Appear­ances and Phenomena

O.M. Ungers’ won­der­ful atlas of phe­nom­e­na Mor­pholo­gie / City Metaphors Mor­pholo­gies1, com­mu­ni­cates through paired images and nouns in Eng­lish and Ger­man. Each two-page spread direct­ly pro­vokes six poten­tial rela­tion­ships between images and words; the won­der being the trans­fer­abil­i­ty across scale and medi­um, phe­nom­e­na as uni­ver­sal metaphors rep­re­sent­ed through appear­ance and over­laid by the cul­tur­al speci­fici­ty of lan­guage. The book is a plea­sure of representations.

Auer­bach and Said’s sem­i­nal work on mime­sis2, posi­tioned like­ness as cen­tral to rep­re­sen­ta­tion in west­ern Euro­pean cul­ture. First pho­tog­ra­phy and now vir­tu­al real­i­ty has dis­turbed the assumed val­ue of like­ness as the means of com­ing to terms with the world. The lim­i­ta­tions of this are now appar­ent in the dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence of the work rel­a­tive to that imag­ined. The hand-drawn sketch has the attribute of pos­si­bil­i­ties, the com­put­er draw­ing the cer­tain­ty of but one. Ungers’ atlas of rep­re­sen­ta­tions direct­ly evi­dences the poten­cy of the gap between under­ly­ing thought and its par­tic­u­lar manifestation.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tion is a cre­ative phe­nom­e­non of dis­place­ment, an imag­i­na­tive space between two posi­tions, pro­vok­ing and allow­ing for engage­ment and advance. Artis­tic prac­tice deter­mines the rela­tion­ship between the artist and her/his work, while hermeneu­tics (inter­pre­ta­tion in the widest sense) deter­mines the onlooker’s engage­ment. These process­es of engage­ment are (sep­a­rate­ly) rela­tion­al and with sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of reci­procity — in oth­er words we are affect­ed by that which we per­ceive such that our per­cep­tion is fur­ther altered; ​‘sep­a­rate­ly’ as sug­gest­ed by Barthes3 in that the engage­ment of author and read­er is through the work and not between author and reader.

The prac­ti­tion­er devel­ops through action with­in her/his dis­ci­pline, that very action inform­ing future prac­tice. For some, this action takes place at mul­ti­ple remove from the ulti­mate incar­na­tion. Archi­tec­ture is an obvi­ous exam­ple, archi­tects spec­u­late, posit, imag­ine remote­ly before per­suad­ing and inform­ing oth­ers to build. The point applies to all artis­tic prac­tice, we oper­ate at some remove, and are influ­enced by our response to that which we con­front. Our per­cep­tion is pred­i­cat­ed on the present rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a future con­di­tion. In psy­chol­o­gy, dis­place­ment is under­stood as the pur­pose­ful redi­rec­tion of an emo­tion or impulse from its orig­i­nal object to another.

Gadamer’s hori­zons and Bordieu’s habi­tus pro­vide par­al­lels; both orig­i­nate in Heidegger’s spa­tial ontol­ogy, both under­stand expe­ri­ence and exis­tence through spa­tial phe­nom­e­na where fur­ther insight is acquired at the edges of that which is known. The under­ly­ing human impulse is to under­stand the world through what we know, we exist in a lim­i­nal con­di­tion, relieved only by the prospect of future spec­u­la­tion and knowl­edge. David Schon’s4 ele­gant expla­na­tion as to how new knowl­edge forms is use­ful. He gives two open­ing his­tor­i­cal expla­na­tions, first­ly that new con­cepts form by rev­e­la­tion (implic­it­ly divine) or sec­ond­ly that that which appears new is sim­ply a rearrange­ment of the pre­ex­ist­ing (as in reducivist). The for­mer (divine) is of lit­tle use to most of us and the lat­ter does not explain the very real evi­dence we have of advance in thought and knowledge.

Instead, and by way of elab­o­ra­tion, Schon posits the sit­u­a­tion of enter­ing into a met­al room with a thin wall that rever­ber­ates when­ev­er it is jarred5. The thought aris­es that the room is a kind of a drum but there is also the rec­i­p­ro­cal process, that the orig­i­nal con­cept (the drum) is now reimag­ined by virtue of its momen­tary trans­fer­ence to the room. Design and artis­tic prac­tice is typ­i­cal­ly non-lin­ear, iter­a­tive, asso­cia­tive, sug­ges­tive, some­times res­o­nant and often metaphor­i­cal. This rel­a­tive­ly recent under­stand­ing was found­ed on the empir­i­cal evi­dence from observed design process­es rather than how it had been the­o­rised or ratio­nalised (Schon, Law­son6, Van Schaik7, and oth­ers), and has been rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly con­firmed in advances in neu­ro­science (Mall­grave8 and oth­ers) where the impor­tance of non-lin­ear neur­al link­ages is now accept­ed. Sim­ply put, the char­ac­ter of much of our brain activ­i­ty is asso­cia­tive rather than causal, rec­i­p­ro­cal rather than lin­ear, nim­ble rather than consistent.

