visual metaphor by VIRGIL C. ALDRICH

Visual Metaphor Author(s): Virgil C. Aldrich Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 73-86 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3331241 . Accessed: 17/12/2013 02:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Aesthetic Education. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 218.106.182.73 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:28:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Visual Metaphor VIRGIL C. ALDRICH My sculptures are plastic metaphors. It's the same principle as in painting. Picasso Three important things are not yet sufficiently done relative to met- aphor; showing (a) how it occurs outside language, not only in the visual arts but also in the perception of almost anything; and (b) how such seen metaphors are embodied in works of visual art, after pro- viding the artist with the experience for such metaphorical expression; and (c) what constitutes a good metaphor, aesthetically speaking, in the light of the above considerations. Until these things are shown, the old prejudice will linger to the effect that aesthetic experience, with the metaphorical twists it gives things, is a "subjective" affair, tainting aesthetic judgments with its subjectivity - as if the metaphorical is an inner interpretive or imaginative response to external things that, strictly speaking, are represented without distortion only in literal por- trayals of them as physical objects of "objective" observation. Though it is not linguistically articulated metaphor that I am pri- marily concerned about in this essay, some initial consideration of it in this form will set forth the strategy I shall follow later here, in connec- tion with vision. Fortunately, the main points about metaphor in lan- guage- those that concern me because they can be shown, mutatis mutandis, to have a bearing on metaphorical seeing -have already been made by Owen Barfield in his "Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction."' It is on such pegs that the argument about visual metaphor is to be hung, so let us turn first to putting these in place for that subsequent use. VIRGIL C. ALDRICH is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Car- olina. He has articles in numerous philosophical journals and is the author of Philosophy of Art. 1Anthologized by Max Black in The Importance of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), pp. 51-71. This content downloaded from 218.106.182.73 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:28:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 74 VIRGIL C. ALDRICH In general, says Barfield, the figurative mode of expression called metaphorical is "in between simile on the one hand and symbol on the other." The form of simile is: A is like B. This form of expression is not per se poetical, even where the content of A and B - the values for these variables--is rich with suggestion for poetic formulation. Then comes the metaphor, in the form: A is B, where this is false, literally speaking. Only the simile may be "literally" true, since it ex- plicitly formulates a comparison. The resemblance is veiled and meta- morphosed into a sort of identity in the metaphor (A in B). Finally, according to Barfield, there is the symbol or symbolic expression, at a greater remove from simile than metaphor. Its form is simply B. This is the symbol, whose "meaning" is A which, in a successful symboliza- tion, is almost liquidated in the symbol B - caught up, assimilated, and transfigured in it so that it is not readily distinguishable from B, though A is in principle identifiable as the "meaning" of B and thus to be conceptually distinguished from B. I shall have to introduce some refinements into Barfield's scheme for my purpose but, before moving on to that, let us see how he summarizes his analysis in the following quotation: ". .. when we started from the simile and moved towards the symbol, the criterion or yardstick by which we measured our progress was the element of comparison- paramount in the simile and very nearly vanished out of sight in the symbol. When, on the other hand, we move backwards, starting from the symbol, we find ourselves with another yardstick, viz., the fact of saying one thing and meaning another. The poet says B but he means A. He hides A in B. .. ." Thus does Barfield set the stage for the performance to follow - the analysis of the concept of "visible" met- aphor, in relation primarily to visual art. What must be brought to light is the fact that figurative expression is linked with figurative per- ception at base, and that this is why any attempt to translate it literally and thus to refer it to nonfigurative, "observational" experience at base, must fail to preserve the "sense" of the original, though such "reduc- tion" may serve other purposes - may even assist one finally to get the figurative sense without any equivalent, literal reformulation of it. Such are the points to be made in what follows. Barfield's insights into metaphor in language, coupled with those of Pablo Picasso with their direct relevance to the visual arts, give the clues for the correct analysis of metaphorical seeing.2 Let me present 2 The notion of "metaphorical seeing" as applied to poetic insight has been treated by Marcus Hester in "Metaphor and Aspect Seeing," Journal of Aesthet- ics and Art Criticism, Vol. 25 (Winter 1966), 205-12. This content downloaded from 218.106.182.73 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:28:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VISUAL METAPHOR 75 some of the latter first for inspection, then proceed to the statement of what they suggest - the "correct analysis." It was to his mistress Francoise Gilot that Picasso said: "My sculp- tures are plastic metaphors. It's the same principle as in painting."3 He said this in reply to her asking why he used ready-made things - mostly junked artifacts such as discarded baskets, pipes, vases, bicycle parts - in his sculptures, instead of molding his forms from some usual material for sculpting, say, plaster. His point was, in effect, that the metaphor in aesthetic perception and its objects is more conspicuous, salient, in compositions whose constituents are things each with an in- dependent identity and name by itself, unlike the amorphous plaster that is not anything in particular until it is formed into