Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis – Mitchell’s “Family of Images” (part 1)

2019

3(59)

DOI: 10. /arc190304

Introduction

Consider the following conundrum:

– What do the reputation of the president of the go-

vernment, an engineering drawing, the Venus de Milo, and

your idea of a white rabbit have in common?

Answer: They are all images.

Although the answer to this conundrum is not partic-

ularly witty, it contains a lesson that we wish to explain

here. The conundrum mentions the president’s reputation.

For reputation, the dictionary tells us that it is […] the

opinion that people in general have about someone or

something, or how much respect or admiration someone

or something receives, based on past behaviour or char-

acter

. To the extent that this is a social construction, an

individual’s reputation and public image are coincident.

Among the meanings of the term “image” offered by the

dictionary are the following: The way that something or

someone is thought of by other people: “The aim is to im-

prove the public image of the police” and Someone’s im-

age is the idea that other people have of that person, esp.

an idea created by advertising and by newspaper and tele-

vision stories: “He’s trying to project a more presidential

* ORCID: 0000-0002-4100-4134. Department of Drawing, Fa-

culty of Fine Arts, University of Granada (Spain).

** ORCID: 0000-0002-2188-6766. Department of Painting, Facul-

ty of Fine Arts, University of Granada (Spain).

“Reputation”, in Cambridge Dictionary on line, https://dictionary.

cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/reputation [accessed: 18.08.2019].

Dorota Maria Kurażyńska*, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras**

Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis

– Mitchell’s “Family of Images” (part 1)

Obraz: Od bycia bogiem[boginią] do stania się flatus vocis

– „Rodzina obrazów” Mitchella (część 1)

image”

. In the sentence This isn’t the rst scandal that’s

damaged the image of the president, the words “image”

and “reputation” are interchangeable. Thus, reputation is

an image – that is said. The conundrum also mentions an

engineering drawing and the Venus de Milo. It is not nec-

essary to clarify what we mean when we say that technical

drawings and statues are images. Finally, the conundrum

mentions your idea of a white rabbit. Although there are

non-iconic ideas (e.g., innity), the idea of a white rabbit

can be said to be an image (mental). In fact, the dictionary

denes “image” as follows: […] a picture in your mind

or an idea of how someone or something is: “I have an

image in my mind of how I want the garden to be” – and,

reciprocally, dene “idea” by saying, “an understanding,

thought, or picture in your mind”

. It is also worth remem-

bering that the word “idea” comes from the Latin term

idĕa, which means “image”, “form” or “appearance” –

the same as the Greek term from which it is derived: ἰδέα

[idéa]. This use of “idea” is found in phrases such as “Her

picture never leaves my mind”. We can therefore say that

the president’s reputation, an engineering drawing, the

Venus de Milo and your idea of a white rabbit are similar

in that we can refer to all of these things as an “image”.

The moral, certainly trivial, idea that emerges from our

conun drum is that we use the word “image” to refer to

a con siderable variety of different things – from solid, big

“Image”, in Cambridge Dictionary on line, https://dictionary.

cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/image [accessed: 18.08.2019].

“Idea”, in Cambridge Dictionary on line, https://dictionary.cam-

bridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/idea [accessed: 18.08.2019].

24 Dorota Maria Kurażyńska, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras

and heavy things that anyone can see, and with which you

could hurt yourself if you stumble over them

, to incorpore-

al phenomena that you cannot grasp or show to anyone, be-

cause they are not located anywhere. Somewhat less trivial,

however, is the fact that within this diversity we can nd

one of the most puzzling problems in the theory of images.

The variety of things and phenomena that we refer to as

an image is so wide, and the perspectives, traditions, and

interests of the thinkers who have tried to tackle the de-

nition of this term are so varied, that the discussion about

images has become a babble-like conversation. In addi-

tion, the extensive semantic eld of the term image be-

comes even more complex if we look at its different trans-

lations: “image”, “picture”, “Bild”, “obraz”, etc. – each of

them connected to (and entangled in) its own etymolog-

ical lineage. One of the famous attempts to address this

issue is an essay by W.J.T. Mitchell, titled What is an im-

age?

[1]. In this essay, which is today considered a clas-

sic, Mitchell delves into the tangle of meanings, senses,

and nuances of things and phenomena that are known as

an image. He does so by proposing a taxonomy, which

he calls “The Family of Images” (Fig. 1). The Family of

images is a development of the conception of images that

is currently considered canonical. This conception holds

that images are a sign modality.

