The concept of a filter is
increasingly replacing Wölfflin’s neo-Kantian concept of the form of intuition,
just as, conversely, attempts are made to reconstruct formal stylizations in art
through combinations of filters.9
The invention of ways of seeing

In this context we should be aware that it is exceptionally rare for the depiction
of a mode of perception that can be explained psychologically or physiologi-
cally to be recognized as an artistic achievement. On the contrary, we are more
likely to consider it an instance of good illustration –as in the example given
above.* ‘Art’, on the other hand, as Martin Seel emphasizes, ‘invents depictions
* Note further, however, that the vision of a near-sighted person is not so banal as it might appear at
first ‘glance’. The work of Gerhard Richter in particular demonstrates the artistic possibilities avail-
able in blurred vision. In his early novel King, Queen, Knave (1928), Vladimir Nabokov examined
vision under conditions of near-sightedness in detail, by making his main character Franz step on his
glasses and then sending him on a journey through Berlin: ‘At last Franz overcame all the blotches
and banks of fog, located his hat, recoiled from the embrace of the clowning mirror and made for the
door. Only his face remained bare. Having negotiated the stairs, where an angel was singing as she
polished the banisters, he showed the desk clerk the address on the priceless card and was told what
bus to take and where to wait for it. He hesitated for a moment, tempted by the magic and majestic
possibility of a taxi. He rejected it not only because of the cost but because his potential employer
might take him for a spendthrift if he arrived in state. Once in the street he was engulfed in streaming
radiance. Outlines did not exist, colors had no substance. Like a woman’s wispy dress that has slipped
off its hanger, the city shimmered and fell in fantastic folds, not held up by anything, a discarnate
iridescence limply suspended in the azure autumnal air. Beyond the nacreous desert of the square,
across which a car sped now and then with a new metropolitan trumpeting, great pink edifices
loomed, and suddenly a sunbeam, a gleam of glass, would stab him painfully in the pupil’ (p. 53f.).
of ways of seeing the world’ (tr).10 This rightly reminds us that the infrastructure
of a work does not need to be the representation of a reality seen with particu-
lar eyes. The infrastructure can result from trying to construct the depiction of
something independently of seeing of that thing. It would be completely beside
the point, for example, to verify that Giotto’s images really reproduce the way
he or someone else saw the world. Still, this argument keeps reappearing: The
special, somewhat painterly sfumato in the Leonardo’s images is attributed to
the Renaissance painter’s near-sightedness; El Greco’s vertically attenuated style
is actually explained through astigmatism with some frequency, and Monet’s
late work is interpreted as the manifestation of a particular form of cataract.11
But although there will never be any means of monitoring the structural cor-
respondence between eye and image that is being asserted here, the absence of
any such monitoring unimportant. The images of Giotto, Leonardo, El Greco or
Monet do not show how they, as historically unique people, saw the world, but
rather inform us about how something can be seen.12
Yet images that reproduce no specific, experienced vision can, conversely,
have an effect on vision. When we are inquiring into the possibilities of making
something visible by means of an image, we are, finally, concerned not only to
compile representations of ways of seeing, but further with constructing and
isolating visibility. This matches one of Fiedler’s a central ideas in his text ‘Über
den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’ [On the Origin of Artistic Activity]
of 1887. The responsibilities of art that go beyond illustration include ‘the devel-
opment and formulation of designs in which reality is represented exclusively to
the degree it can be a visible reality’ (p. 153) –and there is, according to Fiedler,
an acute ‘artistic need’ for this: ‘Anyone who really looks inside himself for it can
discover for himself how inexact, incomplete, meagre the visibility is of which
we are possessed’ (tr) (p. 155). In projecting a pure visibility, art takes on a tran-
scendental function: It simulates schematic planes that make it possible to see
an object. The form of an image becomes a scheme of perception by means of its
relations. No one can get along without these planes that are drawn, for Fiedler,
by artists: ‘Even the least of us must produce his world according to its visible
form.’ (tr).13
It is almost a commonplace when Schopenhauer says: ‘The artist lets us see
the world through his eyes’14 –but what does it mean? Just as an architectural
drawing, the objective side of a correspondence, can give a sense that the pro-
jected structure will built exactly as it is drawn, projected visibilities can, with
the immanent relations of their infrastructure, serve as ‘directions for seeing’,15
as Wilhelm Dilthey aptly puts it, as blueprints for conditions that –as Fiedler
puts it –‘transform the mirror image of the world in people’s heads’ (tr).16 So
art takes on the task of making and teaching new ways of seeing: ‘All progress
consists of expanding knowledge. Applied to the visual arts, progress consists of
depicting a new, inventive understanding of nature’ (tr) (ibid.).
So it would be a complete misunderstanding of Fiedler’s and Wölfflin’s medial
theory of perception to interpret it as an ontological statement about the way
perceptions exist. The stuff of perception is not known, and there is no intention
of introducing an entity into consciousness when perceptions are explicated as
a visual medium. Formal aesthetics’ pictorial concept is meant only as a tool
for grasping something that cannot be described intentionally because it is the
condition of intentionality. By means of visible immanent relations in images,
people gain access to the invisible conditions of seeing. Formal aesthetics is try-
ing, as Fiedler put it, ‘to gain an insight into the condition in which our visible
world finds itself ’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 154).17 The infrastructure of an image gives
an insight into the syntax of seeing, into the human condition: ‘Someone with
van Gogh’s images in mind‘, as Ferdinand Fellmann describes this phenomenon,
‘will see the landscapes of Provence differently from someone who does not have
this model. He will discover qualities in the landscape that make themselves
available to him only because they have been seen as an image (“as painted”). In
this sense even objective perceptions are engaged and suffused with the images
that constitute the independent dimension of meaning in conditioned con-
sciousness’ (tr).18
If we take it into account that there are aesthetic structural qualities even in
visual perceptions, then the concept of an image will always be an irreplace-
able category in theories of consciousness and of perception.19 In recent phe-
nomenology, this necessity has been repeatedly emphasized: ‘Typical stylistic
structures are already inscribed in our experiential world.’20 Only in images
can we see the stylistic structures that comprise the immaterial pictorial qual-
ity of perception, and exactly because of this pictorial quality, perception can-
not be taken to be a passive copy. It is ‘the realization that there is a level of
meaning in consciousness that coincides not with objects, but with forms of
representation’ (tr).21 But these phenomenological arguments for compara-
bility between image and eye seem to have been overlooked from the lan-
guage analytic side. When the objection is raised that it is unnecessary to treat
human perceptions as images,22 we need to insist on knowing exactly which
phenomenon is to be explained with reference to a pictorial analogy. What is
at stake in defending of the concept of the image as an irreplaceable category
for phenomena of consciousness is not –as the critics usually assert –about
why a perception is always an intentional representation of something, but

only about the conditional structural qualities of this representation that
exists independently of its intentionality. In short, it is not about whether it
is possible to explain how people can make things circle about in their minds
without assuming mental images, but whether it is possible to understand
how something can be visible to a person in different ways, depending on
conditions, without resorting to images –the former may be possible, the
latter must be doubted. Only an image can show what it means to have an
experience in the medium of human senses.
From a way of seeing to pure visibility

Taking the cognitive background of Wölfflin’s formal aesthetics into account, it
becomes clear that for him the formal consideration of an image does not lead to
any overcoming of the content, but in fact only to a change of object. Wölfflin is
researching art historical works out of an interest in content using formal meth-
ods. The detailed investigations of Norbert Schmitz confirm it: ‘With this, then,
the object of the image was no longer nature as something independent of that
image, but our human perception’ (tr).23 Now if the goal of formal aesthetics is,
as it claims, to leave the content of an image aside and to overpower it, and if
in addition the form is, with the paradigm of the way of seeing, elevated to the
actual content of the image, then the paradigm of the way of seeing cannot pos-
sibly be the conclusion of the internal logic of formal aesthetics, but only a first
step in the direction of a still more radical victory over content –even over the
subjective conditions of the eyes.
Wölfflin’s aesthetics fleshes out an insight typical of Fielder, that the form of
a work of art is its own content –with Fiedler this is not the last word, however.
Fiedler takes the insight into form as symbolizing condition as a kind of inter-
mediate result in his reflections, which he himself did not work out in nearly
so extensive and detailed a way as Wölfflin did. We do not do justice to Konrad
Fiedler’s contribution to the development of a purely formal understanding of
the image if we read him solely as the philosopher who described the identity
of formal and cognitive interests in art, and so the paradigm of an aesthetics of
ways of seeing. There is no doubt that he furnished the critical antecedents on
which Wölfflin’s theory of forms of intuition is built, but in his later major work
in aesthetics, ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’ [On the Origin
of Artistic Activity] of 1887, the early paradigm shift from beauty to way of see-
ing is just the first step in the logical internal development of formal aesthetics,
followed as compellingly by a second conquest. This occurs with the concept

of visibility –which is central to this text, in fact only to this text. After start-
ing his argument by recounting afresh his view of art as perceptible cognition,
two final chapters outline a perspective, so far largely neglected, that goes much
further towards a purely formal understanding of the image: The main idea goes
thus: from a way of seeing to pure visibility.
Fiedler begins his account of this very modern perspective by stepping back
in the same way from both the relevance of sensual beauty and from perceptible
cognition for works of art: ‘Almost all the claims that tend to be made for any art
practice can be aligned, if in a somewhat indefinite way, under one of two head-
ings: the claim is either that the art has a sensual value or that it has a reference
value’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 189). This statement addresses the first two paradigms
of formal aesthetics: Herbart and Zimmermann clearly claim that art should be
perceived to be beautiful, and Wölfflin clearly demands reference, that is, a rela-
tionship of the pictorial form to the perception. Fiedler himself will not accept,
after all, that it is essential for images to be demonstrably beautiful or meaning-
ful, as they often are, or particularly why works of visual art should or even must
be subservient to these functions. His scepticism rests on the view: ‘These do
not require such complicated activities as those that give rise to artistic achieve-
ments’ (tr) (ibid.). For beauty, the statement is quickly appreciated, because there
are two reasons why it is not surprising to a contemporary reader, in the context
of this discussion, that the relevance of beauty to works of art is not accepted.
First, the view had already been attributed to Fiedler many times,24 and second,
at the end of the nineteenth century, since the appearance of Karl Rosenkranz’s
Ästhetik des Hässlichen [The Aesthetics of Ugliness] (1853), art and art theory
was turning away from an orientation towards beauty with increasing frequency.
Yet for Fiedler to also assert a liberation of visible form from cognitive tasks
seems in nearly diametrical opposition to the usual understanding of Fiedler,
if we understand him primarily as a neo-Kantian theoretician who interprets
art as a cognitive achievement complementary to science. But his formulations
speak for themselves: ‘Only when we have come to be so at ease with art can
we acknowledge an indebtedness to it that is actually completely different from
anything sought by our scientific [sic!], desiring, aesthetically sensitive nature’
(tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 218).
Fiedler opposes all art’s obligations, including the obligation to contribute
to that which is ‘sought by our scientific . . . nature’. An understanding of art as
autonomous is incompatible with reducing art to an instrument for advancing
the culture of seeing. Reducing art to cultural progress is incompatible with an
understanding of art as autonomous. ‘Here, at the end of our research, we realize

just the opposite, that because we have tried to clear the haze within us that had
been hiding the secret meaning of artistic activity, we must now also free our-
selves from the prejudice that the value of this activity is to be sought in effects
that are beneficial in completely different realms of existence’(tr) (ibid.). We can
also say that perspectivism is too narrow a perspective for the many possible
forms of an image. It does not necessarily matter to every image how the percep-
tual apparatus functions, which way of seeing is depicted with the infrastructure,
or how seeing can be taught and learnt. What neo-Kantianism is doing, rather,
is issuing a normative prescription: to compel art to conform to ways of seeing,
perspectives, forms of presentation, styles, modalities of perception –or how-
ever one wants to understand form interpreted as content.
In terms of formal aesthetics’ historical development, this means to demand
perceptible knowledge from art is as normative as it is to demand beauty. Just as
we may object that Zimmermann thought of art only as beautiful art, we may
object that Wölfflin refers to pictorial form only as a depiction of forms of intui-
tion. To the same extent, if not in the same way, art is made to serve a purpose
in both cases: Immanent relations have to satisfy requirements, first, for beauty,
and then for the history of vision. But for Fiedler both the feeling an image elicits
and the knowledge an image displays are only given in the image in a mediated
sense, hence through associated interests and interpretations. This means, con-
cretely: Only through perspectivist thought in neo-Kantianism or, in contem-
porary terms, the phenomenological orientation to perception, does any image
become a representation of an order of the visible. It is not immediately visible; it
is not the most striking feature of an encounter with an image. In Fiedler’s view,
these interpretations therefore do not do justice to the most important princi-
ple of a purely formal consideration of an image, which tries to get beyond any
mediation: ‘What we gain indirectly by way of heightened sensation from this
world of constructs is, as we know, a secondary gain, in fact also brought to life
through artistic work, but not to be regarded as the crucial powers there, where
the work of image-making appears undisguised’ (tr) (ibid., p. 207).
The structures of the argument reappear in historical perspective as
well: Fiedler is arguing here against epistemological formalism, for which images
are the reflections of perspectives, using the same argument that Wölfflin’s neo-
Kantian formalism uses against idealistic aesthetics of content. Wölfflin empha-
sizes any number of times that the objective content of an image is a trivial side
issue as far as the depiction of the eye’s conditions is concerned. Yet Fiedler –
despite working historically earlier than Wölfflin –took the next step leading
logically beyond Wölfflin: That is, from a formal standpoint, it is equally beside

the point for an image to depict a way of seeing through its immanent relations
as it is for the form of the image to depict an object. Both are forms of refer-
ence: the one refers to a subjective internal condition and the other to objective,
external things.
An exact description of the neo-Kantian understanding of form raises the
idea of a doubled formalization: the form of image need not represent either
a way of seeing objects or the ways subjects see. That the depicted object is
unimportant to the formal consideration of images forms the basis for all for-
mal aesthetics that are concerned solely with pictorial syntax in the Herbartian
sense. But the possibility that the conditionality shown in an image can also be
declared unimportant led Fiedler, who is often too closely aligned with neo-
Kantianism, to overcome neo-Kantian perspectivism. Of course this does not
mean that the viewer of the image, that is, the recipient, disappears. Fiedler does
not want to even engage with the metaphysical-ontological question of whether
there can be a pictorial existence without an interpreting pictorial conscious-
ness: ‘We rightly affirm that it is only with our own existence that that is given
which we are able to say is present. But as we have seen, this does not say very
much’ (tr) (ibid., p. 185). Fiedler wants a formalization that considers the subjec-
tivity and conditionality, the will-to-art and to form that flow into a representa-
tion to be formally unimportant. The surface of an image can be as independent
of the eye’s perceptual organization as it is of objects, and this just when the
conditions that are becoming visible, whose inner relational logic Wölfflin was
able to expose, is itself once again recognized as a kind of substance and content.
The relational logic of the image cannot be autonomous for Wölfflin because it
is representationally related to the syntax of perception,25 because it formalizes
by merely exchanging the content. Fiedler conversely developed a concept of the
image in which pictorial forms are free from the functions of both beauty and
cognition. Which does not necessarily mean that the forms of an image may not
be beautiful or that they may not convey knowledge. For Fiedler’s perspective, it
is irrelevant whether they are or do this.
Fiedler’s approach emerges from these considerations: His aesthetics should
be read as the idea, which he himself still considered utopian, to develop a type
of image free of both purposes and letting the pictorial surface be the whole of
the image. His aesthetic raises the questions: What remains of an image at the
end of such a radically formal viewing? In a formal perspective, what remains
an image at all? How do the syntactic structures of an image differ from those of
an ornament or wallpaper? What must the forms of an image do to be the forms
of an image and not those of some other sort of object? Fiedler’s answer to these
questions goes: ‘that something is produced that seems to be there for its visibil-
ity alone’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 209).
The importance of this statement for the history of formal aesthetics can
hardly be overestimated. Fiedler is formulating a proposal for a third solution to
the problem every formal aesthetician ultimately asks himself: Why do people
go on looking at images –the introductory question –when the contents are no
longer interesting? For their beauty, was Herbart’s and Zimmermann’s answer.
For their way of seeing, according to Wölfflin. And when art is as unpersuasive
as a mode of beauty as it is as a mode of perception, then –Fiedler says –images
can and should be viewed for their pure visibility alone: Images are ‘designs of
visibility’ (tr) (‘Sichtbarkeitsgestaltungen’) (ibid., 188). This is the basic theory of
formal aesthetics in paradigms of visibility.
In the first paradigm change, the fine arts became the perceptual arts; these in
turn become –almost tautologically –the ‘visible arts’. Benedetto Croce (1866–
1952) uses this term in the essay ‘Theorie der Kunst als reiner Sichtbarkeit’
[Theory of Art as Pure Visibility] (1911). With this formulation, Croce pin-
pointed the way Fiedler’s aesthetics had transformed the concept of the visual
arts. Croce clearly identified which categories of traditional aesthetics needed to
be replaced by Fiedler’s concept of visibility: ‘The principle of art is henceforth
neither beauty nor concept nor mimesis, nor even feeling, but rather visibility’
(tr) (p. 194). In the most radical kind of formal observation of an image, that is,
one without regard for any purpose, it is visibility alone that cannot be ignored.
It makes no difference what an image achieves, what purpose it serves or what
reasoning underpins it, formally, it is its unique kind of visibility that accounts
for an image being an image.
Pure visibility versus dependent visibility

Visibility is a characteristic of many objects. It is the possibility of being seen.
Every material object offers human beings this kind of contact under certain
conditions. So at first glance it appears odd to try to understand visibility as
a characteristic found only in images; nor is this the thesis. To do justice to
Fiedler’s theory, we must identify and compare two forms of visibility. There
are crucial differences ‘between the richness of visibility we call nature and
the designed visibility that comes before our eyes through artistic activity’ (tr)
(‘Ursprung’, p. 188). We should even emphasize that it ‘comes before our eyes only
through artistic activity’. The pure form of visibility is attainable only through an
image: ‘This activity is in fact essential when we are concerned with producing a

pure expression of the visibility of a phenomenon’ (tr) (ibid., p. 189).
For an object to be an image, it is accordingly not enough for this thing to be
visible. Pictorial existence demands that the image produce a form of visibility
that differs from the visibility of ‘normal’ objects in that it is not the visibility
of something one sees, as paradoxical as it may sound. We need not shy away
from this as a definition of an image: images are objects on which we can see
something that is not present at the place where the image as object is located.
The existence of an image is as much a presence of something absent as it is an
absence of something present; no object can be an image of itself. As similar
as one egg may be to another, one egg will never become the image of another,
because the ‘depicted’ egg is itself an egg. This unity of visibility inevitably breaks
an image up, destroys it and leads to a contradiction: The visibility of the picto-
rial surface contradicts the visibility of the thing that is present. Every image is
obliged to elevate its surface to a self-sufficient phenomenon, that is, to construct
a difference between the pictorial surface and the pictorial material. One can
also say that images come about through a process of isolation; the visibility of
something is presented separately, uncoupled and isolated from the substantial
presence of that thing: ‘Only through this activity does the visibility of a visible
thing break free of the thing and become a free, independent entity’ (tr) (ibid.,
p. 192).
Pure visibility takes the substance away from the visibility of something. It is
not bound up with any object, and does not make reference to the presence of
any entity. To speak phenomenologically, pure visibility has no intentionality,
which is to say it is not the visibility of something. It is a special form sui gen-
eris that is realized only in images, and whose qualities are appreciated only by
recognizing ‘how dependent and restricted the visibility of nature is as long as
it is constituted only in perceptions or in an internal representation process’ (tr)
(ibid., p. 191).
The restricted or dependent visibility of nature is the opposite of pure vis-
ibility. Direct perception of something reveals a world in which the visibility
is only ever the visibility of an outer skin, a surface to which an object is given.
With an object, the surface has no independent life. In nature, the visible sur-
face is a functioning husk. From whatever perspective nature is seen, visibility
cannot be separated from the object: ‘The eye can only show us objects among
whose complicated sensual properties visibility is just one aspect’ (tr) (ibid.,
p. 189). This intentionality of visibility is not grounded in the intentional struc-
ture of perception; one looks at images with the same eyes. There is a different
reason: Visual perception outside of images is supplemented by other senses.

Any non-pictorial object offers perceptual possibilities to the other senses as
well. Dependent visibility can be revealed as the husk of something present that
is invisible, because there are many ways of getting behind the visible surface –it
is usually very easy. Visible things can also be smelt, tasted and felt. It is possible
to perform actions with them, and to be hindered in one’s activity, and to be
brought to the limits of what is possible. These are the ways we can be sure that
visibility is only one characteristic of one and the same ‘substance’ that can be
perceived through other characteristics too. ‘So we are not immediately lead by
experiences of the eyes into an exclusive realm of visibility’ (tr) (ibid., p. 190). To
formulate it in another way: When we see an object, this object is not completely
given over to its visibility; it is more than just visible. One sees a package that
cannot be undone just by looking at it. ‘In visual perception and representation
as such, there is so far no means of gaining what the autonomy of the visibility of
something would show us’ (tr) (ibid., p. 189).
Things are different with an image. ‘We make something that shows us the
visibility of an object, and in doing so, we bring forth something new, something
different from what was there earlier through our visual faculties’ (tr) (ibid.,
p. 162). If an image shows an object, visibility coincides with the whole reality,
for in any image, visibility is everything that is given about an object; in depic-
tion –and in fact only in pictorial depiction –object and visibility are identi-
cal: the objects of the image have no substance, they are phantoms. By means
of an image, reality acquires a skin: However heavy the object one sees in an
image: It is not heavy –and an image of the North Sea is not wet, and an image
of the sun is not warm. There is just one access to the reality of the image: look-
ing at it. The world depicted in an image corresponds to the artistic world of a
person who can only see –but who otherwise cannot hear, smell, taste, touch
or locate his position. This person is furthermore incapable of action. The world
of images is one-sided and reduced to the visual: Objects cannot be touched or
smelt, heard or even used. By disengaging the world from of its usual availability
to be heard, smelt, tasted, touched and used, the image disempowers ‘reality, that
sets firm limits on the deeds and desires of human beings’ (tr) (ibid., p. 101). This
comes close to formulating one task every image must ultimately accomplish,
namely ‘to extract the form in which visible nature appears to us from obscurity
and to give it clear expression’ (tr) (ibid., p. 193).
The result of this de-substantiation, deprivation of force and disentangling
of the obscurity given in the visibility of the image is not, as one might perhaps
think, an irreversible destruction of reality. On the contrary, pictorial reality sui
generis is first constituted through images’ destructive measures. The iconoclas-

tic controversy is immanent to the image.26 Fiedler clearly develops the typical
expressionist two-step on the constitution of pictorial reality, which has been
analysed in detail under the concept of de-realizing materialization.27 ‘By reduc-
ing the whole substance of real existence to the ephemeral stuff of perception
and the representations of a single sense, we lose the ground of the real world
under our feet’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 190). Yet this very destructive disempowering
of all the non-visual senses transforms itself into a constructive move and ‘puts
another form of being in its place’ (tr) (ibid., p. 189).
This may be Fiedler’s main thesis: the pure visibility of the image is an inde-
pendent ‘form of being’ –and not a form of appearance dependent on being.
Pure visibility is given when visibility itself emerges as an entity, and no longer
as the appearance of an entity. The formal study of images culminates in an onto-
logical insight. The image has a special ontological status solely on the grounds
of being an image: we get to see visibility itself. For Fiedler, images are not a
world of their own on the basis of their pictorially immanent interpretation of
visible reality –as one often hears today –but on the basis of visibility’s isola-
tion into an independent entity without substance. This understanding of the
image does not depend on the possibility that a process of interpretation can be
involved in the process of isolation. An image constitutes an autonomous real-
ity not by means of an interpretation of the visible world conditioned by a way
of seeing, but by visibility splitting away and becoming absolute to a material
without substance. The producer of an image is meant to ‘to isolate the visibility
of a thing in such a way that the idea of an object through which the visibility
appears disappears completely, and visibility turns into an autonomous form of
being’ (tr) (ibid., p. 191).
With these thoughts, Fiedler is developing an alternative to neo-Kantian
perspectivism’s idea of pictorial worldmaking. For perspectivist thinking, each
perspective discloses its own reality, because there is no reality outside a per-
spective. With Fiedler, on the other hand, the image does not disclose an absent
world, but builds up a present world sui generis, because the reality that can only
be seen in this medium possesses ontological characteristics that are not to be
found anywhere else. As long as we treat the image as the reproduction of a per-
ception, we will fail to recognize its real nature, especially that of art: ‘In realizing
that the pure and clear visible form of things is closed off from the human mind
as long as the visible is grasped only in terms of direct or reproduced and associ-
ated perceptions, we come to the other insight that artistic activity is required in
order to even approach the visible form of nature at all’ (tr) (ibid., p. 193f.). There
is no contradiction at all between this special ontological status and the status of
image itself as an object in space and time. The pure visibility in the image is –as
Fiedler emphasizes –bound to the visibility of an image carrier. Fiedler knows
very well that ‘for this to be possible, however, a material is required which is
itself visible, and through whose manipulation it becomes possible to actually
produce that construction of visibility’ (tr) (ibid., p. 192). But this visibility of
the pictorial material, which obviously can be smelt and felt as well, must be
overcome in the image-making process, which is the reason one principle of
imagery can be relied upon: Pure visibility arises only if the image is capable of
making its constituent material invisible.28 ‘The material’, Fiedler writes, antici-
pating the idea now familiar from phenomenology, ‘is in a sense forced to betray
itself, inasmuch as it is made to serve the purpose of giving expression to such
an immaterial construction as the ways things present themselves to vision’ (tr)
(ibid., p. 192). Only by destroying material visibility ‘can that world of art arise
in which the visibility of things manifests itself in the arrangement of pure form
constructions [Formgebilde]’ (tr) (ibid., p. 193).
Pure visibility and ornament

Fiedler’s last formulation namely ‘the arrangement of pure form constructions’
asks for further definition. Just as one can describe a difference between the pure
visibility of an image and the dependent visibility of an object, so must one set
pure visibility apart from the visibility of an ornament –even if Fiedler did not
work out the distinction himself. But exactly because ornaments generally qual-
ify as purely formal constructions, they raise a question about why they should
not be considered prototypical of the pure form of visibility, or more precisely,
why formal aesthetics does not consider ornaments to be images.
An ornament, too, is made just to be seen, but the visibility of ornaments does
not attain the status of an autonomous pictorial surface; it always remains a husk
of visibility. An ornament is always an enclosing and embellishing something.
Without such a substrate, one could say, affixation, an ornament is unthinkable.
In his studies relevant to the issue, Hans Sedlmayr (1896–1984) shed light on the
issue: ‘The real cause of ornament’s death is roughly this. It is the very essence
of the ornament that its character, both as to shape and colour, grows naturally
out of the body that carries it, be that body a piece of architecture, a utensil
of some kind, or, to give the earliest instance, the human form itself. But what
remote justification for its existence can there be, when that same body, striving
for a supposed purity, rejects for that very reason the very idea of an ornament?
The ornament is indeed the only category of art which cannot possibly achieve
autonomy –and so the ornament dies’ (Art in Crisis, p. 91f.).29
The autonomy of visibility is essential for the pure visibility of the image.
Only as autonomous visibility does visibility become pictorial visibility, and in
this way become a form of being. Only if visibility can free itself from the carrier
is the image capable of showing something that is not present. So the pure vis-
ibility of an image can be clearly distinguished from that of an ornament: while
looking at an ornament, one is seeing the surface of an object that is present,
whereas while looking at an image, one is not seeing marked wallpaper.
This differentiation of image from ornament is of current interest in par-
ticular because it contradicts the widespread language analytic view that image
and ornament can be distinguished only through semiotics. According to the
language analytic persuasion represented by Danto and Goodman, an image is
always a sign that stands for something else. An ornament, on the other hand,
is an asemiotic decoration that has no semiotic character. The image becomes
an image only on the basis of its interpretation as a sign. Without this semiotic
interpretation by a user, an image would not be recognizable as an image. In this
view, an image can be distinguished from ‘normal’ objects that are not images
only by means of a semiotic interpretation.30
In this respect, Fiedler’s reflections are refreshingly non-judgemental. Formal
aesthetics’ position presents a welcome alternative to the view, hardly challenged
today, that any sort of imagery has a semiotic character. Fiedler pursues the idea
of tracing a formal difference between image and ornament that is not semi-
otic. This is Fiedler’s unique achievement. His thinking necessarily leads to the
insight: Images and ornaments are phenomenologically different phenomena.
Visibility appears as an autonomous form of being only in an image. Only in
an image can we see something that is not present where we are looking. That
does not mean that this pure visibility that is seen when one sees an image is not
normally also used as a sign for absent things. Any form of being can be used
as a sign. The formal approach opens the possibility of having images in which
pure visibility is present without trying to be a sign for something else. Images
remain images, even if meaning of any kind is deemed unimportant, that is, if
the images are viewed formally. That an image can also be a sign is the product
of a subsequent use of pure visibility as a sign for that to which it bears some
similarity. Yet not everything that resembles something else is therefore already
a pictorial sign for this other thing.
This belongs to the basic insights that Fiedler was able to work out by iden-
tifying pure visibility above all as a semiotically neutral form of being. The pure
visibility of an image can be, but need not be a sign. For something that exists,
it is no more necessary to have a semiotic quality than it is to be beautiful or to
have cognitive qualities. Any object can be declared a sign and still remain, as
a perceptible phenomenon, the same object, even if it does not serve a semiotic
function. In an image, a thing remains visible even if this depicted thing has no
semantic relation to anything else. In an image, a thing goes on being similar to
something absent even if the image is not considered a sign for that to which it
is similar. Visibility is more basic than legibility, as we can tell even from animals
who, although they presumably cannot read, can still see something materially
absent in images. This is exactly what Fiedler recognized: Images continue to be
pure visibility even though the pure visibility may not refer to anything. Even if
images actually always can be and perhaps even always are interpreted as signs,
the semiotic character still cannot be essential for the image from a logical per-
spective, since Fiedler’s thinking admits the possibility of images that are not
symbols. This would be the case for images that ‘are created just for their visibil-
ity’s sake’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 194). The ‘just’ here means ‘solely’. With this, Fiedler
is saying: ‘so art seems to be denied any and all meaning’ (tr) (ibid., p. 217).
Fiedler’s aesthetics ends in the idea of an asemiotic image that neither refers
to an object nor shows any condition, but constitutes and designs a pure form of
visibility. He understands the image as creating pure visibility. In this respect his
aesthetics challenge the artist to find a pictorial form in keeping the maxim: Stop
trying to interpret visible reality in the production of an image, and try instead
to understand the creation of an image as the building of an object in which
visibility becomes an independent form of being! The change in paradigm from
a way of seeing to visibility is bound up with a change in the concept of artistic
activity. The artist is no longer to make secondary constructions that take visible
reality into account, but to enrich visible reality by a phenomenon sui generis
that is only visible and that does not occur without artistic activity. The question
arises, are there images grounded in Fiedler’s aesthetics?
4.2 Images produced technically: ‘For their

visibility’s sake alone’
Preliminary remarks
With Fiedler, the internal logic of development in the history of formal aesthet-
ics reaches its most radical configuration. It was not unusual for him to use
the images of his friend Hans von Marées as examples of his thinking. This is
unpersuasive. If images of this sort serve his theory of pure visibility adequately,
any traditional artwork at all might be pressed into service. But it only matters
as long as we are looking for pictorial examples to show the ‘development of
the visual process’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 168). Actually we hear again and again
the view that ‘every image embodies a way of seeing’.31 This is right only in a
very particular sense, however: An image can only ever depict an object in a
way of seeing, so it follows that any image can present a style of making visible.
But things do not always go as far as this shift of meaning. One hardly looks at
holiday snaps for their surface infrastructure; in an illustrated users’ manual, it
is not the view but the objective information that is of interest. Even Wölfflin’s
intention to construe the history of painting as an illustration of the history of
looking is a very biased view of the multiple functions of visual art –but it is
nevertheless a view that at least applies to many works: visual art has tradition-
ally always been associated with an interest in finding out about perspectives,
perceptual and representational possibilities. But Fiedler’s idea of grasping the
image as a design of visibility appears to have become a concern of art only in
the twentieth century.
One might object at this point that according to Fiedler’s own understanding,
every image must isolate visibility to a pure form. That is correct. Yet this formal
description does not do justice to every image, does not account entirely for it.
Crucial questions are: Which images are produced solely and exclusively for the
sake of their pure visibility? Of which image can we claim that the surface of the
image is the whole image? When do images stop being signs for a visible reality
and instead become, themselves, an only-visible reality?
Avant-garde experiments with pure visibility

The first attempt in the history of art to create an image purely for the sake of
its visibility can be found in the painting of Kasimir Malevich (1879–1935).
Malevich characterized his programme as Suprematism, to reflect the essence of
the image in the image itself, which is to say, to make it visible.32 Malevich’s great
significance for twentieth-century art goes back to his claim to make images
concerned with a sensible self-reflection of the image, an aesthetic theory of
the image. The interest in perception is delayed with Malevich. In Suprematism
the artist investigates neither objects nor ways of seeing, but the image itself, by
means of the image. The image serves a function that can be served only by an
image and so is essential for an image at exactly the moment it initiates a vis-
ibility that is not the visibility of something. In order to show this, an image must
relinquish representation and be thinkable as pure monochrome. Any sense of

having content then disappears from the image; the image is nothing other than
visibility. Monochrome painting is one of Suprematism’s forms of fulfilment,
that is, of painting for the sake of pure visibility alone.
The painting and theory of Suprematism is as programmatic as the mono-
chrome image is constricting of artistic fantasy. The monochrome image suffers
from its exclusion of any leeway for play with various forms and styles. So we
really cannot speak of a ‘design of visibility’ as Fiedler claimed: For the essential
thing about being monochrome is that nothing is designed. Monochrome paint-
ing cannot get past its status as an intellectual experiment –which is no small
achievement. It is an esoteric and typically avant-garde phenomenon. We can
therefore also say that Malevich did not so much realize Fiedler’s programme
as reform and extend it. In this respect he is an important intermediary. Rather
than Fiedler, it is Suprematist painting that continues to challenge more than
a few artists. The idea is to reach the goal by other means; to look for more
formally complex forms of realization that do not equate pure visibility with
pure colouration of a surface. ‘Since Malevich celebrated the life of the pictorial
surface as such, painting has responded by structuring visibility as such [. . .] For
a long time it was unclear how Malevich’s vast range of non-objectivity could be
realized beyond the white canvas’(tr).33
It did not take quite as long as Norbert Bolz thinks it did, at least not if we
take into account another experiment on the theme of pure visibility: collage.
Collage, too, is an answer to the question of how the surface of an image can
be made absolute. The theoretical writing of Kurt Schwitters provides particu-
larly clear documentation of this. The goal of a collage is to realize a complete
‘Entformelung’ (de-formulation) and ‘Entmaterializierung’ (de-materialization)
of all the materials that are being turned into elements of pure form and colour
in this way.34 The significance and the meaning of an image are to be destroyed so
that an image can be created that is exclusively a structured colour surface. One
might object that with collage we are concerned with the creation of ornaments.
But this is not the case. Collage’s objectives can be met only by means of images.
For collage, too, is trying to make something visible on an object that is not pre-
sent in the place the collage is located. The design is meant to make the material
fact that a collage consists of slips, shreds and rubbish as invisible as the fact that
in an easel painting one is looking at oil and canvas. The design is required to
build up an independent surface. Collage is trying to be something for the eye
that it is not, seen objectively. But only an image can accomplish this. An objec-
tive image is concerned to produce the visibility of something absent; collage is
trying to produce a pure visibility of colour and light. That which Fiedler calls
the isolation of visibility therefore corresponds exactly to Schwitters’s concept
of de-materialization: collage takes materiality away from the material that is
present and so isolates visibility as such. For this reason a collage is not an orna-
ment, but an instance of light and colour becoming independent –as does the
monochrome image. In fact collage is the paradoxical effort to make a mono-
chrome image without that image being monochrome.
Schwitters understands his work overall as ‘preliminary sketches’. He himself
did not believe that collage –or visual art as such –can do more than experi-
ment with the theme of pure visibility. This self-assessment, which applies to
Malevich as well, is based on both artists’ commitment to the idea of the clas-
sical, original easel painting. Both uphold the tradition of painting and try to
achieve something using a medium in which it is hardly possible. The work of
making a pictorial surface absolute is therefore taken forward, systematically as
well as historically, in reflections in a new medium: in the theory of film. It was
recognized very early that certain forms of film permit the pictorial understand-
ing of Fiedler, Malevich and Schwitters to be realized.
From silent film to video clip