The intel­lec­tu­al lin­eage is clear, orig­i­nat­ing in Dewey’s philo­soph­i­cal prag­ma­tism and his learn­ing by inquiry, fol­lowed by Schon spe­cif­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the gen­er­a­tive metaphor and his the­o­ry of dis­place­ment of con­cepts, and Zeisel’s9 iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the occur­rence of con­cep­tu­al gaps in cre­ative prac­tice. The last is impor­tant, the par­a­digm shift made pos­si­ble through gen­er­a­tive metaphor10.

In the Eng­lish lan­guage the cor­re­spon­dence between the adjec­tives fig­u­ra­tive and metaphor­i­cal is sig­nif­i­cant. We speak metaphor­i­cal­ly or fig­u­ra­tive­ly refer­ring to an under­stand­ing or expe­ri­enc­ing of one kind of thing in terms of anoth­er. Han­nah Arendt (refer­ring to Wal­ter Ben­jamin) won­der­ful­ly referred to metaphors as the means by which the one­ness of the world is poet­i­cal­ly brought about11. Fig­u­ra­tive of course has a sec­ond mean­ing as rep­re­sent­ing forms that are recog­nis­ably derived from life, from the fig­ure, and par­tic­u­lar­ly from the human fig­ure; the seman­tic impli­ca­tion being that fig­ure is an essen­tial metaphor root­ed in our psy­che as humans and at the root of our nego­ti­a­tion with the world. Pal­las­maa writes ​“under­stand­ing archi­tec­ture implies the uncon­scious mea­sur­ing of an object or a build­ing with one’s body, and pro­ject­ing one’s bod­i­ly scheme on the space in ques­tion”12.

This nego­ti­a­tion is played out through embod­ied expe­ri­ence, mean­ing both our pres­enc­ing of where we are and our sen­so­ry capac­i­ties. In sit­u­a­tions where we are at one remove, our expe­ri­ence is realised through the imag­ined pres­ence and expe­ri­ence of oth­ers; the met­ric is the fig­ure, our own, or vic­ar­i­ous­ly through that of oth­ers, or indeed through objects.

Panof­sky in Per­spec­tive as Sym­bol­ic Form13 chart­ed where ear­ly spa­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tions were made pos­si­ble by and between human fig­ures and goes on to observe medieval attached sculp­ture (set with­in its own niche as a con­se­quence of its carv­ing), and the sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion into renais­sance per­spec­ti­val space with which we are now famil­iar. Panof­sky linked rep­re­sen­ta­tion with under­stand­ing and under­stand­ing with self-aware­ness through exis­ten­tial and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. His obser­va­tion in respect of spaces formed in medieval relief work, was that this of course matched the con­tem­po­rary con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of earth­ly space as being con­tained, defined and finite — hence the appro­pri­ate­ness of the trapped space and fig­ure; unlim­it­ed space was a pre­serve reserved for the Almighty.14

Panofsky’s slim tome iden­ti­fied that ret­ro­spec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tions of self are pred­i­cat­ed on both how and where we see our­selves; the what and where of human exis­tence being insep­a­ra­ble. He also artic­u­lat­ed the rec­i­p­ro­cal, that our future nego­ti­a­tion with the world is indeed influ­enced by those very rep­re­sen­ta­tions.15 If exis­tence is spa­tial then the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of space is an acute concern.

Green­berg16 made the neat obser­va­tion that mod­ern art was pre­oc­cu­pied with the very process of the depic­tion of space (depth) using two dimen­sions (the flat can­vas). Green­berg inter­pret­ed this as an eth­i­cal imper­a­tive for the mod­ernists, a com­ing to terms with real­i­ty, in oppo­si­tion to the sus­pect illu­sion­ism of pic­to­r­i­al tra­di­tion of west­ern Europe.

Manet’s paint­ings sus­tain Greenberg’s argu­ment with space ruth­less­ly frus­trat­ed in its depth, sub­tend­ed between fig­ures, per­spec­tive dis­tort­ed or avoid­ed, an over­all flat­ness pre­vail­ing. Yet ear­li­er, Velazquez played equiv­a­lent games of depth of field where indeed the view­er is enveloped in the opti­cal frame­work, destroy­ing object/viewer polar­i­ties. Manet and Velazquez were pre­oc­cu­pied by the phe­nom­e­non of spa­tial depth as depict­ed in two dimen­sions and were there­fore of sus­tained inter­est to Michel Fou­cault 17/18 for whom the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of space was a crit­i­cal epis­te­mo­log­i­cal pur­suit, as with Panofsky.