In this paper

we will analyse the discourse on imag-

es with respect to the taxonomy of images proposed by

Mitchell, and, in particular, we aim to reveal some of its

limitations. It is known that Mitchell must be recognized

not only for the merit of having been the promoter of the

Pictorial Turn, but also for his extraordinary ability and

renement that enables him to reveal some of the un-

derlying issues that polarize (and also encumbrance) the

We say this remembering that the American abstract painter Ad

Reinhardt once contemptuously dened Sculpture as “something you

bump into when you back up to look at a painting”.

The essay appeared in the journal “New Literary History” [1].

Later as Chapter 1º of Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology [2]. We always

quote this from here.

This is the rst part of an essay paper devoted to the analysis

of Mitchell’s doctrine of images. The title of the second part is “Is in-

scription┤Boob├ an image? On Mitchell’s doctrine of images – ‘The

family of images’ (part 2)”.

canonical doctrine of images. Our interest in this author

stems from the fact that we consider his contributions to

the theory of images – always brilliantly insightful – to

be very characteristic of the current course of the debate

over images. First, we would like to comment briey on

the title of this paper. The sentence “‘Image’: From Be-

ing a God[dess] to Becoming a Flatus vocis” includes

a logical fallacy, a literary trope known as “antanacla-

sis”. Antanaclasis consists of using a term deceptively by

designating several different notions at the same time. In

our case, we use the word image as a name that denotes

a [type of] specic object, namely, one that at some time

and place was taken by God[dess], but also (now mak-

ing a metalinguistic use of the term) as a word that refers

to a certain set of meanings – that is, to things devised

by us. This subterfuge allows us to introduce one of the

criticisms we will make of Mitchell, that is, the abuse of

antanaclasis in his discourse on images.

Status Quæstionis: Image theory is unsatisfactory

We could begin by stating that a thing that, on account

of its appearance, makes us respond in the way we would

react to an animal, without being one, is said to be an im-

age – “the image neither equates with living bodies nor

with the lifeless object”. This denition is questionable

(an engineering drawing or an arabesque, e.g., normal-

ly do not make us respond in the way we respond to the

presence of a living being). What seems unquestionable,

however, is that images play an important role in our lives.

We live surrounded by images like never before in the

history of mankind. But there were times when opportu-

nities to encounter an image were scarce. For millennia,

almost everyone lived and died without ever having seen

one of these anomalies that can act upon us as living enti-

ties, without being. It must be assumed that this made the

anomaly of the images even more overwhelming, and that

it facilitated the propensity to invest in them a fabulous

halo (which allowed for assigning a sacred status to the in-

stitutions that controlled them). Images, as we know, have

been taken by god[dess]. The images continue to appear

to be something special to us; that is why they abound and

proliferate among us in the way that they do. Although

for us, accessing them – and even producing and dissem-

inating them – has become an insignicant goal. For this

reason, it might come as a surprise to us that, as Julian

Bell has pointed out:

The rst words in Western culture concerning man-

made images categorically warn us against them:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any

likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in

the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.

Why? What makes the God of the Bible forbid all like-

ness in the Second Commandment, before pronouncing of

killing, adultery and theft?

Images draw us in. The desire to make and attend to

likeness has been powerful throughout history [3, p. 9].

That the images were given such exorbitant impor-

tance, that they were seen as an attack on God, that they

Fig. 1. W.J.T. Mitchell, from What is an image? (source: [2, p. 10])

Il. 1. W.J.T. Mitchell, z Czym jest obraz? (źródło: [2, s. 10])

Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis /Obraz: Od bycia bogiem[boginią] do stania się flatus vocis 25

