Transient Sight and Shifting Perspective

In order to comprehend the idea that a picture is not “the thing” but rather a depiction of the thing being pictured, one must adjust their perception. The minds initial tendency is to perceive the world as it seems, not as it is- meta-commentary forces a cognizance that does not naturally occur. This, I believe, is the effect Mitchell aims to expose in his essay Metapictures, which aims to “separate, at least provisionally, the problem of pictorial self-reference from the polemics of modern and postmodern aesthetics, the battles to determine what is “authentic” or “good” or “powerful” in twentieth-century art, and resituate the issue in a rather different context” (Mitchell 36). This is not to say that Mitchell’s goal is simply to force critical perception, he goes father to suggest, “pictures might be capable of reflection on themselves” (Mitchell 38). In a sense images are all we can be sure of, they are what we see and what we think we know of the world- pictures demand interpretation and interpretation is subjective. Consequently, interpretation lies in the subject, the individual viewing the image- all they can know of it is what they see, and how who they are shapes what they see. Mitchell implies this in his description of the world as “our world, a world that is not merely represented by pictures, but actually constituted and brought into being by picture making…the sense that we live in a world of images, a world in which, to paraphrase Derrida, there is nothing outside the picture” (Mitchell 41).

The troubling part about this idea of Metapictures is that they are about themselves, they are social commentaries in their essence. They force the viewer to understand their duplicity of their simplicity and accept that there is an “inside” and an “outside” to the picture. The inside is what the picture shows, and the outside is the physicality of the picture, its materiality and creation. The inside of the metapicture is constantly referring to the outside- its mortal, manufactured essence, Mitchell says, “Metapicutres are picture that show themselves in order to know themselves: they stage the self-knowledge of pictures”(Mitchell 48). This interpretation of the function of metapictures implicates the viewer as much as the image, as previously stated, an image is what is to the beholder. The viewer has seen innumerable other images before encountering the one in question the perception, thereby creating a moment of self-reflection in viewing the image. Not only does the viewer consider the image itself but himself in relation to it. “We might think of the multistable image as a device for educing self-knowledge, a king of mirror for the beholder, or a screen for self-projection” (Mitchell 48).

Wittgenstein’s investigation of the famously frustrating image of the “Duck-Rabbit” brings up a new element of metapicture, the multistable metapicture. In this investigation Wittgenstein explains the unique function of this image “it is a weak or peripheral hypericon; it doesn’t serve as a model of the mind, for instance, but as a kind of decoy or bait to attract the mind, to flush it out of hiding; its central effect is at odds with the stabilization of an image to be taken in at a glance and easily held in the mind”(Wittgenstein qtd. Mitchell 50). The intentional ambiguity of this image calls into question the role of the viewer in new esteem. The function of sight becomes a point of consideration in Wittgenstein’s notions of compound artificial image, like the “Duck-Rabbit” picture. This is an important example of metapicture because it directly implicates perception and draws attention to the incongruence or sight, “we find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough”(Wittgenstein qtd. Mitchell 53). This seemingly whimsical example offers a shockingly concrete explanation of Mitchells term “nesting”. “Certainly the rabbit and the duck don’t resemble each other; like the bear the eagle they are nested together- that is, located, imagined, or pictured in the same gestalt, the one a narrative representation of fable, the other an equivocal picture” (Mitchell 56). This is the essence of the metapicture; it is transitive in nature and shameless in its provocation of introspection. It reflects on the nature of pictures in a way others, which function only as social commentary, can not. “We may want to say that self-knowledge is only a metaphor when applied to pictures that are, after all, nothing but lines and shapes and colors on a flat surface. But we also know that pictures have always been more than that: they have also been idols, fetishes, magic mirrors- objects that seem not only to have a presence, but a life of their own, talking and looking back at us” (Mitchell 57). The self-understanding of the viewer is a central element of metapicture, which subverts the self-assurance of the viewer and continues the characteristic shifting of perspective.

To bring this disjointed discussion into focus lets try to situate the theoretical functions that have been discussed thus far. Metapictures new perspective, this much has been established- so what? What does this information mean in terms of society and rhetoric? In terms of literal application, very little, but in terms of cerebral stimulation there is a great deal of relevance. To illustrate this idea we can apply it to Marxist theories of social stratification, metapictures force the mind to reevaluate that which it would otherwise consider static. This function is key to the fundamental archetypes of Marxist philosophy and social deconstruction. Metapictures accomplish this cerebral destabilization subconsciously and automatically in a way that words never could.

~Mikaela McShane