something that can be seen as what it resembles. In short, the metaphor takes on a two-way thrust if, instead of molding plaster into the form of, say, a goat's ribs (rib cage), you put a wicker basket in the place of the ribs. Then there is a wicker basket to be seen as the rib cage and conversely, looking at the whole statue of a goat, you may see its ribs as a wicker basket--a compound metaphor with a two-way thrust. The thrust is in only one direction if the ribs are molded out of plaster. One sees only the formed plaster as a goat's rib cage. So Picasso used the wicker basket in his The Goat. Expatiating to Frangoise, he said, "I move from the basket back to the rib cage: from the metaphor back to reality. I make you see reality because I used the metaphor."4 In the same breath he said that he takes a vase and makes a woman's hip out of it. Thus does he reverse the usual metaphor involved in seeing a woman's hip as a vase, making it work "in the opposite direction" as well. The result is "a metamorphosis of each part that creates the whole." Such composition, however, exhibits metaphor with a vengeance or in amplified form, and its purpose is to force attention to the met- aphorical element implicit in the aesthetic experience of seeing some- thing as something else. Its point should not be mistaken as a denial or rejection of the simpler, one-way metaphors and the less arduous seeings-as they are involved in. It is time now to focus on the kind of perception seeing-as is, in general, to show what is metaphorical about it. One thing seems clear at the start. It is the difference between seeing that A is like B on the one hand, and seeing A as B on the other. 3 Fran?oise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (Signet Books, McGraw- Hill Book Co., 1964), pp. 296-97. 4Loc. cit. Photographs of The Goat are between pp. 176-77. This content downloaded from 218.106.182.73 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:28:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 76 VIRGIL C. ALDRICH A simile is exactly right as the report of the former, a metaphor of the latter. Yet, this difference is not such as to preclude a shift from one mode of perception into the other, in some cases; and in others they are even blended at first, such that a decision or choice must be ex- ercised if the one or the other mode is to come exclusively into play. Some examples to clear all this up will help. Case 1. You see Mary (M) and Agatha (A) side by side at a party, and you see that M is like A. In such a situation, looking at both M and A, it is practically impossible to see one as the other, whereas you can't help seeing that one is like the other. Next day, you see M across the street and think that she is A. That is, you mistake M for A, thanks to the resemblance. This is still not seeing M "as" A in the special sense I am isolating out, as is shown by contrast with a case in which, seeing M across the street, you recognize her but musingly see her as A, whom you prefer. A's not being really present, and the similitude, assist in such perception. And a condition of its occurrence is that you do not think that M is A, which marks it off sharply from the case in which you mistook one for the other. Neither is this just to imagine M as A, which you could do with your eyes shut. To get the experi- ence, you must look at M, believe she is not A, and see her as A. This difference between mistaking M for A - or even just noticing the resemblance - and seeing M as A is crucial, because, if spelled out, it shows the characteristic structure of all seeings-as and puts a finger on the essential of the aesthetic case. So I pause here to make the analysis of what seeing something as something else involves in general, before moving on to other specifically different sorts of examples. The next two paragraphs, given to this abstract schematization, are difficult to understand in the abstract, but they will be elucidated by the ex- amples that follow. Seeing that something is like something else, or mistaking one for the other because of the likeness, involves a dyadic relation, viz., the re- lation of resemblance between them. But seeing one as the other in- volves a fundamentally or irreducibly triadic relation. There is (1) the thing whatsoever there to be seen, one way or another. Call this M. Then there is (2) what M is seen as. Call this A. So M is seen as A. The third factor is the elusive one, hard to differentiate from M and from A in the perception of M as A. But it is the crucial one for such perception, and whether or not it is "aesthetic" depends mainly on the prominence of this factor and on how it functions. The reason that distinguishing it from either A or M is a delicate job is that it is a This content downloaded from 218.106.182.73 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:28:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VISUAL METAPHOR 77 "function" of both. Both M and A are transfigured (transformed) or "expressively portrayed" in this third factor, though in different senses as we shall see. Call it B. It (B) is a sort of image of A (what M is seen as), an image that M embodies or "bodies forth." Thus the atti- tude of the percipient to what he thus experiences is like his attitude to an image he simply has, meaning that the logic of the report of the seeing-as experience is like the logic of image-reports. You take the speaker's word for what he sees in this manner - though criticisms are in order with a view to what he may be missing or be "blind" to. Finally, let us say that B is the "content" of the seeing-as experience, that M is its "material," and that A (what B is the image of or what M is seen as) is its "subject-matter." Then we may also say either that (1) the content (B) is the material (M) seen as the subject-matter (A), or conversely, (2) this content (B) is the subject-matter (A) bodied forth by the material (M). It was in view of this sort of phe- nomenon that I spoke of a reciprocal "transfiguration" of A and of M in B - an interanimation of M and A that presents itself for visual prehension in the form of the "content" B which is the "anima" or soul of this affair. In view of this, the subject-matter as such (A) and the material as such (M) drop from notice, in favor of the content (B) -the embodied image in which M and A are transfigured or "expressively portrayed." (That