were taken as a threat so deant of their pre-eminence

that their proscription preceded the prohibition of murder,

adultery and theft – these are behaviours that seem to us to

be very far removed from those that are typical of our cul-

ture. However, the shadow of this archaic understanding

of the images continues to overshadow our understanding

of the images themselves. Mitchell says that, […] behind

every theory of imagery is some form of the fear of im-

agery [2, p. 159]. Although our society tends to see itself

as a culture that is far removed from magical beliefs and

naive animism, […] these naive beliefs are alive and well

in the modern era

In any case, we inhabit a world full of images. And

not only do we live with them and view them as part of

the props of our environment, we also interact with them

continuously, and increasingly. We say this when think-

ing, of course, of the suggestive images with which adver-

tising tempts us; in the persuasive images with which the

mass media haunt us; in the heartbreakingly disturbing,

even unbearable, images, that sometimes reach us via our

mobile devices (such as the bodies of Salvadorian Oscar

Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter

Valeria, lying drowned on a bank of the Rio Grande; they

died on June 23, trying to reach the United States); in im-

ages of all kinds offered by entertainment industries such

as cinema and 3D video games; and also, of course, the

enormity of revered images such as the Venus de Milo or

the Gioconda. We also think of images such as dolls and

paper airplanes.

We can also think of those images generated by aug-

mented reality, which Pokémon GO fans look for, explor-

ing the cities where they play in order to catch them, train

them, and then ght with them, and “animated” images

such as the robotic pets produced by Sony (the AIBO Ro-

bot Dog) or Tiger Electronics – those strange and capti-

vating “teddy bears” called Furbies, which are provided

with articial intelligence, and that learn to communicate

by talking with their owner whilst being able to develop

their own character and personality. We can also think of

the Gynoids developed by companies such as True Com-

panion in the United States, and Orient Industry, in Japan

– which are making the old dream of Pygmalion come

true – and the “articial mules” produced by Boston Dy-

namics, which are robots that can advantageously replace

a mule made of esh and blood. We also think of more

humble images, such as articial plants, shing baits and

duck decoys used in duck hunting; and of dentures, teats

(or nipples) of bottle-feeding and paciers, and the plans

of architects and engineers. As you can see, we have in

mind a fairly wide variety of images – and we would like

to point out that (1

) a large part of these are not men-

tioned in the usual literature concerned with images, and

We take these words of Mitchell, who later adds: I believe that

magical attitudes toward images are just as powerful in the modern

world as they were in so-called ages of faith. […] My argument here

is that the double consciousness about images is a deep and abiding

feature of human responses to representation. It is not something that

we “get over” when we grow up, become modern, or acquire critical

consciousness [4, pp. 7, 8].

) these are also unable to be explained in terms of

what is currently understood to be held by a canonical

perspective, namely:

The commonplace of modern studies of images, in fact, is

that they must be understood as a kind of language; instead

of providing a transparent window on the world, images

are now regarded as the sort of sign that presents a decep-

tive appearance of naturalness and transparency conceal-

ing an opaque, distorting, arbitrary mechanism of repre-

sentation, a process of ideological mystication [2, p. 8].

Images are important

– so Knowledge about images is important

We inhabit a world copiously populated by an extreme-

ly diverse range of images. But images – unlike ants,

clouds, and gastric juices – do not sprout spontaneously

in nature. They are there because we create them, because

we wanted to bring them to the world to put them where

they are. We live in a world full of images because images

matter to us. And, given that we care, knowledge about

images must also be important. Do we have sound knowl-

edge about images? It has been said, for decades, that ours

is a “civilization of the image”. We have been hearing for

more than half a century that “we live in an era dominated

by images” (the “era of image”). It has been claimed that,

[…] the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem

of the image [5, p. 2]. However, the current state of our

knowledge about images is unsatisfactory:

Although we have thousands of words about pictures,

we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of them. What we

do have is a motley array of disciplines – semiotics, philo-

sophical inquiries into art and representation, studies in

cinema and mass media, comparative studies in the arts–

all converging on the problem of pictorial representation

and visual culture [5, p. 9].

Mitchell is not the only scholar who has expressed his

discouragement over the current state of knowledge about

images. This diagnosis is shared by a number of authors.

We will illustrate this fact by providing three examples.

In What is a Picture? Michael Newall makes reference to

“the problems of depiction – of what a picture is and how

depiction works”, stating: There is nothing like a consen-

sus yet – indeed there are many competing positions [6,

p. 1], whilst in La imagen compleja (The Complex Image),

Josep M. Català Domènech declares:

The image, as a concept, always belonged to the par-

adigm of the text. […] Thinking about the image […]

was thinking about the image as information, as com-

munication, as a message […]. The concept of image is

the product of a textual imagination […]. Again we ask

ourselves then, what is an image? […] But, if we real-

ly want to answer this crucial question, now, in this time

of the third millennium, we will have no choice but to

forget all the image denitions provided so far. We must

forget the philological answers, the historical answers,

the aesthetic ones and the philosophical ones that have

marked the path of understanding the image until today.