Visible Man and the Spirit of Film, by the Vienna-and Berlin-based aestheti-
cian Béla Balázs (1884–1949), appeared in 1924. In the development of formal
aesthetics, on its way from a way of seeing to visibility, this book is a mile-
stone –although it can very easily be misunderstood. Due to an unfortunate
writing style, one quickly gets the impression that Balázs is writing about films
as they are seen in the cinema. But from this perspective the book can be
taken only as a curiosity. The claims would be for the most part inapplica-
ble, for hardly a single well-known film would bear them out, for example the
claim that ‘a good film does not have any “content” as such [. . .] It no more has
content that does a painting, a piece of music –or indeed a facial expression’
(Visible Man, p. 19). As description, these sentences are false: There are infi-
nitely many films that have clearly definable contents and that leave no doubt
about telling a story. Balázs’s Visible Man belongs among typical twentieth-
century utopias concerning ‘pure visuality’ (p. 21), along with Suprematism
and Merz theory. ‘Film’, Balázs suggests, ‘is a surface art’ (p. 19). It would be in
a position to create an independent ‘surface of visibility’ (p. 20), ‘Since the film
is two-dimensional, with nothing “behind” the image surface, and no “hidden
meaning” ’ (p. 20).
Balázs describes a film of the future. He takes silent film as the starting point.
It bothers him, obviously, that such a film tells a story, and the audience hears
music rather than speech. Yet Balázs can imagine that it does not have to be
this way. His thoughts arrive at the view: Only with a kind of inversion of the
silent film will the artist be in the position to make images for their visibility
alone: ‘I expect much more from the reverse procedure, one that to my knowl-
edge has never been attempted. I am thinking of the filming of pieces of music.
The visions, even irrational ones, that unfold before our mind’s eye when we
listen to music could be made to pass before us on film. Who knows, perhaps
this will develop into an entirely novel branch of art?’ (p. 79).
Could the video clip be anticipated with any greater precision? The video clip,
which first appeared in the 1970s, is clearly recognized here, in 1924, and pre-
dicted as a visible reflection of the principles of formal aesthetics. Balázs saw film
developing inevitably in the direction of this pictorial form, once it had stopped
carrying contents and was trying instead to let the possibilities of the medium
present themselves. In a clip, images appear in a way that rules out the possibility
of viewing for anything but their visibility. Through the development of modern
media, the formal aesthetics of pure visibility has retroactively become an exact
phenomenology. It is little short of astonishing how accurately formal aesthetics
can be read when we are thinking of clips. This applies to Fiedler and Schwitters
just as it does to Balázs.
The video clip
Video clips are filmed collages.* They consist of a flickering of images made using
the most diverse techniques (film, photography, video, animation) and montaged
together in such a way as to have equal value. The key feature of a clip is the fast
cutting and quick movement of the parts in a shot. No image can be read as
representation –there is not enough time. It is not unusual for a shot to last a
fraction of a second. Everything that appears is only an indication, and usually
shown only in part. No story is told, nor can the image serve as the representation
of a way of seeing. Balázs’s claim is valid: A clip has no content at all, and even if
the separate images in the collage show entirely recognizable objects, these are
* We need to be aware that the term ‘video clip’ does not refer to every film that illustrates a piece of
music, but rather only to the extremely fast montage style of films that were developed in connection
with music, and actually achieved their purest form in this connection, but that in principle can also
be used when no music is being filmed. In the chapter ‘Videoclips’ in Leben in künstlichen Welten
[Life in Artificial Worlds], H. Buddemeier gives a detailed description of the conception of a typical
video clip.
completely entformelt and entmaterializiert in Schwitters’s sense. We could say

that clips are the best Merz art. At a certain speed, any image is ‘vermerzed’ –
which means it becomes a work of Merz art. The image is emptied of meaning
and becomes a piece in an optical kaleidoscope. In the most extreme versions,
the image sequences in a clip approach sheer monotone noise. You almost get
an impression of monochromy again, because the possibilities for perceiving
and understanding are overburdened, deliberately and without restraint. Clips
have one thing in common with monochrome painting, at least with gigantic
American colour field painting, which must be seen, its makers insist, from a
short enough distance that the viewer is overwhelmed by its size. With a clip, too,
one is overwhelmed by the speed, but also by the extreme close-up and fragmen-
tation that was already at the heart of Balázs’s filmic vision. Objectivities are dis-
solved in pure abstractions, deformed or drawn into the surrealistic. Every part of
a clip serves, in the play of light, to degrade the other parts of the clip, including
itself, to purely aesthetic elements of form. Even human beings are subject to this
principle: ‘True theatre actors‘, Balázs writes, ‘are accustomed to representing the
most varied characters, and can only rarely be used in film.’35 With a clip we must
accept it: The players are not actors or performers, but puppets or models.
In summary, a clip is constructed for the purpose of setting the pictorial sur-
face into as sophisticated and unfamiliar a dynamic as possible, so as to isolate
pure visibility as the only perceptible aspect of the image. Visibility itself becomes
visible. We always see just the possibility of seeing something, but never more,
because no possibility becomes reality. Through images, the video clip shows
how the surface of an image can become the whole of the image. The image says
nothing of either real things or of subjective conditions, but rather is the pure
self-representation of the possibilities of a medium. In this way the step from a
way of seeing to pure visibility is itself aesthetic, that is to say, it is reflected in
a sensible way in the image. The enlightened and scientific interest of the tradi-
tional easel picture, the interest in showing people how visible reality looks, has
given way to a free play with pure visibility. The mannered quality of many clips
comes from deliberately representing this will to be formal artificially. What it
possible is shown, and this is shown because it is possible. The image has inte-
riorized the surface-as-absolute, described in formal aesthetics, and makes a
show of it. In the clip, the image has freed itself from its older residues, from
being taken into service, from masquerading; it has thrown off categories such
as information and responsibility and has come into its own.
It would be unproductive to try to see, in a video clip, the complementary
relationship between art and science that has so often defined Western art. In
a video clip, the site of the struggle for perceivable knowledge is occupied –
whether one defends or regrets it –by the optical effect, which is presented for
its visibility alone. It is about exhibiting the view that an image is nothing but
pure visibility; there is nothing to understand, and accordingly few hermeneutic
starting points.36 The clip serves a pictorial medium’s playful self-representation.
If there is a dimension of meaning in clips at all, then only the medial self-
reflection described by Marshall McLuhan: the medium is the message.
Four forms of pure visibility: The easel picture, the

film, the digital image and the simulation
As impressive as the emancipation of video clip’s pure visibility may be, a clip
remains a film, and because of film’s medial limitations, it is by no means the end-
point in the development of an independent, pure visibility. A typology of the vari-
ous forms of pure visibility in images helps to recognize this. In his short discussion
of Balázs’s Visible Man of 1925, Robert Musil laid a possible foundation for such
a typology by separating the pure visibility of the easel picture from that of the
film. He writes, ‘Above all –any argument that film is an art might be paradoxically
extended in this way –what speaks in its favour is its degenerate existence as an
event reduced to moving shadows that nevertheless produces an illusion of life. For
every art is such dissociation. Mute as a fish and pale as the subterranean, film floats
in a pond of the only-visible [nursichtbar]; but painting is mute and fixed’ (tr).37
Musil’s understanding of art corresponds exactly to Fiedler’s: Every art con-
sists of the dissociation of the only-visible, the shadowlike, to a separate form
of being; Fiedler calls this the isolation of visibility. But this dissociation goes
on –as Musil sees –to diverse versions of pure, pictorial visibility. Through the
medium from which it is dissociated, isolated visibility retains medium-specific
characteristics; neither the style in which the medium was used nor the repre-
sentational content has any influence on this purely formal logic. Musil distin-
guishes the easel picture’s fixed pure visibility from film’s moving pure visibility. In
a painting of a fish, the only-visible fish is rigid; it is caught and frozen in place in
a moment. In film, however, it can move and swim. So there are two fundamen-
tally different versions of pure visibility: the static and the dynamic.
Musil’s bipartite division is no longer adequate for the most recent media.
Since the development of film, there are two more ways an only-visible fish can
swim about; Musil was unable to even imagine them. Like most theoreticians
of the twentieth century, Musil was so deeply fascinated by film that it seemed
to him to have completely emancipated pure visibility from its fixity. A film is,
quite apart from its way of seeing and its content –a more natural medium per
se than the easel picture –because the world’s dynamics can be adjusted. But in
his enthusiasm, he does not appreciate that in a film, even fish are caught and
in fact still fixed. It is clear: A fish in a film moves, but the movement is set; the
movement is linear and one-dimensional. The fish swims from point a to point
b, and even if one has not yet seen the film, this line is already determined by
the medium, in fact as a matter of principle. In the medium of film there is just
one dynamic, which is firmly established before the film is seen. The movements
in the film run from the roll, like the film material, in a fixed order. Seen as a
whole, then, the dynamics in film are just as inactive and fixed as the visibility
of an easel picture. If the fish is to swim in another way, another film must be
made, just as another image must be painted if an object is to be seen in another
position. This unites film with the easel picture: both are able to show only what
is planned and previewed. The fish in a film will never break away to take a dif-
ferent turn around Musil’s pond of only-visibility.
The limits of possibilities for movement in film become increasingly clear the
more pure visibility takes on an independent form of being, the greater the drive
towards a convergence between pure visibility and a visibility known through
real objects. A fish in a pond of the only-visible does not move in the same
way as one in a real pond. This does not mean that the camera is depicting it
through a way of seeing, that the movement of the filmed fish may appear dif-
ferent from that of the real one. The typology of pure visibility does not extend
to the manner in which something appears; this is the content of the art his-
torical principles. We should rather keep in mind that the pure visibility of a
film differs from the visibility of the thing represented in that a person cannot
intervene in the filmic visibility, but most definitely can dramatically change the
visibility of the thing –not always for the better. The film enables us to imitate
dynamic objects, but not to manipulate visibility. This opens an unbridgeable
gap between the filmic form of pure visibility and the intentional form of the
dependent visibility of real things. Pure visibility cannot become a perfect real-
ity in film, because in it, no one can intervene in film’s only-visible reality. One
is condemned to look on at the most horrible assassinations without taking any
action. All the while we consider it obvious that one can deal with reality: One
need only smash something to see that although our power to change visibility
is in fact diminished, it is still there. Yet there is no way of getting hold of pure
visibility in either an easel picture or in a film. One can destroy a painting, but
not the represented object. To stay with Musil’s example, the fish cannot change
the direction in which it is swimming.
With this in the background, even the video clip has a conservative position
in the development of the image. The viewer regards pure visibility as it becomes
visible in a clip just as passively as in an Old Master. This contradicts Fiedler’s
claim that visibility becomes a form of being. If something is to be a form of
being, it means, an entity that exists for itself, then a person must be able to
enter into an exchange with it. One of the qualities of what we call an ‘entity’ is
that that a person can do something with it, even if he cannot always do what
he wants. Its pure visibility being inaccessible, a clip remains a traditional, one-
dimensional film, which becomes particularly striking when film is confronted
with the possibilities of digital image processing.
Computerized digital image processing supports a third type of pictorial vis-
ibility: manipulable pure visibility. In this technology, the image is dispersed on
a screen in points of light, so-called pixels, under conditions controlled by a
computer.38 The image is a dot matrix surface, for which the computer calculates
which point is illuminated in what way when. It is not a problem for this screen
technology to make the only-visible fish swim in any direction imaginable. The
fish swims on the screen as in any film, but, as in a real pond, where it swims
is not determined beforehand any more. Rather the direction may be made
dependent on the most diverse conditions by means of the computer. A viewer
of the fish can, for example, use keys and controls to make the fish swim in any
direction he likes. In the digital image, computer-supported processing makes
pure visibility usable. The pictorial surface becomes –as computer terminology
rightly calls it –a user interface.
This marks a crucial difference between the digital image and the easel pic-
ture along with film: The viewer can for the first time enter into pure visibil-
ity and have an effect on it. With so-called Computer Aided Design (CAD) a
house can be turned and used at will. On screen, it is possible to walk across
rooms, smash cups, construct parts of airplanes and assemble airplanes from
parts already constructed. Digital images permit a modelling with pure vis-
ibility without having to account for or attend to the ballast of substance,
which this thing’s visibility has outside the image.39 With the development of
digital image processing, a functional substitution has occurred: Pure visibil-
ity becomes what oil paint is to the easel picture. One does not paint with
pigment, but directly with immaterial visibility. In comparison with nature,
the pure visibility of the image in CAD is lighter, faster, more precise, and
can be accessed and manipulated with no danger at all. Here we are shown
‘what the visibility of things’, as Fiedler wrote, ‘cannot be as long as it adheres
nature’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p. 192). This is due entirely to pure visibility being no
more than a dense syntactic structure that can be transformed in isolation by

means of a computer on a screen. One can also say that the computer treats the
image exactly as formal aesthetics had previously demonstrated in theory: as a
surface-deep design of visibility.
When a pure form of visibility becomes manipulable through digital image
media, we have taken a step in the direction of the development Fiedler con-
ceived as the development of pure visibility into an independent form of being.
Developments in image production technology gradually catch up with formal
aesthetics’ theoretical outline. Pictorial visibility is significantly enriched at each
step in the development of the easel picture through film to the digital image.
The step from the fixed dynamics of film to the open dynamics of the pictorial
screen should be understood as a heightening of naturalism supported by the
medium. Only we must abandon the idea that naturalism in the development of
media has anything to do with a particular way of seeing, a certain style of repre-
sentation. Naturalism, as it expands in the development of media, is an increas-
ingly more accurate imitation of the visibility of something in the absence of
that thing. The steps from the easel picture through film to the digital image
resemble the steps made by pure visibility of the image towards the dependent
visibility of something. So we can already see the goal of this development: ‘The
visibility of things manifests itself in the arrangement of pure form construc-
tions [Formgebilde]’ (tr) (ibid., p. 193).
The step from film’s pure visibility in motion to digital image processing’s
pure visibility in manipulation is not the final step in the development of the for-
mal image. Manipulable visibility approaches dependent visibility in yet another
of its aspects. Musil’s example can again shed light on this latter type of visibil-
ity: in the digital image, the fish swims in the only-visible pond in a direction
that can be chosen at will –but it always swims in just this chosen direction, in
a line fixed through external parameters; it does not choose its direction, it has
no will and no desires –nor could it have, being nothing more than a packet of
light. The digital image acknowledges only a fish without qualities, which does
not appear in nature. Visibility in nature does underpin possibilities for change,
yet such changes meet anticipated and unforeseen reactions, run into obstacles
and wind up at the edges of what is possible. Visibility outside digital image
processing is anything but at our ready disposal. For pure pictorial visibility to
be converging in yet another way would therefore mean that what appears in the
specifications as full accessibility must again be restricted, that artificial limits
must again be deliberately set on unlimited manipulability. Manipulable pure
visibility is surpassed by interactive pure visibility.
Interaction with pure visibility is realized in computer-supported simulation;

Although it, too, processes the image digitally, it represents a step beyond digital
image processing in itself.40 Imagine a computer simulation of a fish in a pond.
The only-visible fish behaves as if it were a real fish, as if it had other-than-visible
qualities as well. It is in fact possible to chase it in various directions, although
still within limits. It is possible to lure it with bait. This is the essential differ-
ence between simulation and non-interactive digital image processing. A digi-
tized fish can swim at any speed. In becoming a simulated fish, which is also
always a digitized fish, it enters into a relation of exchange with the one who has
changed it. Not only does the user affect the image, but the image also responds
to what the user is doing with pure visibility. Despite being completely without
substance, the visibility of a simulation behaves as if it had physical and psychic
qualities. In simulation, visibility, de-substantiated through the appearance of
images, goes on to acquire artificial substance, to take on patterns of behaviour,
resistances and desires. The de-substantiation achieved appears to reverse itself.
The appearance rises to a higher power, and in this way paradoxically becomes a
form of being. The only-visible fish becomes a fish with qualities. It could look as
if it could become autonomous and eat a smaller fish –also only-visible –swim-
ming in the vicinity. Put near a bigger one, it could be eaten –this interaction
between user and image is familiar from countless videogames. In fact most
videogames are prime examples of the interactive form of pure visibility. They
rely on playing with pure visibility as if it were an object that can be grasped
and used; that is real. The interaction turns appearance into a special sort of
object: into an only-visible thing.
The step from the digital image to simulation is comparable to the jump from
film to the digital image. In both cases, a new form of visibility becomes possible
that no earlier medium was able to achieve. Interactive simulation is developing
in increasingly diverse contexts: a new airplane is no longer constructed at a ter-
minal with CAD alone. This is still a procedure used exclusively in digital image
processing. The airplane is also flown experimentally on the screen. The latter is,
furthermore, a procedure based on feedback between user and image.
From the standpoint of formal aesthetics, these techniques show two fun-
damentally different types of visibility. Imagine an image of an airplane that a
viewer can control at will. As long a pure visibility offers no resistance, no change
will cause the image to react. Here, any old crate can fly at supersonic speeds,
which could never actually happen in the construction of an airplane. The step
from digital image to simulation has been taken when pure visibility has taken
on a life and behavioural pattern of its own. That is, when the airplane in the
realm of the supersonic falls apart on screen, or just cannot accelerate to that
point in the first place. Still, the behaviour of pure visibility as determined by
the computer need not correspond to the way it behaves in any reality familiar
to human beings. Airplanes can be flown in simulation in multiple realities and
conditions that exist only on the screen: This is the step that turns pure visibility
into a virtual reality. The physics that describes the laws of non-simulated nature
turns into a special physics that describes only the laws of a particular reality.
Fiedler’s theory of the development of pure visibility into an independent form
of being is transformed into a computer-supported simulation. It is a demon-
stration of what Fiedler anticipated: ‘From the very object we could not sepa-
rate from its tactility, we manage to more or less separate visibility as something
independent’ (tr) (‘Ursprung’, p 161).
As a typology of pure visibility we can confirm: Any image produces a pure
form of visibility. Four types appear depending on medium:
1. the fixed pure visibility of the easel picture,

2. the moving pure visibility of the film,
3. the manipulable pure visibility of the digital image and
4. the interactive pure visibility of the computer simulation.
The intermediate position of photography

Photography takes up an intermediate position within the typological system
of pure visibility, and a facilitating position in the logic of formal aesthetics’
development. On the one hand, photography’s visibility is as fixed and unmov-
ing as that of any easel picture. Photography was and still is a traditional picto-
rial medium with which originals are created. Even if this use may be rare, or
becoming rare, it should not be judged impossible. On the other hand, pho-
tography allows an access to fixed visibility that no easel picture could achieve.
The speed and ease with which a photograph is produced, and especially its
unlimited reproducibility, support an independent engagement with pure vis-
ibility in which the object of the image is as unimportant as the image’s way of
seeing. There is no longer any concern about either the depicted object or the
way of seeing in any process of reproduction. Neither the ‘what’ nor the ‘how’
is of any interest, since the reproduction does not set out to interpret pure vis-
ibility by means of a subjective way of seeing, but simply to duplicate. With the
reproduction of an image, the issue is not to produce an image about an image,
but to multiply the same image. The reproducibility of photography makes the
visibility of any image accessible and independent. This accounts for the special
position of photography: it replicates the isolated and fixed pure visibility of an
image –including that of an easel picture.
Photography, as Walter Benjamin famously pointed out in the essay ‘The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936), changes the aes-
thetic status of the original, in a sense retroactively, without changing the work
one bit. By reproducing an easel picture, the pure visibility of the original is
released from its tie to a unique image carrier and so to a place. Through pho-
tographic reproduction, pure visibility, which is generated subjectively for an
original painting and attached to a single support, can be available in unlim-
ited quantities, in the most varied places at the same time. From the standpoint
of formal aesthetics, the destruction of an aura, which Benjamin described in
detail, is the result of an alienation in purpose: original images, produced for the
representation of ways of seeing, are reproduced for their visibility alone. This
is the reason a reproduction affects those schooled on the original as alien and
in a sense empty. Reproduction works against the intention of more than a few
images. The perception of a visible world is the basis of a painted easel picture.
But the mode of perception plays no part in the process of reproduction. In
replicating images, the single image automatically becomes a purely superficial
design. For reproduction processes do not treat images as signs for objects or
for ways of seeing, but as purely formal designs of visibility. In the process of
reproduction, it is impossible to tell whether what is being reproduced is a pat-
tern or an image.
Reproduction’s tendency to give preference to a superficial treatment of an
image is reinforced by the mass of everyday images. Only through reproduction
techniques has it become possible for people to live in an environment in which
vast numbers of images rush through one’s field of vision at a speed reminiscent
of a video clip. And if it was always the case that not every image was viewed
for its meaning, mass-distributed reproductions lead to more images being used
solely as designs of visibility. Photography is the medium suitable for images that
one flicks past, that are seen only in passing. With the invention of photography,
the technique was found that made it possible to mechanically isolate and mul-
tiply the visibility of something quickly. When photography serves to depict its
own medium, what it renders visible is no longer ways of seeing, but rather pure
visibility.
This is not to say that there are no photographs available for hermeneutic
consideration. Photography is open to various uses. It negotiates between the
easel picture and the digital image by enabling an image to function purely as a
design of visibility. Photography makes it possible for classical images to appear

in contexts that would be completely inaccessible to them if only the original
was available. The process of mass reproduction leaves only a decorative visibil-
ity behind, even of those images that exemplify a notable way of seeing. Think
of the Sistine Madonna’s angels: It would be completely pointless to continue
to regard Rafael’s masterpiece reproduced on a T-shirt or a napkin as a con-
tribution to the perceptual psychology of the way human vision is organized.
The original once had this function, among others, which can be destroyed by
reproduction. On the T-shirt, there is no role for an engagement with a way of
seeing. Rafael’s contribution to the development of a Renaissance perspective
turns, nolens volens, into a fashion statement, a play with pure visibility. In a way
very different from any he imagined, this way of engaging with images, brought
about through photography, responds to Fiedler’s call for an understanding of
the image as simply a ‘design of visibility’.
The will to media

Photography’s intermediate position confirms the basic thinking behind the
typology of pure visibility: The only-visible splits away into forms that are not
products of artistic activity, but the inventions of new media. Reproducibility
is the first step in a technical development towards a medium that puts pure
visibility at our disposal. To put it metaphorically: Photography would really
prefer to be a digital image, to offer access to pure visibility while it is being
viewed. But not even with the most sophisticated improvements can photogra-
phy achieve this. The step can be made only with the leap into another medium,
into digital image processing. On an easel picture, even the most virtuoso art-
ist cannot create an interactive communication with pure visibility, something
which any videogame achieves with ease. So the choice of medium takes on a
meaning. Before there is any content, it implies a choice of a particular form of
pure visibility.
This leads to a situation Riegl and Wölfflin could not have fully grasped, and
to which they did not fully respond: Since there have been media that are quali-
tatively varied with respect to visibility, a will to medium has preceded the will
to art. It is a matter of deciding which medium to use to depict something. Riegl
and Wölfflin considered the pictorial medium to be formally unimportant, since
from a formal perspective, the pictorial media they saw offered the same type of
pure visibility: The formal qualities of pure visibility do not change depending on
whether one makes a print, an oil painting or a watercolour. Exactly this idea is key
to the art historical principles: The question of whether something is represented

in a painterly or haptic way is not a question of pictorial medium, but of the will
to art, that is, of the stylistic use of whichever medium. Any medium is stylistically
indeterminate, and so may be used in a painterly or linear form. This is the reason
Riegl and Wölfflin could explain that the forms of ways of seeing cannot be defined,
either in terms of aesthetic content or in terms of materials. But they did not notice
that the forms of visibility are determined by the medium, because they did not
consider any alternatives to the fixed visibility of the easel picture.
The choices of formal possibilities in the representation process have become
more complex. For Riegl and Wölfflin, the one insurmountable question in the
process of depiction is whether an object is depicted in a painterly or a linear
way. Today, the question of whether an object is depicted in a fixed, moving,
manipulable or interactive way is unavoidable as well. To this extent, the types
of pure visibility are categories that apply to one of the levels of the art historical
principles. Someone producing an image today –whatever it may look like –has
had to decide that pure visibility should, for example, be fixed. In everyday life,
it is usually just the question of the form of visibility that arises, not the form of
representational optics: Shall I take a photograph or make a video? This decision
is normally determined by the image’s eventual use.
The classical easel picture is and remains unsurpassed as the medium for the
question of the way of seeing, the ‘how’ of visibility. Only in the easel picture is
visibility locked in, so that one can concentrate on how it looks. For this rea-
son, the easel picture will continue to be one artistic medium among others. As
long as human beings want to know how their visible reality looks and can be
arranged, they will not be able to avoid using images as cognitive instruments.
Only in a still image are the dynamics of the subjective conditions brought to a
halt, and one instant, a moment in a development, held fast. This is the way a
viewer can engage with one and the same object in an otherwise dizzying multi-
plicity of appearances. The ways human beings see become communicable and
comprehensible.
It is very different with film, which can in fact also be used for the represen-
tation of momentary conditions and coincidences, but without exhausting its
medial possibilities. Unlike a still image, the medium of film permits the devel-
opment of conditions and matters of fact to be traced. Film is particularly suited
to situations in which the logic and necessity of a chain of events needs to be
visible. For it is a condition of film that movement occurs in a predetermined
form, and this corresponds to the inevitability of developments. In an interactive
video game, there is no predictable development.
When interest shifts from the analysis of a way of seeing and the inevi-
tability of developments to the availability and manipulability of visibility,
we come back to digital image processing. With electronic image processing,
the traditional task of the easel picture, namely to interpret visible reality,
loses its monopoly on image-making activity. Along with interpreting visible
reality by means of an image comes the surpassing of the interpretation of
visible reality by means of an image. Obviously even a computer screen can
reproduce an Old Master. A computer can also be used to paint a traditional
picture. But computers used in such ways do not exploit the possibilities that
open with the advent of digital image processing. It would be like photo-
graphing with a film camera –which is actually possible! The specific possi-
bilities of digital image processing lie in the construction and modulation of
an object in the visible alone.
When the digital medium is used for this, the purpose to which it is suited,
the will to understand the way the visible is ordered is displaces by a will to pos-
sess and take of control of the visible. This is a shift that ushers in a shift from the
hermeneutics of the image to the pragmatics of the image. The meaning of the
way of seeing is abandoned, which is the reason most computer images are very
unrefined and crude stylistically as well. They present no object for hermeneu-
tics, because there is no interpretation of visible reality to understand in a digital
image. Rather than understanding the image, the viewer is meant to use the image;
to him, pure visibility is a model without mass.41 Digital image processing turns
pure visibility into a new ‘immaterial material’, with which the user shapes, models
and constructs on screen as he once could with clay or plaster outside the image.
Digital image processing is made to treat pictorial appearance as a form of being.
In comparison with non-interactive digital image processing, interactive
simulation is paradoxically as much a step forward as a step back. On the one
hand, computer simulation makes it possible to use and manipulate pure vis-
ibility, which corresponds still more exactly to the use and manipulation of
the depicted thing in reality. In simulation, pure visibility begins to behave like
dependent visibility or, more exactly, a dependent visibility. But on the other
hand, the step from freely available digital visibility processing to simulation is
also puts a restriction on the possibilities and freedoms obtained. In simulation,
things can no longer be handled as one wishes, but only as the simulated real-
ity permits. A reality principle governs simulation, even if it is not the principle
that governs matters outside simulation. This special mixture of restriction and
accessibility, of prescription and freedom through pure visibility of simulation is
the basis of virtual reality.
Virtual reality and cyberspace

There are two forms of computer-supported simulation: the recognizable and
the unrecognizable. A simulation that occurs on the screen is recognizable,
because the viewer sees that the simulation concerns an image. An example of
this kind of simulation was given above with the airplane that can be test-flown
on screen. The only-visible airplane, even if it is just a simplified line drawing,
can be recognized as such by the viewer during the simulation without difficulty.
The viewer looks from the outside at the image of an airplane in flight, which is
simulating its behaviour by means of symbolic language; schematically depicted
flames could mean, for example, that the overworked engine had exploded.
Screen simulation can also provide views into and from the cockpit. There is a
view of a schematically depicted dashboard and one given through the wind-
screen as well. As perfectly as we see what we would see on the instrument panel
and through the window during the flight, in this kind of simulation we see what
we see, always as a depiction. There is no danger of confusion. This very thing
changes when the simulation is no longer recognizable as such.
The phenomenon of a simulation that is not recognizable has, in turn, two
forms: as special and as general simulation. A flight simulator, for example, is a
special simulator. With this computer-governed machine, it is possible to inter-
act with a machine in an unrecognizable form. From inside the simulator cabin,
it is no longer possible to distinguish the cabin from the cockpit of an airplane.
Pure visibility is joined by ever-improving pure audibility, tactility, smellability,
usability. In artificial form, visibility’s disentanglement is reversed. One can prac-
tice the flight of a machine in simulation because the point of contact between
computer and the user of the image, the so-called interface, is considered part
of the image. Care is taken to see that interaction with the computer from the
outside resembles interaction with an airplane.42
General unrecognizable simulation is the last step towards the development
of perfect, independent pure visibility. The much-discussed concept of ‘cyber-
space’ stands for this phenomenon. Cyberspace technology is concerned with
a machine to simulate any situation, that is, with universal simulation technol-
ogy.43 This is achieved by providing the senses with impressions so apparently
real that they are perceived to be perceptions of a physically extant reality. The
illusion is achieved by confronting people directly with deceptive sensory stim-
uli. At the current stage, the viewer of the image still wears data goggles: Images
are not seen from a certain distance, as with a television, but projected at a range
of just a few centimetres directly into the eye, realizing for the first time an image
form in which the viewer can perceive no frame. It is often rightly said that
cyberspace realizes the idea of the panoramic image through other technical
possibilities. The interface between computer and user becomes invisible, and
with this, the pure visibility of the image becomes absolute. The image is no
longer in conflict with a non-pictorial environment that lies beyond the image,
because no such environment exists. The image is no longer recognizable as an
image; it is the rare case of pure visibility no longer recognizable as a pictorial
effect. An only-visible view of a spatial situation is projected directly into the
eyes of the viewer. When he moves his head, the collimation shifts in exactly
the same way as sensual impressions would if the viewer had moved himself
or his head in material reality. Cyberspace is a 360-degree simulation. This is
possible because the data goggles are fitted with sensors that report every head
movement and change in the line of sight to a calculator, which uses the data
to transform pure visibility. This cybernetic feedback can be applied to other
senses: Sounds can be simulated with a data helmet, tactile sensations with data
gloves, and so on to full data suits. It is clear that the development of cyberspace
technology is trying to get at human nerves directly through implants, passing
over glasses and gloves. The interface can also be constructed as a socket in the
back of the head. Through the electronic stimulation of nerves, something only-
visible can be produced without any material support being there at all. Imagery
is completely dematerialized.*
The effect of cyberspace is obvious. A visible world comes into being that
has no materiality, not even that of an image carrier. The viewer not only sees,
but moves about in this only-visible world. The pictorial surface becomes the
* At this point, however, we also need to point out that any unrecognizable simulation has limits in
principle, limits which cannot be exceeded even in cyberspace. External human senses can all be
simulated –at least their simulation is thinkable. Visibility and audibility, tactility, and so on, can be
produced without producing the object. But for interior senses and for physiological human needs, a
simulation is not practically, but logically impossible, because the simulacrum must take on substan-
tial qualities in order to be a simulacrum. It is meaningful to speak about a simulation only as long
as there is an external standpoint from which we can tell that the simulation is not reality. With a
flight simulator, this is the view from the outside into the cabin. By walking out of the cabin or tak-
ing off the data helmet and data gloves, we can tell that what we had taken earlier to be actual reality
was an artificially produced simulation; in fact we have not flown somewhere else in the airplane. In
speaking of an unrecognizable simulation, we are referring to the user’s perspective; a simulation in
principal, unrecognizable even from the outside, could not and would not need to be designated a
simulation, because it would be indistinguishable from reality. One human phenomenon that cannot
in principle be simulated because there is no external perspective to make the simulation recogniz-
able as such is nourishment. Even with the simulation of a long-haul flight, any flight simulator
reaches a limit. Even the steward serving coffee can be, say, an actor or a contrived robot. But coffee,
as artificial as it might be, is still coffee: Artificial food is probably bad food, but still food. But rather
than being a bad airplane, a flight simulator is no airplane at all. However perfect cyberspace tech-
nology becomes, there will be no virtual food and no virtual air.
person’s only environment. He is transported into the space of pure visibility; he

can move about freely in it and investigate it in the same way he learnt to investi-
gate visible reality outside simulation. He can grasp a depicted object that is only
visible because the computer provides the tactile stimuli that constitute grasping.
Virtual reality can be filled with any imaginable objects, including other peo-
ple –real as well as fictional people.44 No meaningful distinction exists for cyber-
space technology between putting an object into the virtual space and letting
another person enter –on the contrary: Only then does the technology reveal
its peculiarity. Cyberspace is a world of zombies, with only the husks of people;
the skin of reality. The dead can live here, without really living, and the living
die here without really being dead. This is exactly what is meant when Fiedler
says that appearance will turn into a form of being. It is a credit to Fiedler’s
imaginative powers that he saw so early how his programme of the only-visible
becoming independent would have to end and how it today has ended: with a
‘ghost of reality’ (tr)45 –cyberspace is nothing other than this: a phantom of vis-
ibility. When ‘the formal relationships of an art suddenly emerge in isolation’,46
we are faced with a –and Musil saw this even in film –‘fundamentally strange
splitting off [of visibility] from the fullness of life’ (tr) (ibid., p. 1139): with a
‘mad world’ (tr) (ibid., p. 1140). This mad flaying of the world has its beginnings
in any image; it ends in cyberspace, with pure visibility becoming completely
absolute. Pure visibility, an aspect of any image, becomes the whole, and so takes
the image to its own limit.
Non-symbolic communication
Cyberspace is philosophically significant as the apparent discovery of a form
of image that cannot be meaningfully discussed as a sign. Fiedler’s aesthetics
accomplished preliminary work on this point, too, by giving not a semiotic, but
a phenomenological definition of the image as a special form of visibility. This
is not at all to suggest that images do not often function as signs for something
absent –only that they do not have to! Images can set their semiotic character
aside without ceasing to be images. In this respect cyberspace is the experimen-
tum crucis: Here the image abandons its semiotic character without giving up its
support of pictorial communication. The development of cyberspace is, in fact,
bound up with this goal: non-symbolic communication.
Someone asks, ‘Who is Peter?’ This question can be answered in many ways.
Peter can be described verbally; or a photograph of Peter might be shown. Both
would clearly be symbolic modes of response. We would have a non-symbolic
answer to the question if someone just pointed to Peter and perhaps also said,
‘That’s Peter!’ Of course the sentence ‘That’s Peter!’ has a symbolic nature. But the
sentence is not in itself the answer to the question. It only refers to the answer,
and that answer is not a symbol of Peter, but Peter himself. From a semiotic
standpoint, the situation does not change if the answer is given while Peter is
appearing in cyberspace as a ‘ghost’. We can see from this simple example that
cyberspace opens a non-symbolic communication –and this in fact program-
matically. Jaron Lanier, inventor of the most important technologies needed to
realize cyberspace, confirmed this idea as the goal he set in the development of
virtual realities in an interview for The Whole Earth Review in 1989: ‘There is
an idea I’m very interested in called post-symbolic communication. This means
that . . . you really don’t need to describe the world any more because you can
simply make any contingency’ (p. 118).
Because in cyberspace visible reality is performed rather than described,
cyberspace is produced not through an act of depiction, but a process of imita-
tion. We should be aware that the development from easel picture to simula-
tion is linked to a shift in the principle of mimesis. Simulation does not attempt
to interpret visible reality, but to isolate the visibility of something in order to
present it.47 One might object that for exactly this reason, a simulation is not an
image at all. But this objection is based on the assumption that an image must
always be a sign, always an interpretive depiction. But if we take into account
that cyberspace only isolates an aspect that is also present as part of a depiction,
then cyberspace can also be considered a form of imagery. An image interprets
and isolates visibility. If we consider the act of semiotic interpretation to be the
essential thing, then cyberspace is not an image; if we conversely take phenome-
nological, pure visibility to be the essential quality of any image, then cyberspace
is an image, and in fact an image that consists entirely of pictorial surface. One
could also say: simulation continues to be an image because it produces what
only images can produce: pure visibility.
The development of digital image processing is in any case based on a reali-
zation of the autonomy of visibility. This substantiates the understanding of the
image that Fielder thought out beforehand: It is possible to construct pure vis-
ibility without necessarily having to create a sign. Images that can be read as
signs for a way of seeing can also be regarded as constructions of pure visibility.*
* This understanding can be expanded further. Boris Groys makes an effort to do this in his essay ‘Die
Erzeugung der Sichtbarkeit’ [The Production of Visibility] (1995). He regards all of art from this stand-
point: ‘Art is by its nature the making of visibility: The work of art as such is made to be seen’ (tr). But
Groys further believes that art can only produce visibility by making something new. Only the new rises
above what is already and so makes itself visible. The old, on the other hand, melts into the art historical
No image has to be understood as an interpretation; to take an image to be an

