is comparatively realistic when it is possible from inside the game of imagin-
ing or pretending to explore the representer visually as a way of getting
further information about the represented. That is, in looking at the repre-
senter continuously and with attention to different aspects of it, one takes
oneself, in the game, to get more information about what is represented.^34 In
looking atw, one sees that one object represented is behind another or one
sees that a person on an occasion had just this expression. This kind of visual
exploration of the representer in order to get further information about the
represented is not possible with nondepictive, verbal representation.
It is important to remember, however, that there is often little“direct
resemblance”between representer and represented. Again, most snapshots
are more like one another than they are like what they represent. At a
distance one can readily confuse two distinct snapshots of a person, but it
is much harder to mistake a person for a snapshot and vice versa. Instead, the
resemblances that matter are between looking at an objectoand imagining
or pretending to look ato(by or in looking atw). The relevant resemblances
are mediated by the visual-imaginative game.
This further explains why there is nopureorabsoluterealism. In painting or
photographywemust alwayschoosebetweenhavinga sharpfocusonallobjects
represented throughout the visual field or presenting some objects in focus and
some distant objects blurred. Either choice can work within a game of seeing
objects“in”the representation. But neither corresponds perfectly to how we
see. In actually looking at objects rather than visual representations of them, we
can refocus our eyes on objects at different distances, thereby changing what is
blurry and what is sharp. Visual representations do not permit this kind of
change of focus. Any given object is presented in the representation either
sharply or somewhat blurred.^35 Furthermore, it is often effective (in both visual
and verbal representation) to be reminded of either the visual or verbal object as
an artifact, say by leaving patches of canvas bare or by authorial aside. Such
reminders both allow us to marvel at the representation as a constructed thing
and to become aware that it embodies a point of view on what it represents.^36
Walton’s account of visual representation elegantly combines elements of
resemblance theory and elements of conventionalism. In construing visual
representation as a certain kind of imagining game–imagining that one is(^34) Seeibid., pp. 328–31, and also Scruton,Art and Imagination, p. 204.
(^35) Walton,Mimesis as Make-Believe, p. 328. (^36) Ibid., p. 275.
36 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art