Pictorial Appearing: Image Theory After Representation

217 Pages·2020·5.56 MB·English

by  Kresimir Purgar

Krešimir Purgar
Pictorial Appearing
Image | Volume 126
To my dear colleagues, Keith Moxey, Michele Cometa and W.J.T. Mitchell
Krešimir Purgar is associate professor of visual studies and image theory at the
University of Osijek, Croatia. Most recently he edited W.J.T. Mitchell’s Image
Theory – Living Pictures (Routledge, 2017).
KreŠimir Purgar
Pictorial Appearing
Image Theory After Representation
This book has been co-published with the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osi-
jek and financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Education of the
Republic of Croatia.

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Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4135-6
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Acknowledgments
This book took me many years of writing and thinking about images,
although its modest length may not necessarily prove so. In spite of
its parts having previously been published elsewhere in different
journals and presented as lectures and invited talks in different parts
of Europe, its main scope was envisioned some five years ago when it
became clear to me that once again, as has been the case many times
in history, the civilization of images was undergoing a profound
change. But this time it is a change towards overwhelming and ever
more immersive visual experiences that are not images anymore,
just pure sensorial phenomena in the realm of the visual. During the
maturation of my thoughts about images, many very helpful people
came across my path, some of whom were very reassuring while
others were critical in reshaping my insights in ways I could not have
imagined were possible.
I would like to thank the editors and reviewers of the different
journals where the majority of the material has been published prior
to (how appropriate!) appearing in this book. The earlier version of
Chapter One was published as “What is not an Image (anymore)?
Iconic Difference, Immersion and Iconic Simultaneity in the Age of
Screens” in Phainomena. Journal of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
in 2015. Chapter Two was published as “Essentialism, Subjectivism,
Visual Studies. Concerning non-Disciplinary Ontology of Images” in
Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, published by Universidade Nova
de Lisboa in 2017, in a special issue on visual culture edited by Teresa
Castro and Margarida Medeiros, whom I thank for the enthusiasm
they showed in accepting it for publication. A rather different version of
6 Pictorial Appearing
Chapter Three was published as “Cinematic Time in Painterly Space.
Sergei Eisenstein’s Theory of Montage and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon” in the exhibition catalogue Image 2007, curated by Klaudio
Štefančić in Croatia in 2008. Thank you, Klaudio, for believing in
me and for following my work from the beginning. Chapter Four
appeared in 2017 as “Modalities of Pictorial Appearing. Fundamental
Concepts”, once again in Phainomena. Journal of Phenomenology and
Hermeneutics, and I warmly thank Dean Komel, a member of the
journal’s editorial staff, for his susceptibility to my ideas. Versions of
Chapter Five were published previously as “Reality and Truthfulness.
Abstraction, (hyper)realism and the post-pictorial condition” by the
University of Bologna in their journal Piano B. Arti e culture visive in
2016 and as “The Meaning of Hyper-Realism Today. Iconic Difference
and Perception of Hyper-transparent Images” in the exhibition cata-
logue Search for Reality. Jadranka Fatur and the Hyperreal, edited by
Martina Munivrana and published by the Museum for Contemporary
Art in Zagreb in 2018. I thank all the people involved in both instances
for acknowledging my work.
I would not be as confident in presenting my insights in this book
if they had not been exchanged with live audiences, mainly students,
at several European universities where I was invited to give talks on
the topics discussed here. First of all, I am greatly thankful to my
colleague, Luca Vargiu, for having me invited to give a guest lecture
titled “Indeterminacy of Images: Pictorial Appearing from Fiedler to
Wiesing” within the PRIN 2015 project – Il problema dell’indetermi-
natezza. Significato, conoscenza, azione at the University of Cagliari
in 2018. I am also indebted to Lauro Magnani from the University of
Genoa for inviting me in the same year to take part at the Summer
School of the Istituto di studi superiori and to give a lecture entitled
“Art and technology. The disappearance of images in contemporary
visual culture”. Also contributing to my busy schedule that year,
but further helping me to shape the final version of this book, was
Andrea Pruchová Hruzová, who invited me to Prague to give a talk
titled “Allegories of post-representation. On the future of images” as
part of her great initiative: Fresh Eye – A Platform for Visual Culture
Acknowledgments 7
Studies. Finally, and most recently, I have discussed the introductory
parts of Pictorial Appearing at the European University in Tirana
where I gave a guest lecture on “How to look at pictures that mean
nothing?” in the Department for Applied Arts. My wonderful hosts
and invaluable interlocutors there were Marko Stamenković and
Konstantinos Giakoumis to whom I express my deepest gratitude.
In the long maturation of this book, there were four conferences
and presentations that I gave that proved to be most valuable for
giving Pictorial Appearing its final overall tone. More specifically, I
am referring firstly to the international symposium Ways of Imitation
held at the University of Florence in 2015, where I presented my
paper “The Absolute Image. Ontological Concerns of non-Mimetic
Depictions in Abstract and Conceptual Art”. Two conferences at the
University Roma Tre – the first in 2016 entitled Contemporary Film
and Media Aesthetics and the second in 2018 entitled From Spectacle to
Entertainment. Cinema, Media and Modes of Engagement from Modernity
to the Present – gave me the opportunity to test my ideas through two
presentations: “Post-Pictorial Condition. Ontology of Image in the
Digital Age” and “Philosophy of Image Through Motion Pictures.
(Re)presentation and (Dis)appearing”. In 2017 I co-organized the
conference The Revolutionary Imaginary. Visual Culture in an Age of
Political Turbulences at the Lithuanian National Gallery of Art as part
of the activities of the European Humanities University in Vilnius and
the international network Visual Culture in Europe. It was a pleasure
to work there with my dear friends Almira Ousmanova and Marquard
Smith and to deepen our mutual interest in the culture of images.
My special thanks go to those people who have significantly shaped
my whole career in different ways and on different occasions, and
whose intellectual strength and personal integrity have left an indelible
imprint on all my professional endeavors. These people are Keith
Moxey from Columbia University in New York, Michele Cometa from
the University of Palermo and W.J.T. Mitchell from the University of
Chicago. I therefore dedicate this book to them.
K.P.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | 5
List of illustrations | 11
Introduction — Imagining a world without images:
Mimesis, simulacrum and beyond | 17
1. What is not an image (anymore)? | 29
1.1. On the concept of image as a difference and
(dis)continuity | 31
1.2. Image as not-representation-anymore
and not-yet-immersion | 35
1.3. The essence of the image: Between abstraction
and representation | 43
1.4. Iconic simultaneity: Signs of difference
and the phenomenon of immersion | 52
2. Essentialism and subjectivism: Two ways of claiming
an image | 61

2.1. Between the discursivity and materiality of images | 62
2.2. Overcoming a discursive and material concept
of image | 75
3. Epistemological turns: Image as metaphor of the
conditions of looking | 87
3.1. Moving and still images – an aesthetic turn | 92
3.2. The principle of montage and the painterly tableau –
a temporal turn | 95
3.3. The convergence of painting and film –
an ontological turn | 101
3.4. Space and time of the technosphere – a pictorial turn | 106