interpretation is itself an interpretation. By grasping pure visibility as a form of
being and not as appearance, Fiedler anticipated the essence of digital image
processing and was the first to have the idea of a non-symbolic communication
through images. When pure visibility becomes a form of being, the viewer no
longer sees a sign with an objective reference, but a special form of visible reality.
Visibility’s independence is necessarily bound up with a loss of semiotic quali-
ties. What cyberspace achieves is inherent in any image, and starts to be compre-
hensible with CAD. Here, visibility is already treated as material that is not more
than it is: visibility. We have become accustomed to the idea that the depicted
object of an artwork may not be important. Who looks at Cézanne’s apples to
see apples? Many images in art are viewed for their style alone. But this formal
observation is inadequate for the new pictorial forms of the twentieth century.
Particularly in recent developments in the image, one finds a sensual reflection
of the step from a way of seeing to visibility. The visible style of a digital image is
formally as unimportant as visible apples are to an image of Cézanne’s.
4.3 The disappearance of artistic claims to truth
Preliminary remarks
In the short essay ‘Moderner Naturalismus und künstlerische Wahrheit’ [Modern
Naturalism and Artistic Truth] of 1881, Konrad Fiedler raises the question of
background and remains indistinguishable from it. Groys therefore identifies the artistic production
of visibility with the production of something new: ‘Visibility or presence is not a characteristic of an
object under consideration as such, but the effect of a relation between this object and its background.
Even if we are permitted to see everything that is, there is still a space for innovation, for through inno-
vation new visibilities are produced. [. . .] For visibility that is to be achieved through innovation is, as
I said, the effect of a relation between the work of art and its context. In order to produce visibility, it
is not absolutely necessary to put a new object of consideration into a normative context, we can also
situate a familiar object in a new context’ (tr) (ibid.). The result is that through these interpretations, art
forms that would otherwise be very difficult to tie in to this approach are taken to be the production of
visibility: Object-Art. For Groys, even ready-mades and installations are attempts to produce visibility,
because they create something new in the context of art history. However this is not achieved through
a new design of something, as is traditional in art, but only through the design and use of contexts in
which a common object is placed. For Groys, the production of visibility in the avant-garde of this
century has increasingly moved away from the object and towards work on contexts: What takes shape
is not the work of art, but its context. But as persuasive as this understanding of object-art as the pro-
duction of visibility is, we still need to attend to the phenomenological difference between the visibility
of a ready-made as an innovation with respect to the background of art history, and the pure visibility
of an image. In a ready-made, the visible object remains materially present and is not pure visibility. So
we should consider whether ‘visibility’ produced through contexts and innovation would not be better
characterized with the term ‘conspicuousness’.
‘what truth may be in an artistic sense’ (tr) (p. 97). Asking the question is in itself
remarkable. One often hears the view expressed that truth claims must be ruled
out of a formal understanding of art. This is correct insofar as formal aestheti-
cians do in fact refute concepts in which art, and art alone, is said to open access
to a higher, metaphysical form of truth. But it is not true that formal aesthetics
is therefore obliged to take the view that the concept of truth does not apply to
images at all. Fiedler’s own account of the artistic concept of truth has the dis-
advantage of being most clear about what artistic truth should not be, namely a
naturalistic description of reality. It is nevertheless appropriate to examine how
a claim to artistic truth is understood within a formal approach to an image,
and how this is affected by the conceptual shift –from an image as a representa-
tion of a way of seeing to an image as a design of visibility. We will confirm that
the shift from a way of seeing to visibility manifests itself as a disappearance of
artistic truth claims, and in this way, by means of a investigating a detail, use the
problem of truth to confirm the development under discussion here.
Problems of pictorial truth
Language analytical philosophers often raise the issue of whether it is possible
for an image to be true at all. Images are said not to assert anything, and only
assertions can have the quality of being true or false. It is actually right that
an image showing Peter in front of the cathedral in Florence is not identical
with the statement: ‘Peter is in Florence.’ For even an image that only depicts
one object always depicts infinitely many matters of fact; each depiction of an
object offers a vast amount of information about the relationships of the parts
of the objects to one another. An image of Peter shows how he holds his arms,
how he holds his head. In short, it reproduces the relationship of every depicted
part to every other depicted part. In a photograph of Peter in Florence, it may
also be possible to see that that the sky is blue, that there are many tourists and
doves there. It is not unusual for this fundamental ambiguity of images to be an
advantage, for example should one wish to reconstruct a house. This can always
be better achieved with an image than with a verbal description of the house,*
* Another difference between images and statements can be mentioned here: images and concep-
tual language differ in that in an image there is the possibility that something can be accidentally
described, without anyone having been involved; this is excluded from spoken or written language.
Accidental description in images did first become possible with photography, but right away one
finds countless examples of things going on the background of an image that are there purely by acci-
dent, and that no one intended to depict. This sets images made using photographic technologies,
even if the house appears in the image by accident. Infinitely many matters of
fact are reproduced in any image, each in need of a unique statement: an image
says more than a thousand words.
An advantage can be a disadvantage in other contexts: an image always shows
more than a thousand words say –but it never says a sentence. The existence
of any particular matter of fact cannot be asserted by means of an image. It
is impossible to set up an image that reproduces only the fact that ‘Peter is in
Florence’. And we have not even asked whether an image could negate a matter
of fact, or locate it in the past or future. No image can depict what something
is not. Only conceptual statements can perform these acts of abstraction, and
this can be used to mark an important difference: The image can neither restrict
itself to the depiction of a one matter of fact nor assert its existence. But since the
question of truth can only be posed meaningfully for an asserted matter of fact,
we must either stop talking about the truth of an image –the option is supported
by most scientific theorists –or take another meaning from it –this option is
defended by most aestheticians. Our daily dealings with images show how this
‘other meaning’ can look.48
Adaequatio imagines ad rem perceptam

Despite the essential difference between images and statements, we may ask
whether a matter of fact that is not asserted, but still depicted, coincides with
something we see. If we are looking at an image of Peter in Florence, it is reason-
able to confront the image with questions about whether he was there, whether
the weather really was pleasant, whether he really was wearing that jacket, and
so on With regard to any matter of fact, it is possible in principle to ask whether
the image is true or false, and possibly to answer on the basis of the image. This
is a common practice: on seeing an image of a flying saucer, one asks whether
this is a true image –and everyone knows what is meant in a familiar and con-
textual sense by this truth. Hundreds of researchers are engaged every day with
the discussion of the truth of images in this sense. As Nelson Goodman was able
to put it in his essay ‘On Rightness of Rendering’, not only the truth of a state-
ment but also the truth of images is a function of the right match. An engage-
ment that is not more closely defined by the images themselves leads to a sign
including film and video, apart from all other kinds of images. There is no purely accidental object
in a painted image; there is always a painter that wanted to paint it in. Even if he wanted to paint
something that was supposed to be in that place accidentally, he intends to paint it. For this reason,
the recognition of the photographic image as art essentially depends on whether accident is to be
accepted as an artistic element. The Dadaists were, as we know, the first to make the claim, and they
in turn did not defend photography as an art form for nothing.
being interpreted as matching: if this is the case, then it is true. ‘The truth of
statements and the accuracy of descriptions [. . .] is primarily a matter of fit: fit
to what is referred to in one way or another, or to other renderings, or to modes
and manners of organization’ (p. 138). Unlike Heidegger, Goodman does not
seem to want to refute the interpretation of ‘truth as accuracy’, but rather sees
it as opening a perspective, of replacing generally speculative talk about ‘truth’
with sober talk about the ‘rightness of fit’ (p. 132): ‘Rather than attempting to
subsume descriptive and representational rightness under the truth, we shall do
better, I think, to subsume truth along with these under the general notion of
rightness of fit’ (p. 132).
With respect to these reflections, it has been rightly pointed out that ‘with
Goodman, the final decision about what is right becomes the burden of prac-
tice’ (tr).49 What fits depends on how one engages with the object to which the
question is being put. One’s engagement with an image is not determined by
the image itself, but brought in through contexts, interests and prior knowl-
edge. Only a specific practice provides the framework in which something
fits something. The concept of accuracy is grounded in a way of living and
interacting. It is not necessarily an argument against the use of the concept
or accuracy, but it is an exact description of the conditions under which the
concept can be used.
Even non-objective information about an image, for example the way of see-
ing, can match. Even for the non-objective information in images there are con-
ventional forms, within which it is by no means arbitrary or relative to confirm
that the image matches. A blurry photograph does not say: ‘A short-sighted per-
son’s vision has qualities exemplified in the relations in this image.’ This informa-
tion is only gained through an interpretation of the image. The practice consists
of asking whether the immanent relations in an image correspond to a particular
kind of seeing, whether the image as a whole corresponds, on the basis of the
way it is made, to a situation as it is seen at a particular moment, under particu-
lar conditions.
This interpretation does not demand that every part of the image correspond
to a part of the object. It is rather about an agreement between the infrastructure
of the pictorial surface and the infrastructure of a perceptual syntax. Assuming
that works of art are obliged to research perceptual conditions, it is reasonable to
regard this structural correspondence between the image and something seen as
a kind of artistic truth: adequatio imagines ad rem perceptam.50 The claim of ade-
quatio, which a phenomenon needs in order to be capable of being true in the first
place, is not made by any image in itself, but is drawn in through an engagement
with the viewer that the image does not specify any more closely. In this sense of
truth, many impressionist images show very well, for example, the way in which
visible reality appears to human beings when they perceive it in a state of a radi-
cal transience and ephemerality. From this example, one also sees that the formal
concept of artistic truth is an unpretentious category: It is the accuracy of non-
objective information. This understanding of truth therefore presupposes that
any image is to be understood as information and not as expression.
Information instead of expression

For Wölfflin, the immanent relations in an artistic image necessarily follow from
a particular way of seeing. For him, an artist’s images are always made in the way
the artist would have been seeing. The artist’s optical conditions are inevitably
recorded in the form of an artistic works. A work of art is, for Wölfflin, always
the expression of a particular mode of perception. So for him, the question of
truth does not arise. His starting point is, in fact, that the forms of Renaissance
and Baroque art were not visual possibilities, but rather the logical result and so
the expression of the way people saw at that time; his aesthetic makes a decid-
edly historical claim. This has already been quoted above: ‘Velasquez saw them
[the objects he painted] in such a painterly way’ (Principles, p. 108). Wölfflin
does not mean this metaphorically at all. He very clearly takes the view that
people at a particular time would not have been able to see in any other way than
is shown in the images of the artists of this time, and accordingly he wants to
reconstruct the teleological history of vision using visual art.
Wölfflin’s historical claims for formal aesthetics have been criticized often
and with justification51 –but recently have also being defended in a modified
form.52 His thesis, that there are epochal, immutably firm forms of intuition at
specific times, and that they determine the style of all artists of these epochs,
cannot be defended empirically, and is logically as absurd as the view that only a
short-sighted person could make a blurry image. The images of the Renaissance
and the Baroque inform us about various ways of seeing. But they do not tell us
who and when, to say nothing of whether an entire generation saw in this way –
at least not without making some additional purely hypothetical and idealistic
assumptions. For the non-objective and the objective content of an image can
be equally fictional. Even a person with normal vision can make blurry pho-
tographs. We therefore need to treat the non-objective content depicted in an
image in the same way as we treat the objective content: not as a reproduced copy
of something, but as a deliberately produced depiction of the form of intuition.53
Today, the research of Ernst H. Gombrich, from his famous collection The
Image and the Eye. Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation
of 1982, provides an almost ideal example of treating the non-objective
meaning of images in this latter sense. His understanding of the relation-
ship between image and eye, that is between representation and perception
is, from a philosophical standpoint, a great advance over Wölfflin’s because
he gets free of all speculative assumptions and retains only the portion of
Wölfflin’s reflections that argue as information theory does. He repeatedly
rejects the assumption that the expression of an age is to be seen in a style.54
For Gombrich, the immanent relations in an image are not necessarily the
expression of, but only information about possible ways of seeing.55 He is
concerned ‘. . . to scrutinize painting by great masters for the amount of infor-
mation embodied in their pictures’.56 Yet the accuracy of the non-objective
information in images is no more taken for granted than that of the objective
information. Gombrich rather works the truth out by comparing structures
in the image. In this way he inquires of a great number of very diverse images,
for example, whether they correctly reproduce the ambiguity of perception at
the edges of an image –whether they match. If the quality of the immanent
structures does not correspond, the image is rejected as an inaccurate rep-
resentation of the structural coherence under investigation. To this end, he
draws a comparison between the quality of their immanent relations and the
syntax of perception.
The result of this search for correspondence, that is, the search for truth,
is, for example, that he rejects as false the obvious solution of an image that is
simply blurred at its edges: ‘Our photographer Gombrich writes, ‘resorted to
the expedient of covering part of his lens with vaseline to get partial blurring
of the field, but the results only demonstrate the futility of this device’ (p. 267).
It is clear, even from the problems that arise in the pictorial knowledge of
ambiguity at the edges of perception, that changes of the condition of the eye,
still trivial in the case of short-sightedness, can become an undertaking as
complex as it is subtle. It sets a task that is at once a challenge to the sciences
of perceptual psychology and to the visual arts. This is formal aesthetics’ main
idea within the paradigm of a way of seeing; art and science are not in opposi-
tion, but mutually complete one another because in researching visible reality,
both make claims to truth: ‘The artistic drive is a drive for knowledge, artistic
activity engages the capacity for knowledge, the artistic result is the resulting
knowledge’.57
Artistic truth as surface coherence

It has already been pointed out above that if we see the representational means
of artistic images exclusively in a representational relationship to concrete forms
of human observation, we will have an insufficient understanding of what an
image can do and particularly of what an artistic image sets out to do. Pictorial
depiction can free itself from a human way of seeing, and it is characteristic
of many works of art to want to be more than an illustrative representation of
modalities of perception available to psychological and physiological investiga-
tion. It is not unusual in art for the concrete ways people see to be completely
unimportant; just as the depicted object can become unimportant. Cubism fur-
nishes many examples of images reproducing not a way of seeing, but forms in
which the pure visibility of something can be constructed. It would be absurd
to interpret such construction as the condition of the eye, in Wölfflin’s sense.
There is an asymmetrical relationship between perception and depiction: there
are more possibilities for depicting an object than there are for seeing it. The
visibility of something can be constructed in an image without any intention
that the construction should represent the way people see this thing. This, the
image’s very emancipation from simply illustrating a way of seeing to inventing
visibilities, leads to the question of the criteria that can still be used to test truth
claims. For an artistic image, which we assume ‘enriches the world by a new
kind of perception’ (tr)58 it is impossible in principle to compare the image with
a perceptual syntax. For it is exactly per definitionem a new, a constructed type
of observation, for which there is no prior example, to which this sketch must
stand in depictive correspondence. How can we still speak of artistic truth?
Although its title does not exactly give the impression of its being a contri-
bution to the development of the formal observation of images, particularly to
the question of artistic truth, the book by the Berlin philosopher Georg Simmel
(1858–1918) that appeared in 1900, The Philosophy of Money does this neverthe-
less.59 A view is defended here that artistic truth is a quality of the relations of
the parts of an image to one another. The crucial passage in this respect goes: ‘In
what is called the “truth” of a work of art, the mutual relationship of its elements
as against its relationship to the object that it depicts is also probably much more
significant than is usually acknowledged [. . .] Truth is therefore also a relative
concept in the particular context of art. It is realized as a relationship between
the elements of a work of art, and not as an exact correspondence between the
elements and an external object which constitutes the absolute norm’ (p. 106f.).
Simmel takes the only logical route: The truth of an artwork has to be defin-
able on the basis of the surface syntax alone. One speaks of artistic truth when a
special form of the ‘phenomenon of relations’ (p. 107) is given. It is the surface
coherence of an image. Simmel even explicitly rejects the view that the criterion
for the truth of an artwork would be that a correspondence or correlation is
given between the image and the represented object. This kind of relation, he
says, applies only to “truth” in the ordinary and substantial sense’ (ibid., p. 107).
Here Simmel and Fiedler are in agreement: ‘The creation of inventories of the
world’ (tr)60 is not a valid criterion for artistic truth. But even if no correspond-
ence can be established between the representation of a way of seeing as a whole
and the structures of a perception, unified coherence is still a truth criterion for
an artistic depiction.
This way of reading renders the question of an object’s claim to artistic truth
identical with the question of its aesthetic success. For the formal observation
of images, the question of artistic truth coincides with the question of stylistic
coherence. In this way, the perfecting of a style becomes a criterion of artistic
truth. For this reason it is not remarkable that Simmel was often accused of
aestheticism. A way of seeing is declared true when it is found to be coherent.
So, according to Simmel, ‘we can get no impression of either truth or falsehood
from single elements in works of fine art or of literature; in isolation they stand
outside these categories. Or looking at the matter from the other side: the artist
is free as regards initial elements from which the work of art emerges; only after
he has chosen a character, a style, an element to colour and form, an atmosphere,
do the other parts become predetermined. They have now to meet the expecta-
tions aroused by the first step, which may be fantastic, arbitrary and unreal. So
long as the elaboration is harmonious and consistent, the whole will produce an
impression of “inner truth”, whether or not an individual part corresponds to
outward reality and satisfies the claim to “truth” in the ordinary and substantial
sense. Truth in a work of art means that as a whole it keeps the promise which
one part has, as it were, voluntarily offered us. It may be any one part, since the
mutual correspondence of the parts gives the quality of truth to each of them’
(p. 107).
This interpretation of artistic truth comes to an ambivalent conclusion: on
the one hand, this concept certainly resonates with the basic approach of for-
mal aesthetics and understands artistic truth as a syntactic trait of the pictorial
surface. But according to Simmel’s concept, the question of the artistic truth of
a work is the same as the question about its aesthetic coherence, its stylistic self-
sufficiency and internal relational harmony. This understanding of truth presents
another problem: When is the coherence of the pictorial surface given? How can
this be established? What Simmel introduces as the criterion of aesthetic truth
corresponds to the criterion with which the aesthetic quality of artworks is tra-
ditionally judged. But whether the whole work really ‘keeps the promise which
one part has, as it were, voluntarily offered us’ (p. 107), as Simmel put it in the
last quotation, ultimately remains a question whose answer is as contentious
as the question of an object’s aesthetic quality is speculative. In short, we need
to see whether another criterion for artistic truth can be found. Contemporary
aesthetics provides crucial suggestions in this regard.
Artistic truth as rhetorical success

The reception of the idea that works of art follow the invention of ways of seeing
has taken many forms in recent aesthetics. A predominant understanding is that
it is not enough for a work of art just to represent a way of seeing. If this is the
case, no specific difference from a non-artistic representation has yet been estab-
lished. The image of short-sightedness used earlier also presents a way of seeing.
Any pictorial representation can finally be seen this way, as if it showed a way of
seeing. For Arthur C. Danto, the situation produces the following relationship
between a work of art and something that is not a work of art: ‘Any representa-
tion not an artwork can be matched by one that is one, the difference lying in the
fact that the artwork uses the way the nonartwork presents its content to make a
point about how that content is presented.’61
The symbolic dimension of artistic practice does not suffice to establish a
specific artistic form of truth. In addition to the symbolic dimension of artistic
form production, a pragmatic concern must be added, one could even say a
didactic concern. We demand from an art work whose form symbolizes a way
of seeing, as we do not from an illustration of the way of seeing, that this way of
seeing be shared with the viewer in a way that changes his way of seeing things.
And this is a process of which we can ask, as we can of any pragmatic process,
whether it functions or not, in short: whether it is successful. The artistic truth
of images is decided by way of the success of a message on a non-objective level
of meaning. Art appears as an attack on the viewer’s own mental condition; for
this must be changed, should he see the world as it is represented. Even Nelson
Goodman, from his language analytic perspective, emphasizes –surprisingly –
this pragmatic challenge: ‘What counts as success in achieving accord depends
upon what our habits, progressively modified in the face of new encounters and
new proposals, adopt as projectable kinds [. . .] A Mondrian design is right if
projectable as effective in seeing a world’.62 If we start from the idea that the
investigation of ways of seeing in art coincides with a genuine rhetorical con-
cern, it becomes possible to describe a concept of artistic truth. It is not enough
for works of art to represent the world in some way. Beyond this way of seeing,
they must also cause the viewer to see the world with a changed perspective –
changed as much as possible in the suggested way: Art –as Danto predictably
emphasizes –‘He must in some marvellous way engage the mind and make it
move into the state he intends it to be in. He is not dealing with automata or
mere rational beings.’63
The rhetorical-pragmatic dimension is valid only inasmuch as it functions or
does not function. Works of art are valid in a way that is fundamentally differ-
ent way from the way statements are valid for their truth. We cannot justify the
validity of art as we would, say, the validity of propositions or actions, it is rather
a success in shaping a reality. With the formulation ‘truth of art’ it becomes pos-
sible to describe the function of disclosing a world, that is, its capacity to rep-
resent and interpret reality in such a way as to also be a way for others. ‘The
truth of art’, as Martin Seel formulated it, ‘is the validity of world disclosure’(tr).64
The question is what the validity of world disclosure is. Wilhelm Dilthey rightly
pointed out in this regard that for a pragmatic understanding of artistic validity,
these are purely ‘questions of influence and power’,65 the principle of which is
that a powerful man ‘compels men to see with his eyes’ (ibid, p. 209). In fact the
impact of a way of seeing is a criterion that can decide whether to ascribe artistic
validity to a work or not.
The missing possibility of being true

The pragmatic reading of artistic truth opens a middle way: On the one hand,
elaborate speculative claims that some higher form of metaphysical truth is
to be found in art are rejected. On the other hand, specific artistic concepts
of truth are defended as meaningful. ‘Its truth’, as Fellmann summarized the
formal-pragmatic understanding of art, ‘is a function of the capacity to generate
regulated vision, and so to inculcate a particular way of seeing’ (tr).66 To put it
in another way, we can speak of artistic truth only if art is taken to be the rep-
resentation of a way of seeing. If art surpasses this function, talk about artistic
truth becomes superfluous. The phenomenon of artistic truth is bound to the
paradigm of the way of seeing, that is, to images that reflect their way of seeing
sensually.
But even these last claims to truth disappear when no interpretation of vis-
ible reality is to be seen in an image at all, only autonomous designs of visibil-
ity. It is not on the basis of the image itself that we affirm or deny an image’s
truth claims, but rather on a prior decision to consider the image as represent-
ing a way of seeing or as a design of visibility. The interpretation of an image
as the representation of a way of seeing arises from a particular understand-
ing of art, without which the question of artistic truth would not arise. When
pure visibility has become an independent form of being, this interpretation
has reached its limits. The question of artistic truth then becomes as absurd
as it would be if directed at an ordinary object. In the case of a video clip, or
of a computer animation, or of cyberspace, it is impossible to assume formal,
artistic truth: All are beyond a way of seeing, if not in the same way, then to
the same extent, and so the conditions for claiming artistic truth are not given.
As the way of seeing recedes, so do claims to artistic truth. The emancipation
of pure visibility is –leaving the development of technical media aside –the
result of a willingness to consider artistic truth claims to be unimportant. For
the relationship between artistic truth and pure visibility is inversely propor-
tional: As interest in understanding the image as an original work of art dwin-
dles, interest in the image as a structure of pure visibility, that is, as a design
achievement, expands. Unlike an artistic achievement in the traditional sense,
this does not interpret visible reality, but only –and this ‘only’ is no judgement –
to equip it with new visible things. An image that exists only because of its vis-
ibility –and depending on one’s point of view this will be regretted as intellectual
impoverishment or defended it as an emancipation from unjustified demands –
does not claim to be more than can be seen, although more can be seen than is
really present.
5
Phenomenological Reduction and Pictorial

Abstraction: Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(1908–1961)
5.1 Formal aesthetics and reduction
Preliminary remarks
The intention of formal aesthetics becomes accessible to us only if we recognize
the procedure that defines it, namely the reduction of the aesthetic object in its
complexity, as a productive philosophical method. Whether the formal observa-
tion of an image serves to affirm beauty, trace the logic of a way of seeing, or iso-
late autonomous visibility, the image is consciously reduced to its infrastructure
in each case, and many other aspects of the image –say, the social, art historical
or iconological dimensions –are excluded, every formalism is associated with a
reduction. Yet it is remarkable that in the writings of formal aesthetics, methodo-
logical self-reflection is not centred on the concept of reduction. It is not rare to
even get the impression –it is especially the case for Wölfflin –that to concentrate
on form is understood to be completely obvious and normal: as though there
were no other way to interact with images, as though people see only a planimet-
ric network of relations in images. One misses a critical awareness of the method,
the unspoken assumptions on which formal observation is based. For this reason
it is appropriate to illuminate the formal approach form a specifically phenom-
enological perspective, and in this way to complete its self-understanding. For if
there is one philosophy that has discussed the possibilities and the functions of
reduction as a philosophical method, then it is the phenomenology founded by
Edmund Husserl. This is clear from even a short review of Husserl’s point of view.
Phenomenological reduction
For Edmund Husserl, it is characteristic of both scientific and everyday inter-
action with the world that this world be preconceived as, and assumed to be,
real and present. In what he calls the ‘natural attitude’, we are conscious of the
world as a present reality.1 This consciousness of reality is the starting point for
phenomenological argumentation. In this respect, it shares in the principle of
inescapable phenomenality, that is, the view that reality is only ever the inten-
tional content of consciousness. Yet this phenomenal character of reality is not
itself in turn the content of consciousness. It is actually that characteristic of
natural consciousness to be directed towards something in a way that covers up
the quality that the things being taken to be real are things for consciousness.
Husserl’s concept of the natural attitude makes reference to something being
given in consciousness in such a way that no attention is drawn to the media-
tion. This dimming out is the norm, the preconceived, self-activating ground of
any lived life, requiring no supplementary effort: Without some deliberate effort
to change the natural attitude, consciousness is in things. This ‘being-directed-
towards-something’, crucial to any intentional structure, therefore constitutes
the theme of phenomenology, in particular the theory of reduction.
The principle of phenomenological reduction consists of artificially abandon-
ing the natural attitude so as to gain a new perspective on the object. Belief in
the existence of an external world, often dismissed as naïve, is rendered inop-
erative by means of an attitude known as epoché. Epoché is, as Husserl defines
it in the Ideas of 1913, the ‘bracketing out’ [Einklammerung] or ‘suppression’
[Ausschaltung] of a belief in existence: ‘We put out of action the general pos-
iting that belongs to the essence of the natural attitude’ (§32, p. 61). This, the
phenomenologist’s willed disposition, requires a deliberate and extraordinary
act.2 Maintaining the epoché, too, demands continuous effort, which is one of
the reasons it is not unusual for this attitude to become problematic: ‘The source
of all such difficulties lies in the unnatural direction of intuition and thought
which phenomenological analysis requires.’3 If Husserl’s concept of epoché at
first glance recalls Descartes’s concept of methodical doubt, the formulation ‘for
phenomenological analysis’ marks the crucial difference. Husserl is not attempt-
ing to overcome the state of epoché by means of phenomenological analysis, but
rather to work out from this state. With Descartes, on the other hand, methodi-
cal doubt is there to be overcome. In his meditations, Descartes even deliberately
adopts the position of a radical sceptic, and doubts the validity of every belief in
existence; but the goal of this doubt consists in finding a foundation on which to
Phenomenological Reduction and Pictorial Abstraction 159
build an assertion of existence. Descartes wants to leave the pure immanence of

consciousness behind –and to do it as quickly as possible. But Husserl’s goal in
bracketing out natural belief in the existence of the world is to stop focusing on
what a recognized object is, and concentrate instead on how it is given, that is,
to allow structures of consciousness to show themselves and become potential
objects of phenomenological description. Phenomenology’s claim to be able to
see entities as they have never been seen before therefore depends on the success
of the epoché. Epoché can ‘turn one’s regard to the phenomenological field’ –
(Ideas, §60, p. 139) just as a gestalt can suddenly change: The look can turn back
from consciousness’s object of reference to acts of consciousness themselves, so
that in the artificial attitude, the real theme of phenomenology can come into
view: the immanent structures of consciousness.
The image as the object of phenomenological reduction

After even this short paraphrase of Husserl’s idea of phenomenological reduc-
tion, it is easy to interpret formal aesthetics as implementing a phenomeno-
logical reduction for a different object. Husserl calls for a reduction of what is
immediately given to consciousness. Formal aesthetics is concerned, conversely,
with the image. Yet the two phenomena are related in their intentional character.
For it is not only objective consciousness that is an intentional consciousness of
something; an objective image, too, is an image of something, and so disposes
over an intentional character. The parallels between image and consciousness
extend further in their common medial transparency. Consciousness is not
alone in giving something and as it does, then disappearing into the background
as the giving medium. The image, too, shows an object; that is, it produces con-
sciousness, without drawing attention to itself as a material object. This idea,
having by now become almost a commonplace as ‘the transparency of the image’,
is among the classical phenomenological insights.
It is clear where these parallels between image and consciousness lead: The
observation of an image, too, involves a natural attitude, or as Husserl says in his
lecture ‘Phantasy and Image Consciousness’ of 1904–1905: ‘In normal contem-
plation of the picture I live in the image consciousness. In that case, I focus my
attention on something entirely different’ (p. 48). We have a normal observation
of an image when the viewer is looking at the image not in order to see the mate-
rial object that is present, the canvas or the paper, but rather the absent, depicted
object, the so-called image object. A person looking at an image without inter-
est, as is normally the case in looking through an album of photographs, is
observing an absent world –but still a world and not a piece of paper. This does
not mean that the image cannot also be viewed as a material object. Any image
is visible in two aspects: as something that depicts and as something depicted.*
Landscapes of kilometres unfold on a piece of paper of a few square centime-
tres; both aspects can be observed. But an image is considered a depiction of
something in the sense under discussion here only if we are looking not at, but
through the surface of the image.4
Because of its intentional character, an image is an object that allows a phe-
nomenological reduction to be carried out. An artificial attitude can be taken
towards even an image, in the hope of in this way discovering aspects whose
character it is to be overlooked in normal pictorial observation. Although the
suitability of images for reduction seems so clear, Husserl himself never sug-
gested or implemented it. In this respect, the studies of the Frenchman Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) are ground-breaking. Especially in his late essays,
Merleau-Ponty explained in detail that not only the image, but also every lin-
guistic phenomenon should be submitted to a phenomenological reduction,
since medial self-denial is characteristic of any linguistic message. In The Prose
of the World, which Merleau-Ponty wrote in the early 1950s and which was pub-
lished in 1969, it says, ‘When someone [. . .] succeeds in expressing himself, the
signs are immediately forgotten; all that remains is the meaning. The perfection
of language lies in its capacity to pass unnoticed’ (p. 10). Merleau-Ponty himself
confirms the structural affinity of language to consciousness –in principle in
this context –by emphasizing that the intentional orientation of an image, ‘just
as perception takes us to things themselves’ (ibid., p. 14). His conclusion from
this analogy is clear: ‘If we want to understand language in its original mode
of signifying, we shall have to pretend never to have spoken. We must perform
* This double visibility –as Husserl shows in his image lecture –is in a relationship of mutual antago-
nism, and it is just this that accounts for the special way things are given in pictorial depiction: ‘The
appearance belonging to the image object is distinguished in one point from the normal perceptual
appearance. This is an essential point that makes it impossible for us to view the appearance belong-
ing to the image object as a normal perception: It bears within itself the characteristic of unreality,
of conflict with the actual present. The perception of the surroundings, the perception in which
the actual present becomes constituted for us, continues on through the frame and then signifies
“printed paper” or “painted canvas” ’ (p. 51). ‘And yet it belongs to these apprehension contents: in
short, there is conflict. But in a peculiar way. The image object does triumph, insofar as it comes to
appearance. The apprehension contents are permeated by the image-object apprehension; they fuse
into the unity of the appearance. But the other apprehension is still there; it has its normal, stable,
connection with the appearance of the surroundings. Perception gives the characteristic of present
reality. The surroundings are real surroundings; the paper, too, is something actually present. The
image appears, but it conflicts with what is actually present. It is therefore merely an ‘image’; however
much it appears, it is a nothing [ein Nichts]’ (Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory, 1898–
1925, p. 50).
a reduction upon language, without which it would still be hidden from our
view –leading us back to what signifies. We should look at language the way deaf
people look at those who are speaking. We should compare the art of language
with other arts of expression which do not have recourse to language and try to
see language as one of those mute arts’ (ibid., p. 46).
Against this background, we can understand how a purely formal observa-
tion of the image is justified. It is not about treating the image as an ornament,
but about the effort to describe, by bracketing out the relationship to the refer-
ent, aspects of the image that are not the subject of attention. We should not
overlook Fiedler’s call, even before Husserl, ‘to grasp that seeing as such can
come into its own only when every relationship to any objectivity that is in any
sense perceptible has disappeared from it’ (tr).5 Yet what formed the core of his
writings was not, as it was for Husserl, the elaboration of this methodological
challenge, but rather the implementation of this method, the description of
what one sees when one is not looking at the referent of an image. This applies
equally to Wölfflin’s theory of art historical principles. If Wölfflin observes an
image ‘naively’, that is, without reflecting on the attitude that is conditioning
his observation, then it is certainly a phenomenological naivety in observing
images: bracketing out the relationship to the referent. It is characteristic of the
formal approach to describe the image from an unnatural attitude. For normally
we see an image not as just a system of immanent relations, but as a representa-
tion of contents. Epoché is meant to alter this seeing so that we can better under-
stand the image as a medium that constructs meaning. By means of the epoché,
the place where the meaning of the image is generated, namely the surface of the
image, is observed –or better, becomes observable.
The surface of the image

From a phenomenological perspective, the surface of an image is in fact a special
problem. We must be aware that it is as much an aspect of the material depict-
ing as it of what is immaterially depicted. For on the one hand, the pictorial
surface is the ‘touchable’ outer edge of a physical object. Familiar methods of
describing material characteristics may be used to describe it. So to point out
that something is painted canvas or printed paper is undoubtedly to give one
kind of description of a pictorial surface; using scientific methods, such surface
details can be made specific. But such descriptions sidestep the essential issue,
that the object of description is a representation, which it to say that it has an
intentional structure. We must therefore also be aware that the pictorial surface
is the place where the immaterial representation of something absent appears.