Frank Stel­la the Amer­i­can painter lament­ed the absence of spa­tial­i­ty from twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry abstract art and strug­gled in his own work to find depth close to the sur­face of the can­vas with­out recourse to the com­fort of pic­to­r­i­al illu­sion. In Work­ing Space19 he recog­nis­es sim­i­lar con­cerns in the work of Car­avag­gio20, Car­rac­ci, and post-cubist Picas­so; work where space is estab­lished between the paint­ed fig­ures yet com­pressed rel­a­tive to the plane of the can­vas21.

While west­ern Europe moved from murals to framed pan­el and can­vas, from shal­low to deep space and then resur­fac­ing or (flat­ten­ing) with late mod­ernism, Chi­na con­tin­ued a tra­di­tion of the paint­ing as nar­ra­tive or more accu­rate­ly nar­ra­tives, with­out either sin­gle view­point or van­ish­ing point, with­out per­spec­ti­val diminu­tion, depic­tion not with­in a frame but on a con­tin­u­ous scroll. Manet’s indebt­ed­ness to Japan­ese print­mak­ing is evi­denced in his spa­tial sen­si­bil­i­ty, his use of frontal flat colour, and the lib­er­ties tak­en with the con­ven­tions of opti­cal per­spec­tive notwith­stand­ing his eschew­al of both nar­ra­tive and larg­er landscapes. 

The con­flict between these tra­di­tions of east and west is high­light­ed in the account of the Jesuit’s arrival in Chi­na in the Scolari’s Oblique Draw­ing22; ren­der­ings that func­tioned to suc­cess­ful­ly per­suade in Europe were con­sid­ered as absurd dis­tor­tions by the Chi­nese, again an affir­ma­tion of Foucault’s posi­tion that in addi­tion to cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of space through fig­ure was of epis­te­mo­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. In larg­er land­scapes and spaces beyond the dimen­sion of con­ver­sa­tion, human pres­ence as met­ric adopts dif­fer­ent guis­es. Nar­ra­tives of sequence, time, and trav­el were used to map the incom­pre­hen­si­ble by the pio­neers, the Euro­pean pil­grims, and the native Aus­tralians’ walk­a­bouts rep­re­sent­ed in their extra­or­di­nary pla­nar images.

Sys­temic pover­ty lim­it­ed cul­tur­al devel­op­ment in Ire­land to talk, music, and ulti­mate­ly text; lan­guage (par­tic­u­lar­ly when bor­rowed from an over­lord) became instru­men­tal in a sophis­ti­cat­ed sur­vival made pos­si­ble through guile, wit and irony. Irish aur­al and oral tra­di­tions are immense­ly strong with con­se­quences for a par­tic­u­lar spa­tial­i­ty, space delimited/understood by the topo­graph­i­cal rela­tion­ship between con­vers­ing char­ac­ters, and sec­ond­ly the pro­lif­ic use of the descrip­tive nar­ra­tive with place being defined through its occu­pa­tion. The for­mer echoes the con­cerns not­ed above (Panof­sky, Manet, and Stel­la), the lat­ter a nod to Gadamer. The ref­er­ence to char­ac­ter rather than fig­ure is impor­tant, char­ac­ter absorbs per­son­al­i­ty, a pres­ence beyond objec­tive mate­r­i­al presence.

Before the arrival of cin­e­ma, Irish society’s expo­sure to pic­ture mak­ing was main­ly through reli­gious iconog­ra­phy. The Protes­tant scep­ti­cism for the visu­al left the imag­i­na­tive field open to the Catholic church­es each of which had its oblig­a­tory four­teen sta­tions of the cross and (com­mon­ly) one or more stained glass pan­els, the extent of the lat­ter being a mea­sure of local wealth. The sta­tions of cross are a spa­tial recon­struc­tion of the path tak­en by Jesus Christ on the day of his cru­ci­fix­ion and depict events and places with­in this defined nar­ra­tive. The sta­tions are dis­trib­uted around each church, are expe­ri­enced sequen­tial­ly, viewed from below and at rel­a­tive­ly close dis­tance. The avail­able tech­niques of mar­quetry, carved or paint­ed wood, com­bined with the imper­a­tive of the nar­ra­tive, pro­duced dis­tor­tions of per­spec­tive typ­i­cal­ly result­ing in severe­ly fore­short­ened and com­pressed space. As in Panofsky’s obser­va­tions, the spa­tial­i­ty is artic­u­lat­ed through the device of the ensem­ble of fig­ures. The sec­ond cul­tur­al expo­sure to com­pressed space (phys­i­cal rather than depict­ed) was the con­fes­sion­al, a tiny dark cubi­cle of black dark­ness aid­ing anonymi­ty, a space to seek relief from past mis­de­meanours and from which to escape absolved into the dim light of the church. 