We must forget everything, even momentarily, and start

from scratch [7, p. 42].

26 Dorota Maria Kurażyńska, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras

Our last example is taken from the Anthropology of

Images by Hans Belting:

While is has become fashionable in recent years to speak

about “image”, this discourse has brought to light consid-

erable confusion in the language that people use, a con-

fusion that is merely glossed over by the word “ image”.

[…] Though people are not talking about the same thing,

they are nonetheless using the same word. Some authors

create the impression that images circulate in disembod-

ied form […]. Others associate images broadly with the

visual realm, as if to suggest that everything that is visual

is an image. The “image”, however, is dened not by its

mere visibility but by its being invested, by the beholder,

with a symbolic meaning and a kind of mental “frame”.

Still others identify images wholesale with iconic signs,

thus disregarding the difference between the semiotic and

the iconic. Finally, there is a school of thought that seeks

to protect art from being contaminated by images from

mass media or others sources. This confusion of words

and meanings give rise again and again to new controver-

sies in which denitions are contested. As a result, we not

only speak in the same way about very different images,

but we also apply very different modes of discourse to the

same kinds of images [8, p. 9].

One of the reasons for the disquiet caused by the cur-

rent state of knowledge about images is, in effect, the fact

that we call such a disparate variety of different things

and phenomena “image” to such an extent that we are

not clear about what we are talking about when we pro-

nounce, hear, or read the term “image”. We use this word

to refer to so many different things and different phenom-

ena that the question “What is an image?” can be replaced

by “What is not an image?”

“But what is an image?” asks

Hans Belting in his Foreword for Likeness and Presence:

History of the Image Before the Era of Art – after indicat-

ing that the history of the images should not be confused

with the history of art, he then states: The term means as

much and as little as the term art [10, p. 5].

The Family of Images

Although our lives are surrounded by images, although

their prominence in our world is manifest (and growing),

and although academic interest in images and the number

of publications, meetings, symposia, and conferences spe-

cically referring to them have grown exponentially in re-

cent decades, there is a persistent dissatisfaction regarding

the achievements of the theoretical discourse on images.

Raymond Bellour’s claim “Without any doubt, we know

less and less what an image is” – referred to by Belting in

his diagnosis of the current Status Quæstionis [8, p. 14]

– summarizes the intellectual collapse that characterises

the current state of image theory.

If the fact of living surrounded by images and living

with them is clearly an incentive that urges us to talk about

This question was asked by Steffen Siegel at the “What is an Ima-

ge?” Seminar, organized in 2010 by James Elkins. None of the attendees

(including Mitchell) was able to offer a plausible answer to this question

[9, p. 14 and other].

images, then the need to clarify what we mean when we

speak of an “image” has become no less of a pressing de-

mand. When we say “image”, we do not always seem to be

clear about what we mean – we can often mean too much

(and then the question arises “What is not an image?”), or

too little (in which case we might only be talking about

the Gioconda or emulating Roland Barthes’ speech about

an advertisement for Panzani pasta).

Given that specifying the meaning of the term “image”

poses seemingly insurmountable difculties, some authors

have chosen to follow the initiative of art theorists who, hu-

miliated by the inability to offer a plausible answer to the

question “What is Art?” they were left to ponder the idea

of “Family resemblances” advanced by Wittgenstein. The

locus classicus for the doctrine of family resemblances

is found in Part I of his Philosophical Investigations [11,

pp. 65–77] where, within the framework of a discussion

about language games – that is, on the diversity of func-

tions given to the term “language” – Wittgenstein says:

Instead of producing something common to all that we

call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no

one thing in common which makes us use the same word

for all – but they are related to one another in many dif-

ferent ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these

relationships, that we call them all “language” [11, p. 65].

Wittgenstein illustrates the issue by taking the word

“game” as an example. After mentioning games such as

board games, card-games, ball games, Olympic games, etc.,

he concludes:

We see complicated networks of similarities overlap-

ping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities of

detail [11, p. 66].

I can think of no better expression to characterize these

similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various

resemblances between members of a family: build, fea-

tures, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc., etc. over-

lap and criss-cross in the same way – And I shall say:

“games” form a family [11, p. 67].