The reverse side of an image is not a pictorial surface, even though it is materi-
ally bound to the front side. Here we can already see how a pictorial surface
resists a scientific approach. No physical examination, however rigorous, can
come to the conclusion that a painted surface is the surface of an image and
not that of a painted object. Only if an object is examined as a representation of
something can we be sure that we are looking at a pictorial surface, or, to put it
more exactly: that we are seeing through, overlooking the pictorial surface in its
materiality; this pictorial surface has no reverse side. It is a phenomenon that is
not visible, but rather must be made visible, and in fact made visible after it has
been seen through.
The infrastructure of an image belongs to the terrain Husserl calls ‘the invis-
ible’.6 It can be described, just as the lenses can be described, in two ways. There
seems to be a difference between describing a lens from a physical perspec-
tive, pointing out that it is round and that it has a pronounced curvature, and
drawing attention to it by trying to describe it while looking through it. That is
typical of phenomenology. The phrase ‘to the things themselves’ insists not on
a scientific turn in philosophy, but rather always on a description of things as
they are given for a subject: as they are if they are a phenomenon.* To meet the
requirement, a lens would have to be looked through, even if no relevance has
been established to the object being viewed. One can also say that the qualities
that phenomenology wants to describe must first be turned into visible phe-
nomena by means of a reduction. It is problematical to do this with an image,
for an image resists superficial observation. It takes artificial effort to observe it
formally. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) described this with all desirable clarity
* In the area of aesthetics, the positioning of this phenomenological phrase has introduced a turn back
towards the aesthetic object, which, from a contemporary standpoint, looks like a new version of the
programme proposed by Herbart and Zimmermann. In phenomenological aesthetics, one finds the
same resistance to anchoring philosophical aesthetics in metaphysical systems that is characteristic
of the beginnings of formal aesthetics. Both aesthetics arise from the same position with respect
to speculative philosophy. We can see this clearly in the first sentences of Donald Brinkmann’s
book Natur und Kunst. Zur Phänomenologie des ästhetischen Gegenstandes [Nature and Art. On the
Phenomenology of the Aesthetic Object] of 1938; except for the mention of Husserl, they could be
Zimmermann’s: ‘With respect to all traditional constructive “theories”, the phenomenological aes-
thetic proposed here adopts Husserl’s call “to the things” in the form of “back to the aesthetic object”.
Far from retaining traditional constructive aestheticians’ concern with resolving or explaining or
understanding the mystery of the aesthetic object, a critical phenomenological aesthetic is content
to rediscover, under all the constructive accessories, the object in its qualitative being, and so to pre-
sent it in its full mystery and contradiction for the first time. In other words, it sets out to restore to
aesthetics its object, which it had lost through systematic bias over time, and to point out the way this
recovery of the object can be achieved’ (S. V.). In light of this fundamental agreement in position, is it
not surprising that Brinkmann further confirms the idea defended in this chapter: ‘Wölfflin’s theory
[has] [. . .] the greatest significance for a phenomenology of aesthetic objects’ (ibid., p. 141).
in his phenomenological study The Imaginary (1940): ‘A picture spontaneously

offers itself in relief to the imaging consciousness, and the perceptual conscious-
ness would have great difficulty seeing it as flat’ (p. 50).
Formal aesthetics is the attempt to see the image as a surface, so as to turn
the surface of an image into a phenomenon. It is concerned with a process of
aestheticizing, that is, of sensitizing to the an-aesthetic aspects of an image.
The concept of the an-aesthetic, much-discussed at present, corresponds to the
actual status of formal aesthetics. The goal is an inversion of the image’s imma-
nent relation of aesthetic to an-aesthetic.* The power of the image to draw the
look through the surface to what is represented is artificially disempowered
through epoché, so that it can, after the look has come to rest on what is repre-
sented, resurface from the depths, so to speak, not directly from the front, but
from behind, to the surface. This detour –to the represented thing and back to
the surface –is necessary; for the formal observation of an image out from the
epoché leads to a way of looking at the image that is different from what would
be produced in a crude-formal way of looking that no longer takes what is rep-
resented into account at all. This last would reduce the image to an ornament or
just a pattern, but formal aesthetics –because it brackets out, rather than ignor-
ing the semantic dimension –treats the image as an empty syntactic structure,
like a mathematical formula. A person engaged in this kind of formal observa-
tion knows that what it is describing is an aspect of an image, that the surface not
only possesses decorative qualities, but also displays a pictorial language suitable
for making an absent object visible. So it produces, by means of the epoché, an
artificial look at the image that opens the narrow path between a description of
* Wolfgang Welsch speaks of an ‘aesthetic-anaesthetic relation in every mode of perception’ within

the phenomenological tradition (Ästhetisches Denken [Aesthetic Thinking]), p. 33. This refers to
the presumed contents: ‘One sees visible objects, not seeing or visibility. Actual perception is related
to objects, pushes forward, and is efficient for this very reason. Of course this means that a kind
of anaesthetic is inscribed in perception itself. Its own specificity –its schemata and character,
including the limitations they entail –remains curiously hidden from it’ (ibid., p. 33f.). In apply-
ing this –for now terminological –suggestion to formal aesthetics, the implications are clear: An
almost paradoxical situation arises. In phenomenological considerations, medial communication is
not theorized to the same extent as is the perception of objects or images. In viewing an image, the
stylistic structures are unthematic, that is, for Welsch they are not aesthetic, if the concept ‘aesthetic’
is understood in the original Greek sense of ‘perceived’ —but formal aesthetics is concerned with
these very aspects: Formal aesthetics is, in the contemporary understanding, an anaesthetics. Formal
aesthetics is concerned with the object of contemporary anaesthetics: The schemata and character
of a perception Welsch is referring to correspond to the theme of formal aesthetics, which is to say
anaesthetics. This makes it clear that the demand for an anaesthetics is not merely terminological.
‘Anaesthetics’ is meant to express the possibility that the unthematized reverse side, the anaesthetic
aspects could be more relevant than the visible ones. ‘To put it briefly, anaesthetics has to do with the
reverse side of aesthetics’ (tr) (p. 10). In fact Wölfflin’s results from the example of stylistic phenom-
ena confirm Welsch’s programmatically formulated hope that turning to anaesthetics will serve to
clarify aesthetics.
the work that is materialistic –directed solely towards the physical work –and

one that is idealistic –directed solely towards the content: ‘In the last analysis,
phenomenology is neither a materialism nor a philosophy of mind. Its proper
work is to unveil the pre-theoretical layer on which both of these idealizations
find their relative justification and are gone beyond.7
If we keep in mind that the pictorial examples from Wölfflin’s Principles of
Art History would serve their argumentative function equally well if they were
reproduced upside down, we have a clear instance of what Husserl described as
a truly unnatural way of looking. Qualities of style are purely phenomenological
qualities of a pictorial surface, for they are completely inaccessible to the natural
sciences; style cannot be measured. This becomes clear even in the relational
qualities that finally constitute style, for example the painterly and the linear.
Every visible transition from one form to another is painterly if we can just get
close enough, with the aid of a microscope, and every transition appears linear if
we are only far enough away. We can see the quality of a pictorial surface only by
looking at it from the same distance needed to see the represented object prop-
erly. For this reason Merleau-Ponty, too, stresses the importance of the correct
distance. For we can only understand it phenomenologically: ‘Anyone observing
the painter too closely, with his nose on the brush, would see only the reverse
side of his work. The other side is this thin stroke of black, the place is the great
sun spot that he begins to circumscribe’ (Prose, p. 44).
The right distance must be maintained, but it does not matter which way the
image is hung. From this we can see that the an-aesthetic structural qualities
of an image do in fact depend on content, but not one concrete content. The
formalization of an image changes the status of the content: Specific content
becomes unspecific. The painterly, planar, unified, clear and a-tectonic struc-
tural quality of an image seen upside down is no longer recognizable, or not so
clearly recognizable as it is in one that is hanging correctly. In fact if the images
in Wölfflin’s Principles of Art History really were turned upside down, it would
ease the demands the formal mode of viewing makes on the viewer.* The arti-
ficial, that is to say phenomenological view of images in Wölfflin’s argument
would then become clear more quickly. Wölfflin’s doctoral supervisor, Johannes
Volkelt, was correct in supposing that ‘the attitude of an aesthetician in Herbart’s
sense is phenomenological’ (tr).8
* This method is actually very widely used in graphology. There, texts are turned upside down during
formal analysis, so that the viewer does not become a reader.
5.2 Visibility as quiddity
The problem of phenomenological reduction

That the idea of a phenomenological reduction can be applied to an image is sig-
nificant for the way phenomenology is understood in principle, in whatever way
phenomenology in principle is practiced. At first glance, one could get the idea
from formal aesthetics that an image is just one more possible object that can be
examined using phenomenological instruments. But this interpretation quickly
reaches its limits. It does not take the objective connection between aesthetics
and phenomenology into account. In contrast to the epoché during the viewing
of an image, Husserl’s concept of a reduction of what is immediately given to con-
sciousness is fundamentally difficult. With this in mind, the role of the image as
an object of phenomenological observation changes abruptly. If Husserl’s original
idea of phenomenological reduction is tangled up in aporias, it means that the
idea of an epoché as such is meaningful only for the observation of an image.
Husserl himself leaves no doubt that the reduction should turn the phenom-
enologist’s attention to the subject: ‘If I put myself above all this life and refrain
from doing any believing that takes “the world” straightforwardly as existing –if
I direct my attention to this life itself, as consciousness of “the” world, I thereby
acquire myself as the pure ego, with the pure stream of my cogitationes.’9 By disa-
bling natural belief in the world by means of the epoché, the subject Husserl calls
transcendent or pure is supposed to appear to the phenomenologist. The reason
for referring to the subject in this way lies in phenomenology’s claim: Reduction
is not to be understood as a psychology of the empirical and therefore always
individual subject, rather it sets out, in its eidetic vision, to experience the pos-
sibilities of consciousness in principle. Following his transcendental turn in the
Ideas of 1913, Husserl also pursued his programme of categorical knowledge into
the subject. He extends the eidetic of external objects, that is, seeing the general
in the particular, with an eidetic of internal experience, that is, a seeing of tran-
scendental principles. The explicit goal of phenomenological reduction is to draw
principles of consciousness out of empirical consciousness. The crucial thing
about phenomenological reduction is that its results should take a form of uni-
versal validity by originary intuition, setting it apart from conceptual abstraction.
Husserl believes that fundamental principles can be observed in conscious-
ness. To turn one’s attention from the content of consciousness to acts of con-
sciousness – from noemata to noesen –is not to be understood as a psychologism,
which attempts to explain the objectivity of the world from empirical contents,
but rather as a new instance of transcendental philosophy that does not deduce,
as Kant does, the logical conditions of possibility, but rather itself becomes the
object of a transcendental experience. It is about seeing the general in the par-
ticular, not only in an eidetic variation of objects (as it is even in the Logical
Investigations) but with consciousness itself. In the epoché, the reality judged to
be real in the natural attitude is to develop from possibilities of acts of conscious-
ness experienced. Husserl’s students in Göttingen rightly found it difficult to
reconcile the turn to transcendental philosophy with phenomenology’s original
impetus to focus on the things themselves. Phenomenological reduction fur-
ther seeks to describe and make evident the real world in its consciousness-
constituting processes more or less from the inside –not to construct it.
As understandable as Husserl’s ambitious expectations for reduction are, the
practice remains ambiguous. If the direct experience of an object undergoes
reduction, the reduction changes the objective experience in a way that comes
out as a judgement of the experience, as a purely subjective experience that mani-
fests itself in the perceptual judgment. Through the epoché, the observation ‘The
book is red’ turns into ‘I see red and interpret this as a book’. But this change in
position does not afford greater insight into the state of affairs that is the content
of the object, nor does it open on to a conception of transcendental subjectivity.
The problems with reduction as the eidetic vision of a pure ego are of a funda-
mental kind: The laws governing the way experience is constructed cannot become
an object of experience, for no phenomenologist has the skill to disable himself as
a real subject of assertion. At best, the reduction concludes with a statement about
what an empirical consciousness experiences at one moment. But this is insuf-
ficient, since what a reduction is supposed to make clearly accessible is not an
empirical experience, but rather subjective rules governing the formation of expe-
rience, cleansed of all individuality and subjectivity. The problem is, and Merleau-
Ponty proposed to challenge Husserl about it as early as 1945 in Phenomenology
of Perception, that one’s own subjectivity is unavoidable: ‘The most important les-
son which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction.
This is why Husserl is constantly reexamining the possibility of the reduction. If
we were absolute mind, the reduction would present no problem’ (p. xiv). For if
reduction leads to an awareness of the existence of the empirical subject, then
the problem of achieving a complete reduction shifts over to the question about
switching off the reality of the empirical subject. But this is logically impossible.
As radical as reduction may be, there will still be psychological assertions about
empirical subjects –assertions formulated in the natural attitude, that is, in a belief
in the existence of the ego in question. And how could it be otherwise? For the self,
whose existence must be ignored by the phenomenologist in the eidetic vision of
transcendental acts, is identical to the phenomenologist’s self. Belief in one’s own
existence cannot be disabled or bracketed out, because existence is always part of
self-consciousness: cogito ergo sum. The theory of reduction must therefore end
in the aporia: ‘No one knows what “my pure consciousness” really means. For as
long as consciousness is mine, that is, empirical, it is not pure, and if a conscious-
ness is pure, that is, “consciousness as such”, then it is not empirical. This is the
dilemma of transcendental phenomenology. It does not strive for introspection.
That would be psychology, which would undermine the validity claims to which
phenomenology holds firmly. All the same, phenomenology remains oriented to
the subjective side of active cognition. How is it possible? Subjectivity without sub-
jectivism –that is the unresolved mystery of the reduction’ (tr).10
Between subject and object: The pictorial surface

These problems with reduction of direct consciousness of an object ask for the
reason it is the possible, through epoché, to reduce the image during viewing. Is
representation significantly different from perception in terms of its suitability
to be an object of phenomenological reduction?
Representations, whether texts or images, are particularly suitable for phe-
nomenological reduction. The reason is that with them, epoché does not focus
attention entirely on the subject of the observation, but rather permits some
consideration of an aspect of the work that is not thematic. Phenomenological
reduction avoids subjectivism exactly when it –like hermeneutics –deals exclu-
sively with mediated experience, because here, after the reduction, an awareness
of the instance of mediation persists. With an image, the phenomenologist is
with the image even after the reduction. The epoché does not lead the receiver
of the image to an aesthetic of reception, an awareness of aesthetic experience,
but rather to awareness at another level that mediates between him and what is
represented: the pictorial surface. The surface of the image is a phenomenon that
is positioned between the object and the subject as the image is being perceived,
and so affords the possibility of stopping, in the process of reduction, before
stepping back into in pure subjectivity. The basis for this is that to bracket out
what is represented while viewing a representation can only ever be to complete
the process, given by the image itself, of de-realization of what is represented.
When an image is submitted to a phenomenological reduction, it is an attempt
to see the image itself as a form of reduction, which is to say, as de-realization.
Fiedler’s theory of pure, pictorial visibility does not propose anything different.
To represent reality means to ‘reduce’ reality to its pure visibility. His aesthetic, seen
in this way, performs a phenomenological reduction of the image to the extent it
characterizes the de-substantiation of visibility that is immanent in an image as
pure visibility. In ‘Eye and Mind’ (1961), Merleau-Ponty can only repeat Fiedler’s
main idea about images: ‘They present the object by its outside, or its envelope’
(p. 172). The reason is clear: ‘to make us see the visible’ (ibid., p. 166). We must
understand the call for a phenomenological reduction of pictorial consciousness
as the theoretical reflection of a de-realization already achieved in artistic practice.
From this perspective we can understand why it was almost inevitable that
the epoché would reveal its strengths in formal aesthetics. Only in an image can
reduction expose a phenomenon that cannot be grasped materially or idealisti-
cally: This is style –and here once again Merleau-Ponty’s view coincides with
formal aesthetics, particularly with Wölfflin’s.11 As the formalists emphasized
again and again, the form visible on the surface, the infrastructure of an image,
is misunderstood if it is considered to be just an ornamental pattern. Merleau-
Ponty’s response to formalism is telling in this respect. He, too, worked with a
widespread but unfounded concept of formalism, and wrote, very aptly: ‘It is
certainly correct to condemn formalism, but it is usually forgotten that formal-
ism’s error is not that it overestimates form but that it esteems form so little that
it abstracts it from meaning’ (Prose, p. 89).
At least the writings of Fiedler and Wölfflin are enough to show that the theo-
ries worked out in formal aesthetics are completely in accord with phenomenol-
ogy: They, too, describe style as the product of a transcendental reduction and
so as the condition of possibility of using an image to refer to something outside
the image.12 In this respect, too, all that was left for Merleau-Ponty to do was to
condense the formal understanding of style into a short phrase: ‘Style is what
makes all signification possible’ (Prose, p. 58). So the image fulfils even Husserl’s
transcendental philosophical expectations for phenomenological reduction. By
looking away from the ‘what’ in an image, we come to see the structures that
make it possible for an image to have meaning.
Intra-ontology
If we ask what we can conclude from the knowledge that unlike the reduction
of perception, the reduction of an image works, two alternatives present them-
selves: On the one had, the suitability of images for phenomenological reduction
can be used as an argument for restricting phenomenology to the treatment of
these objects. The critique of Husserl’s idea that it is possible to submit things
immediately given to consciousness to reduction would then go: Reduction can
only ever be implemented with what is represented, for there it is inherent in
the object. The unattractive consequence of this alternative is that phenomenol-
ogy, as a method exclusive to aesthetics, would languish. Alternatively, there is
the possibility of understanding the suitability of images to phenomenological
reduction as a need to change Husserl’s understanding of phenomenology as
shaped by his concept of reduction, and to develop it further in an aesthetic
sense. That is, we could take, from images’ suitability to phenomenological
reduction, the idea of conceiving of phenomenology as aesthetic theory. This
seems to be the way Merleau-Ponty wants to go.
Merleau-Ponty addresses his relationship to Husserl’s theory of reduction in
detail in the essay ‘The Philosopher and His Shadow’, which appeared in 1959.
The main idea in this essay is given in the title. Only it would be very inadequately
understood if one were to read it as just a modest biographical indication that
Merleau-Ponty does not find his connection to Husserl to be very substantial.
The concept of the shadow is meant to guide the reinterpretation of idea of phe-
nomenological reduction. This becomes clear when we recall Merleau-Ponty’s
objections to Husserl’s concept of reduction. Merleau-Ponty doubts the exist-
ence of the ‘singular beings’ (p. 165) that Husserl set out to find in a transcenden-
tal experience by means of a reduction. He writes critically of Husserl’s theories
of reduction: ‘They look deeper down for the fundamental’ (ibid., p. 163). This
is a valid objection. Husserl does in fact try to disclose, by means of reduc-
tion, a realm of knowledge he himself calls ‘ideas’, and in doing so recalls Plato.
Reduction is said to make it possible to experience a reality that grounds visible
reality like an essence. This is where Merleau-Ponty begins his development of
phenomenology. He relocates the goal of phenomenological reduction: from a
vision of ideas to a vision of a shadow. Rather than looking at ideas themselves,
a philosopher looks at that which proceeds from the ideas: their visible shadows.
Phenomenology is not to leave Plato’s cave, but to be this cave’s philosophy.
In Merleau-Ponty, ‘shadow’ can be read as the metaphorical conception of
that which he, in contrast to Husserl, expects to disclose from the reduction.
Shadows always remain bound to the presence of the objects of which they are
shadows, and are in this way distinguished from traces. They cannot get free
of things. With a shadow, one can always be certain, to this extent, of seeing
something between an object and a subject. Shadows only exist within this ten-
sion. They are the insubstantial phenomena that exist only between something’s
being-in-itself and a subject’s being-for-itself.
It is often inconspicuous words that show the concerns of a philosophy. The

frequency with which ‘between’ becomes central in Merleau-Ponty’s writing
is noticeable, and stylistically emphasizes his phenomenological concern with
transitional areas. In this respect, the reduction of the image serves as a model
of an aesthetically transformed phenomenological reduction. Since reduction of
the image reveals the pictorial surface as a phenomenon lying between the ideal
represented content and the observer looking on, the reduction of the direct
awareness of the object cannot end in the subject, but must contend with the
phenomenon that mediates between subject and object. The late phenomenol-
ogy of Merleau-Ponty is –cum grano salis –wholly taken up with an inquiry
into such –as he himself says –‘hinges of being’13 between the objective and the
subjective: ‘There is undeniably something between transcendent Nature, natu-
ralism’s being in itself, and the immanence of mind, its acts, and its noema. It is
into this interval that we must try to advance’ (ibid., p. 166).’14
When, in light of this programmatic challenge, we recall Husserl’s view –
‘In so far as their respective senses are concerned, a veritable abyss yawns
between consciousness and reality’ (Ideas, p. 111) –the difference between
these two thinkers seems substantial. With Husserl, the disabling of a belief in
the objective world can only lead to the subjective, since he does not know or
does not identify any intermediate phenomena. Merleau-Ponty, by contrast,
schooled in the observation of the image, takes hold of reduction as the very
method with which to recognize an unrecognized reality between subject and
object –or better said: a reality that is subjective and objective to the same
extent. In this Merleau-Ponty actually accounts for just one of Husserl’s origi-
nal ideas, one he thinks Husserl himself did not take into account system-
atically enough through the course of his development. It is the idea that for
phenomenology, the essence of a thing cannot be something that lies behind
the appearance, but a phenomenon that shows itself in the appearance. It is
characteristic of Merleau-Ponty’s style to designate the subject of his frag-
mentary posthumous text The Visible and the Invisible, which appeared in
the years 1959 and 1960, as ‘intra-ontologie’ (p. 225). Phenomenology –one
could speak of a new form of ontology –is to investigate realities that sub-
vert the subject-object duality. Merleau-Ponty finds two great topics for his
intra-ontology: visibility and the body. Both phenomena are, for Merleau-
Ponty, an answer to the question of what bridges the duality of consciousness
and being.
Visibility is always the visibility of an object for a subject; the body is the
physicality of a subject. In the natural attitude, neither comes to mind. Life is
normally lived in things to such an extent that neither the visibility of things nor
the body is experienced as an issue. It is astonishing how little we know of the
way something looks if we live and deal with that thing undisturbed. Only by
bracketing reality out, and so always and in fact primarily putting an end to all
pragmatic living of life, does one get a view of the pure visibility of a thing and
of one’s own body. And there are further structural affinities between the body
and visibility. For the body itself has an inner constitution of visibility, that is, it
is always a body that sees as much as it is seen. For Merleau-Ponty, the visibility
of the world is –and this is reminiscent of Schopenhauer –the world’s physi-
cality: ‘From now on the body stands for things themselves being visible and
becoming visible’(tr).15
These reflections show, for Merleau-Ponty, that visibility is more than the effort
to provide phenomenology with a new topic of study, supplementing others. The
turn to visibility expresses an understanding of phenomenology that has been
modified in response to Husserl, distancing itself from eidetic vision, although
Merleau-Ponty has no intention of leaving the reduction behind. For him, vis-
ibility rather becomes the new phenomenological quiddity of reality: ‘The world
is what we see’ (The Visible and the Invisible, p. 3).16 Phenomenology therefore
has to investigate what I perceive. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology is the
same as the theory of visibility. So from a historical point of view, the phenom-
enological discussion fifty years after Fiedler approaches one of his basic ideas: If
an object loses its reality, which is to say that it is undergoing phenomenological
analysis, nothing will remain of it but its pure visibility. Visibility is the genuine
topic of phenomenology, just as formal aesthetics is, conversely, phenomenology
avant la lettre.
5.3 The abstract image
Preliminary remarks
In committing phenomenology to an inquiry into visibility, Merleau-Ponty
brought it closer to the practice of art than it had ever been before. For Merleau-
Ponty, phenomenology addresses the same issues as painting: ‘In whatever civi-
lization it is born, from whatever beliefs, motives or thoughts, no matter what
ceremonies surround it –and even when it appears devoted to something else –
from Lascaux to our time, pure or impure, figurative or not, painting celebrates
no other enigma but that of visibility.’17 In light of phenomenology’s and painting’s
shared subject matter, the question arises –in particular after Merleau-Ponty
located phenomenology so clearly in relation to the image –whether painting
conversely adopts phenomenological considerations of its own, that is, whether
such considerations can be reflected in paintings. Merleau-Ponty may not have
examined this problematic with perfect clarity, but his desire to have understood
as a phenomenological reduction says a great deal: ‘With what is abstract art
concerned, if not with a certain way of rejecting or denying the world?’ (tr) (La
Prose du Monde, p. 89).*
The step towards giving up objective content altogether, taken by artists such
as Henry van de Velde, Adolf Hölzel, Wassily Kandinsky at the beginning of the
twentieth century, presumes a pictorial understanding that could make such
a step even thinkable.18 It is worth the effort to base the development of the
abstract image in genuinely phenomenological argumentation, although with-
out referring to specific artists, as in art history. The point is to show that it is
possible and obvious to step from a phenomenological understanding of an
image to an abstract image. At issue is an abstract image that presumes not
to imitate any visible reality. An abstract image is of special interest to formal
image theory only if one takes strictly the absence of reference to any real or
fictional object as a starting point. For an image that does not resemble any
object, that does not isolate the visibility of any object, raises the question of
how it is an image at all.
The sacrifice of objects

Although fish are not among the most significant themes in the visual arts,
images of fish make extraordinarily good examples for explicating formal dif-
ferences among types of images. In the last chapter, four types of pure visibility
were identified in this way following on from Robert Musil’s example of a fish in
a pond of only-visibility: the easel picture, fixed; the film, dynamic; the digital
image, manipulable; simulation, presenting an interactive fish. From Merleau-
Ponty’s phenomenological perspective, this model cannot yet be complete. This
division does not include the pictorial type of pure visibility in which the fish
swims out the picture entirely. For Merleau-Ponty, this is exactly what happens
with an abstract image: ‘But the painter throws away the fish and keeps the net’
(Prose, p. 47).
* This question did not appear in the English translation (Heinemann, 1974) and has been translated
from the French.
As is often the case with Merleau-Ponty, an understanding of his reflections

on this point depends on a metaphor. In what respect can an abstract image be
understood as a leftover net? And there are further difficulties in understanding
this statement, for it is not enough to clarify the purely metaphorical meaning
of ‘net’: It is rather the particularity of the subtle formulation ‘keeps the net’ that
simultaneously gives, by means of ambiguity, two different but complementary
answers to the question of what an abstract image is, two answers that add up
to one answer. In order to understand what is left over for Merleau-Ponty when
there is no longer any recognizable object, the word ‘net’ must be read equally as
a concept and as a metaphor.
If we take ‘net’ to be a concept, an image’s refusal to depict something leads
to a net of immanent relations, to a planimetric infrastructure. For an objective
image is, for Merleau-Ponty, ‘all run through and intertwined on the surface by
a network of vectors and a clustering of the lines of force to their roots’ (Prose,
p. 47). This depth is exactly what is abandoned in an abstract image, for it is in
the nature of an abstract image not to refer to any object beyond the image. In
an abstract image, one no long looks through the surface, whether this be a win-
dow or a filter, at a visible world. But exactly this rejection of reference confronts
abstract art with a problem: on the one hand, there should be an image without
depth, having no objective meaning, while on the other hand, the result has to
be distinguishable from a simple pattern. An abstract image is a pure net of rela-
tions, but it should not be just a net, as is familiar from wallpaper.
So the problem of the abstract image corresponds to the problem of formal
aesthetics. The origin of the abstract image can be traced in the theory of art as
well as in the practice of art; theory and practice are complementary.19 Both the-
ory and practice want to get beyond the objective content of an image without
destroying the image in its image-ness in the process. There is an experimentum
crucis in formal aesthetics: Justification of aesthetic formalism, whether of the
theoretical or practical sort, depends on the capacity to differentiate between
ornament and abstraction. Now we can understand the real meaning phenom-
enology has for formalism. Formal aesthetics can get help from phenomenology
in distinguishing ornament from abstraction. For phenomenology shows that
reduction does not necessarily destroy the sense of something, but can, on the
contrary, bring sense to light that was not thematized. We can understand this
by reading the word ‘net’ as a metaphor.
The metaphorical meaning of ‘net’ is firmly established through a ‘maritime’
context –‘But the painter throws away the fish and keeps the net’: the net is the
means of catching the fish. This says –using net as a metaphor for means –that
abstract artists throw away the contents, instead retaining the means with which
they were able to hold the fish in a fish-image, and making this means the only
aspect of the image. How are we to conceive of such an image which shows the
means one could use to catch a fish? Merleau-Ponty is not thinking of, say, an
image of a fishnet. What are the means with which a depicted fish is pictorially
caught? Can there be an image of a fish in which no fish can be seen?
For Merleau-Ponty, the answer is clear. Style is the means with which refer-
ence can be developed in an image. Without designing a surface in a particular
way, no object can be depicted. Abstraction is, within the image, a turning away
from the object, and at the same time the image’s turning ‘to itself ’, in fact to
those pictorial methods available for catching something in an image. This is
nothing other than the design of a surface with visible forms. Abstraction is a
form of pictorial self-reflection on this process. The only means available to a
painter for catching a fish in an image consists of covering an object with a net
of relations, that is, creating a visibly structured surface. Such a network, which
is more than an ornament because it has come from a reduction of the objective
image, can be called an abstract image. So abstraction appears as a phenomeno-
logical reduction enacted by means of an image. What abstraction and phenom-
enological reduction have in common is that by artificially giving the object up,
the surface of the image is isolated and made into the sole visible aspect of the
image. By turning the look away from the object, reduction is trying to get a look
at the surface. The same holds for abstraction: By abandoning the objective mat-
ter of an objective image, it tries to draw attention to some aspect of that image
that was not at issue. Merleau-Ponty calls this the ‘holocaust’ of objects’ (Prose,
p. 63). The object is abandoned in the interests of perceptual enhancement at
another level. Even Husserl said of reduction, ‘Strictly speaking we have not lost
anything’ (Ideas, p. 113). Through the loss of the fish, we get a look at the fishing
net, which for an abstract image is really only a network of relations.
The abstract image is, from a genetic perspective, an image. It must be derived
from an objective image. This happens by reading the abstract image as a dem-
onstration of forms that can also be used to make an objective image. The source
of the meaning of an image lies in visible differentiation and visible identifica-
tion, the creation of transitions and contrasts, of unities and multiplicities on the
surface of an object: ‘If we really want to understand the origin of signification –
and unless we do, we shall not understand any other creation or any other cul-
ture, for we shall fall back upon the supposition of an intelligible world in which
everything is signified in advance –we must give up every signification that
is already institutionalized and return to the starting point of a nonsignifying
world’ (Prose, p. 58). It is clear from this quotation that Merleau-Ponty had no
need to distinguish between art and phenomenology. This statement applies
equally to the phenomenologist’s activity, which is a process of reduction, and to
the artist’s activity, which is a process of abstraction. Both pursue a transcenden-
tal inquiry, that is, they try to make visible the conditions under which an image
can represent something. It is about a reflection on the way images come into
being. From this standpoint, abstract images are a form of meta-imagery, since
they make even reflections about the image visible as an image.
This concern is not entirely without precedent. The abstract image can be
understood as a development of the ideas Friedrich Schlegel was calling ‘tran-
scendental poetry’ as early as 1798 in the Athenäums-Fragmenten [Fragments
from the Athenaeum].20 This programmatic concept marks the beginning of
art works’ claim to make the conditions of their own possibility visible, thereby
reflecting themselves in their visibility. This entails –unavoidably, a programme
of transcendental images –an intersection between art’s and phenomenology’s
interests in cognition, between practice and theory. The difference lies in the
means: In art, visibility is achieved by means of visible works, in phenomenology
it is attained by means of a changed attitude to the original intuition.
Art and phenomenology approach one another in two steps. It has already
been rightly noted that art and phenomenology pursue common interests,
whether in disclosing authentic reality in an expressionistic sense, or in resolv-
ing the mystery of visibility.21 But this is ultimately just their first step towards
reciprocal completion. They really draw closer when the phenomenological atti-
tude is reflected sensually as an aspect of an image, so that art is working towards
an aesthetic fulfilment of phenomenological ideas: In this way, art is made com-
plete as phenomenology, and reciprocally, phenomenology is made complete as
aesthetic theory.22
The abstract image: Part of an absent whole

Summarizing the phenomenological train of thought, we can confirm that an
abstract image is unique in that it may be viewed in the natural attitude in the
same way an objective image is viewed from the epoché. With an abstract image,
there is no need to bracket out the relationship to the object and with it the
unnatural aspect of formal observation. The abstract image shows a viewer in
a normal attitude what an objective image can show a viewer orientated artifi-
cially. In this respect an abstract image serves, on the one hand, as relief: It is not
in the subject, but in the work that the epoché required for formal observation
occurs.23 This means, on the contrary, that an abstract image is seen as an

image –and not as a pattern –only if it is received and interpreted as just such
relief, as –as Wölfflin says –‘the pleasure of seeing redeemed from the worry of
ordinary looking’ (tr).24 A further consequence is that an abstract image always
remains a dependent secondary phenomenon, a supplemental relief with regard
to an objective image. For an abstract image can only avoid being an ornament
by standing in some conceivable relation to an objective image. This concerns
not an empirical but a logical relationship between abstraction and objectivity,
one that is asymmetrical: abstract images are unthinkable without the supposi-
tion of objective images, but objective images can readily be thought without
abstract images. The relationship is asymmetrical because an objective image,
too, possesses the qualities that isolate and absolutize an abstract image. In every
objective image, an abstract image is inscribed as an unthematized part that lies
outside the subject matter. Merleau-Ponty is right to think thus: ‘The classics
were also already painters in the modern sense’ (Prose, p. 70). From a phenom-
enological point of view, the abstract image is conceived as the whole of what
is a part-aspect of the objective image. This becomes especially clear when we
take Roman Ingarden’s phenomenology of the image into account: ‘I do . . . want
to call attention to the fact that a, so to speak, non-presentational picture enters
into the structure of every presentational picture as an indispensable component
of it, and that the artistic or aesthetic value of the whole picture depends in an
essential way on the artistic value of this.’25
Here, the difference between an abstract image and a pattern is again noted: The
abstract image means to be an isolation of a constituent part of an objective
image –even if it looks like an ornament. It presents the forms from which it
is uniquely made as the infrastructure of an absent objective image. Yet if a part
appears as a whole, a symbolization takes place, to which the semiotic principle of
abstraction would apply: The goal of an abstract image is to free immanent picto-
rial relations to be the whole, that is, to symbolize according to the pars-pro-toto
principle. The abstract image is not a sign for an object, but –as will be examined
in the next chapter –only a possible sign that is not completely realized. It is a
sign for another sign, an image about the way an objective image could be struc-
tured. Instead of real fish, only a net is painted, with which possible fish could
possibly be caught. Instead of describing an objective reality, which could also be
fictional, but which is a reality nevertheless, the abstract image describes possible
ways reality could be represented and experienced. One can also say, instead of
representing an object through a way of seeing –what an objective image does –
the abstract image tries to make just a way of seeing visible, without the object.
There are graduated steps along to way to lending a way of seeing visibility. It
begins with the representation of objects that obviously could not be the purpose
of the image: It is odd to think that Cézanne wanted to indicate apples. If we look
formally at the representational form used in an objective image, the object in
this image transforms itself into an example of the experience of objects as such,
which –as Merleau-Ponty noted –‘may be banal’ (Prose, p. 46f.). The abstract
image is the endpoint of the formal isolation of the way of seeing to the sole inten-
tion of an image, which is in fact associated with a qualitative leap. For only in
abstraction does the way of seeing coincide with visibility. In an objective image, a
way of seeing is shown by using this way to seeing to present an object. The inter-
pretation of visible reality manifests itself in the quality of the immanent relations
and determines the style of the image, which makes different things the same of
differentiates among things that are the same: ‘For each painter, style is a system
of equivalences he builds for himself for this work of manifestation’ (ibid., p. 61).
In this sense the origin of the abstract image is based on the discovery that
it is possible to create a system of equivalents without representing things.
For an image does not need to show an object in order to represent a way
of seeing in itself. An abstract image, too, can show how unities are formed,
how transitions are understood. In an abstract image, visible reality does
disappear, but the interpretation of visible reality does not; on the contrary,
interpretation becomes the only thing that is visible.26 As Egon von Rüden
describes the process of abstraction, the pictorial surface ‘becomes the basis
for a purely immanentistic understanding of the image that is identical with
a formalist conception of style, that strives for style as style, that is, for an
abstract self-representation of style as a durable artistic principle, purged
of all objects’ (tr).27 So for an objective image, an abstract image, identical
in style, is always thinkable, and conversely for an abstract image, an objec-
tive one. For Merleau-Ponty, Vermeer’s images have non-objective pendants
in which retain only ‘the “Vermeer structure” ’ (Prose, p. 70). It concerns an
image that ‘observes the system of equivalences’ (ibid., p. 70). It would be
an abstract image that could not be distinguished structurally from one of
Vermeer’s images, because it ‘speaks the language of Vermeer’ (ibid., p. 70).
This does not apply to an ornament. This does not mean that an abstract
image could not appear as a pattern due to the viewer’s incapacity –whether
the reasons for it lie in him or in the work –to recognize the forms on the
surface as the syntax of a pictorial language. Abstract images demand migra-
tion to another phenomenological level: One who sees something other than
forms in an abstract image will fail, as will one who sees just forms.
6
From the Formula to Formative

Discourse: Charles William Morris
(1901–1979)
6.1 Images about images
Preliminary remarks
Formal and phenomenological reflections on the abstract image eventually run
into semiotic difficulties. Because formal and phenomenological aesthetics take
an abstract image to be the expansion of one partial aspect of an objective image
into the whole image, the abstract image stands in a relationship to thinkable
objective images. An abstract image differs from an ornament only on the basis
of its relationship to a possible objective image. Unlike an ornament, the abstract
image is a unique kind of sign. According to Merleau-Ponty, the infrastructure
of an abstract image is not just a simple patterning, but the net, the pictorial
means with which objects might have been caught; one could also say: the infra-
structure of an abstract image is the syntax of a possible pictorial sign. But the
question is how the relationship of abstract to objective image can be described
semiotically. What sort of sign are we dealing with in an image that withholds
interpretation of content and leaves it at syntax? In order to proceed, formal
aesthetics needs a semiotic foundation.
Images of ways of seeing: The ‘how’ becomes ‘what’

A sign is an object that stands for something else and that therefore refers to
this other thing: aliquod, quo stat pro aliquot is the classical definition of a sign.
Tying this definition to the results of formal pictorial analysis, an image can
function doubly as an iconic sign, that is –according to Peirce –as a sign that

resembles what it denotes. The image can –as was established at the beginning
of Chapter 4 –possess an objective and a non-objective meaning, that is, it can
stand for objects and for ways of seeing, not in the same way, but in equally
pictorial ways. This iconic doubling of meaning arises because the image, in
its representation, resembles an object, but in its infrastructure, it resembles
a condition of perception. The two possible meanings of the image are closely
related. The non-objective meaning of an image corresponds to the ways and
means, to how an image refers to an object, or, stated semiotically: That to
which an image refers in its non-objective meaning is the sense of the picto-
rial sign. The sense –this is Frege’s term for the denoted object’s way of being
given –becomes the non-objective reference in aesthetic contexts. This can
also be formulated more simply: If an image refers to a way of seeing, the ‘How
the image refers to the object’ becomes ‘What the image shows’.1 Chapter 4
explained how the early Fiedler demanded that this shift in meaning be pre-
sent in works of visual art, insisting that ‘the substance of such a work is noth-
ing else than the Gestalt-formation itself ’ (On Judging Works of Art p. 56).
But the ‘how’ does not become a new ‘what’ just by being there. It only comes
to a new act of symbolization if the image not only possesses a particular way
of showing, but further symbolizes this way of making visible as two possibili-
ties: first as a possible human form of intuition, and again as a possible form of
representation for other images; for this reason the terms form of intuition and
form of representational coincide. If this is the case, the visible form of the image
stands in for something else that is invisible, and so is a genuine sign.
The abstract image is –in light of the phenomenological perspectives pre-
sented in the last chapter –no exception in this respect, but rather a radicalization
of the non-objective possibilities for symbolization that lie within any objective
image. If the objective image is a sign with a double meaning, the abstract image
is just a simple sign: It has only a non-objective meaning. The abstract image
only shows a way of seeing the world, without presenting an object in this way
of seeing; the ‘how’ of an image has become the only existing ‘what’, one can also
say: the way of seeing coincides with the visible.2
The problem: How does the ‘how’ become the ‘what’?

