E.H. Gombrich THE IMAGE and THE EYE: Further studies in the psychology of pictorial representation (1982) Oxford, Phaidon Press Limited.

E.H. Gombrich THE IMAGE and THE EYE: Further studies in the psychology of pictorial representation (1982) Oxford, Phaidon Press Limited.

‘The Sky is the Limit’: The Vault of Heaven and Pictorial Vision

It is this impossibility consciously to analyse our act of perception, I would suggest, which accounts for the artist’s need to approach the problem of naturalistic painting by trial and error. Though he cannot foretell exactly what device may have the desired effect, he can judge whether he can recognize the effect of his picture.

The student of art certainly has reason to take note of Gibson’s attack on the traditional distinction between appearance and reality, for at least since the time of the Greeks art has always been said to be concerned precisely with the imitation of appearances.

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I have argued elsewhere that what Brunelleschi invented was a method of working out what will be occluded by what in our field of vision from any given station point. The objectivity of this demonstration is not in doubt; what caused and still caused the trouble is the concept of ‘apparent size’ that has been imported into these discussions.

I believe, with Gibson, that normally the visual array contains all the information we need to perceive the invariant forms of edges and solids.

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If I am right, the curvature [of a straight line] does not represent what we really perceive, but what we really do not perceive. It marks the transition from the world of solid objects to the field we scan for orientation. These two distinct modes of perception may thus account for the existence of two warring schools in the theory of perspective, though it can be shown that their claims and counterclaims have very little practical relevance.

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For Gibson, ‘a picture is a surface so treated that a delimited optic array to a point of observation is made available that contains the same kind of information that is found in the ambient optic arrays of an ordinary environment.’ What matters in this definition is that it does away with ‘ visual sensation or appearances’. ‘An artist can capture the information about something without replicating its sensations.’

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Why, then, do we not see a flat expanse but a convex field? Because – my answer would have to be – we can never separate the static view from the flow of information that precedes and follows it. If the apparent vault is really composed of a succession of narrow fields of vision at right angles to the momentary line of sight, we must not only expect such a curvature while we scan the heavens, we are bound also to perceive it while we try to keep our eyes fixed on one point in the sky. Introspection suggests to me that in such an unnatural situation the very processes described by Gibson for conditions of inadequate information come into their own because the area of focused vision is then surrounded by a halo of uncertainties onto which anticipatory phantoms are projected in accordance with the simplicity principle. Could this experience, perhaps, be used as a basis for further generalisations?

…many of the visual sensations of which we are aware may not be directly caused by the stimuli of which sensationalists speak, but rather originate in the system itself. In normal circumstances these anticipatory phantoms and the incoming information fuse so readily and so efficiently that we are neither aware of the visual stimuli nor of our visual expectancies. Only when this fusion is inhibited by external or internal causes do we actually see what I have described as ‘pre-images’, as distinct from after-images (which are generally attributable to purely physiological processes).

Links to things said be Sack in Hallucinations

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The visual information the painter can simulate may never actually duplicate the information we pick up from solid objects close by. But it is not possible that he can mobilize the system to produce the same phantom sensations which come into play in those processes of search or probing for simplicity precisely in situations of inadequate information? If that is true, our perception f pictures would indeed differ from the perception of the visual world, but the right stimulation from the canvas may still engender a reaction similar to that which we experience in front of nature. A fine landscape or seascape by one of the Dutch masters certainly does not give me the illusion that the museum wall opens into parts of Holland. But I would claim that in getting absorbed in such a painting my search for meaning between and behind its brushstrokes weaves on its surface a rich fabric of uncontradicted sensations. Following the artist’s suggestion I begin to forget the textured surface. I see the horizon curving and the sky arching over the earth, not a mediated perception so much as a mediated phantom. I doubt whether the illusion would be stronger if the panel were rounded rather than flat or that it is much influenced by the position from which I view the painting. Little is needed, but little of the right kind, for my visual system to pick up the scent and to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, even when it is hunting that notorious Snark – the non-existent vault of heaven.    

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