concept will be analyzed later, where it will be distinguished from the concept of "descriptive portrayal.") So much for the abstract schematization. I must now bring it to life with examples. First, consider again Case 1, in this framework. Case 1 again. Mary is the material (M) of the experience of seeing her as Agatha, who is the subject-matter (A). Notice, you do not see Mary as the content (B) or as the embodied image of Agatha. You see her as Agatha (A). What happens in this perception is that the figure of Mary comes alive - is animated - not with Agatha in person (A) but with an image (B) of her. This is figured or bodied forth in the pattern of some of Mary's qualities -contours, movements. Both Mary (M) and Agatha (A) momentarily disappear from atten- tion in favor of the embodied presentation (content B). Yet, in a case like this, A is the dominant factor. Bringing Barfield's scheme back into use, we might say that here A (Agatha) is the "meaning" of B (the embodied image of her), and that in this nonaesthetic sort of seeing something as something else, the meaning A is so salient that the content B is, so to speak, at its mercy. Moreover, B is at the mercy of the material (Mary) that so casually or fortuitously bodies it forth, This content downloaded from 218.106.182.73 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:28:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 78 VIRGIL C. ALDRICH under no controls. That is why, in this sort of seeing-as case, one so readily slips out of seeing-as altogether into thinking about Agatha (A). So B (image, content) here is on the verge of disappearing in favor of M (material, Mary) which then functions like a sign that refers to A (Agatha), on the strength of the resemblance of M to A. Then M just "reminds" the percipient of A, like a description. And this sort of perception turns on the dyadic relation of similarity, not on the triadic one involved in seeing M as A -the one that features B (content). This suggests that, if B is to be amplified and secured against the threat of such dissipation into A or M, M (the material) must be arranged under controls, subordinating A (Barfield's "meaning of B") for the sake of B itself. Were Mary to act on stage the part of Ophelia in Hamlet and to play it well, such securing of the content - Ophelia as bodied forth in the controlled action - would be effected. And there would be an (aesthetic) advantage in Ophelia's not being a live woman at home in her apartment two blocks away like Agatha. Case 2. Curiously enough, seeing a cloud as a woman's head with hair windblown comes more readily than seeing a live woman you know as another live woman you know. The moral of this is that one must be cautious about how he makes resemblance a necessary con- dition of seeing-as. There can be too many points of resemblance be- tween M and A to invite such seeing, and it is one of the most difficult things in philosophy of art to say just how any resemblance functions, aesthetically speaking. The cloud is like a woman's head only with respect to shape, and not very much like even on this count. Yet, for seeing-as, it has an advantage over Mary, who is like Agatha in in- numerable (aesthetically irrelevant) ways- given also the advantage of the natural stage-setting of the sky that aptly distances the cloud for seeing-as experience. Moreover, the woman's head it is seen as is "a" woman's head, mean- ing that the noticed head is nothing at all in particular apart from the content (B) realized "in" the cloud. So there can be no ques- tion of resemblance here in the usual sense of two things, each with its own identity of which "M is like A" could be said. So one more naturally exclaims, pointing at the cloud: "Look, a woman's head with hair blowing!" (The metaphor M is A, where A's identity is determined by B.) But even here, there is an option. One might remark, instead, on how like a woman's head that cloud is in the sky (M is like A). Then, in this comparison (simile), there would be an implicit reference to (description of) another element--any or some woman's head This content downloaded from 218.106.182.73 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:28:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VISUAL METAPHOR 79 which happens to be like the cloud in certain quite general respects. The comparison's reference to this disqualifies it as the expression of seeing M as A, since it indicates something outside M and thus invites attention to this A as the referent of M. Thus B as content is liqui- dated. So in cases of this more sketchy sort too, where something sur- prises one by incidentally appearing as something else, the content (B) is at the mercy of the material (M), and even of the subject-matter (A) insofar as the resemblance of M to "some" A or other tempts one to reminiscence or to think about women, out of the seeing-M-as-A experience. Case 3. In this third case, one sees, let us say, a Matisse drawing (M) as a woman's head (A). I spoke above disparagingly of a mere outline (shape of the cloud) being the vehicle (M) on which the ap- pearance (and disappearance) of content B depends; a case of B at the mercy of M. There is a significant reversal of this in the case of the Matisse sketch. Picasso said that when Matisse "draws a line on a piece of white paper ... it doesn't remain just that; it becomes some- thing more."5 What happens in such a case is that the material (M) is exquisitely arranged under the control of what is going to appear as the content (B) of the experience of seeing the arranged material (M) as its subject-matter (A). A master artist pre-visions the content to be realized by the appropriate manipulation of the material that is to be seen as something. Thus does the content become the dominant factor, the controlling one, in the aesthetic case. Before the content (B) is realized, it is the "idea" of the artist, an aesthetic potential call- ing for embodiment. To "think" aesthetically is to be aware of, or have, ideas in this sense. Such thinking continues, of course, during the operation of embodying the idea, until it is "realized" as the con- tent (B) of the experience of seeing the arranged material (M) as the subject-matter (A); and the idea will naturally be modified by the character of the material in the process of getting embodied. But, still, in such cases, M and A are in principle "a