From a formal standpoint, it is convincing that an image elevates its own ‘how’ to
content; this description undoubtedly addresses the concerns of the greater part
of visual art historically as well.3 But this description is semiotically doubtful. If
From the Formula to Formative Discourse 181
the meaning of images is to show how they show what they show, the question
arises, How do images show how they show what they show?
The question is not sophistic; it concerns a fundamental problem in formal
aesthetics. Martin Seel rightly points out a serious difficulty in the formal inter-
pretation of images: ‘The work of art accordingly presents a form in which it
presents its contents. This formula emphasizes above all the aspects of art works
that show techniques. But the formalistic explanation remains conspicuously
empty because it always puts the work of art into a meta-position with respect to
what is at issue, whatever it may offer. If the way a work of art offers things means
that its own technique is presented, it follows that this technique, too, is in turn
something which is offered by the work of art, with the consequence that this
can be offered in one way or another. We land in a regress’ (tr).4
Concretely, the problem consists of the following: If a blurry image depicts
the perceptual modalities of a short-sighted person, then the represented form
of intuition is the non-objective meaning of the image, of which it could be jus-
tifiably asked: How does the blurry image refer to this way of seeing? The ques-
tions proliferate. If an image is a double sign in the sense discussed above, it
must be possible to distinguish the principal aspects of each of them: sense and
meaning. Or to ask in another way: If a blurry image represents the vision of
a short-sighted person, is that short-sighted vision represented in a particular
style, as an object in an image is always represented in a particular style? The
same holds for abstract images: How does an abstract image symbolize a way of
seeing without itself using a way of seeing to show the way of seeing?
A fundamental difficulty lies behind these questions: Are images that sym-
bolize a way of seeing metalinguistic signs? A metalinguistic sign is a sign that
refers to another sign. At first glance this seems to be the case for images, since
they show a way of seeing given in other images. The way of seeing an image
uses to represent something corresponds to that which can be called a picto-
rial language. It follows that an image about pictorial language –even about its
own –is a sign about a language, and that it is, in turn, a metalinguistic sign. So
one can say that art that claims to discover ways of seeing discovers languages
of representation and languages of perception. From a semiotic standpoint, such
art consists, as the title of a relevant anthology on semiotic aesthetics subtly puts
it, of signs of signs about signs Zeichen von Zeichen für Zeichen [Signs for Signs
about Signs].5 This is to say that works of art are signs that refer to the language
of signs so as to make new signs in this language possible.
The problem with this interpretational approach is that meta-languages,
too, use languages. If, in keeping with Max Bense, we call images signs for
signs about signs, we unavoidably confront the question of which language we

should use if we want to represent, by means of an image, how images show
what they show. The obvious and by no means trivial answer goes, we use
established pictorial languages. With established pictorial languages, images
can be used to make meta-structural images that examine ways and means of
showing.
Meta-images: Structural drawings, x-rays and gallery images

In keeping with Arnold Gehlen’s aesthetics, but with Kant’s as well, images
of visual art are taken to be ‘images about images’ and are interpreted using
that formula.6 If we take this definition seriously, the way of referring to the
‘how’ of another image is itself a process that could be called ‘depicting’. But
this is not persuasive in two respects. First, abstract images would no longer
be abstract images, for they would have an object to which they would refer,
namely other images. Second, images that are very obviously about other
images barely resemble images that show how they show what they show.
Images that indisputably qualify as ‘images of images’ include, for example,
structural drawings.
In order to represent compositional patterns and so-called lines of force, art
historians use structural drawings, showing the significant features through the
formal construction of an image. Max Imdahl in Germany and Erle Loran in
America are known for producing such images about images.7 Their drawings
really are images about images, for the objective meaning and the stylistic means
of making reference to this objective meaning can be separated without diffi-
culty. They are images of images in the same sense a landscape is an image of a
landscape. It would be only logical to call them ‘picture-pictures’.
Structural drawings are semiotically comparable to x-rays of an image, also
often used by art historians.8 In both cases, the image of another image is pro-
duced, and in both bases this happens in a way that makes immanent pictorial
structures visible. X-ray as well as thermal-or infrared images make it pos-
sible to see pictorial structures that can no longer be seen by the light of day;
structural drawings, conversely, show structures that are ordinarily overlooked.
So in a certain sense structural drawings are a kind of compositional x-ray;
what we see through is not the support, but the phenomenological opacity of
the image.
The same holds for gallery and studio images. These usually show a flood
of images in the spaces of an artist, art dealer or museum. Here, too, what are
produced are images about images in the strict semiotic sense. These images
show especially clearly that images about images represent the depicted images
in a particular style. To state it formally, in the depicting image and the depicted
image we are concerned with a system of relationships that does not possess the
same aesthetic structural qualities. The image is reproduced as seen through a
way of seeing, and it has to be this way for the depicting image to be an inde-
pendent image at all.
If the depicting image had the same structural qualities as the depicted image,
it would be a copy. A copy with style is an inherent contradiction. On the con-
trary: With a perfect copy of an image, perfect transparency –the image and
what it denotes cannot be visually distinguished –comes at the cost of losing
stylization. It is therefore only conditionally justified to go on speaking of images
about images in the context of perfect copies. The concept of pictorial imitation
is more appropriate.9 For imitation is unique in not interpreting the object in its
visibility, but rather imitating it in its materiality, in its plastic form. But pictorial
imitation is a limit case that does not occur among images about images. Here
the structural qualities of the depicted image are transformed in the process
of depiction, which is why the same images in different gallery images appear
widely to vary widely in style.
With this, these images about images confirm what was to be expected semi-
otically: When images refer to other images, they do so in a particular style.
Images about images have sense and meaning. An x-ray picture and a structural
drawing, if they refer to the same image, have the same reference with differ-
ing sense.* This also holds from one structural drawing to another, for they can
work through the distinguishing marks of an image’s style in varying ways. By
attempting to represent an image’s way of representing by means of a structural
drawing, the way of representing itself is made visible in a particular type of pic-
torial representation. This is not a problem as long as one realizes that if images
about images become, in turn, the objects of an image, an infinite regress will
result. Structural drawings of structural drawings can certainly be made: images
about images about images. But we will not get to an abstract image by this
route. We cannot describe the semiotic status of non-objective images appropri-
ately if we think of them as images about images.
* The problem does arise at this point that one sometimes does not know what the same image is.
X-ray images of other images let us see not only invisible structures of images whose surface can be
seen, but more usually completely different images, even those of another painter. An x-ray can also
actually be an image about an image, but not an image about the visible image to which a structural
drawing would refer. In this case the meaning would not be identical.
6.2 Images as formulae
Designation without denotation

Although we cannot comprehend the semiotic character of abstract images by
treating them as images about images, we can learn from the problems asso-
ciated with this explanatory effort. We will be able to characterize an abstract
image semiotically only if we abandon the view that a sign has exactly two pos-
sibilities for making references: either to objects or to other signs. As long as
we accept these premises, the abstract image must be assigned to one of the
two possibilities in order to qualify as a sign. If, on the other hand, we want to
subvert this dualism and describe the abstract image as a sign that refers neither
to objects nor to other signs, then it is helpful to turn to the semiotics of the
American philosopher Charles William Morris (1901–1979).
Not least among the distinguishing features of Morris’s semiotics is that the
phenomenon of designation, as he himself says explicitly in his main work Signs,
Language and Behavior of 1946, ‘does not restrict the alternatives for mathemat-
ics to either designating the world or designating signs, for formative-informative
discourse does neither’ (Signs, Chapter VI, n. ‘L’., p. 271).* This foundation
already supports the early essay ‘Esthetics and the Theory of Signs’ of 1939, in
which Morris in a sense picks up on Robert Zimmermann’s original thought,
namely that logic and aesthetics ‘have long been felt as related’ (‘Esthetics’,
p. 131).* His intention is very clear: He wants to show that there are ‘distinctive
kinds of signs’ (Signs, p. 161) that ‘do not designate either the world or language’
(ibid., p. 170). Of course this type of sign must be of special interest for the theory
of the abstract image, as Morris himself confirmed. It can forestall what Morris
* As soon as discussion turns to semiotics, terminological problems inevitably arise. This is particu-
larly true when we are concerned with authors of varying backgrounds and from different times
as well. In order to avoid misunderstandings, let us say here explicitly how the terminology of the
authors under consideration here is used: The concepts ‘denotation’ (Morris), ‘Bedeutung/meaning’
(Frege) and ‘extension’ (Carnap) are considered the same. As is usual in analytical philosophy after
Goodman, no distinction is made between the use of ‘symbol’ and ‘sign’. These identifications are
widely established in contemporary semiotic aesthetics, which does not rule out the possibility of
and need for differentiation in other discussions.
* In Morris’s work it is particularly clear that semiotic aesthetics does not necessarily have to be
opposed to formalism. A study of a work that is restricted to the form can conclude that the form
of the work is, as a form, a sign, and so a potential object of semiotic analysis. For this reason, the
self-assessment of many semiotic aestheticians should be corrected, and this specifically as Walther
Ch. Zimmerli explained: Rather than being a movement resistant to formal aesthetics, the ‘semi-
otic turn’ in twentieth-century aesthetics was rather first instigated by ‘functionalism, formalism
and structuralism’ (tr) (Die ästhetisch-semiotische Relation und das Problem einer philosophischen
Literaturästhetik [The Aesthetic-Semiotic Relation and the Problem of a Philosophical Literary
Aesthetics], p. 180).
does not want on any account, namely for images without objective content to be
classed as asemantic things. Morris supports the thesis, actually still widespread,
that every ‘work of art is conceived a sign’ (‘Esthetics’, p. 131). There is no prob-
lem maintaining this view with most art objects. The problematically uncertain
case is the abstract image, or music, which is not under discussion here. But
Morris takes up exactly this problem. He wants to try ‘to confirm the sign status
of the art work’ (ibid., p. 137), for his view is that even if ‘no denotatum [. . .] can
be found, the work of art can still be considered a sign (ibid., p. 140). For Morris,
the rejection of objective content is not necessarily associated with the loss of
status as a sign. For, as Morris’s thesis goes: ‘There can be designation without
denotation’ (ibid.).
A designation is a ‘description of the conditions which something must fulfil
to be a denotatum of the sign’ (Signs, p. 20). It is actually not difficult to imag-
ine that while ‘every sign has a designatum, not every sign has a denotatum’
(Foundations, p. 83). The best-known examples of this are fictional signs. The
sign ‘unicorn’ specifies a ‘kind of object’ (ibid.) that is, this sign has a designatum,
but refers to no denotatum. Abstract images are not fictional images, however.
The difference is obvious. A fiction describes a kind of object, and the fictive lies
in there being no object of this kind. With a fiction, one knows perfectly well
which object would be a denotatum of the sign if one existed –but it is different
for an abstract image. There, no object of any kind is described. So one should
differentiate between saying an abstract image or a fictional image has no deno-
tatum; both have no denotatum in different ways. A fictional sign has a non-
existent denotatum. Fictions, as Morris aptly puts is, are ‘signs which . . . have
null denotation’ (ibid., p. 103). Yet an abstract image is not a null-denotation,
for it has neither an existent nor a non-existent denotatum.10 What describes
an abstract image comes before the description of an object. Abstract images
are characterized by not describing any kind of object, but rather a way –avail-
able to all kinds of objects –that objects could become stylistically visible. This
is a difference, because the various ways objects can be are, in turn, related to
many kinds of objects; they constitute a pre-objective problem. The central ques-
tion therefore goes: How can designation be conceived semiotically for abstract
images? Morris suggests that ‘a comparison of abstract art to mathematics may
be clarifying at this point’.11
The formal language of mathematics is a semiotic phenomenon for Morris,
possessing the same semiotic characteristics found in abstract images –includ-
ing the problems, namely the refusal of an objective meaning: ‘At first sight this
thesis might seem to lend support to the view that such art has no semantical
dimension, since a mathematical system is commonly regarded as purely for-

mal or syntactical’ (ibid.). But for Morris, this negative assessment does not
last. For him, the language of mathematics is finally no more an asemantic phe-
nomenon –it would then be no language at all –than abstract art is. We have
only to get past the first impression. Then the typical signs of a purely formal
language show what they are: formulae. ‘The mathematical terms mentioned
are commonly regarded as signs added to the language so that certain opera-
tions, otherwise impossible in certain cases, are always possible, and certain for-
mulas, otherwise needing qualifications, can be stated in their full generality’
(Foundations, p. 106). For Morris, it really is ‘one of the most difficult topics in
semiotics: the interpretation of what are often called ‘logical signs’ or ‘formal
signs’ or ‘syncategorematic signs’ (Signs, p. 86). Morris emphasizes again and
again that the critical question is whether these unusual signs ‘can actually be
regarded as signs’ (ibid.), ‘whether formators are signs, whether and what they
signify’ (ibid., p. 154).*
The formula: A special case of designation without denotation

For Morris, the semiotic problems of abstract art are semiotic problems of for-
mulae or, as he himself usually put it, of ‘formators’, or more exactly, ‘formative
ascriptors’. A formal statement of the type ‘a + b = c’ actually does not describe
an object and makes an interpretation of content impossible. Formators are a
special class of sign. Their opposite are so-called ‘lexicative signs or lexicators’
(Signs, p. 153). For Morris, these are signs whose meaning can be given, can be
found in a lexicon. This cannot be the case for formators. A formator ‘does not
lexicatively signify with respect to things other than signs. Nor with respect to
signs. [. . .] The question then is legitimate whether formators are signs at all in
the sense in which lexicators are signs’ (ibid., p. 157). One sees that with the
concept of the formator, Morris is trying to subvert the division of signs into
objective signs and meta-signs, without challenging semiotic status: ‘And even
the finally formalized structure has a semantical character [. . .] the mathemati-
cal system designates the class of structures similar to itself and denotes any
* At this point it may be added that Morris did not distance himself from his comparison of abstract
art with the formal language of mathematics. On the contrary, in his later writings Morris repeatedly
discusses even his early essay ‘Esthetics and the Theory of Signs’ very critically, but as far the prob-
lems addressed here concerning the semiotic character of a work of art that does not denote any-
thing, Morris was still saying, in 1964: ‘This problem arises in another form in the analysis of analytic
formative ascriptors in symbolic logic and mathematics’ (Signification and Significance, p. 69, n.6).
structure which in fact is so similar –though in fact there may be no denotatum

other than the sign vehicles of the system itself ’ (‘Esthetics’, p. 141).
The central idea is formulated here: Formators do not designate things or
signs, but rather symbolize their own structure as a possible structure for other
signs. They are signs for a purely formal contact with realities. In a certain sense,
formators are not complete signs, because they refer to nothing. They have the
character of a sign only inasmuch as they describe the form of a possible sign.
To this extent, formulae are always signs for other ‘complete’ signs with sense
and reference –but also self-reflexive. A particular structure is presented as the
structure of a possible statement, a possible description –or with an abstract
image, as the syntactic structure, the stylistic form of a possible objective image.
The self-reflexive turning of formulae and abstract images towards their own
structure is always just a turning towards one realization of this structure among
many. This is how the essential semantic ambiguity of the formula comes about.
The part-to-whole relation described by phenomenology between abstract and
objective images returns at this point: The formula itself is part of that which it
symbolizes as whole. It possesses, in itself, the qualities of the class of structures
to which it refers.
Nelson Goodman would call the mode of symbolization of formative ascrip-
tors an exemplification: ‘Exemplification is the relationship between a sample
and what it refers to.’12 Goodman rightly points out further that exemplification,
‘although encountered here rather incidentally in the course of the inquiry into
expression, and seldom given much attention, [. . .] is an important and widely
used mode of symbolization in and out of the arts’ (ibid., p. 52). Goodman’s con-
cept of exemplification is heading in the same direction as Morris’s concept of
the formula. Like the formula, the probe is a sign turned on itself, for an object
becomes a probe by being considered representative of a class of objects to which
it belongs. Once again with a probe, the relation between sign and meaning is
that of part-to-whole.13 The principle that defines the formula also applies to the
probe: ‘Exemplification is possession plus reference.’14 The formula, too, not only
has its own structural characteristics, but shows them as the contents of a self-
referential symbol. Formulae and abstract images cease to be ornaments only
if we perceive the difference between possession and reference to possession.
Even Morris emphasizes this by noting that ‘in the work of art the sign vehicle
is [. . .] one of its own denotata, but in esthetic perception it must be realized as
such, i.e., the two must not be confused’ (‘Esthetics’, p. 137). This is an implicit
recognition that a fictional formula is as unthinkable as a fictional way of see-
ing. Only the objective content of an image can be fictional. But the existence
of a represented way of seeing is always proven by the representing image itself.

For the image itself is evidence that at least one of the symbolized structures
exists: There can be no probe of something that does not exist.
Formulae and horizon consciousness

A formula is unique in its semantic indeterminacy. Formulae are neither mean-
ingless, nor do they have any firm meaning; Ernst Cassirer would, in the tradi-
tion of Kant, speak of formulae in terms of ‘pure meaning’.15 A formula sets up an
objective sign with an objective description, without itself being this denotation.
The formula is only the form prepared for a possible sign with meaning: ‘a +
b = c’ can become ‘1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2 apples’. The objects in the struc-
ture are not definite, which does not mean that no definite structure is being
described. In fact, it is essential that the structure can remain the same even
when the relata change. In structures, relationships take priority over what is
related. So the relata in structures can change in appearance and reference while
the structure stays exactly the same.
If we compare this semiotic mode of a ‘mathematical formula that is what
it represents’16 with the semiotic structure of an abstract image, it becomes
clear that in both cases a meaningfulness is given that Husserl outlines with the
term ‘horizon’. Husserl was particularly distinct about this concept in Cartesian
Meditations of 1931. There he attempts to use the concept of horizon to describe
an open relationship to an object, one in which, paradoxically, there is no par-
ticular object, but into which some particular object can be introduced at any
time. ‘Horizons’, he says, ‘are “predeterminate” potentialities’ (p. 45). Horizon
consciousness is determined consciousness of an as yet indeterminate object.
For Husserl, the essential thing about this kind of sensefulness is what is left
over from ‘further determinings (which perhaps never take place)’ (ibid., p. 45).
The structural affinity to abstract images is obvious: They, too, are related to
an object without yet being related to a specific object. They set up the reference
by referring to a schema into which an object can fit. They make reference to an
object possible by establishing the way the referential object will be. Formulae, as
much as representations of ways of seeing, are potential carriers of meaning that
can, like a horizon, be transformed into the state of current meaning, that can
be, as Husserl says, ‘filled’. But this ‘filling’ necessarily alters the logical status of
the reference. To explicate the indeterminacy of the horizon thematically ‘means
to transform the formal, perpetually open apriority of the horizon into a series
of material (predicative) assertions’.17
This much can be claimed for formulae as well as for abstract art: As a for-
mula stops being semantically indeterminate and becomes semantically explicit,
an algebraic formula becomes an arithmetic one, ‘a + b = c’ becomes, for exam-
ple ‘1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2 apples’.18 One of Morris’s subtle insights was to
notice, again here, the structural affinity between the formal language of math-
ematics and the formal images of abstract art: ‘Abstract art has a relation to the
total language of art similar to the relation of mathematics to the total language
of science’ (‘Esthetics’, p. 140). That is, from a semiotic view of its infrastruc-
ture, abstract art is related to objective art as algebra is to arithmetic. The central
idea is that formal languages or formal images make it possible to recognize the
immanent relations of referential statements or objective images: ‘For it is by
formative ascriptors that we see certain interrelationships between our lexicative
ascriptors’ (Signs, p. 170).
From the standpoint of this structural affinity, objective images appear in
a different light. Any arithmetic statement can be treated as an algebraic for-
mula: Formators can ‘have a lexicative component’ (ibid., p. 161). So from a
semiotic perspective, we can understand what the formal-phenomenological
concept of abstract image is claiming. In calculating apples, it is possible ignore
the meaning of the relata in the syntactic relations, and so to view the arithmetic
calculation as one state of a formula only, that is, as a relational structure only.
The expression ‘1 apple’ is declared a meaningless sign and we get a purely syn-
tactic formula. This exact semiotic transformation takes place when an objective
image is taken to be a sign for a way of seeing. It is not important whether the
relata of a formula are independently meaningful or not: ‘The x’s and y’s and p’s
and q’s of formulas may be ambiguous lexicators (signifying whatever is signi-
fied by the members of a certain set of signs) and yet as establishing relations
between signs in a sign combination [. . .] they may be formators of the type to
be called connectors’ (Signs, Chapter VI, note ‘D’ p. 269).
The question of how the ‘how’ gets to be ‘what’ in an image can be answered
by comparison with formulae. If an objective image is used as a probe into its
infrastructure, then no one refers meta-linguistically to a way of seeing, but
rather transforms a sign with a specific, determined meaning into a sign with an
indeterminate meaning. That is, a part of the image is taken to be the whole, and
from the specific, determined intentionality of the image comes an indetermi-
nate horizon. This change can occur without there being the slightest change in
the sign’s appearance: The transformation is the result of taking the pictorial sign
as a formal probe for its own structure. In this sense, the abstract image can be
interpreted, to use a concept from modern linguistics, as an imitation formula.
The image as an imitation formula

In comparison to the theory of visual art, the representation of languages by
means of languages in linguistics has been more fully researched. The results
of research into so-called imitation formulae19 apply to the audibility of spoken
languages, but can also be transposed to the visibility of pictorial languages. Just
as an image can represent a pictorial language by means of its visible, immanent
relations, so, too, can a word do it by means of its audible immanent relations. Just
as there are abstract images whose non-objective meaning lies in the form, there
is poetry as pure sound painting. And just as there are images outside of art that
represent ways of seeing by means of their relations, illustrations, for example,
there are also words outside poetry that do not mean languages, but rather imi-
tate: ‘Rhabarber’ is an example of this. ‘Rhabarber’ is an imitation formula used
in the theatre as an acoustic representation of mumbling. The actors who want
to imitate the language just say ‘Rhabarber, rhabarber, rhabarber’ or in England
‘rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’. Miorita Ulrich says of this: ‘Imitation formulae of
the type rhabarber, rhubarb are not names as such, they do not mean “to speak in
general, to talk” (not “to speak incomprehensibly” either) nor do they designate
one or another form of speaking: They represent speaking (talking), they are the
depiction of speaking, or more specifically of talking. Still more: They have no
single-language meaning at all, neither a lexical nor a categorical nor a syntactic
one (Rhabarber is neither the substantive in the formula Rhabarber, Rhabarber
nor anything like the “subject” of a sentence): Only in certain communities do
they have a traditional text function. They do in fact coincide materially [in this
example] with a word in a language that means something: Rhubarb is the single
language name for a plant, Barbara is a personal name. [. . .] These meanings
are suspended, however, when the function is “imitation of speaking”: The only
thing that continues to matter is the suitability of these forms, on the basis of
their phonetic construction, to function as instruments of imitation, to give the
listener the impression of speaking, of talking whose meaning cannot be pinned
down or identified in a single language. Here, a fragment of (material) language,
as a thing, serves a function that is not actually “linguistic”, which means not
actually for reference, but as the depiction of a “reality” which is once again
language’ (tr).20
In this semiotic sense, an image can be an imitation formula as well –even
an image that was not meant to be. Any image, however ordinary, can be a for-
mula for the kind of making-things-visible that the image itself possesses. For
Fiedler, art is nothing other than an ‘inherited system of formulae’(tr).21 With
this we have come to the point where semiotic reflections and Fiedler’s for-
mal description complete one another. It seems entirely logical that in Fiedler’s
posthumous-published writing ‘Wirklichkeit und Kunst’ [Reality and Art], the
key term for characterizing art is ‘formula’.22 This quality of formulae can be
transferred to perception, which then itself becomes a formula. To put it another
way, to Fiedler, Wölfflin’s forms of intuition are called ‘formulae’, which is semi-
otically exactly right. A form of intuition is a formula: ‘It is as if the eye is in
possession of a great treasure of formulae, to which it refers the impressions it
receives, so forming a visual image that is satisfactory and satisfying only to the
extent the impressions have been fully absorbed into those formulae’(tr) (ibid.,
p. 157).
6.3 The formative discourse of fast image sequences
The formative discourse of formal logic and mathematics

The comparison Morris set up in the essay ‘Esthetics and the Theory of Signs’
of 1939 between non-objective images and the formal language of mathematics
breaks off one-sidedly in the book Signs, Language and Behavior of 1946. Only
the semiotic structure of the language of mathematics is pursued further. But the
parallels to abstract image forms are not extended. This opens the possibility of
completing Morris’s original comparison in this respect. Morris rightly points
out that for the language of mathematics, a description of independent kinds of
signs that occur is not enough. For a language, it is not only typical to work with
specific signs. The same signs can be used in very diverse ways. More complex
linguistic phenomena are therefore defined not only through the formal charac-
teristics of their building blocks, but also through forms of engagement with the
signs, through linguistic practice. Therefore the concept of the formula or the
formator is no longer enough for Morris to describe the language of mathemat-
ics semiotically. He introduces the concept of formative discourse.
The concept of discourse develops into a key concept for Morris, although
his use of it is purely technical. A discourse is a special way of interacting with
signs for specific purposes. In contrast to a single sign, discourse is a procedure,
a process, and always has a temporal duration and dynamic. With this, Morris
is emphasizing that the use of signs leads to semiotically different structures.
Although a religious text may use the same signs, that is, make use of the same
concepts as a scientific one, there is a semiotic difference between them: ‘Such
specializations of language will be called types of discourse. Books, for example,

are classified as scientific, mathematical, poetic, religious, and the like’ (Signs,
p. 123).
From Morris’s comprehensive system of discursive types, it is formative
discourse that is relevant for formal aesthetics. The language of mathematics
and logic functions for Morris as the prime example of a formative discourse.
According to his semiotics, ‘logico-mathematical discourse is [. . .] a type of
formative discourse’ (ibid., pp. 178–179). This type of discourse is characterized
as one ‘in which formative ascriptors are dominant’ (ibid., p. 168); of course
many formulae are used in mathematics. Yet in addition to the frequency of this
specific type of sign, there is a use of the sign that is at least as specific –a use
for which it does not even seem to matter too much whether we are working
with formators or lexicators. In formative discourse, the meaning of signs can
also become unimportant through use. A formative discourse must therefore
not consist entirely of formators. For Morris, the following syllogism is typical
of a formative discourse: ‘ “If men are animals, and animals are mortal, then
men are mortal” may be taken as an instance of the kind of discourse we have
in mind. Tested in terms of our preceding distinctions and methods, this com-
pound ascriptor is formative and analytic in English, regardless of whether the
component ascriptors are formative or lexicative’ (ibid., p. 169). This syllogism
could also appear in a scientific discourse, for example in a biology book, but
there it would have another meaning. In formative discourse, the meaning that
is there becomes irrelevant. It is not important whether the syllogism is written
with concepts or with variables having no content: ‘If A B and B C are, then A C
are.’ Signs are used in a formative discourse in such a way that lexicators can be
used as well, although the argument is formal only.
When we consider the description of logical-mathematical discourse and
remember the comparison of the languages of mathematics and of abstract art
Morris himself began, the question inevitably arises whether the step from form-
ator to a formative discourse for images could not be traced. Are there images
that are semiotically related to an abstract image as imitation formula in the
same way formative discourse is related to the formator? One gets the impres-
sion that Morris himself was calling for work on this question. He at least left no
doubt that in his view even non-conceptual signs could constitute discourse. The
arts ‘may then signify in any of the modes of signifying. And since they can be
put to various uses, they can illustrate in various degrees all of the types of dis-
course which have been distinguished’ (ibid., p. 194). Still the question remains
open: What images create a formative discourse?
Morris himself seems to want to avoid this very question, although his argu-
ment almost forces him to pursue the comparison he began in his early writing.
He also notices what he would have to specify in order to work through his
parallels: a further development of the abstract image to the point of possessing
a discursive character of its own. But his indications remain unsatisfying. On
the one hand, we get the impression that there is no doubt about the existence
of formative discourse in art as well; there is really no need to mention it, since
everyone knows about it: ‘Finally, the arts may signify formatively: not only may
they include formators but they may in subtle ways link signified properties as
both pertaining to a given object and as not pertaining, and thus at least approxi-
mate the formative ascriptors of speech and writing’ (ibid., p. 194). On the other
hand, he makes the possibility of using formators for formative discourse in
images relative: ‘Formators are clumsily handled in other media than speech or
writing’ (ibid., p. 195). In short, Morris appears to suspect that there will be a
type of image that could be described as formative discourse; but he either does
not know or cannot find it, although he himself insists that semiotic research
on images should not be constrained to the high arts: ‘An age in which printing,
photography, painting, film and television have an important place will call for a
semiotic which has not neglected the visual sign’ (ibid., p. 190).
From the imitation formula to the video clip