As already mentioned, Wittgenstein’s comment on

family resemblances occurs in the context of a discussion

about the various uses of the term “language”. This dis-

cussion, in turn, occurs within the framework of a more

general debate about the meaning of words. Wittgenstein

argues that attempts to dene the essential meaning of

terms such as “language” and “game”, are fatuous. The

meaning of a word – that is, what its denition is intended

to specify – is not an essence (the essence is presumably

shared by the things named using that word). In general,

Wittgenstein states that, “the meaning of a word is its use

in language” [11, p. 43].

One of the authors tempted by the possibilities of using

“family resemblances” to tackle the denition of “image”

was Mitchell, who, in “What is an image?” delved into

the tangle of meanings, denitions, and nuances of the

wide variety of things and phenomena called “image” and

proposed a taxonomy called “The Family of Images” [2,

pp. 9–14]. The Family of Images can be seen as an attempt

to bring to light a philosophical concept of “image” that

can guide our research. Mitchell begins his section enti-

tled “The Family of Images” as follows:

Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis /Obraz: Od bycia bogiem[boginią] do stania się flatus vocis 27

Two things must immediately strike the notice of any

one

who tries to take a general view of the phenomena called

by the name of imagery. The rst is simply the incredible

variety of things that go by this name. We speak of pictures,

statues, optical illusions, maps, diagrams, dreams,

hallu-

cinations, spectacles, projections, poems, patterns, mem-

ories, and even ideas as images, and the sheer diversity

of this list would seem to make any systematic, unied un-

derstanding impossible. The second thing that may strike

us is that the calling of all these things by the name of

image does not necessarily mean that they all have some-

thing in common [2, p. 9].

The Family of Images is an attempt to answer the ques-

tion “what is an image?” by unravelling the tangled con-

cept of images and articulating it in a classication pre-

sented in the same way as one would present a family tree

(Fig. 2). From the common root called “Image”, Mitchell

derives the following branches: Graphic, Optical, Percep-

tual, Mental, and Verbal. The type of images housed in

each of them, he tells us, is the object of study of a specif-

ic academic discipline (Art History, Optics, etc.) and for

each of them there is a specic institutionalized discourse.

“Presiding over all these special cases of imagery”

there is “a parent concept” – the concept of the image “as

such”, the phenomenon whose appropriate institutional

discourse is philosophy and theology [2, p. 11]. Against

this backdrop, and expressly invoking the Wittgensteinian

notion of language games [2, p. 8], Mitchell states that

Fig. 2. There are many different kinds of images. Why? (authors’ property)

Il. 2. Istnieje wiele rodzajów obrazów. Dlaczego? (własność autorów)

28 Dorota Maria Kurażyńska, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras

he intends to examine: Some of the ways we use the word

“image” in a number of institutionalized discourses –

particularly literary criticism, art history, theology, and

philosophy [2, p. 9].

In his proposal, Mitchell mentions the notions of fam-

ily, parent concept, genealogy & family tree, and argues

that – as our understanding of images is based on en-

trenched social and cultural practices “in a history funda-

mental to our understanding… of what images are” – he

will trace a genealogy of the family of images [2, p. 9].

But the genealogy he proposes to us is not one that goes

back in time, tracing the ancestor that the family gene rated

– such as when Julius Caesar traced the gens of the Julia

family, reaching back his lineage to the goddess Venus

and her son, the Trojan prince Aeneas. Such a genealogy

would not make sense, since the relationship between the

branches of its tree is not that of a diachronic sequence,

but that of a synchronous catalogue.

This genealogy is also unlike that established by zool-

ogists when they determine, for example, the common an-

cestor of “Darwin’s nches” – a group of 15 different bird

species discovered by Darwin in the Galapagos Islands.

This is because the origin of the Family of Images does

not lie in a remote original ancestor from which a variety

of disparate descendants would have (adaptively) derived

(statues, reections in mirrors, dreams, metaphors, etc.),

but in a “parent concept” – that is, a certain understanding

of what an image is. And this idea – conceived by way of

the fons et origo of the subject, thematised by all insti-

tutionalized discourses on images – is not located at the

beginning, but at the end of the story, that is, you do not

start with it, you obtain it. This is the result of enlighten-

ment that is reached after examining “some of the ways

we use the word “image” in a number of institutionalized

discourses”. Notice that now we are not talking about

images (“We speak of pictures, statues, optical illusions,

maps, diagrams, dreams, hallucinations, spectacles…”,

Mitchell had said), but of a certain idea about what an

image is – which is reached by inferring this from the dif-

ferent meanings attributed to the term image in various

institutional contexts. Here, as in other passages, Mitch-

ell’s speech slips through the ambiguities of antanaclasis.