Pic­ture mak­ing for the Irish land-own­ing class focused on por­trai­ture with the spa­tial depic­tions favour­ing land­scape rather than inte­ri­ors. These paint­ings of land­scape tend­ed to be frontal, tonal, con­cerned with sil­hou­ette, a lim­it­ed spa­tial depth achieved by lay­er­ing. The beau­ti­ful twin Views of West­port House (1761) by George Moore are among the rich­est spa­tial descrip­tions, two pla­nar views (more accu­rate­ly aspects), rec­to and ver­so, the land­scape pred­i­cat­ed on the exis­tence of House, depict­ed with­in a for­mal lan­guage of book and pic­ture; the House as ersatz fig­ure. The land­scape idiom con­tin­ued into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry with Paul Henry’s won­der­ful sil­hou­ettes of the west of Ire­land23 where depth is sub­tle­ty sug­gest­ed by colour tone. Seán Keating’s pub­licly com­mis­sioned paint­ings for the new Irish state24 reveal their cul­tur­al ori­gin in Ireland’s reli­gious pic­ture-mak­ing and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the for­mal con­struc­tion and depic­tion of depth in the ubiq­ui­tous sta­tions of the cross. Ger­ard Dil­lon achieved some­thing sim­i­lar and tack­led land­scape using the most pla­nar of view­points, eschew­ing per­spec­tive and imag­ined as seen from the air25. The rela­tion­ship between fig­ures as a device of spa­tial artic­u­la­tion and mark­ing is as with Car­rav­a­gio — expan­sive in the lat­er­al and ver­ti­cal axes but com­pressed in the third dimen­sion at right angles to the canvas. 

The Irish land­scape is a nar­ra­tive of places of habi­ta­tion, event, and local fea­ture, artic­u­lat­ed through human pres­ence, and under­stood through its rep­re­sen­ta­tions (visu­al and aur­al) as much as through its direct expe­ri­ence. Myth is a par­tic­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a nar­ra­tive, an attempt to explain the inex­plic­a­ble through the col­lapse of time and physics, phe­nom­e­na revealed. Rec­i­p­ro­cal trans­la­tions also apply (as in Shon’s exam­ple of metaphor), specif­i­cal­ly the influ­ence of a cul­ture of visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion on that of the writ­ten narrative. 

Bri­an O’Nolan (1911−66) was an Irish author, sur­re­al­ist in all but name work­ing under mul­ti­ple pseu­do­nyms, a liv­er of two or more lives. As Flann O’Brien he penned The Third Police­man26(1967), an epic romp through imag­ined spaces and occa­sions, a twist­ed com­men­tary on Irish social life in the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Oblique­ly, the book is con­cerned with the gap between the appear­ances of things and their mean­ing, appear­ances in his case being those of phe­nom­e­na. In the nov­el, the main pro­tag­o­nist mur­ders, and then enters some cir­cu­lar sequence there­by return­ing to a police sta­tion that inhab­its the thick­ness of a wall. The first appear­ance of the police sta­tion is as pla­nar appari­tion in oth­er words, frontal as if in a drawing. 

Access is achieved by the device of a win­dow sash, swung effort­less­ly and with­out resis­tance (phys­i­cal or intel­lec­tu­al) into a third dimen­sion, con­found­ing the flat­ness of the apparition:

Unlike the devices of spa­tial release in the work of C.L. Lewis or J.K. Rowl­ing, O’Brien’s revealed spaces remain com­pressed, indeed squeezed, and occu­pied. The unfold­ing of the police sta­tion is through its occu­pa­tion by figure(s), the pres­ence and move­ment of the two cor­po­re­al enti­ties, the nar­ra­tor and the enor­mous Sergeant Pluck (the policeman’s bulk mag­ni­fy­ing the tight­ness of the occu­pied space).

In the book the bicy­cle takes on the attrib­ut­es (and indeed gen­der) of its pre­vi­ous own­er and is the device of spa­tial engage­ment with land­scape, col­laps­ing dis­tance and time, reduc­ing all to its own met­ric. The dis­place­ment of per­son­al­i­ty from per­son to bicy­cle pro­vides the means of spa­tial discovery:

Space has two man­i­fes­ta­tions with­in O’Brien’s The Third Police­man, the first is mate­r­i­al, sub­stan­tive, acti­vat­ed by fig­u­ra­tive pres­ence, enclosed, its phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal gen­e­sis being the occu­pied cave; the sec­ond is ephemer­al, tem­po­ral, thin, rest­less, momen­tary, lay­ered, frontal, acti­vat­ed by move­ment, its gen­e­sis being the jour­ney. Both man­i­fes­ta­tions oper­ate through cor­po­re­al agency, one direct­ly, the oth­er vic­ar­i­ous­ly in the form of the bicycle.

Our pres­ence is cen­tral even in our absence.