In the next-to-last investigation (Chapter 4), we saw that video clips are to be
counted among the pictorial forms that reflect the descriptions and expectations
of formal aesthetics. In light of Morris’s thoughts on the possibility of a forma-
tive discourse in the arts, it seems appropriate to turn again to video clips, for in
them, the two main characteristics of a formative discourse can be quickly estab-
lished: Clips are, first, discursive in an original sense, namely as the discurrere
of a sequence of images in motion. This applies to any film, of course, but film
does not share the second indication. Clips tell no story and explain no matters
of fact. The staccato-like change in angle, the deliberate testing of the viewer
through speed and scale make it impossible to see a fast sequence of images as
the representation of content, or to somehow read it as a sign in the way that is
familiar from narrative film. The collage principle has the effect of reducing the
sequence of images to their pure visibility. But, and this is crucial, this formaliza-
tion nevertheless does not end in a kaleidoscopic play of light; the fundamen-
tal semiotic structural affinity between the clip and the abstract image lies just
here –in its idiosyncratic semiotic status. Neither pictorial form constructs signs
with reference to things outside the image. Rather the image enters a state, as
changeable as it is ambivalent, of having the capacity to be only a possible sign,
without acting on the possibility. This happens by two different routes.
The abstract image is not permitted any recognizable similarity to an object,
so as to be certain not to be read as a sign for that object. If an image has no
similarity to any objective quality at all, it cannot be taken as an iconic sign of
this object –rather at most as an arbitrary one. With this in the background,
abstraction becomes the effort to defend the image from being interpreted as a
sign for an absent object. In an abstract image, the independence of pure vis-
ibility becomes clear, for it cannot be interpreted as a sign for an absent object.
The abstract image refuses the use of images that otherwise seem to be so obvi-
ous: an image that shows Peter is also a sign for Peter. With the abstract image,
it becomes clear that there are two steps here. An image that shows Peter can
in fact be interpreted as a sign for Peter –but it does not have to be. Pure vis-
ibility is more fundamental than legibility. It is possible, often even very obvious
to take an image to be a sign in the usual way, but it is not at all necessary. For
not everything that in some way resembles something else is therefore a sign
of that other thing. An image is, above all, the visibility of something without
the presence of that thing. But this does not mean that pure visibility is a sign
for the thing as well. It only becomes this through interpretation as a sign. But
the image would remain an image without this interpretation, as can be seen
in the abstract image, which cannot be interpreted as a sign of anything at all,
and remains an image. This means, to sum up, that for easel pictures, the only
way of making an abstract image is to reject mimesis. This is not the case for
image sequences.
With respect to possibilities for abstraction, electronic media are richer than
easel pictures and photographs. In addition of dissimilarity, they have speed at
their disposal as an alternative way of switching off the objective interpretation
of the image. The principle is simple: The image is shown so briefly that the rep-
resented object cannot be recognized. This is not possible with an easel picture.
In fact it is characteristic of an easel picture to freeze the depicted object and
so present it for an extended, even contemplative observation. In this respect,
image sequences make the transition between an objective image and a purely
abstract image fluid. Image sequences can indicate an object only in passing,
by letting it rush by. One recognizes only what kind of object was to be seen,
but not which object it actually was. One recognizes human beings, for exam-
ple, but not specific people. Because of the speed, the images can no longer be
taken to be signs for particular objects. The reduction of the image to formulae
is not achieved here through the style of the images, but through the discourse
in which the images are located.
Of course we know from easel pictures that an object can be painted in such
a way that its particularity remains unrecognizable. There are images that show
no actual people, only schematic human beings. In an easel picture, this is done
through the stylistic transformation of a possible person. The image interprets
the appearance of a person in such a way that no specific person can be recog-
nized. This stylistic schematization is available for single images in an image
sequence as well. Like a collage, a clip can use images in diverse styles as build-
ing blocks. But the stylistic schematization does not reach the foreground; it
does not become the dominant means, for unlike the easel picture, the image
sequence has the further possibility of destroying the relationship to a concrete
object by showing the object temporarily. Speed is the preferred means of trans-
forming the specific determined meaning of the individual images into a refer-
ence to something indeterminate. The single images in a clip are no longer signs,
but only possible signs. They could be iconic signs if only they could be seen for
longer. Even if the single images show an object, then, they are still not signs for
these objects: ‘Formative ascriptors are not lexicative even though they contain
lexicators, because they do not designate, appraise or prescribe’ (ibid., p. 166).
This is exactly the case with a clip: The single images lose their relationship
to the world in formative discourse, although a similarity with it is preserved;
Representational images turn into play with pure visibility.*
Ideally, a clip gives no sequence of depictions of specific things, but an unspe-
cific indication of things.23 The state that is sought, into which the sequence is
to take the meaning of the single images, is bound up with rushing by. A clip
has no beginning and no end; it is a series that can continue endlessly, that lives
from the change of images and that is actually there only for it. A slow clip is
not a clip at all. Only haste prevents definitive objective meaning from com-
ing through, and with it a relationship to specific objects being built up. The
* Semiotic parallels between video clips and graffiti can be seen here as well. With a graffito such as
Jean Baudrillard’s famous example ‘Kool Killer’, words become empty formulae and continue to be
at most signs for signs. To this extent, a formal emancipation of concepts’ visibility is taking place,
as it was anticipated in the sound painting of avant-garde poetry: ‘For SUPERBEE SPIX COLA 139
KOOL GUY CRASY CROSS 1 36 means nothing, it is not even a proper name, but rather a sym-
bolic matriculation number whose function is to derail the common system of designations, [. . .]
Invincible due to their own poverty, they resist every interpretation and every connotation, no longer
denoting anyone or anything. In this way, with neither connotation nor denotation, they escape the
principle of signification and, as empty signifiers, erupt into the sphere of the full signs of the city,
dissolving it on contact. [. . .] This was precisely because graffiti has no content and no message: this
emptiness gives it its strength’ (‘Kool Killer’, pp. 78, 79f. and 80).
principle of the clip is that of time being short, which contributes to the produc-
tion of a labile intermediate state. The viewer gets no time to take the image in
as a representation of something. The idea is to allow just as much time as it
takes to see that if there were enough time it would be possible to see content –
this possibility is not to be used, however, only to be seen as a possibility. This
is the way the equally ambivalent and unstable semiotic condition of a purely
formative discourse is constituted. There is no completed reference at hand, only
pretence. An intentional structure of a reference is prepared, but not realized;
it remains indeterminate: ‘the screen becoming suddenly a last horizon of vis-
ibility’.24 The clip goes beyond the abstract image. It surpasses even the character
of the abstract image as an imitation formula. The static formator becomes a
formative discourse which once again grasps the sequence of signs itself not in
terms of content, but in purely formal terms. A formative discourse does not
develop a story, but attempts to protect the pure visibility of images from inter-
pretation through content –at least as long as the images are running. Stopping
a clip would change the semiotic status of the visible, allowing the artificiality
of the visible to burst in. Pausing a clip is semiotically comparable to filling the
algebraic formula ‘a + b = c’ with content, letting it become ‘1 apple plus 1 apple
equals 2 apples’. Stopping a clip produces specific determinacy. The formative
discourse of the speeding image sequence, the formal play with pure visibility,
turns into one single still image with style and reference.
Internalized schedulelessness
If we recognize the clip as an extreme form of a tendency that can be observed in
television, reflections on the formative discourse of fast image sequences take on
special meaning. Of course no emptying or formalization of content takes place
just by projecting a normal image on the screen of a television; a monitor can
reproduce any Old Master. New media can in general be used for the same pur-
poses that older media could have achieved. But it is unconvincing to research
television with the idea that films can be viewed on it. This is not a quality spe-
cific to the use of the monitor in producing images.
The novelty is that by projecting the images on screens, it becomes possible
to change programmes –to zap. Only with the development of monitors did it
become possible to jump back and forth between images and films by pressing
a button –that is, if we ignore the suggestion, however right it may be, that we
could also produce a clip by roller-skating through a museum. Formative dis-
courses as described here arise in zapping: image sequences without beginning
or end, without a schedule. The images are viewed not as real signs, but as poten-
tial signs, without getting to the point of the possible becoming real. Jumping
between the programmes makes any one channel obsolete. No one knows which
sequence of images he will see. Television has a uniquely paradoxical charac-
ter: because it offers many programmes, it also offers the possibility of watching
without a programme. The viewer himself produces a video clip according to the
following principle: Before content or a statement becomes recognizable, it is
right to switch over, because although we can use the television to view content,
this does not exploit the specific possibility it offers for schedulelessness.
Images that are made specifically for monitors can respond to the possibili-
ties of electronic image processing. An image sequence for television will try
to ward off the danger of being switched off by switching over. This is possible
when the destruction of the programme through zapping in turn becomes the
programme. When numerous contemporary investigations in media studies
conclude ‘that the surface changes constantly, and is furthermore presented in
such an unfamiliar and clever way as to arouse intense interest’ (tr),25 formal aes-
thetics takes the view that the tendency of electronic image processing towards
purely formative discourse lies in the logic of the medium. The principle of the
clip, ‘that the viewer should not get enough time to completely grasp the images’
(tr) (ibid.), is noticeable even in broadcasts that make explicit claims to being
informative. As soon as we have adopted the premise that television, too, reflects
the formal possibilities of electronic image processing –which need not be the
case at all, for films can be shown and reports made on television as well –then
formative discourses inevitably arise that react to having no schedule by inter-
nalizing an absence of schedule. In this way the ‘missing half-second’ becomes a
phenomenon that increasingly characterizes mass media.*
Electronic image processing can make visibility absolute and treat it as a
material. It further supports that which also is actually new in new media, the use
* It is worth noting that the tendency to understand image sequences in terms of clips can be demon-
strated even in broadcasts that are incompatible with rapid sequencing because they have the express
intention of transferring information. But even news broadcasts are defined by the possibilities of
new media; see H. Sturm, ‘Wahrnehmung und Fernsehen: Die fehlende Halbsekunde’ [Perception
and Television: The Missing Half-Second], and the chapter ‘News in Electronic Media’, pp. 31–61, in
H. Buddemeier, Leben in künstlichen Welten [Life in Artificial Worlds]. With such media research
in the background, one gets the impression that human beings are more attracted to exploiting the
possibilities of a medium than they are to making use of the medium’s mandate to inform. That is,
formal aesthetics leads us to the question of why media are not used for informative functions to the
extent they could be, why human beings are so fascinated with total visibility. The question exceeds
the programme of formal aesthetics, however. Norbert Bolz, too, noted this critical point and made
this reference to it: ‘Here an aesthetics of communication would need an anthropological foundation’
(tr) (Chaos und Simulation [Chaos and Simulation], p. 123).
of pictorial visibility as a purely formative discourse. Electronic image process-

ing sets pure visibility into a dynamic that is not a function of a representation
or of a course of events, but a modelling with possible signs, bracketing out their
character as signs so that it need not be taken into account. In Computer Aided
Design (CAD), pure visibility enters into a formative discourse. It changes, vis-
ible things are twisted and turned, but the sum of the changes occurs without
any link to a denotatum. As the processes of change are underway, the substance,
the reference is not dragged along: not signs, but only pure visibility is being
manipulated. As in modelling clay, no signs are deformed, rather something
is produced that can be a sign. Reference again becomes relevant to electronic
image processing of pure visibility only if the process, the discourse, stops, so
that at the end of the transformation there is an image whose visibility can again
be interpreted as a figurative representation of something. During the trans-
formation, interpretation as a sign is set aside, so that even if the image shows an
object, it is not a sign of this object. This is familiar to the concept in algebra: In
algebraic calculation too, one cannot know whether or what ‘a’ means. As in cal-
culation, so too on the screen of CAD, a purely formative discourse is underway
during the transformation.
The question of medial status

Against this background of constant danger that electronic image processing
will become formative discourse, it becomes understandable that assessments of
television’s quality as a medium of information can vary so markedly. A medium
is a means for transporting information. In this sense, electronic image process-
ing on monitors can be used as a medium of information. From this perspective,
television is a medium in the classical sense. Supporting this view is a process
that can hardly be denied, that television images can transmit knowledge of mat-
ters of fact. By means of the transmission of images, one gets insights into events
that one never actually saw. The distance between events on earth –in space
as well as in time –diminishes, and the world shrinks increasingly into a –as
Marshall McLuhan described it in the 1960s –‘global village’, where everyone is
informed, or more exactly, can be informed, about everything.26 Live broadcast
makes it possible, through electronic image processing, to view of events around
the world all at once. From the standpoint of information theory, television is
the fastest medium for visual matters of fact.
It seems that fast image sequences are incompatible with the medial require-
ments of electronic image transmission. The speed of images has the effect of
making pure visibility so absolute, so independent that it is no longer viewed

as a sign for something absent and therefore as information, but rather for its
syntax as formative discourse. This is most apparent in the most extreme case
of the clip, but starts earlier. It amounts to a kind of revolt of the image as pure
visibility. In zapping, no distinction is made between a newscast and a feature
film: with respect to their pure visibility, they become equal. So one can get the
impression that at least for fast image sequences –whether self-made or pre-
existing –the far more radical media theoretician Günther Anders’s view of tel-
evision as a whole is right: it is not a medium.
In the study Die Welt als Phantom und Matrize. Philosophische Betrachtungen
über Rundfunk und Fernsehen [The World as Phantom and Matrix. Philosophical
Observations on Radio and Television], which was already in print in 1956,
Günther Anders (1902–1992), a Viennese student of Husserl, presented the view
that television images are not representations, but phantoms. The thesis is cur-
rently enjoying renewed interest as it is further developed by the French theoreti-
cian of postmodernism Jean Baudrillard –the development consists primarily in
bending Anders’s critical position into an affirmative stance. Baudrillard speaks of
simulations rather than phantoms, but with respect to the assessment of electronic
transmission of pure visibility, both take the view ‘that we cannot answer the ques-
tion whether we should address ourselves to it as present or absent, as real or picto-
rial [. . .] For phantoms are nothing but forms that present themselves as things’ (tr).27
The provocative quintessence of the simulation-theoretical point of view goes: On
the monitor, visibility becomes so independent and unmanageable that it is taken
for reality. The images presumably taken to be informative representations change
their ontological status and mutate into a substitute for reality: They begin ‘to be
not the depiction of reality, but reality itself ’ (tr) (ibid., p. 168).
The argument inevitably leads to a denial of television’s right to be a medium.
It must be taken seriously. The modern view finds, even in electronic image pro-
cessing, the continuing possibility of a supplementary instrument of enlighten-
ment for the liberation of human beings from illusions and false opinions; the
postmodern view that sees television as a simulating replacement for reality and
welcomes it as an apparent liberation from harsh reality: the argument between
the two is not about whether electronic image processing is a bad or a badly
used medium, but about the far more fundamental problem of whether it is a
medium at all. This is the unequivocal postmodern point of view: ‘Television is
not a medium, it is reality!’ (tr).28
At first glance, this thesis seems compatible with the fact that fast image
sequences make the objective meaning of single images inaccessible, and can
be viewed as a whole just for the sake of their pure visibility, as a simulation.
But taking fast images up into postmodern simulation theory in this way does
not take their semiotic uniqueness as formative discourse into account. In rec-
ognizing how fast image sequences achieve the formulaic quality of the abstract
image by other means, it becomes clear why the question of its medial status is
so difficult to answer. Are abstract images a medium? Images are a medium –
yet in formative discourse the image enters into a state in which the meaning
is no longer firm, but given only as a possibility. From fast image sequences it
becomes clear that in the argument between modern and postmodern authors
about the medial status of television, a third, more subtle position is usually
overlooked: The formal qualities of fast image sequences suggest Hans Magnus
Enzensberger’s view: Television is developing into a null-medium.
The null-medium
Hans Magnus Enzensberger introduces the concept of the null-medium in his
eponymous essay of 1988. With it, he presents an interpretation of television that
best suits the formulaic quality of fast image sequences. If a viewer not only uses,
but further exploits television for its possibilities of exaggerated dynamics, he
moves ‘energetically toward a state that could be called schedulelessness. In pur-
suit of this goal, he uses all the available buttons on his remote control like a vir-
tuoso. [. . .] The new media are new in that they no longer rely on programmes.
They achieve their true purpose to the extent they approach the state of a null-
medium. [. . .] Visual technologies, television above all, are the first to be in a
position to really get rid of the burden of speech and to liquidate everything that
once was called programme, meaning, “content”. [. . .] Not the weakness, but the
strength of television lies in the null-setting. It constitutes the use value. One
turns the device on in order to switch off ’ (tr) (pp. 93, 95f. and 101). Fast dis-
courses transform the medium in which they occur into an extraordinary state.
It is a situation in which no information is delivered, although only that is done
which normally delivers information in this medium: images are shown. This is
the advantage of the concept of the null-medium. Television is not denied any
possibility of being a medium. But there is a description of conditions in which
it is not used as a medium. How widespread this state may actually be is not
important to a semiotic description.
Mathematical formulae are prototypical for null-media. They have no spe-
cific content –‘a + b = c’ has no referent –but content can nevertheless be
entered into the formula. The idea of the null-medium also closes the circle to
Merleau-Ponty’s description of the painter who throws the fish away to keep the
net closed: The empty net is a metaphor for the null-medium. A null-medium
is a form in which an objective sense is pre-arranged. Any image, viewed for-
mally, can enter into this state, now emptied of sense, and with increasing speed
the pressure to do so increases. Lack of time makes the surface unavoidable.
The inevitable result is that the pictorial surface is valued more highly, making
the image subject to principles of design. Abstract art marked the endpoint of
formal observation from the side of the work. It described a goal that fast image
sequences, too, strive to achieve by other means: ‘Without the heroic pioneer-
ing achievements of modern art, null-media could not be imagined. [. . .] From
Kandinsky to action painting, from Constructivism to the depths of Op Art and
computer graphics, artists have done what they could to purge their works of
any “meaning”. To the extent they have achieved such minimization, they qualify
fully as forerunners of the null-media’ (tr) (Nullmedium, p. 97).
From abstract art, the overall pattern becomes clear: null-media are not new
media that ally themselves with those that are already established. The discovery
of null-media is a discovery of formal uses of existing media; any medium can
approach the state of a null-medium. Abstraction is a way to the null-medium
for an easel picture, for the screen it is the fast image sequence. But what the
two have in common is their position on visibility. In both cases, a production of
visibility replaces the representation and interpretation of a visible reality. This
is an underlying context: As soon as a pictorial medium is used for its visibility
alone, it necessarily becomes a null-medium. Access to images for their visibility
alone can be achieved only when one looks to images for enrichment not of an
informative, but of a purely phenomenological kind: When we do not want to
know something, but rather to see something. Images enrich human reality by
making absent things visible. The use of the image as a sign logically comes later,
for the visibility of the image is more fundamental than its legibility. By making
it difficult, if not impossible to use the image as a sign, the null-medium exploits
as much as it exhibits the pre-eminence of visibility: Hardly any other phenome-
non demonstrates so clearly as extremely fast image sequences, explicitly setting
out to overwhelm the reading viewer, that images, if they do not inform about
objects, remain images. The legibility of the image as a sign retreats into the
background –as the image forces it to do –and remains present there only as a
possibility. Fast image sequences confirm the assumption that the development
of new pictorial forms reflects the pictorial understanding of formal aesthetics.
The image in the twentieth century, in art and in new media, appears as a per-
ceptible reflection of its own foundation: its visibility.
Notes
Chapter 1
1 For an overview of the discussion of this concept of aesthetics see Kolloquium Kunst
und Philosophie 1. Das Kunstwerk [The Colloquium Art and Philosophy 1. The
Work of Art], edited by W. Oelmüller.
2 The beginnings of analytical aesthetics mentioned here are given in detail in
K. Lüdeking, Analytische Philosophie der Kunst [Analytic Philosophy of Art].
3 G. Dickie, ‘Is Psychology Relevant to Aesthetics?’, p. 324.
4 F. Koppe, Grundbegriffe der Ästhetik [Principles of Aesthetics], p. 170. On the
role of the avant-garde as a testing ground for an aesthetic’s current relevance, cf.
L. Wiesing, ‘La situazione attuale dell’estetica in Germania’.
5 The traditional understanding of a work is presented in W. Thierse, ‘Das Ganze ist
aber das, was Anfang, Mitte und Ende hat’ [But the Whole Is That Which Has a
Beginning, Middle and End].
6 Cf. the destruction of the concept of a work by the avant-garde P. Bürger, Theory of
the Avant-Garde. The Kolloquium Kunst und Philosophie 3. Ästhetische Erfahrung
[The Colloquium Art and Philosophy 3. The Work of Art] edited by W. Oelmüller,
which offers a look at the vast literature on problems in the destruction of the work.
7 See J.-F. Lyotard, Immaterialität und Postmoderne.
8 Another example of the programmatic renewal of a Kantian approach on the basis
of the destruction of the work ushered in by Duchamp is the study Kant after
Duchamp by Th. de Duve.
9 O. R. Scholz, Bild, Darstellung, Zeichen [Image, Depiction, Sign], p. 137.
10 The relevant comprehensive overview of diverse efforts to develop an anti-
idealistic philosophy of art appears in A. Halder, Kunst und Kult [Art and Cult]
and St. Nachtsheim, Kunstphilosophie und empirische Kunstforschung 1870–1920
[Philosophy of Art and the Empirical Investigation of Art]. Also helpful and
noteworthy is the outline, in print by 1930, Die Philosophie der Kunstgeschichte in
der Gegenwart [The Philosophy of Contemporary Art History] by W. Passarge.
11 See E. Gilbert and H. Kuhn, ‘Esthetics in the Age of Science’, pp. 524–549 in A
History of Esthetics.
12 For the rarely sufficiently acknowledged significance of Taine’s aesthetics, see
E. Cassirer, Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften [The Logic of the Cultural
Sciences], pp. 78–86. Taine’s role in anticipating the phenomenology of the image
204 Notes
is presented in L. Wiesing, ‘Phänomenologie des Bildes nach Husserl und Sartre’

[Phenomenology of the Image after Husserl and Sartre], pp. 265–269.
13 Cf. V. Gerhardt, ‘Von der ästhetischen Metaphysik zur Physiologie der Kunst’ [From
Aesthetic Metaphysics to the Physiology of Art].
14 S. Barrach’s book Über spekulative Ästhetik und Kritik [On Speculative Aesthetics
and Criticism], a reaction to Zimmermann’s essay, appeared in the same year.
15 The history of the distancing of empirically-psychologically oriented aesthetics
in the first half of the twentieth century is traced in detail in the Geschichte
der psychologischen Ästhetik [History of Psychological Aesthetics] by Ch.
G. Allesch, especially in Chapter 23, ‘Die psychologische Aesthetik und ihre
Gegner’[Psychological Aesthetics and Its Enemies], pp. 396–425.
16 The concept of a ‘general study of art’, so central to the philosophy of art in the
early twentieth century, actually first occurs in R. Zimmermann’s essay ‘Zur
Reform der Ästhetik als exakter Wissenschaft’ [On the Reform of Aesthetics as
an Exact Science] of 1862 (p. 227). A precise account of the history and theory
of this concept can be found in W. Henckmann, ‘Probleme der allgemeinen
Kunstwissenschaft’ [Problems of a General Theory of Art].
17 A brief overview of the history of formalism is found in O. Hostinsky, Herbarts
Äesthetik in ihren grundlegenden Teilen quellenmäßig dargestellt und erläutert
[Herbart’s Aesthetics Presented in Its Essential Parts by Source], pp. 98–107. In
addition, Zimmermann himself continually calls attention to formalist thinking
in his Geschichte der Ästhetik als philosophischer Wissenschaft [Aesthetics as
Philosophical Science] of 1858, and to this extent writes what is still the essential
history of aesthetics –obviously only up to the nineteenth century. This Geschichte
der Ästhetik [History of Aesthetics] corresponds to the first part of the two-volume
work, also called Ästhetik [Aesthetics], whose second part is in turn identical to
Zimmermann’s Allgemeine Ästhetik als Formwissenschaft.
18 Zimmermann’s path and position within the anti-metaphysical movement of
the nineteenth century is given in R. Bauer, Der Idealismus und seine Gegner in
Österreich [Idealism and Its Enemies in Austria], pp. 71–76.
19 An annotated collection of these places can be found in a work cited above,
O. Hostinsky’s Herbarts Ästhetik in ihen grundlegendedn Teilen quellenmäßig
dargestellt und erläutert. Herbarts Äesthetik [Herbart’s Aesthetics], a dissertation by
A. Ziechner of 1908, remains the most comprehensive account of his theory.
20 The aestheticians Griepenkerl, Bobrik and Flügel have largely fallen into oblivion.
The dissertations Bobriks Äesthetik [Bobrik’s Aesthetics] by E. Fiebig and Ästhetik
und Wissenschaft [Aesthetics and Science] by E. Krämer are helpful for Bobrik. For
Flügel, see K. Hemprich, Otto Flügels Leben und Schriften [Otto Flügel’s Life and
Writing].
21 A good additional overview of the dispute can be found in K. S. Laurila, Ästhetische
Streitfrcagen [Aesthetic Controversies], in the chapter ‘Der Streit um Form und
Notes 205
Inhalt in der Ästhetik’ [The Argument about Form and Content in Aesthetics],
pp. 227–365. Also, cf. L. -O. Åhlberg, Form and Content Revisited.
22 For an example see F. Th. Vischer’s contribution, Über das Verhältnis von Form
und Inhalt in der Kunst [On the Relationship between Form and Content in Art]
of 1858.
23 The essay ‘Logik in Literatur’ [Logic in Literature] by G. Gabriel examines Goethe’s
‘holistic’ critique of logic.
24 Cf. N. Malcolm, Nothing Is hidden, and the chapter ‘Der Angriff auf den
Essentialismus’ [The Attack on Essentialism] in G. Pitcher, Die Philosophie
Wittgensteins [Wittgenstein’s Philosophy], pp. 251–264.
25 This is particularly the case in V. Flusser’s Lob der Oberflächlichkeit. Für eine
Phänomenologie der Medien [In Praise of Superficiality. Towards a Phenomenology
of Media].
26 The difference between the concept of form, or better of gestalt in gestalt psychology
and the concept of form in Herbartianism has been examined in detail by Alois
Höfler in ‘Gestalt und Beziehung –Gestalt und Anschauung’ [Gestalt and
Relationship –Gestalt and Intuition] of 1912, although without taking Herbart
into consideration: ‘Gestalt is not relationship, that is, Gestalt cannot be completely
dissolved into relationships, association, relations’ (tr) (p. 162). Since this is exactly
what Herbart and Zimmermann want to do, however, to resolve Gestalten into
relations, their concerns do not correspond to those of gestalt psychology on this point.
27 J. F. Herbart, Analytische Beleuchtung des Naturrechts und der Moral [Analytic
Illumination of Natural Law and Morals], p. 217.
28 O. Flügel, Über den formalen Charakter der Ästhetik [On the Formal Character of
Aesthetics], p. 350.
29 From this perspective, it becomes understandable that Zimmermann, with
Riegl –whose further developments of Herbartianism will be discussed in the next
chapter –should figure among the fathers of modern structural art history. A short
essay of 1937 by L. Venturi, Robert Zimmermann et les origins de la Science de l’art,
which takes up this theme, may be the only publication in this century to concern
itself especially and exclusively with Zimmermann.
30 J. F. Herbart, Allgemeine Metaphysik, nebst den Anfängen der philosophischen
Naturlehre. 1. historisch-kritischer Teil [General Metaphysics, with the Beginnings of
the Philosophical Study of Nature. 1. Critical-historical Section], p. 381.
31 On the meaning of the concept of indifference for Schwitters’s aesthetic theory, cf.
L. Wiesing, Stil statt Wahrheit [Style Instead of Truth], pp. 28–49.
32 K. Schwitters, ‘Tragödie’ [Tragedy], pp. 99.
33 K. Schwitters, ‘Merz’, p. 76.
34 G. Braque, Der Tag und die Nacht [Day and Night], pp. 41. The formalist
background of abstract art is presented in detail in W. Hofmann’s text, Grundlagen
der modernen Kunst [Foundations of Modern Art] which has since become a classic.
206 Notes
35 M. Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, p. 63.

36 P. Bürger, Zur Kritik der idealistischen Ästhetik, p. 89.
37 R. Zimmermann, ‘Zur Reform der Ästhetik als exakter Wissenschaft’ [On the
Reform of Aesthetics as an Exact Science], pp. 226.
38 J. F. Herbart, A Text-Book in Psychology, p. 129.
39 We need to be aware, however, that the development of objectivism in
Zimmermann’s concept of beauty was also encouraged in the views of his teacher,
B. Bolzano, who presented them in ‘Über den Begriff des Schönen’ [On the Concept
of the Beautiful] of 1843.
40 J. F. Herbart, Kurze Enzyklopädie der Philosophie aus praktischen Gesichtpunkten
entworfen [A Short Encyclopaedia of Philosophy in Practical Terms], pp. 371.
41 J. F. Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik
und Mathematik. Analytischer Teil. [Psychology as Science, Newly Based on
Experience, Metaphysics and Mathematics. Analytic Section], pp. 94.
42 J. F. Herbart, Allgemeine praktische Philosophie [General Practical Philosophy], pp. 27.
43 J. F. Herbart, A Text-Book in Psychology, p. 49.
44 R. Zimmermann, ‘Über Lotzes Kritik der formalistischen Ästhetik’ [On Lotze’s
Criticism of Formalist Aesthetics], p. 376.
45 See W. Wundt, ‘Psychologismus und Logizismus’ [Psychologism and Logicism].
46 The logician and aesthetician Georg Neudecker (1850–unknown) already identified
this as the central problem of early Herbartianism in his Studien zur Geschichte der
deutschen Ästhetik seit Kant [Studies in the History of German Aesthetics since
Kant] of 1878. ‘The task given [through Herbart] to aesthetics could in fact be
accomplished only by observation and experience, in short empiricism, which is
also the only source from which Zimmermann quietly draws his pleasing forms’
(tr) (p. 90). H. Lotze, in his Geschichte der Ästhetik in Deutschland [History of
Aesthetics in Germany], evaluated the problem of early Herbartianism in a very
similar way: it wants to answer of question of beauty with logical means, but ‘it
can, by its very nature, only be answered the experimental way’ (tr) (p. 245). In
fact the evaluation runs like a scarlet thread through discussions of Herbart and
Zimmermann. Again and again it is said of their project: ‘certainly as empirical, but
not as apriori aesthetics’ (O. Hostinsky, Herbarts Äesthetik in ihren grundlegenden
Teilen quellenmäßig dargestellt und erläutert [Aesthetics Presented and Explained in
Its Basic Parts Through Sources], pp. 92).
47 S. Nachtsheim, Kunstphilosophie und empirische Kunstforschung [Philosophy of Art
and the Empirical Study of Art], pp. 72f.
48 Hermann Lotze has done more than anyone else to establish this unintended yet
implicitly present self-contradiction in the first phases of formal aesthetics: ‘But
formal aesthetics still works primarily with the materials it inherited from the large
and lively, often misguided, but here unfairly underestimated efforts of idealist
aesthetics’ (tr) (p. 246).
Notes 207
Chapter 2
1 J. von Schlosser, Die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte [The Vienna School of Art
History], p. 149.
2 On the life and work of Riegl, cf. the comprehensive monograph Studi su Alois
Riegl by S. Scarocchia. Riegl’s significance for the formation of modern art history
is presented by H. Köhler, Strukturale Bildlichkeit [Structural Pictoriality], and
W. Sauerländer, ‘Alois Riegl und die Entstehung der autonomen Kunstgeschichte
am Fin de Siècle’ [Alois Riegl and the Rise of Modern Art History at the Fin de
siècle].
3 D. Frey, ‘Probleme einer Geschichte der Kunstwissenschaft’ [Problems in History for
Science Art], p. 31.
4 See W. Kemp, Alois Riegl; this is the also the source of the last quotation from Riegl’s
unpublished estate (p. 45).
5 Ernst H. Gombrich confirms this in a remote place: ‘Riegl looked to Herbart’s formal
aesthetics, which prevailed the time and which Zimmermann no doubt conveyed
to him in Vienna, for the methodological equipment of his first major work’
(‘Rezension von “J. Bodonyi: Entstehung und Bedeutung des Goldgrundes in der
spätantiken Bildkomposition” ’ [Origin and Significance of the Gold Ground in Late
Antique Pictorial Composition], p. 66)
6 W. Passarge goes on to provides a very suggestive overview of the history of diverse
theories of basic art historical principles stemming from Riegl in the chapter
‘Kunstgeschichte als Formgeschichte und das Problem der Grundbegriffe’ [Art
History as a History of Form and the Problem of Principles] in Die Philosophie der
Kunstgeschichte in der Gegenwart [The Philosophy of Contemporary Art History],
pp. 16–36; for more on the issue, see Th. Zaunschirm, Systeme der Kunstgeschichte
[Systems of Art History]. The studies Zur Frage nach dem Malerischen [On the
Question of the Painterly] by A. Schmarsow and ‘Plastisch und Malerisch’ [Plastic
and Painterly] by W. Thomae are helpful from a systematic standpoint. A. Hauser
attempts to align particularly the theories of Riegl and Wölfflin within an intellectual
history in the chapter ‘Geschichtsphilosophie der Kunst: “Kunstgeschichte
ohne Namen” ’ [Philosophy of the History of Art: ‘Art History without Names’],
pp. 127–306 in Philosophie der Kunstgeschichte [Philosophy of Art History].
From a philosophical perspective, the interpretation ‘Über Grundbegriffe der
Kunstwissenschaft’ [On Principles of Art History] by E. Utitz is noteworthy.
G. Kaschnitz-Weinberg’s contribution to this discussion is presented by M. M. Roß,
Künstlerische Struktur und Strukturontologie [Artistic Structure and Ontology of
Structure].
7 A. Hildebrand, The Problem of Form, 131.
8 See B. Peeters, Hergé, p. 22f.
208 Notes
9 The difference between haptic and painterly corresponds to the opposition

between the ‘form of being’ [‘Daseinsform’] and ‘form of effect’ [‘Wirkungsform’]
in Adolph Hildebrand’s The Problem of Form in the Visual Arts of 1893: ‘The
idea of the “form of being” relates to the object itself [. . .] the idea of the “form
of effect”, conversely, relates to the optical image of the object’ (p. 131). With his
opposition between the form of being and the form of effect, Hildebrand departs
in one essential point from the position formal aestheticians take of art historical
principles. Hildebrand is not primarily concerned with a logical description of
the pictorial form, but with criteria for artistic quality. For him, the optically
farsighted mode of depiction is a mark of quality. For more details on this and
on Hildebrand’s view of Riegl, see M. Imdahl, ‘Marées, Fiedler, Hildebrand,
Riegl, Cézanne’, p. 174ff.
10 See the comparison between Turner and Mark Rothko in M. Bockemühl, J. M. W.
Turner, pp. 29–47.
11 This key idea of Merleau-Ponty’s can be compared to B. Waldenfels study ‘Das
Zerspringen des Seins’ [The Shattering of Being].
12 E. Cassirer, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences, p. 61.
13 E. Panofsky, ‘Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie’ [On the
Relationship of Art History to Art Theory], p. 51.
14 H. Sedlmayr, ‘Kunstgeschichte als Stilgeschichte’ [Art History as a History of Style],
p. 22. Sedlmayr also examines Riegl’s distinction between ‘external stylistic character’
and the ‘principle of style’ in this context. These two concepts do in fact clearly explain
how his thinking relates to familiar concepts of style. ‘Expressionism’ can definitely be
used as a stylistic category according to Riegl. He is in a position to morphologically
summarize the external stylistic character of a great many forms. The art historical
principles, on the other hand, refer to the conditions of possibility for an external
stylistic character, and to this extent present a transcendental stylistic principle.
Relationship of Art History to Art Theory], p. 67. By 1920, in the essay ‘Der Begriff
des Kunstwollens’ [The Concept of Kunstwollen], Panofsky had already given the
interpretation of Kunstwollen that prevails today.
16 The expression ‘drive’, which Riegl uses often, not just in this quotation, is a
concept Schopenhauer typically uses in describing his understanding of the will.
For him, will is ‘merely a blind, incessant impulse’ (Will and Idea, §54, p. 354). For
him, the optically farsighted mode of depiction is a mark of quality. This is not
an altogether unimportant conceptualization. It provides terminological clarity
that in formal aesthetics, Kunstwollen is not understood as a rational decision
at all. This is sometimes overlooked in the reception of formalism. P. Bürger
writes, for example, ‘In other words: formalists are concerned to reconstruct the
process of artistic creation as a rational choice between possible alternatives’
Notes 209
(Vermittlung – Rezeption – Funktion, [Transmission –Reception –Function],

