How to enter image-space

Abstract

In art history, we are concerned with artefacts, some of which are considered to be “works of art” in a more specific sense. We want to know why artefacts look the way they look, what they mean and how. Since many artefacts are—or include—images, we are also interested in questions concerning the making, meanings, and uses of images. My current focus is on the theory of images, a field of research located at the common border of art history and philosophy and therefore marginal to both disciplines. This essay is more specifically about pictorial space or “image-space,” as I shall call it. Image-space is a very common and well-known phenomenon. If we are confronted with an unfolded scroll of paper with marks of ink and paint on it (fig. 1), and tell others we see part of a coast with cliffs and trees and houses, bordering the wide expanses of sea and sky, then this is an example of image-space. But image-space need not be vast and deep. Take this painted page of parchment containing the first word of the gospel according to St. Matthew, liber (fig. 2). The initial letter seems to have opened its thighs to give birth to a tendril. Would you agree that the beginnings and ends of this elastic L are fastened to the ornamental frame by means of golden ribbons? And at the many points where these ribbons cross, would you say that one part runs over the other, so that one is above, the other beneath? Would you also say that the bare parchment inside the ornamental frame and around the initial can be seen both as an opaque plane of inscription and as some kind of opening? Then this is another example of image-space, even if it is so shallow