More than a list of ancestors that culminates in the

ancestor from which would have originated the graphic,

optical, perceptual, mental & verbal sub-families of the

images, this genealogy consists of a story that refers to

the avatars of a trans-historic nature that could evoke the

gure of the Count of St. Germain.

Images are not just a particular kind of sign, but some-

thing like an actor on the historical stage, a presence or

character endowed with legendary status, a history that

parallels and participates in the stories we tell ourselves…

[2, p. 9].

This genealogy could be seen as a Bildungsroman, un-

derstood in the way described by Arthur Danto when he

speaks of progress in the understanding of Art:

In the German genre of the Bildungsroman – the nov-

el of formation and self-discovery – the story is told of

the stages through which the hero or heroine progresses

on the way to self-awareness. […] And that awareness,

though the end of the story, is really “the rst day of the

rest of her life” [12, p. 5].

The narrative running through this story is basically

the following: if they were considered gods, the images

would have been seen as copies, to nally be understood

as signs. They were taken by god[desse]s, eg. in the world

where the people of Israel emerged:

When Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole

her father’s household gods [Genesis 31:19].

Now you have gone off because you longed to return to

your father’s household. But why did you steal my gods?

[Laban tells his son-in-law Jacob, the husband of his

daughter Rachel] [Genesis 31:30].

Make us gods who will go before us [the Israelites

asked Aaron] [Exodus 32:23].

You shall have no other gods besides Me [Deuterono-

my 5:7].

After, in the “era of art” (Belting), the images became

imitations that, by copying aspects of the things of the

world, re-produced the effects produced by the things

copied. Leonardo, who described the painting as “the sole

imitator of all the visible works of nature”, said:

And the painter […] achieves directly the imitation of

the things of nature. By painting, lovers are attracted to

the images of the beloved to converse with the depicted

semblance. By painting whole populations are led with

fervent vows to seek the image of the deities […]; by paint-

ing animals are deceived [13, pp. 20, 21].

Eventually, it was understood that an image is noth-

ing more than a sign. In an interview published in 1961,

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler – Picasso and Braque’s dealer

at the time they invented Cubism – emphasized that un-

derstanding Cubism and modern art in general requires us

to understand that painting is a form of writing (écriture):

A woman in a painting is not a woman; she is a group

signs that I read as “woman”. When one writes on a sheet

of paper “f-e-m-m-e”, someone who knows French and

knows how to read will read not only the word “femme”,

but he will see, so to speak, a woman. The same is true of

paint ings; there is no difference. Fundamentally, painting

has never been a mirror of the external world […]; it has

been a creation of signs, which were always read correctly

by contemporaries, after a certain apprenticeship, of course

[14, p. 63].

We will see that Mitchell reverses the sense of the his-

torical development of this story – placing not at the end,

but rather at the beginning, the understanding of imag-

es that comprise the original referent of the term (i.e. the

terms used in ancient times that we translate to “image”),

that is, not statues and paintings, but mental images. In

any case, this Bildungsroman provides us with a great and

compelling narrative of the way things must be seen. Let

us see how he constructs it.

“Image”:

The term in its strict, proper, or literal sense

Mitchell points out that it seems reasonable to assume

that the reason we call such a variety of disparate things

an image is that the term “image” is not always used in the

Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis /Obraz: Od bycia bogiem[boginią] do stania się flatus vocis 29

same way. It is suggested, therefore, that one way to un-

tangle this mess would be to start “by asking which mem-

bers of the family of images are called by the name in

a strict, proper, or literal sense” – with the implication that

the rest “involve some extended, gurative, or improper

use of the term” [2, p. 12]. Mitchell admits that it is hard

to resist the temptation to consider that the “appropriate”

sense of image corresponds to the type of things housed

in the Graphic and Optical branches of his tree – which

are […] representations we see displayed in an objective,

publicly shareable space [2, p. 13]. But this suggestion is

a Socratic ruse. We soon discover that Mitchell’s purpose

is to argue that […] contrary to common belief, images

“proper” are not stable, static, or permanent in any meta-

physical sense, […] they are not perceived in the same way

by viewers any more than are dreams images [2, pp. 13,

14]. After proceeding with the intention of undermining

the conviction that the metaphysical consistency of real

and material images is greater than that of mental images,

Mitchell reveals his viewpoint on this matter by stating:

It’s time now to acknowledge that this whole story

could be told another way, from the standpoint of a tra-

dition which sees the literal sense of the word image as

a resolutely non- or even anti-pictorial notion. This is the

tradition which begins, of course, with the account of man’s

creation “in the image and likeness” of God [2, p. 31].