p. 96) It is correct: Formalists are concerned to describe a choice between possible
alternatives, and these alternatives can in fact be rationally determined; but in the
production of art, in a formal understanding, the choice itself need not in turn be
rationally grounded, but rather may result from an irrational drive.
17 E. Rothacker, Die dogmatische Denkform in den Geisteswissenschaften und das
Problem des Historismus [The Dogmatic Way of Thinking in the Humanities and the
Problem of Historicism], p. 20.
18 If we call this non-rational principle ‘life’, we come to understand why Riegl’s theory
of Kunstwollen has been justifiably identified in many quarters as vitalism. Cf.
W. Sauerländer, ‘Alois Riegl und die Entstehung der autonomen Kunstgeschichte am
Fin de Siècle’, pp. 133–137.
19 E. Cassirer, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences, p. 73.
20 This is also emphasized in the research of S. Scarrocchia, Studi su Alois Riegl,
here particularly in the chapter ‘Riegl e l’arte contemporanea. Contributo alla
fenomenologia degli stili’, pp. 189–208.
21 The idea of the direct observation of relationships can also be found in Alexius
Meinong, Carl Stumpf and William James; cf. H. Höffding, Der Relationsbegriff
[The Concept of Relation], pp. 14–30. Brunswig acknowledges the originality of
his viewers carefully when he writes: ‘There is a fairly general recognition, that a
piece of psychic reality is currently being rediscovered’ (Das Vergleichen und die
Relationserkenntnis [Comparison and the Recognition of Relation], p. 3). In fact by
1739, David Hume had already described the direct visibility of relations with great
clarity in Treatise of Human Nature: ‘Relations are discoverable at first sight, and fall
more properly under the province of intuition than demonstration’ (p. 70).
22 In this context, see also R. Jochims, Visuelle Identität [Visual Identity].
23 G. Boehm, Sehen [Seeing], p. 52
24 In his essay ‘Logik und Ästhetik’ [Logic and Aesthetics], G. Abel examines this
internal interlocking of logic and aesthetics in Nietzsche more closely, and positions
it in the wider context of perspectivism and interpretation philosophy.
25 See also in this regard Die Weltanschauungen der Malerei [The Weltanschauung
of Painting] by H. Nohl. According to Nohl, this idea that one might characterize
formal styles in the history of thought, in their diversity, as one does in formal
aesthetics, using relational concepts, particularly Riegl’s basic principles –was taken
up primarily from Karl Mannheim ‘Beiträge zur Theorie der Weltanschauungs-
Interpretation’ [Contributions to the Theory of Weltanschauung Interpretation].
His programme of a sociology of knowledge was developed explicitly through the
application of Riegl’s idea to the description of structural differences in world views.
In ‘Science as Art’, Paul Feyerabend defended the more radical view that by applying
Riegl’s principles to scientific discourse, discourse might be resolved into purely
210 Notes
aesthetic phenomena that distinguish themselves from one another through style
alone, and that the truth of statements must therefore be understood in such a way
that their ‘trust is what the style of thought says truth is to be’ (p. 46).
26 It is possible to interpret the variety of representations of relationships to the
world in a realistic way. In this case it would no longer be a worldly image, no
longer a theoretical representations, an image or artefact that is discussed as
haptic or painterly, but the world depicted in these things. So different ontologies
correspond to haptic and painterly: a ‘discreet ontology’ and an ‘indiscreet
ontology’ –without this necessarily being meant in a substantialistic sense. In
contemporary discussions of indiscreet ontology there are in fact remarkable views
of the way Riegl’s main ideas can be defended with ontological methods. This is
especially clear in W. Hogrebe’s essay ‘Eindeutigkeit and Vieldeutigkeit’ [Clarity
and Ambiguity].
27 In A History of Formal Logic, J. M. Bochenski gives a succinct overview of the
history of relational logic. See also E. Paisseran, La Logique des relations et son
histoire.
28 Cf. on the Aristotelian concept of relations ‘An Historical Sketch of the Problem
of Relations’ by D. S. Mackay, ‘The Concept of Relation: Some Observations
on Its History’ by J. R. Weinberg, as well as the chapter: ‘Die Geschichte des
Relationsbegriffs’ [The History of the Concept of Relation] in H. Höffding, Der
Relationsbegriff [The Concept of Relation] S. 1–13. On A. N. Whitehead’s defeat of
the Aristotelian concept of relations, see G. Böhme, ‘Whiteheads Abkehr von der
Substanzmetaphysik. Substanz und Relation’ [Whitehead’s Renunciation of the
Metaphysics of Substance. Substance and Relation].
29 This is the conclusion of F. Patzig’s research in ‘Der Strukturalismus und seine
Grenzen’ [Structuralism and Its Limits].
30 D. D. Merill gives an introduction especially to the relational logicians De Morgan
and Peirce, ‘DeMorgan, Peirce and the Logic of Relations’.
31 In this context, see the chapter ‘Verschiedene Arten von Relationen’ [Various Kinds
of Relations] in R. Carnap, Einführung in die Symbolische Logik [Introduction to
Symbolic Logic] pp. 104–109.
32 G. Gabriel, Fiktion und Wahrheit [Fiction and Truth], p. 15.
33 G. Boehm, ‘Bildsinn und Sinnesorgane’ [Pictorial Meaning and Sense Organs],
p. 125.
34 The effort to make use of Frege’s conceptual tools for a semantic description of art
works goes back in no small measure to the works of Gottfried Gabriel, and can
already be found developed in the text mentioned earlier, Fiktion und Wahrheit
[Fiction and Truth]: particularly worth noting here is the appendix, a re-working of
an essay that appeared as early as 1970, ‘Frege über semantische Eigenschaften der
Dichtung’ [Frege on the Semantic Characteristic of Poetry]. Gabriel examines Frege’s
Notes 211
own ‘poetry’, that is, his own use of metaphor in the distinction between sense and
meaning, in the essay ‘Der Logiker als Metaphoriker’ [The Logician as Metaphor-
Maker]. In Fiktion und Diktion, G. Genette shows that the distinction between sense
and meaning can be used to define the style of literary texts. The suggestion that
Frege’s metaphor of coloration be interpreted as a description of style can be found
in A. C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, pp. 249–251.
Relationship of Art History to Art Theory], p. 141.
36 W. Burkamp, Begriff und Beziehung [Concept and Relationship], p. 59. See also
Burkamp’s Logik [Logic].
37 This is presented in detail in D. D. Merrill’s Augustus DeMorgan and the Logic of
Relations.
38 C. S. Peirce, ‘Why Study Logic?’ p. 115. Cf. Th. A. Schulz, Panorama der Ästhetik
von Charles Sanders Peirce [Panorama of the Aesthetics of Charles Sanders
Peirce]; C. M. Smith, The Aesthetics of Charles S. Peirce’; M. O. Hocutt, ‘Logical
Foundations of Peirce’s Aesthetics’.
39 W. Dilthey, Studien zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften, p. 28. On Dilthey’s
grounding of logic in aesthetics, see F. Fellmann, Symbolischer Pragmatismus
[Symbolic Pragmatism], pp. 109–143.
40 Cf. K.-O. Apel, Der Denkweg von Charles Sanders Peirce [Charles Sanders Peirce’s
Intellectual Journey], S. 175ff. Apel works through the aesthetic basis for Peirce’s
theory of relations, and further associates it with Husserl’s theory of intuitive
insight. The justification for this kind of reading is further confirmed in the detailed
study ‘Peirce’s Esthetics’, by V. Kent. In fact the phenomenological idea of an ‘eidetic
as protologic’ seems to lend itself readily to an association with Peirce’s proto-logical
function of aesthetics. This becomes clear by holding to an aesthetic way of reading
phenomenology, as F. Fellmann has proposed in Phänomenologie als ästhetische
Theorie [Phenomenology as Aesthetic Theory].
41 A discussion the goes into this idea of the complementary relationships between logic
and aesthetics more deeply can be found in G. Gabriel’s ‘Erkenntnis in Wissenschaft,
Philosophie und Dichtung’ [Knowledge in Science, Philosophy and Poetry].
Chapter 3
1 G. Patzig, Relation [Relation], p. 1231.

2 See R. Carnap, Einführung in die Symbolische Logik [Introduction to Symbolic
Logic], pp. 106–109.
3 On the concept of pictorial form, see further in H. Wölfflin, ‘The New Pictorial
Form’, pp. 251–286 in Classical Art.
212 Notes
4 In the introductory essay ‘Zum geschichtlichen Ort’ [On Historical Locality],

pp. 13–54 in Wittgensteins Kristall [Wittgenstein’s Crystal], Cl.-A. Scheier shows not
only that Wölfflin’s concept of pictorial form can be compared with Wittgenstein’s
understanding of the image, but also conversely, that we can be assume
Wittgenstein had a solid art historical background.
5 An idea that can be found as early as 1893 in Das Problem der Form in der
Bildenden Kunst [The Problem of Form in the Visual Arts] by Adolph Hildebrand
(in Chapter 4, ‘Flächen-und Tiefenvorstellung’ [Conceptions of Surface and
Depth], pp. 39–57).
6 On the difficulties with this pair of concepts, see W. Marx’s essay ‘Offene und
geschlossenen Form’ [Open and Closed Form].
7 Ch. Schmitz, ‘Wölfflin und die Literatur’ [Wölfflin and Literature], p. 64
8 M. Podro has investigated the problem of the unity and complexity of art works in
‘A Sense of Complexity in the Visual Arts’, and has done so by making an explicit
reference to Herbart’s understanding of form, which is noteworthy.
9 M. Lurz, Heinrich Wölfflin, p. 186. Lurz’s portrayal of Wölfflin is not only central for
the interlinking of the principles, but also can be taken to be the main monograph
on Wölfflin’s work as a whole; there is, in addition, a comprehensive bibliography
of the vast Wölfflin literature. A. Hauser, in ‘Grundbegriffliches zu Wölfflins
“Kunstgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffen” ’ [Principles of Wölfflin’s Art Historical
Principles] does provide another equally noteworthy riposte to Lurz’s view of
Wölfflin, however, proposing that Wölfflin’s work is based on a psychological-
empathic theory.
10 A comparably formulaic representation of Wölfflin’s conclusions can be found
as early as 1915, in M. Hamburger Das Form-Problem in der neueren deutschen
Ästhetik und Kunsttheorie [The Problem of Form in Recent German Aesthetics
and Art Theory]. It says there, aptly, ‘To summarize this way of regarding form,
we can conclude: the linear art work is at the same time planar, closed, clear in its
coordinated parts. The painterly work is recessive, in its open form, and, through
the subordination of parts, deliberately unclear’ (tr) (p. 150).
11 In Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790), too, colour is consistently
treated as the opposite of form. Only the relational structure of a form belongs ‘to
the form; because there it is possible to abstract from the qualities of any perception
(whether, and which colour, or whether and which tone it may be)’ (A 40).
12 H. Paetzold, Ästhetik der neueren Moderne [Aesthetics of Recent Modernity], p. 50.
13 The juxtaposition of the concepts ‘convergence’ versus ‘contrast’ is located in Joh
Pawlik, Praxis der Farbe [The Practice of Colour], pp. 41–47.
14 B. Waldenfels, ‘Ordnungen des Sichtbaren’[Orders of the Visible], p. 334. For a more
semiotically oriented discussion of the connection between image and perception,
Notes 213
see also the conference papers Vision and Visuality, edited by H. Foster and
N. Bryson, Vision and Painting.
15 B. Waldenfels, ‘Ordnungen des Sichtbaren’ [Orders of the Visible], p. 234.
16 On this point see J. Hart, Heinrich Wölfflin: An Intellectual Biography, the section
‘The Influence of Fiedler and Kant’, pp. 424–426. The strong presence of neo-
Kantian thinking in the intellectual life around the turn of the century should not
be underestimated: cf. Th. E. Willey, Back to Kant. Specifically regarding Wölfflin,
we know from unpublished posthumous sources that he studied the work of the
most important proponents of neo-Kantianism in detail: he knew the writing of Ed
Zeller, F. A. Lange, F. Paulsen, O. Liebmann, A. Riehl and W. Windelband: cf. on
this point J. Hart, ‘Reinterpreting Wölfflin’.
17 K. Fiedler, ‘Moderner Naturalismus und künstlerische Wahrheit’ [Modern
Naturalism and Artistic Truth], p. 103.
18 Johann Heinrich Lambert, too, emphasizes this relational understanding in a ‘Brief
an Kant vom 3. Feb. 1766’ [Letter to Kant of 3 February 1766]: ‘Since form arises
entirely from relational concepts, it specifies simple conceptual relationships, no
others’ (p. 65). The connection between the concepts of form and relation in Kant
is presented in detail in the study Relation und Funktion [Relation and Function]
by P. Schultheiss. On the concept of form in the Critique of Pure Reason, see
H. Graubner, Form und Wesen [Form and Essence].
19 G.Mohr, Das sinnliche Ich [The Sensual Self], p. 91.
20 Cf. P. Rohs, Transzendental Ästhetik [Transcendental Aesthetics].
21 St. Körner, Kant, pp. 34–35.
22 This quotation from Wölfflin lies at the core of A. Hauser’s very concise account
of Wölfflin’s theory, ‘Grundbegriffliches zu Wölfflins “Kunstgeschichtlichen
Grundbegriffen” ’[Principles of Wölfflin’s ‘Principles of Art History’].
23 On the black mirror, cf. the catalogue Sehsucht [The Longing to See], published by
the Art-and Exhibition Gallery of the German Federal Republic, p. 113. There is
basic material about how well the comparison between image and mirror works in
the essay ‘Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand . . .’ [Mirror, mirror, on the Wall . . .] by
J. Kulenkampff.
24 In his essay ‘Mirrors’ of 1984, U. Eco, too, supported this view from a semiotic
perspective. Eco comes to the conclusion that a pictorial representation is not
comparable to a mirror, because pictorial representations are signs, whereas mirror
images are not. But he finds that distorting mirrors undermine the opposition, for
because they structurally transform the visible, it is possible to detect in them ‘the
beginning of semiosis’ (p. 218).
25 On the theory and history of this metaphor, see R. Konersmann, Lebendige Spiegel
[Living Mirror].
214 Notes
26 G. W. Leibniz, ‘Aus den Briefen von Leibniz an Remond’ [From Leibniz’s Letters to
Remond], p. 471.
27 On the history of the development of an understanding of perception from Kant to
the neo-Kantians of formal aesthetics, cf. M. Podro, The Manifold in Perception.
28 K. Fiedler, Moderner Naturalismus und künstlerische Wahrheit [Modern Naturalism
and Artistic Truth], p. 107.
29 G. Boehm, ‘Einleitung zu “Konrad Fiedler: Schriften zur Kunst I” ’ [Introduction
to ‘Konrad Fiedler: Writings on Art I’], p. XLIX. In Gottfried Boehm’s account of
‘Fiedler’s interpretation of Kant’ (pp. XLVII–LII), the idea of a reinterpretation
is central, as in the quotation. In fact this very probably matches Fiedler’s own
understanding –as well as Wölfflin’s. As far as one can tell from the texts, both start
from the perspective on Kant that was usual in the nineteenth-century, namely
that Kant understands perception to be a process in which a form of intuition is in
fact inscribed, but which does not take on a structuring through fantasy, produced
in the imagination. But this understanding of Kant has been qualified frequently;
cf. P. F. Strawson, ‘Imagination and Perception’. This interpretation of Kant centres
on a footnote from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. There, Kant
notes that ‘the imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself ’ (A120,
p. 239). That would mean that Kant, too, was unable to conceive of perception
without immanent acts of fantasy. Yet it is difficult to know how firmly to place this
footnote, which no longer appeared in the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason, at the centre. As the starting point for Kant’s understanding of perception,
it would necessarily change our picture of Fiedler: The ‘decisive reinterpretation’
(Boehm) then becomes an equally persuasive relationship of continuation, as it
has been developed by Stefan Majetschak: ‘Exactly when Kant’s analysis applies,
that we can count on the power of imagination having a constitutive function
in any awareness of perceptible forms, we can say, with Fiedler, that the “fantasy
of an artist [. . .] is basically nothing other than the power of imagination we all
need to some extent in order to possess the world as a visible appearance” ’ (tr)
(Bd.1, p. 31). (St. Majetschak, ‘Die Überwindung der Schönheit’ [The Conquest of
Beauty], p. 60).
30 In considering that the critical basic ideas of Wölfflin’s later theory of art historical
principles were already set out in Wölfflin’s dissertation ‘Prolegomena zu einer
Psychologie der Architektur’ [Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture] of
1886, it is not surprising that Wölfflin was credited as a precursor even of gestalt
theory; see F. Sander, ‘Gestaltpsychologie und Kunsttheorie’ [Gestalt Psychology
and Art Theory]. Further systematic connections of Fiedler’s and Wölfflin’s theories
of visibility to gestalt theory and in particular their common effect on abstract art
of the early twentieth century are traced in W. Hofmann, ‘Studien zur Kunsttheorie
des 20. Jahrhunderts’ [Studies on the Art Theory of the 20th Century].
Notes 215
31 ‘ “Seeing” ’ for instance, is not a passive process, by which meaningless impressions

are stored up for the use of an organizing mind, which construes forms out of these
amorphous data to suit its own purposes. “Seeing” is itself a process of formulation;
our understanding of the visible world begins in the eye’ (S. K. Langer, Philosophy in
a New Key, p. 90).
32 R. Arnheim, Visual Thinking, p. 14.
33 A. Eckl, ‘Zum Problem der kategorialen Funktion von Wölfflins
“Kunstgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffen” ’ [On the Problem of Categorical Function
in Wölfflin’s Art Historical Principles], p. 40. The interpretation of Wölfflin presented
so concisely in this essay is examined more fully in Eckl’s book Kategorien der
Anschauung [Categories of Perception].
34 G. Boehm, Einleitung zu ‘Konrad Fiedler: Schriften zur Kunst 1’ [Introduction to
‘Konrad Fiedler: Writings on Art 1], p. XCI.
35 More precise observations about the relativity of seeing can be found in
N. Goodman, The Structure of Appearance.
36 In The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception J. J. Gibson explicitly examines
visual perception as a function of the perceiver’s environment. The ecological theory
of perception provides concrete psychological results to support theses that are
defended in philosophy at the level of principle through so-called interpretationism.
Every perception process is an interpretation process according to this view,
so that the environment determines the type of an internal interpretation. One
could also say that since an observation is always determined by the environment,
there is always a condition to its being understood. The chapter ‘Wahrnehmen
und Interpretieren’ [Perceiving and Interpreting], pp. 110–131, in H. Lenk,
Interpretationskonstruckte [Interpretational Constructs] is relevant here.
37 See M. H. Segall, D. T. Campbell and M. J. Herskovits, The Influence of Culture on
Visual Perception, and Th. Kleinspehn, Der flüchtige Blick [The Fleeting Glance].
38 K. Fiedler, ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’ [The Origin of Artistic
Activity], p. 130.
39 F. Fellmann, Symbolischer Pragmatismus [Symbolic Pragmatism], p. 34.
40 The most recent attempt so far to describe concrete spatial and also temporal
formations can be found in Metamorphosen von Raum und Zeit [Transformations
of Space and Time] by M. Burckhardt. Burckhardt’s insights lie directly the
tradition of formal aesthetics: they read as an explicit continuation of this project.
Yet it seems the recent histories of vision are generally marked by disinterest in any
history of their own. This is also the case for the text of Th. Kleinspehn, mentioned
earlier, Der flüchtige Blick [The Fleeting Glance]. In his very concise overview of
recent attempts to understand the ways culture and technology has transformed
vision, Wolfgang Kemp rightly arrived at the following generalization: ‘A common
feature of these studies is a lack of awareness of the historicity of the approach.
216 Notes
They lack a call and productive response to a life work structured entirely in
this direction, making it all the more surprising, as Walter Benjamin, the ever-
present mediator between a relatively narrow art history and a general cultural
criticism, did not refrain from pointing out. I think of Alois Riegl, who [. . .]
tested the possibilities for “a history of the eye” –a history of the eye being the
corresponding formulation of the great competitor Heinrich Wölfflin, who, like
Riegl, saw the history of vision as “the most elementary task of a history of art” ’
(tr) (‘Augengeschichten und skopische Regime’) [Histories of the Eye and Scopic
Regimes]), p. 1164.
41 H. Wölfflin, In eigener Sache [In My Own Affairs], p. 17.
42 It is therefore entirely appropriate that Hermann Schmitz should assign Wölfflin a
key position in his text ‘Der Leib im Spiegel der Kunst’ [The Body in the Mirror of
Art] (1966): ‘Among the leading historians and theoreticians of art, Wölfflin seems
to be the only one to have suspected, and even sometimes to even have clearly seen
the definitive significance of bodily existence for the formation of artistic style’ (tr)
(p. 257f.). In fact the interpretation of the concept of condition in Wölfflin has also
shown that Schmitz’s assertion is valid not ‘for the young Wölfflin’ alone (ibid.,
p. 258), as he himself thought. Wölfflin did in fact defend the thesis especially
clearly in his dissertation ‘Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur’
[Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture] (p. 21). But this does not conflict
with the later theory of art historical principles.
43 A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea §18, p. 142. On the way
Schopenhauer’s thinking related to the body see F. Esser, Die Funktion des Leibes
in der Philosophie Schopenhauers [The Function of the Body in Schopenhauer’s
Philosophy].
44 W. Dilthey, ‘Studien zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften’ [Studies on the
Foundations of the Human Sciences], p. 33.
45 From a certain perspective, Kant himself sets up the development of neo-
Kantianism towards a historical subject. The Critique of Pure Reason ends, in any
case, with very short fourth main section of the theory of transcendental method,
with the title: ‘The History of Pure Reason’. Yet Kant himself confirmed that this
heading is only a plan at this point: ‘This title stands here only to designate a place
that is left open in the system and must be filled in the future (B880, p. 702).
46 On Liebmann, see H. -L. Ollig, Der Neo-Kantianismus [Neo-Kantianism],
pp. 9–15.
47 A. Halder, Kunst und Kult [Art and Cult], p. 29.
48 There is more detailed information about Friedmann’s philosophy in F. Kuntze, Der
morphologische Idealismus [Morphological Idealism], and W. Hofmann, ‘Studien
zur Kunsttheorie des 20. Jahrhunderts’ [Studies of 20th-Century Art Theory],
pp. 149–152.
Notes 217
49 H. Plessner, ‘Die Einheit der Sinne’ [The Unity of the Senses], p. 81.

50 Spatial infrastructure according to Kant has been described with the
instrumentation of relational logic in The Shape of Space by G. Nerlich; see in
particular the chapter ‘Space and Systems of Relations’, pp. 5–28.
51 K. Fiedler, ‘Aphorismen’ [Aphorisms], p. 60.
52 G. Boehm, ‘Die Wiederkehr der Bilder’ [The Return of Images], p. 19.
53 A. Hildebrand, Das Problem der Form [The Problem of Form], p. 120.
54 It must be noted again here that the relativism of ways of seeing in formal
aesthetics –with Fiedler as well as with Wölfflin –is based on a fundamental
exclusion of practical demands, and so is concerned with the autonomous
artistic look. Perception can only be emancipated if it has no purposes to serve.
Fiedler definitely did point out that reality, which on the one hand ‘remains to
the observation a continually changing, ephemeral play’, and on the other hand,
‘sets firm limits to human deeds and desires’ (tr) (Moderner Naturalismus und
künstlerische Wahrheit [Modern Naturalism and Artistic Truth], p. 101). Nor
were there any doubts at all in formal aesthetics about the argument against the
relativism of ways of seeing presented with exceptional clarity by the Realist Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg, namely ‘that human beings do not have the power to model
the world as they wish, but do have to power to grind lenses through which it can
be made to appear almost as they wish’ (‘Amintors Morgenandacht’ [Amintor’s
Morning Devotion], p. 295). On the pragmatic limits of relativist positions, see
F. Fellmann, Interpretationimus und symbolischer Pragmatismus [Interpretationism
and Symbolic Pragmatism].
Chapter 4

2 This is also confirmed in G. Pochat, Der Symbolbegriff in der Ästhetik und
Kunstwissenschaft [The Concept of the Symbol in Aesthetics and Art History],
pp. 69–76.
3 The research of Margaret Iverson on the semiotic dimension of Kunstwollen is
helpful in this regard. She comes to the conclusion: ‘I have tried to show that this
attention to form –the artifice of art –does not imply a disregard for meaning. On
the contrary, it multiplies meanings. [. . .] This is the lesson of modernism: visual
signs have a power of their own which is independent of the relationship to things’
(‘Style as Structure’, p. 71).
4 In this context it is also worth noting that a bridge from German to Russian
formalism, as represented by Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Viktor
Schklovsky and Yuri Tynyanov, might be thrashed out around this idea of
218 Notes
Fiedler’s. Russian formalism, too, although it is primarily a theory of literature

and not a theory of visibility as formal aesthetics is, sees its task in an ‘analysis
of form understood as content’–at least in Boris Eichenbaum’s ‘Die Theorie
der formalen Methode’ [The Theory of the Formal Method] of 1925 (p. 21).
The accompanying explanations concur with the argumentation from formal
aesthetics as well: ‘A new meaning was now read from the form itself; it no longer
registered as something external to the work, but as something concrete-dynamic
that has content in itself, without any correlations. It amounted to a decisive
criticism of the views of the Symbolists, who were looking behind and through
the form for “content”. Hand in hand with this criticism went the conquering
of “aestheticism”, the preference for individual components of the form, very
consciously separated from “content” ’ (tr) (ibid., 20f.). Cf. A. A. Hansen-Löve,
Der Russiche Formalismus [Russian Formalism], and V. Ehrlich, Russischer
Formalismus [Russian Formalism].
5 Cf. U. Franke, Kunst als Erkenntnis [Art as Cognition], and G. Gabriel, ‘Erkenntnis
in Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Dichtung’ [Cognition in Science, Philosophy and
Poetry]. In Baumgarten we actually have the central aesthetician of the eighteenth
century who, with his complementary understanding of logic and aesthetics, is
in agreement in principle with Herbartianism’s programme of formal aesthetics.
But this agreement in principle between Herbartianism and the original idea of
an aesthetic discipline should not lead us on to suppose that Baumgarten was
quick to distance himself from the Herbartians’ purely formal way of working in
the way he imagined the realization of his programme. For Baumgarten, cognitive
achievement specific to art is bound up with the contents of artworks. This is the
reason Baumgarten’s aesthetics is carried further in the nineteenth century, if at all,
in idealism and not in formal aesthetics. This is confirmed in H. Paetzold’s detailed
history of Baumgarten’s influence Ästhetik des deutschen Idealismus [Aesthetics of
German Idealism].
6 M. Bense, Aesthetica [Aesthetica], p. 49.
7 B. Waldenfels, ‘Ordnungen des Sichtbaren’ [Orders of the Visible], p. 251. On
understanding the idea of the artist’s studio as a scientist’s laboratory, see also
N. Schmitz, Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeichen der Moderne [Art and Science under
the Sign of the Modern], pp. 153–166.
8 In The Perception of the Visual World, James J. Gibson somewhat
unconventionally uses an image fuzzy at the edges to represent the vision of
children. Photographs
serving this semiotic function are especially numerous in H. Haken and M. Haken-
Krell, Erfolgsgeheimnisse der Wahrnehmung [Secrets of Perceptual Success].
9 See I. Rentschler, ‘Weltbilder der Kunst –Erscheinungsformen der Wirklichkeit’
[World Views of Art –Forms of Reality’s Appearance].
Notes 219
10 M. Seel, Kunst, Wahrheit, Welterschließung [Art, Truth, Worldmaking], p. 44.

Expressed in this essay especially concisely, the idea is examined in greater detail in
Die Kunst der Entzweiung [The Art of Rupture].
11 In The World through Blunted Sight. An Inquiry into the Influence of Defective Vision
on Art and Character, the English ophthalmologist Patrick Trevor-Roper has, with
impressive results, advanced the view that the visible world of art is for the most
part the result of defective vision; see especially the chapter ‘The Unfocussed Image’,
pp. 17–63. For G. Boehm, such naturalistic accounts serve as evidence that a basic
hermeneutic understanding of the image has been lost. He rightly points out ‘just
because vision has a natural basis is no reason to suppose that the viewer is entirely
dependent on it’(Sehen [Seeing], p. 57).
12 E. H. Gombrich, in Zwischen Landkarte und Spiegelbild [Between Map and Mirror
Image] further undermines this view.
13 K. Fiedler, On Judging Works of Visual Art, The stylistic colouration of perception
is, accordingly, unavoidable. As a result, there are two possible reactions to it: One
can try to understand the stylistic structures that are there, that is, to describe, in
a metalinguistic move, the language of the perception in a conceptual language;
or one lets himself be involved in an interaction between image and perception,
that is, one tries to change his view. The first way corresponds to the programme
of a hermeneutics of the image. Its goal is to develop conceptual categories that
make the non-objective meaning of the images linguistically describable, and so
make it possible to understand the conditionality of ways of seeing, a conditionality
based on their immanent pictorial logic. The hermeneutics of images will not be
pursued further here. Gottfried Boehm, in ‘Zu einer Hermeneutik des Bildes’ [On
a Hermeneutics of Images], has traced its goals and its exact provenance from
Fiedler’s demand for a logic of the image. At least equally plausible is the route taken
by J. Hart, in ‘Reinterpreting Wölfflin’, from Wölfflin’s aesthetics to a hermeneutics
of the image.
14 A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I, §37, p. 252.
15 W. Dilthey, ‘Contributions to the Study of Individuality’, p. 247. On the ‘cross-
fertilization of Dilthey’s and Wölfflin’s insights’, see also E. Utitz, Über Grundbegriffe
der Kunstwissenschaft [On the Principles of Art History], p. 39.
17 This idea that images, particularly in art, say less about objects than they do about
conditions, is supported phenomenologically and semiotically in F. Fellmann,
‘Wovon sprechen die Bilder?’ [What Do Images Speak About?].
18 F. Fellmann, Symbolischer Pragmatismus [Symbolic Pragmatism], p. 133. On the
pictorial character of landscape perceptions, cf. M. Smuda, ‘Natur als ästhetischer
Gegenstand und als Gegenstand der Ästhetik’ [Nature as an Aesthetic Object and as
the Object of Aesthetics].
220 Notes
19 In his study Mental Imagery, Mark Rollins confirms this view: cf. especially the
sections ‘Images as Structured Configurations’, pp. 72–81, and ‘Picture Perception
and Mental Imagery’, pp. 99–108. It is astonishing how closely Rollins’s arguments
resemble those of the formal aestheticians. One finds Rollins unfolding and
persuasively defending the basic ideas of Fiedler and Wölfflin freshly against
the background of recent findings in cognitive science. So he, too, begins by
asserting: ‘It is crucial that it be possible for different series of images to represent
the same content; for it is only in that way that the same visual process type can be
said to admit of multiple realizations’ (ibid., p. 84). The reasoning from this inner
flexibility of ‘ “images” lies in the same tradition: In order to describe perceptions,
it is necessary to assume a “perceptual style” ’ (ibid., p. 94). According to Rollins,
every perception is imprinted with what he calls ‘ “pictorial attitudes”, which have
as their content a certain perceptual organization or way of seeing the world’ (ibid,
p. 96). This way of seeing determines a form of intuition or, to be more precise with
respect to the concept of form: ‘not just form but relation among form’ (ibid., p. 91).
A noteworthy clarification of this understanding of internal images can be found in
K. Sachs-Hombach, ‘Piktoriale Einstellungen’ [Pictorial Attitudes].
20 B. Waldenfels, ‘Das Rätsel der Sichtbarkeit’ [The Mystery of Visibility], p. 335.
Also noteworthy in this context is Henri Focillon, who does not yet figure in the
history of phenomenology’s development, particularly in France, despite having
worked out very comparable ideas as early as 1934 in his book The Life of Forms
in Art: ‘Human consciousness is in perpetual pursuit of a language and a style.
To assume consciousness is at once to assume form. Even at levels far below the
zone of definition and clarity, forms, measures and relationship exist. The chief
characteristic of the mind is to be constantly describing itself. The mind is a design
that is in a state of ceaseless flux, of ceaseless weaving and then unweaving, and its
activity, in this sense is an artistic activity’ (p. 118). It would be worth the effort to
find out to what extent Focillon acted as intermediary between formal aestheticians
such as Fiedler and Wölfflin on the one hand and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology
on the other. For as the latter put it: ‘Perception already stylizes’ (The Prose of the
World, p. 59). This passage alone is evidence of a basic structural affinity.
22 On these topics, see the essay by O. R. Scholz, ‘Bilder im Geiste?’ [Images in
Minds?].
23 N. Schmitz, Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeichen der Moderne [Art and Science
under the Sign of the Modern], p. 60.
24 See St. Majetschak, ‘Die Überwindung der Schönheit’ [The Conquest of Beauty].
25 The concept of perceptual syntax appears as early as M. Mearleau-Ponty’s
Phenomenology of 1945.
26 Cf. G. Boehm, ‘Die Bilderfrage’ [The Problem of Images].
Notes 221
27 See F. Fellmann, Phänomenologie und Expressionismus [Phenomenology and

Expressionism], pp. 44–56 and 66–71.
28 Cf. Transparence et Opacité by Ph. Junod.
29 H. Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis, p. 91f.
30 Oliver R. Scholz exemplifies the language analytic point of view: ‘Whether
something is an image or not depends not so much on how the thing is constituted
as above all on which semiotic system is serving as the framework for the
interpretation. Strictly speaking, one should not ask what an image is, or which
things are images as such, but rather when, or under what conditions something
is an image, when something is functioning within a pictorial system’ (tr) (Bild,
Darstellung, Zeichen [Image, Representation, Sign], p. 83).
31 J. Berger, Ways of Seeing, p. 2.
32 See in this regard K. Malevitch’s own text, Suprematismus [Suprematism], and
also in regard to his understanding of images the texts from the anthology Nach
der Destruktion des ästhetischen Scheins [After the Destruction of Aesthetic
Appearance], edited by H. M. Bachmayer, D. Kamper and F. Rötzer.
33 N. Bolz, Am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis [At the End of the Gutenberg Galaxy],
p. 149.
34 See Wiesing, Stil statt Wahrheit [Style Instead of Truth], pp. 101–115.
35 B. Balázs, Visible Man, p. 27.
36 The thesis is also found in H. U. Gumbrecht, ‘Wahrnehmung vs. Erfahrung oder
Die schnellen Bilder und ihre Interpretationsresistenz’ [Perception vs. Experience,
or Rapid Imagery and Its Resistance to Interpretation].
37 R. Musil, ‘Ansätze zu neuer Ästhetik’ [Approaches to Recent Aesthetics], p. 1138f.
38 See H. van den Boom, Digitale Ästhetik [Digital Aesthetics], and J. Deken,
Computerbilder [Computer Images].
39 For Vilém Flusser, this is the reason that ‘a visionary power is expressed in these
surfaces that would never have been possible before the invention of keys (Into
the Universe of Technical Images, p. 32). At first glance it may seem a surprising
characterization. There was never any substance or danger about changing things in
one’s imagination. But if we start from the idea that ‘technical images are envisioned
surfaces’ (ibid., p. 33), Flusser’s thesis in fact becomes persuasive: if we interpret
the image itself as one way imagination may be enacted, then the technical image
opens unsuspected imaginative possibilities, and conversely technical images offer
the theory of consciousness the possibility of thinking of the power of imagination
as a form of virtual imagery. This suggestion –the pendant to Flusser’s approach,
so to speak –can be found in F. Fellmann, Einbildungskraft as virtuelle Bildlichkeit
[Imaginative Power as Virtual Imagery].
40 The relevant account of possibilities for interaction between a human being and an
image can be found in M. W. Krueger, Artificial Reality II.
222 Notes
41 See H. van den Boom, ‘Vom Modell zur Simulation’ [From Model to Simulation].
42 On so-called interface design, see the essay collection The Art of Human-Computer,
edited by B. Laurel.
43 An extensive overview of the developments, possibilities and assessment of
cyberspace technology can be found in H. Rheingold’s report Virtuelle Welten
[Virtual Worlds], as well as in the anthology Cyberspace, edited by F. Rötzer and
P. Weibel.
44 ‘The world of numerical simulation is neither real nor imaginary, it presents another
category: The virtual exists without really existing’ (tr) (Ed Couchot, ‘Die Spiele des
Realen und des Virtuellen’ [Games of the Real and Virtual], p. 350.
45 K. Fiedler, Moderner Naturalismus und künstlerische Wahrheit [Modern Naturalism
and Artistic Truth], p. 101. The dimension of cyberspace that is ghostly in best sense
of the term is interpreted in K. Lüdeking, ‘Die Vergangenheit des Körpers’ [The
Body’s Past].
46 R. Musil, ‘Ansätze zu neuer Ästhetik’ [Approaches to Recent Aesthetics], p. 1140.
47 The goal of not understanding an image to be an interpretation was one of
the visions linked to photography in classical modernism. The name of the
photographer Edward Weston (1886–1958), for example, is firmly attached to the
idea of ‘presentation instead of interpretation’. Today one gets the impression that
photography raised expectations that could be met only by digital image processing.
This background supports a fresh reading of early programs of photography, such as
Weston’s call for presentation instead of interpretation.
48 Gottfried Gabriel describes a noteworthy attempt to mediate between scientific-
theoretical and aesthetic routes. In the discussion of the relationships between ‘art
and truth’ in ‘Erkenntnis in Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Dichtung’ [Cognition in
Science, Philosophy and Poetry] he, too, comes to the conclusion: ‘So it seems that
we are under pressure to introduce a completely different concept of truth, namely
one that is non-propositional’ (tr) (p. 214). Yet his no doubt realistic estimate of the
effect of this route prevents him from taking a thinkable theoretical route, ‘But this
alternative offers no way out, at least none that could be accepted from a scientific
theoretical standpoint’ (tr) (ibid.). He therefore outlines an alternative concept that
‘could satisfy all sides’. ‘This possibility consists of recognizing the propositional
concept of truth as the only concept of truth, but extending the concept of cognition
beyond the propositional concept of truth. This then means watching out for
potentially non-propositional insights rather than for non-propositional truths’
(ibid.).
49 G. Gamm, Flucht aus der Kategorie [Escape from Categories], p. 329. See G. Abel,
Interpretationswelten [Interpretation Worlds], pp. 300–314, for more about the
fitting function’s inevitable dependence on practice and interpretation.
Notes 223
50 B. Waldenfels chose this formulation, which draws on the famous definition ‘veritas
est adequatio rei et inerlectus’, in ‘Das Zerspringen des Seins’ [The Shattering of
Being] (p. 149).
51 Cf. here the essay that remains today the most persuasive criticism, the young
E. Panofsky’s ‘Das Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst’ [The Problem of Style
in Visual Art]. On the other hand, A. Eckl rightly emphasizes that these criticisms
lose their force when Wölfflin is read, against his own intention, in a strictly neo-
Kantian, a-historic way: ‘If the Principles are understood to be the result of an
analysis of the conditions of possibility for aesthetic perception, the periodicity
of the stylistic development becomes contingent, rather than constitutive of
Wölfflin’s theory’ (tr) (‘Zum Problem der kategorialen Funktion von Wölfflins
“Kunstgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffen” ’ [On the Problem of Categorical Function
of Wölfflin’s Art Historical Principles], p. 35.
52 The aesthetics of the American George Kubler is especially typical of this, as the
following quotation shows: ‘The “history of things” is intended to reunite ideas and
objects under the rubric of visual form: the term includes both artefacts and works
of art, both replicas and unique examples, both tools and expressions –in short all
materials worked by human hands under the guidance of connected developed in
temporal sequence. From all these things a shape in time emerges. A visible portrait
of the collective identity, whether tribe, class or nation, comes into being’ (The
Shape of Time, p. 8).
53 A very similar argument appears in Hegel’s criticism of physiognomy from
the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. It warns against interpreting facial
characteristics as causal expressions of internal states and traits of character.
These are only sign-based expressions, and only information that can therefore
be true and false: ‘It is therefore no doubt an expression, but at the same time
only in the sense of a sign, so that to the content expressed the peculiar nature
of that by which it is expressed is completely indifferent. The inner in thus
appearing is doubtless an invisible made visible, but without being itself united
to this appearance’ (p. 111).
54 This is especially clear in Gombrich’s essay ‘Styles of Art and Styles of Life’.
55 On the relationship of information to image see H. D. Zimmer, Sprache und
Bildwahrnehmung [Language and the Perception of Images].
56 E. H. Gombrich, ‘Standards of Truth’, p. 266.
57 K. Fiedler, ‘Über die Beurteilung von Werken der bildenden Kunst’ [Evaluating
Works of Visual Art], S. 57.
58 K. Fiedler, ‘Aphorismen’ [Aphorisms], p. 43
59 If we see this book as the one in which Simmel began to outline what later became
his formal sociology, it seems almost obvious that formal analyses of art would also
224 Notes
appear here and there in it. On the concept of formal sociology, see Chapter 3 in
Simmel’s Grundfragen der Soziologie [Fundamental Questions in Sociology].
60 K. Fiedler, Moderner Naturalismus und künstlerische Wahrheit [Modern
Naturalism and Artistic Truth], p. 99.
61 A. C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, p. 146.
62 N. Goodman, ‘On Rightness of Rendering’, p. 137. Goodman seems to want to
make the question of the criterion for accuracy in art an exception to relativism
found elsewhere in his writings. This is especially clear the Revisions he made
with Catherine Z. Elgin of her theories in 1988. On the one hand, it represents
relativism with respect to the view that a general criterion for accuracy might be
found: ‘No philosophical pronouncement can provide a general criterion or rules
for determining rightness’ (p. 158). But on the other hand, there is very definitely a
suggestion for a possible criterion of accuracy specifically for works of visual art: it
is success in changing a way of seeing, the function of sharing a mode of perception.
At least the following sentences seem to repeat Dilthey’s view exactly: ‘A work is
right to the extent that the markers it exemplifies can be projected to enhance our
understanding of the work itself and of other aspects of our experience. Successful
works transform perception and transfigure its objects by bringing us to recognize
to aspects, objects and order that we would once have underrated or overlooked’
(ibid., p. 22).
63 A. C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, p. 169.
64 M. Seel, Kunst, Wahrheit, Welterschließung [Art, Truth, World Disclosure], p. 50
65 W. Dilthey, ‘The Three Epochs of Modern Aesthetics and Its Present Task’, p. 209.
Chapter 5
1 See Ed Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological

