ABSTRACT
There’s an oft-quoted, though perhaps apocryphal, remark attributed to Pablo Picasso concerning a portrait of Gertrude Stein that he had just completed. When told by critics that the picture didn’t look like Stein, Picasso is supposed to have quipped, “Everybody thinks she is not at all like her portrait, but never mind, in the end she will manage to look just like it” (Pentose 1973, 122). 2 What Picasso seems to be claiming here is that certain pictures – his portrait of Stein, for example – can alter the very way we see the world. To many, this has seemed like an exaggerated boast about the power of pictures. I disagree. Indeed, pictures may not only shape our perception of the world; they can and do play an important role in making it. It is primarily this latter, stronger claim that I wish to defend. 3
