ABSTRACT
Part I offers an initial account of the aesthetically empowering significance of art in the form of the pictorial image. This centers on how such made images transform the role of imagery as a cognitive feature of experience. Part II shows how pictorial art also intervenes, ontologically, on our experience of the visual field, and, in correlation with this, on our experience of space-time and finitude. In Part III, this developing theory of the pictorial subconscious is extended further through discussion of the role played by pictorial space. More specifically, the interventional role of pictorial space is tied to four main principles whereby such space is unified. The theory is extended to abstract works, and allows them to be understood as an allusive mode of pictorial art. Part IV addresses how we become aware of the pictorial subconscious—through a horizon of comparisons and contrasts. The pictorial artwork’s interventional significance is recognized through the artist’s originality of style in handling the distinctive features of the medium, and engaging with different aspects of the pictorial subconscious.