Philosophy. In this context see especially §30, ‘The General Theory of the Natural
Attitude’, p. 56.
2 On the concept of epoché in Husserl, compare with The Problem of Epoché in the
Philosophy of Edmund Husserl by E. Ströker.
3 Ed Husserl, ‘Investigation III: On the Theory of Wholes and Parts’, p. 170.
4 Cf. L. Wiesing, ‘Phänomenologie des Bildes nach Husserl und Sartre’
[Phenomenology of the Image after Husserl and Sartre].
5 K. Fiedler, ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’ [On the Origin of
Artistic Activity], p. 153.
6 Ed Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen [Cartesian Meditations], S. 50.
7 M. Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Philosopher and His Shadow’, p. 165.
Notes 225
8 J. Volkelt, ‘Objektive Ästhetik’ [Objective Aesthetics], p. 401. In light of the way

formal analyses assumed phenomenological analysis –already noted in the previous
chapter –one can only endorse E. Holenstein’s contemporary call for a systematic
‘reintegration of formal and structural analyses in phenomenology’ (E. Holenstein,
Linguisik, Semiotik, Hermeneutik, [Linguistics, Semiotics, Hermeneutics], p. 9). The
route Holenstein suggests for such reintegration is, however, oriented primarily
towards the work of the Prague philosopher Roman Jakobson. See E. Holenstein,
Roman Jakobson’s phänomenologischer Strukturalismus [Roman Jakobson’s
Phenomenological Structuralism]. Jakobson’s work really is a prime example of an
integration of formal and phenomenological thinking, in which his understanding
of formalism lies in the Russian, rather than in the Herbartian tradition. In this
respect two traditions in the integration of formal and phenomenological thinking
should be distinguished.
9 Ed Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen [Cartesian Meditations], p. 21.
10 F. Fellmann, Phänomenologie als ästhetische Theorie [Phenomenology as Aesthetic
Theory], p. 127.
11 Cf. also L. Singer, ‘Merleau-Ponty on the Concept of Style’.
12 The art historian Hermann Beenken in particular worked this aspect of formal
aesthestics in the essay ‘Konsequenzen und Aufgaben der Stilanalyse’[Implications
and Tasks of Stylistic Analysis] of 1925. Beenken, who earned his doctoral
degree under Wölfflin in Munich in 1920, was the first to call attention to the
complementary relationship between Wölfflin and Husserl. He says, ‘What remains
most comparable [to Wölfflin’s stylistic analysis] is phenomenological analysis as
it was developed by Husserl and his circle for philosophical work. For there, too,
in the area of, say, assertions in the realm of mental events, one is not content with
an investigation of the factual, as it is done in psychology, it being a science of
experience; rather phenomena are “transcendentally cleansed” by means of peculiar
“reductions”, so that the statements are the statements of ideas, not statements of
matters-of-fact. Stylistic analysis too, although it always starts from things given in
experience, is aimed at “transcendentally cleansed phenomena”, and the principles
it seeks are not, in the first instance, those of real matters-of-fact, but of essential
principles, and so of ideal nature’ (‘Konsequenzen und Aufgaben der Stilanalyse’
[Implications and Tasks of Stylistic Analysis], p. 417f.).
13 M. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 236
14 M. Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Philosopher and His Shadow’, p. 166.
15 B. Waldenfels, Phänomenologie in Frankreich [Phenomenology in France], p. 200.
16 M. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 3.
17 M. Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind’, pp. 165–166.
18 See O. Stelzer, Die Vorgeschichte der abstrakten Kunst [The Prehistory of
Abstract Art].
226 Notes
19 The way theory and practice complement one another at the beginning of
the century has been repeatedly noted. Here is Werner Hofmann’s view of
aesthetics from Wölfflin to Sedlmayr: ‘One can come to this way of seeing
only if one has learned, through engagement with the abstract painting of our
time, to look into formal relationships without objects’ (Gespräche mit dem
Sichtbaren [Conversations with the Visible], Part 2, p. 580). In the study Kunst
und Wissenschaft im Zeichen der Moderne [Art and Science under the Sign of the
Modern], N. Schmitz presents a pertinent account of the relationship between
Wölfflin’s art theory and the origin of abstract images, which can be especially
persuasively drawn as a comparison with the work of Adolph Hölzel.
20 F. Schlegel, Schriften zur Literatur [Writings on Literature], Frag. 238, p. 50.
According to Franz Gniffke, ‘Transcendental Poetry’ is the name ‘for an art that has
become critical in the Kantian sense, because it reflects conditions of its objective
depiction that had never become visible before. That means that the process of
the painter’s reflection goes back –more than on his own representation in a
self-portrait or the representation of such things as the situation of the painter in
the studio –into the invisible conditions for making them visible’ (‘Bilder über
Bilder’ [Images about Images], p. 208). The transcendental thinking of Kant and
particularly of neo-Kantianism was actually read in detail by the fathers of abstract
art, and undoubtedly had a decisive effect on the intellectual framework of their
works, as D. H. Kahnweiler was able to emphasize in an exemplary way through
the example of the emergence of Cubism with Juan Gris; see D. -H. Kahnweiler,
Juan Gris.
21 See F. Fellmann, Phänomenologie und Expressionismus [Phenomenology and
Expressionism], and H. R. Sepp, ‘Annäherungen an die Wirklichkeit’ [Approaches
to Reality].
22 F. Fellmann elaborates this idea in Phänomenologie als ästhetische Theorie
[Phenomenology as Aesthetic Theory]. Largely neglected ideas about the image as
an artistic means of pursuing phenomenological interests appear very early in the
work of Husserl’s student, the Freiburger Fritz Kaufmann; see especially Kaufmann’s
1940 study ‘Kunst und Phänomenologie’ [Art and Phenomenology].
23 From this point of view, it seems obvious that only in the abstract image did the art
historical principles find an object adequate to their theses. This reading of formal
aesthetics would argue roughly as follows: Formal pictorial analysis in Wölfflin is
directed at the wrong object. The purely relational view should be directed towards
purely abstract images from the start, for only in this way is no tension generated; in
this way no reduction to form is necessary, for the abstract image already does what
formal aesthetics tries to do more or less forcefully with an objective image: to make
a pure network of immanent relations. A. Eckl gives exemplary evidence that the
results of Wölfflin’s theory of art historical principles really can be profitably used to
Notes 227
interpret an abstract composition in ‘Zum Problem der kategorialen Funktion von

Wölfflins “Kunstgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffen” ’ [On the Problem of Categorical
Function of Wölfflin’s Art Historical Principles], pp. 44–52.
24 H. Wölfflin, ‘Adolf von Hildebrand’, p. 92.
25 R. Ingarden, The Ontology of the Work of Art, p. 214. Cf. also R. Ingarden, ‘Über die
sogenannte “abstrakte” Malerei’ [On So-Called ‘Abstract’ Painting].
26 Cf. G. Boehm, Abstraktion und Realität [Abstraction and Reality].
27 E. von Rüden, van de Velde –Kandinsky –Hölzel, p. 45.
Chapter 6
1 Cf. E. H. Gombrich, ‘The “What” and the “How” ’.

2 To return to Frege’s view, in an abstract image we are dealing with a sign that
has sense, but no meaning. In a footnote to ‘Sense and Reference’, Frege himself
proposed ‘it would be desirable to have a special term for signs having only
sense’ (p. 216). He suggests naming them ‘representations’ (ibid.). This is a very
capricious suggestion, for in following it, concepts such as ‘unicorn’ would be
representations, on the one hand, and on the other, representations that depict
extant things would be no longer be representations. As will be examined more
fully in what follows, what Frege calls a representation would better be called a
fictional sign.
3 Cf. W. Hofmann, Von der Nachahmung zur Wirklichkeit [From Imitation to Reality].
4 M. Seel, Kunst, Wahrheit, Welterschließung’ [Art, Truth, World Disclosure], p. 62.
5 The reference is to the Festschrift Zeichen von Zeichen für Zeichen [Signs for Signs
about Signs], edited by E. Walther and U. Bayer.
6 Cf. A. Gehlen, Zeit-Bilder [Time Images]. See F. Gniffke, ‘Bilder über Bilder’ [Images
about Images].
7 For examples, see M. Imdahl, Giotto Arenafresken, and E. Loran, Cézanne’s
Composition. On the current discussion of art historical structural drawings and
specifically on the difference between their conception of ways of seeing and that of
works of art, cf. F. Koppe, ‘Kunst als entäußerte Weise, die Welt zu sehen’ [Art as an
Externalized Way of Seeing the World].
8 So-called computer-generated cartoons can also be mentioned in this context. These
are technically generated images about images of a particular kind, specifically
drawings that are produced from photographs by means of a computer. Cf. the essay
‘Computer-Generated Cartoons’ by D. Pearson, E. Hanna and K. Martinez.
9 Husserl speaks of ‘adequate images’. For him, this is a special form of
‘multifaceted pictoriality’ [‘mehrfältigen Bildlichkeit’]. This is Husserl’s
228 Notes
extraordinary name for all types of image-depicting images, from an essay of

1905 among his posthumous papers. But more detailed explanations remain
very sketchy. On adequate images he says: ‘An adequate image; that is, in the case
of images of images, an image that is a perfect copy of the original image such
that the image apprehension could no longer feel any duality at all and therefore
image apprehension could no longer occur [. . .] In the case of paintings: The
images of paintings can be adequate if, say, the image intends to be the image
only of the plastic form’ (Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory, Appendix
IX, p. 189).
10 In this context, reference is made expressly to G. Gabriel’s pertinent research,
which persuasively shows why one need not assume the ontological existence of
fictional objects in order to describe fictional signs. Fictional objects can be grasped
as pure sense structures (intensions). In this regard, see G. Gabriel’s essay ‘Sachen
gibt’s, die gibt’s gar nicht’ [There Are Things That Don’t Exist] as well as his chapter
‘Semantische Grundbegriffe und die Definition des Terminus “fiktionale Rede” ’
[Semantic Principles and the Definition of the Term ‘Fictional Speech’] in Fiktion
und Wahrheit [Fiction and Truth], pp. 14–32.
11 Ch. W. Morris, ‘Esthetics and the Theory of Signs’, p. 140. Morris’s comparison also
matches the self-conception of many abstract artists, as is clear in O. Stelzer, Die
Vorgeschichte der abstrakten Kunst [The Prehistory of Abstract Art], especially in
the chapter ‘Kunst und Mathematik’ [Art and Mathematics], pp. 24–28. Max Bense,
who has made use of Morris’s insights at many points in his aesthetics, points out
the semiotic parallels between formal communication in art and mathematics as
well. He confirms, ‘There are “formal communications” that appear here as the
bearers of aesthetic characteristics. With them, artistic results move into the area of
mathematical phenomena’ (tr) (Aesthetica, p. 49).
12 N. Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 53, n.5.
13 In the essay ‘Die Rolle von Probe und Etikett in Goodmans Theorie des
Exemplifikation’ [The Role of the Probe and Label in Goodman’s Theory of
Exemplification], D. Gerhardus has worked through the part-to-whole relation and
interpreted it more closely.
14 N. Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 53.
15 Cassirer does in fact give a description of a symbolic function –as Ernst Wolfgang
Orth worked out in his essay ‘Lektüre und geistiger Bildraum’ [Readings and
Mental Pictorial Space] –specific to ‘formal contact with realities resulting in
substantial loss of bearings’ (tr) (p. 186). By 1927, Cassirer was already making a
semiotic distinction between the ‘expression’ [Ausdruck] and the ‘representation’
[Darstellung] of ‘pure meaning’ [reine Bedeutung]; See E. Cassirer, ‘Das
Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie’, [The Problem of
the Symbol and Its Position in the System of Philosophy], pp. 88–89 and 90–91
and 8–10. In fact Cassirer’s concept of pure meaning already contains the idea of a
Notes 229
semiotic comparison between abstract, aesthetic phenomena and the language of

mathematics in Morris’s concept of the formator. For –as Orth, too, demonstrates –
Morris’s prime examples of pure meaning embrace ‘mathematical calculation –but
also that which he calls style’ (tr) (‘Lektüre und geistiger Bildraum’ [Readings and
Mental Pictorial Space]), p. 186.
16 This apt phrase appears in the introduction to Ch. L. Hart Nibbrig’s Zum Drum
und Dran einer Fragestellung [On the Ins and Outs of an Inquiry] in a short
parallelization of mathematical formulae with music, p. 12.
17 G. Gamm, Flucht aus der Kategorie [Escape from Categories], p. 109. Cf. also
G. Gabriel, Fiktion und Wahrheit [Fiction and Truth] the chapter: ‘Von der
Semantik zur Ästhetik’ [From Semantics to Aesthetics], pp. 99–111.
18 Cf. also F. Kambartel, ‘Formales und Inhaltliches Sprechen’ [Speech: Form and
Content].
19 The concept of ‘imitation formula’ was introduced by Miorita Ulrich. See the essays
‘Bread-and-butter, Bread-and-butter’ and ‘Sprachnachahmung, Nachahmung
von Sprache und Übersetzung’ [Linguistic Imitation, Imitation of Language and
Translation].
20 M. Ulrich, ‘Bread-and-butter, Bread-and-butter’, p. 269.
21 K. Fiedler, ‘Wirklichkeit und Kunst’ [Reality and Art], p. 125. In a comparable way,
Aby Warburg (1866–1929) also interprets art as an inherited system of formulae.
Warburg was not interested in formulae for visibility manifest in art, however, but
in formulae for pathos, on what he called ‘pathos formulae’ (See A. M. Warburg,
Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen [Selected Writings and Criticism], pp. 125
ff. and 153 ff.). But as far as the implicit semiotic evaluation of art is concerned,
Warburg’s interpretive direction is in line with Fiedler’s –which is the one Morris
articulated. In his interpretation of the pathos formula in ‘Von Warburg ausgehend’
[Starting with Warburg], Hans Ulrich Reck returns to the structural affinity between
formulae and Husserl’s concept of horizon and speaks trenchantly of the formula as
a ‘horizon of expectation’ (p. 208).
22 K. Fiedler, ‘Wirklichkeit und Kunst’ [Reality and Art], pp. 124, 125, 126, 128, 157,
158, 160 and 162.
23 Cf. P. Weibel, Musik-Videos’ [Music Videos].
24 P. Virilio, ‘The Illusions of Zero Time’, p. 30.
25 H. Buddemeier, Leben in künstlichen Welten [Life in Artificial Worlds], p. 46.
26 See M. McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
27 G. Anders, Die Welt als Phantom und Matrize [The World as Phantom and Matrix],
pp. 142 and 170.
28 V. Anding, ‘TV-Trilogie’ [TV Trilogy], p. 17.
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Index
abstraction, pictorial visibility as exclusive theme of 6

as defence against interpretation as sign Zimmermann as beginning of 50
of absent object 194 aisthetics 9, 88–9
difference from conceptual Allen, Grant 21
abstraction 165 Anders, Günther xiv, 199
limits of 71–2, 92, 147 Arnheim, Rudolph 97
as phenomenological reduction 174, 175 art
possibilities for in various media 194 avant-garde 16, 18, 127, 195
Adorno, Theodor W. 33 film as 131
aesthesiology 102–3 formative discourse in 193
aesthesis 37, 88, 89 modern and postmodern 16
see also perception science and 130, 150
aesthetics, formal theory of x, xv, 10, 16
art as disclosure of (Wõlfflin) 80 as visibility, making of 144–5
beauty and 34, 37, 39, 50 will to 138–9
causal explanation rejected by 51–2 see also Kunstwollen
computer manual text, similarity to 78–9 art history x–xi, 6, 8, 40, 49, 100, 109,
consciousness, means of studying 9, 145, 172
114, 159
formal logic, analogous to 7, 8, 27, Bacon, Francis 96
65–70, 75 Balázs, Béla 128–31
formative discourse’s relevance Baudrillard, Jean 199
to 47, 102 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 110, 218
as groundwork for digital image beauty 2, 34, 37, 46, 50, 89, 108
technology 80, 134 Beenken, H. 225
Herbart’s 23, 30 Benjamin, Walter 137, 216
idealism rejected by xviii, 6, 8, 27–8, Bense, Max 110, 181–2
30, 33, 52 Bildtheorie ix–xi
image as object of reflection in 8 Bildwissenschaft
intentional character of 159 see visual culture
paradigms of (Fiedler) 10, 107–19 Bobrik, Georg Eduard 23, 204
as phenomenology 12, 171 Boehm, Gottfried xi, 56, 61, 98, 209, 210,
possibilities as primary concern of 106 214, 215, 217, 219, 220, 227
reduction of the image in 11, 157, 159 Bolz, Norbert 127, 197, 221
relational logic, parallels to 57–67 Bolzano, Bernard 23
semiotic aesthetics as variation of 12 Braque, Georges 32
style as object of 40 Brinkmann, Donald 162
surface infrastructure as concern of 30 Brunswig, Alfred 54–5, 209
transcendental aesthetics rejected by 6, Bubner, Rüdiger 16–17
9, 86–9, 93–4, 103 Buddemeier, Heinz 129, 197, 229
twentieth-century image forms Bürger, Peter 18, 33, 34, 203
grounding in xvii–xviii, 5, 11, 129 Burkamp, Wilhelm 66, 211
254 Index
Carnap, Rudolf 69, 184, 210, 211 Fiedler, Konrad xiv, 10, 11, 19, 90, 96, 97,
Cassirer, Ernst 30–1, 49, 57–8, 105, 106, 105, 107–56, 168, 180
188, 203, 208, 209, 228 film 131–4, 139
Cézanne, Paul 4, 145, 177 Flügel, Otto 23, 27, 30, 204, 205
collage xvi, 10, 32, 33, 127–8, 129, 193 Flusser, Vilem 221
colour 82–6 formator (Morris) 12, 186–97, 189, 191–3,
Computer Aided Design (CAD) 133, 135, 196, 229
145, 198 forms of intuition (Kant) 9, 90
consciousness as determinants of style (Wõlfflin) 149
forms of representation in 114 formal aesthetics’ understanding of 93–7
image in 88, 114 as polar opposites (Wõlfflin) 97
images in the study of 9 formal aesthetics
intentional content of 158 see aesthetics, formal
as object of phenomenological formula 188–91
reduction 159, 165–6, 168 imitation 192
copy 89, 183 Foucault, Michel 47–8
Croce, Benedetto xiv, 119 Frege, Gottlob 60–3, 103, 180, 184
cubism 151 Friedmann, Hermann 102, 103, 216, 236
cyberspace 11, 141–4, 155 fundamentum inconcussum,
ephemerality as 103
Dada 147
Danto, Arthur 124, 153, 154, 211, 224 Gabriel, Gottfried 61, 205, 210, 211, 218,
De Morgan, August 8, 58, 66 222, 228, 229
decisionism 50, 53 Galton, Francis 21
Democritus 88 Gehlen, Arnold 182, 227
Descartes, René 158–9 Goethe, Johannes Wolfgang von 28
Dickie George 16, 203 Gogh, Vincent van 114
Dilthey, Wilhelm 66, 100, 101, 113, 154, Gold, Peter 27, 37, 219, 223, 237
216, 224 Gombrich, Ernst H. 76, 84, 150, 207,
discourse, formative 12, 191 223, 227
formal aesthetics’ relevance to 192 Goodman, Nelson xiii, 17, 124, 147–8,
Dittmann, Lorenz 39 153, 184, 187, 215, 224, 228
Dõrflinger, Bernard 27 graphology 164
drawing, structural 182 Griepenkerl, Friedrich Conrad 23, 37, 204
Dürer, Albrecht 42, 57, 79, 104 Grosse, Ernst 21
Dvorák, Max 39 Groys, Boris 144–5
Guyau, Jean-Marie 21
easel picture 12, 131, 139, 144
Eckl, Andreas 97, 215, 223, 226 Hanslick, Eduard 19
Ehrenfels, Christian v. 97 Hart, Joan 100, 213, 219
eidolon 88 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 6, 24, 25,
Einstellung 80 79, 105
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus 13, 200 Heidegger, Martin 33, 148, 206
Epicurus 88 Herbart, Johann Friedrich 5, 7, 23, 35, 76,
epoché 12, 158–9, 163, 165, 167 100, 161, 164
see also reduction Herbartianism 35, 39, 40, 66, 91, 102,
107, 111
Fechner, Gustav Theodor 5, 20, 22, 36 Hergé 41, 43, 44, 45–6, 54, 56, 59, 65, 74
Fellmann, Ferdinand 9, 114, 154, 211, Hettner, Hermann 5, 20
215, 217 Hildebrand, Adolf 43, 105
Index 255
Hirth, Georg 21 logicism 36

Hölzel, Adolf 172 Lombroso, Caesare 21
horizon 188 Loran, Erle 182
Husserl, Edmund 55, 74, 77, 157–74 Lotze, Hermann 27
Lurz, Meinhold 75, 100
image
abstract 171–7 Majetschak, Stefan 104
as cognitive instrument 9 Malevich, Kasimir 126–7, 128
compared to algebraic formula 12 Marées, Hans v. 125
as imitation formula 189–91, 192, 196 Marx, Ellen 85
infra-red 182 McLuhan, Marshall 131
as phenomenological reduction 12, 172– Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 12, 47, 104–5,
7, 179, 180, 183, 157–77, 179, 224, 225
184, 185 Merz 3, 128, 130
sense and reference in the 60–3 mirror, living 94–5, 99, 101
as sign 12 Mohr, Georg 91
theory of the ix–xviii, 18, 40, 126, 172 Mondrian, Piet 153–4
x-ray 182, 183 Morris, Charles William 12, 179–202
see also Bildtheorie MTV 5
image sequences 13 Musil, Robert xiv, 131, 143, 172
Imdahl, Max 83, 84, 182, 208, 227
Ingarden, Roman 41, 176, 227 Nachtsheim, Stephan 37
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 42 Nietzsche, Friedrich 21, 55–6, 80, 100
intuition, form of (Kant) noemata 165
see forms of intuition noesen 165
Nohl, Hermann 57, 209
Jauß, Hans Robert 15 null-medium 13, 200–1
Jonas, Hans 61, 62
ornament, visibility and 123–5, 176
Kandinsky, Wassily 172
Kant 6, 9, 34, 36–7, 55, 71, 86–7 Paetzold, Heinz 84, 89, 212
form of intuition in 90–4, 97–9, 100, Panofsky, Erwin 51, 65, 208, 211
102–4, 105, 182 Patzig, Günther 69, 211
transcendental aesthetic of 89, 93 Peirce, Charles Sanders 8, 58, 64, 65–7,
Klages, Ludwig 101 180, 210, 211
Koppe, Franz 16 perception
Körner, Stephen 92 conditionality of 97–8, 99, 101, 102, 199
Kues, Nikolaus von 95 in contrast to mirroring 89–90
Kunstwollen 51, 52, 109 design of a 99
Küppers, Harald 85 as mental activity (Fiedler) 96
relational structure of 89
Langer, Susanne K. 46 unity and multiplicity as forms of
Lanier, Jaron 144 (Wõlfflin) 96
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 95 philosophy
Liebmann, Otto 101, 213, 216 aesthetics and the history of 4–5
logic analytic 110, 124, 192
aesthetics of (Zimmermann) 37 formal aesthetics’ obscurity in 4
Artistotelian 58 of language 16
relational 8, 58, 89 transcendental 93, 94, 100, 102, 105, 166
of ways of seeing (Wõlfflin) 10 photography 136–8, 147, 150
256 Index
Plato ix–x, 37, 169 Simmel, Georg 151–3

Plessner, Helmuth 102, 103, 217 simulation (digital) 11, 135–6, 140, 141–2,
principles, art historical (Wõlfflin) 9, 45, 143, 144, 172, 197
47, 49–50 style 8, 39–40, 44, 46, 48, 50, 53, 99, 103,
absence of colour relations from 82–5 105, 168
as computer controls 78–86 compared to phenomenological
irrelevance of medium to 139 analysis 54
as logical categories 57, 59, 60, 63–5, of forms of intuition 103–4
70–2, 75–6 Frege’s view of 63, 103
as supplement to transcendental qualitative immeasurability of 164
aesthetics 87, 92, 96, 102 as resolution of indeterminacy 54
psychologism 36 Riegl’s theory of 49–50
Semper’s theory of 52
Raphael, Max 83 as system of equivalences 177, 183
Raphael Sanzio 137 variations in, as variations in
raster graphics 79 thinking 57
ready-made 16, 18 subject
Recki, Birgit 17 concept of for Wõlfflin and Kant 99
reduction xv, 11–12, 29, 30, 66, 157–62, transcendental 100, 165–6
165–77, 194, 226 Suprematism 10, 126–7, 128
Rehkämper, Klaus xvii surface, pictorial
Rembrandt van Rijn 17, 18, 79 emancipation of 10, 123, 128
Renoir, Auguste 42, 78 infrastructure of 108, 148, 152
reproduction 137, 139 materiality of 161–2
Riegl, Alois 8, 39–68, 138, 139 relational logic of 8, 30, 39–47, 54, 57
Rothacker, Erich 53, 54, 99 semiotic status of 12
Ruskin, John 83 between subject and object 167, 170
as user interface 11, 113, 142–3
Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin 21 valuing of 201
Sartre, Jean-Paul xvi, 162–3 as whole of image 118, 144
Schiller, Friedrich 3, 95, 100 symbolic form 108
Schlegel, Friedrich 175 paradigm of 109, 110
Schmid, Reinhard 110
Schmitz, Christiane 73, 212 Taine, Hippolyte 20
Schmitz, Norbert 115, 218, 220, 226 Turner, William 10, 41, 45, 54, 56, 59–60,
Scholz, Oliver R. 18, 203 65, 74, 79
Schopenhauer, Arthusr 24, 25, 51–2, 53,
100, 113, 171, 208, 216, 219 Utitz, Emil 109
Schröder, Ernst 58
Schweinfurth, Cf. Ph. 43 vector graphics 79
Schwitters, Kurt 3, 18, 32, 127–8 Velásquez, Diego 87, 149
sculpture 43, 107 Velde, Henry van de 172
Sedlmayr, Hans 123, 208, 221, 226 video clip 10, 13, 18, 129–31, 133, 137
Seel, Martin 22, 89, 112, 154, 181, 219, 224 videogames 135, 139
semiotics xiii, xvii, 12, 60, 125, 184–6 Vienna School 39
Semper, Gottfried 52 virtual reality 11, 140–3
signs visibility
images as potential xii–xiii, 197, 198 conditions of 114
sequence of 196 design of 126, 127, 134, 138, 146, 155
theory of xiii, 12 four types of 131–6
Index 257
paradigm of 119–25 Wind, Edward 45

pictorial 11, 12 Winter, Eduard 23
pure xiii, 11, 115–55, 168, 171, 172, 183, Wittgenstein, Ludwig 29, 70, 212
193, 194, 196–200 Wölfflin, Heinrich 8–10, 27, 43, 44,
styles of 105 52, 59, 69–106, 109, 111, 112,
as topic of phenomenology 171 114–19, 126, 138, 139, 149–51, 157,
visual culture x–xii 161, 162, 164, 168, 176, 191, 207,
Volkelt, Johannes 100, 164 211–20, 223–7
Wundt, Wilhelm 36, 206
Waldenfels, Bernard 87–8
ways of seeing, multiple possibilities Zimmerli, Walther Ch. 184
for 94, 105 Zimmerman, Robert 7–8, 15–38, 76, 82,
paradigm of 110–15 100, 108, 116, 117, 161, 162, 204, 205,
Welsch, Wolfgang 89, 163 206, 207
Figure 1 Hergé. Image of the ship Sirius from the comic series Tintin, Red Rackham’s
Treasure, 1944.
9781474232647plt.indd i 6/16/2016 6:38:15 PM

Figure 2 J. M. W. Turner, Staffa, oil on canvas, 1832.
9781474232647plt.indd ii 6/16/2016 6:38:15 PM

Figure 3 Vector and Raster (pixels). Illustration from the manual for Adobe Illustrator
6.0, Adobe Systems Incorporated, 1995.
9781474232647plt.indd iii 6/16/2016 6:38:15 PM

Figure 4 Illustration from auto motor und sport, 1993.
9781474232647plt.indd iv 6/16/2016 6:38:16 PM

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The Visibility of the Image

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Aesthetic Theory, Theodor W. Adorno

Translated by Nancy Ann Roth

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in English 2016

Originally published in German as Die Sichtbarkeit des Bildes. Geschichte

All rights reserved and controlled by Campus Verlag GmbH

English language translation © Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting

British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Cover design: Catherine Wood

Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

List of Figures vii

1 The Beginnings of Formal Aesthetics:

2 Formal Aesthetics and Relational Logic: Alois Riegl (1858–​1905) 39

3 The Logic of Ways of Seeing: Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–​1945) 69

4 From the Way of Seeing to Visibility: Konrad Fiedler (1841–​1895) 107

5 Phenomenological Reduction and Pictorial Abstraction:

6 From the Formula to Formative Discourse:

From a contemporary perspective, I find it nearly incomprehensible: in The

can be established through observation, in fact only through observation. For

be committed to a specific task and to treat only excellent phenomena as aes-

state to Kurt Schwitters’s visions of a Merzwelt [Merzworld]. Both are exemplary

developed alternatives to philosophical aesthetics that took extant philosophies,

als Formwissenschaft [General Aesthetics as a Science of Form] of 1865, were

visibility, it is necessary to examine the relationship between formal aesthetics and

The Beginnings of Formal Aesthetics:

1.1 Formal logic as a model for formal aesthetics

Giving up the work and contemplation of the work

in the writings of George Dickie, a co-​founder and key exponent of language

question of whether an object is an image as such, which does not need to be an

The trend in non-​speculative aesthetics in the nineteenth century

Robert Zimmermann’s forgotten programme

of Zimmermann’s aesthetics requires awareness that formal logic is not an

1.2 The programme: A structural theory

Formalism and Herbartianism

its aesthetic qualities. The founding premise of formalism is that in an aesthetic

Formalism versus idealism

appearance of this meaning –​whether it is the idea of the beautiful in Hegel or

Formal aesthetics: The observation of the visible form

The relational concept of form in Herbartianism

introduction to Formwissenschaft (p. vii). Herbartians identify form with the

* J. W. Nahlowsky is fully justified in objecting, as early as 1863 in his ‘Ästhetisch-​kritische Streifzüge’

1.3 Perspectives and problems in Herbartianism

Perspective: A non-​idealistic concept of the work

independence of the surface visibility in abstract collage, or even more clearly,

The problem of beginnings: The objectivity of beauty

smallest components of the beautiful, ‘in which absolute satisfaction lies’(tr)

The danger of logicism

because its forms are reproductions of the aesthetic’ (tr) (Formwissenschaft,

Formal Aesthetics and Relational Logic:

2.1 Transitions on the pictorial surface

‘Style’ instead of ‘beauty’

Although external factors largely determine an image, it retains possibilities

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

List of Figures vii

2 Formal Aesthetics and Relational Logic: Alois Riegl (1858–1905) 39

3 The Logic of Ways of Seeing: Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) 69

4 From the Way of Seeing to Visibility: Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895) 107

in the writings of George Dickie, a co-founder and key exponent of language

The trend in non-speculative aesthetics in the nineteenth century

appearance of this meaning –whether it is the idea of the beautiful in Hegel or

* J. W. Nahlowsky is fully justified in objecting, as early as 1863 in his ‘Ästhetisch-kritische Streifzüge’

Perspective: A non-idealistic concept of the work

Visibility as pre-conceptual rationality

being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent. Just as it is certain

With respect to this difference –relational logic undertakes an extensional clas-

Principles of colour relations: Colour contrast –colour convergence

aisthetic –by proposing art as a means of studying the structures of percep-

representations –even representations of space possible in the empirical subject

Avant-garde experiments with pure visibility