ABSTRACT
In the Tate Gallery, Mariel encounters a painting that, at first, seems pretty and pleasant. Then something happens: the image changes. In a moment of revelation, the painting seems to open itself to her. The simple brilliant blue canvas gives way to a kaleidoscopic splendour that amazes and entrances. This new image brings an all-consuming joy that carries with it the freedom of childhood. It encompasses Mariel in pure pleasure. She marvels at its exquisiteness and even begins to lose herself in the strange world that it is opening up, but then she is recalled to what she first saw: the blue. At times, we see an image and then find that we initially saw it incorrectly.
Perhaps we discover that the large photograph we saw when we first entered a gallery is, upon closer inspection, a minutely gridded painting by Chuck Close. Or we may look at a photograph and realize that what we took to be a strange scarf is, in fact, a cat wrapped around the person’s shoulders. In these moments, our experience of the image is one of seeing and then our seeing again as the image corrects itself. What we initially perceived is revealed to be something else and we may be amazed by the image’s illusion or laugh at the absurdity of our initial understanding. But is this perception-as-misperception and correction what has happened to
Mariel? Rather than having “incorrectly” seen the image at first, the painting seems to show her two distinct, but coexisting, facets. The two aspects, moreover, are strangely contradictory in both appearance and mood. Whereas the first is monochrome, peaceful, and stilling, the second is vibrantly coloured, vital, and active. Indeed, they seem so different from one another that Mariel experiences them as entirely different works of art. In encountering one aspect and then the other, Mariel may have experienced
what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called the “dawning of an aspect” (p. 194e). According to Wittgenstein (1958/1963), it occurs when a picture appears in a way that we had not noticed before (p. 194e). Wittgenstein gives as an example Jastrow’s rabbit-duck illusion, wherein we first see the drawing as a rabbit but then notice it is also a duck. For Mariel, the “dawning” occurs when the blue painting reveals itself to be a multitude of colourful butterflies. A change of aspect in an image can be profound. As Wittgenstein (1958/1963)
describes, it is “quite as if the object had altered before my eyes” (p. 195e). Even though the painting does not objectively change, Mariel experiences it as changing.
At first, it is a calm blue painting. Then she discovers the butterflies and the blue recedes. Finally, the blue begins to visually re-emerge, surrounding the butterflies. According to Wittgenstein, the dawning of a new aspect implicates what had previously been seen. “If you search in a figure (1) for another figure (2), and then find it, you see (1) in a new way. Not only can you give a new kind of description of it, but noticing the second figure was a new visual experience” (p. 199e). Wittgenstein’s (1958/1963) understanding of aspects, however, can only explain
so much of Mariel’s experience. Wittgenstein’s examples are visual illusions wherein we see a drawing first one way, then the other, and then back to the first. He remarks, “what dawns here lasts only as long as I am occupied with the object in a particular way” (p. 210e). In the case of the rabbit-duck drawing, we see the image as the duck and then the rabbit and then the duck again. We move back and forth between these two distinct aspects as our occupation changes. All of the illusions that Wittgenstein invokes to explore how different aspects of
an image may appear and disappear, however, rely on their exclusivity and distinctness. The drawing is either a rabbit or a duck. The double cross is either a white cross on a black background or a black cross on a white background. They differ from Mariel’s experience in that one never simultaneously sees both facets of these images. Although Mariel’s experience initially may have reflected this kind of changing aspect-moving from serene blue paint to vibrant colourful butterfliesit does not remain a flitting back and forth. The blue re-emerges in and around the butterflies; it does not overtake them. It is as if the first aspect seeps into the second. The two contradictory aspects forcibly begin to merge as Mariel realizes the butterflies have been fused with the blue. As Mariel slowly begins to make sense of the simultaneous appearance of what
had initially been two distinct images, her understanding of the painting is pregnant with a terrible realization. Then, I get it: within the painting’s exquisite beauty lies a terrible monstrosity, but it is only because of its monstrous aspect that the painting’s beauty is possible. These dainty little creatures were drowned and bound in paint in order to create this piece of art. The two facets are not mere opposites; they are mutually dependent. The existence of one requires the presence of the other. Rather than offering clarity, this understanding brings confusion. Mariel wants to
flee yet stay, to look away but also continue to look. She is drawn to the artwork even as she is repulsed by it. The painting evokes an overflowing multiplicity of emotions and urges. And there is shame; for despite the terrible knowledge imparted and stark evidence of the violence committed against something she cares dearly about, somehow the painting only beckons to her more. The painting is simultaneously eloquent and hideous, alluring and awful, beautiful and ugly. The image is monstrously exquisite and exquisitely monstrous. It is sublime.
