seeingo–that is played with certain kinds of two-dimensional objects
(paintings, photographs, prints, etc.) and three-dimensional objects (sculp-
ture), Walton is able to account for the historical varieties of representational
styles, rooted in our decisions to play imagining games in certain ways, and
he is able to account for the comparative realism of some visual representa-
tions. But how and why do games of visual representation come to be played?
It is difficult to reject the intuition that the playing of these games rests not
only and simply on decisions, but also on noticings of resemblances between
protorepresenter and represented.
Richard Wollheim develops a theory that articulates this intuition. He
argues that visual representation arises out ofseeing-in, for example, the kind
of seeing of a bear in a cloud that anyone, even a child, might manage. For
human beings, some visual experiences of objects in nature–clouds, stains
on the walls of caves, reflections on the surfaces of ponds, patterns of grain in
wood or rock–have what Wollheim calls“twofoldness,”^37 in that we are
aware of both the surface looked atandsome presented something that
seems to stand out from or in or behind the surface. This seeing-in is a
natural human visual experience, and it is, Wollheim argues,“prior...
logically and historically”^38 to visual representation and the playing of any
games of make-believe. It is prior logically,“in that I can see something in
surfaces that neither are nor are believed by me to be representations.”^39
Clouds, for example, are not symbols or denoters of anything; they just are,
and yet we can see things in them. It is prior historically in that the likeliest
route of emergence of visual representation involves someone–aware of
natural seeing-in in relation to clouds, plays of shadow on rock, and so forth–
undertaking to“mark...a surface with the intention of getting others
around him to see some definite thing in it: say, a bison.”^40 In this way, the
practice or game of visual representation arises out of and builds on natural
seeing-in, natural awareness of resemblances.
Against Wollheim’s account, Walton objects that the twofoldness of
seeing-in needs explanation. How and why, Walton asks, are we aware of
boththe marked surface and the object that we seem to see in it? The answer,
Walton argues, is that we are aware of ourselves asimaginingseeing the
object represented rather than literally seeing it. After all, there is no actual
(^37) Richard Wollheim,Painting as an Art(Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 46.
(^38) Ibid., p. 47. (^39) Ibid. (^40) Ibid., p. 48.
Representation, imitation, and resemblance 37