ICONIC PREDICATION

A picture not only depicts its subject, but has something to say about it. Indeed, as I have argued in the last chapter, no picture can depict something without having something to say about what it depicts. A picture that doesn't say anything is not a picture.

Yet of course pictures do not literally speak – they are ‘mute poetry’. Nor do pictures literally ascribe properties to objects; the artist ascribes properties to objects with his pictures. In the picture objects are depicted as having certain properties. Obviously there are no names or predicates in pictures, and although pictures admit of decomposition they do not decompose into names, unsaturated expressions, operators of various sorts, etc. How then does iconic ‘predication’ work? (Of course we observe the usual Fregean distinction between predication and assertion.)

A picture depicts Brando because there is that about the picture which invites those who recognise Brando to see him in the picture. And what is it in the picture that explains their ability to see Brando in it if not the fact that it depicts Brando as having certain properties? Of course, to depict a man who is surly is not necessarily to depict him as surly. What is it to depict not only a surly man but to depict him as surly? Perhaps we can say that a picture of Brando iconically represents him as surly just when anyone who is able to recognise Brando and anyone who is able to recognise an individual as surly could generate, on the basis of his ability, the interpretation that the picture is true or accurate only if Brando is surly.