This, no doubt, is a stunning statement – and no less

startling is the embedding within it of one Mitchell’s fa-

vourite mottos: “in the image and likeness of God”. First,

we see that Mitchell places the discovery of the true answer

to the question “what is an image?” not at the end of a long

historical process of cognitive progress, by virtue of which

the appropriate solution to the question of “what is an im-

age?” is nally reached, but rather ab initio, returning to

the biblical sources (sources that he seems to discover in

the masterpiece of a prominent 12

-century polymath born

in Córdoba during the twilight years of Spanish Jewry’s

golden era, the Guide of the Perplexed by Maimónides)

With an interest in paying attention to this acknowl-

edgement (“It’s time now to acknowledge…”), because it

reveals the route that this author will take in search of the

genealogical answer to the question “What is an image?”

The most crucial reference to images of the tradition

that man was made in the image and likeness of God is the

mandate: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven im-

age”. Compliance with this exhortation and the idea that

We think it is important to note that Maimonides has been de-

scribed as “an iconoclastic rebrand”. This is described by Dani Rabi-

nowitz, referring to the characterization of Maimonides offered by Josef

Stern en The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. The phrase “an

iconoclastic rebrand” appears in the review of Rabinowitz “A Unied

Reading of Maimonides’ Guide” (June 10, 2014), vid. in https://mar-

ginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/unied-reading-maimonides-guide/. In The

Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, Stern describes the Maimóni-

des as a complex thinker and characterizes it by offering an extensive

sequence of traits that ends like this: Maimonides the proto-Spinozist,

proto-Kantian, or proto-Levinasian, and, of course, Maimoniders the

iconoclast [15]. Naturally, Mitchell does not ignore the iconoclassical

propensity of Maimonides, whom he calls “Talmucic scholar” and pla-

ces […] a religious tradition obsessed with taboos against graven ima-

ges and idolatry [3, pp. 31, 32].

the literal sense of the word image refers to “a resolutely

non- or even anti-pictorial notion” t well – and this link

is consistent with a reminder formulated by Mitchell in

the rst paragraph of his Introduction to Iconology: This

is a book… about vision written as if by a blind author for

a blind reader [2, p. 1].

Image = Sign

The biblical tradition is declared iconoclastic. But it

is here, however, or precisely, where Mitchell nds the

means by which to strengthen his answer to the question of

“What is an image?” – an answer which, as already stated,

is nothing more than the idea that image = sign (a sign, we

can now add, that he understands to be “resolutely non- or

even anti-pictorial”). One of the most remarkable passag-

es of “What is an image?” is the paragraph that illustrates

the thesis of image = sign.

If there were no more minds there would be no more

images, mental or material. The world may not depend

upon consciousness, but images of the world clearly do.

And this […] it is because an image cannot be seen as

such without a paradoxical trick of consciousness, an

ability to see something as “there” and “not there” at the

same time. When a duck responds to a decoy, or when

the birds peck at the grapes in the legendary paintings of

Xeuxis, they are not seeing images: they are seeing other

ducks, or real grapes – the things themselves, and not im-

ages of the things [2, p. 17].

The argument that leads us to conclude that the ex-

istence of images is mental seems so convincing that it

should be scrutinized carefully, because it leaves a residue

that we would not want to leave abandoned to their fate.

Mitchell states that to be an image is to be a sign. With-

in the framework of this presumption, its reasoning ts

perfectly with the explanation of the notion of “sign” of-

fered by Semiotics. In any classication of the sign as an

element of a process of signicance, it always appears as

something that (being there, in præsentia) is put in place

of something else that is in absentia, or not physically

present. Peirce dened it as […] something which stands

to somebody for something in some respect or capacity

[16, CP. 2.228], a denition that can be translated as fol-

lows: something that, in someone’s eyes, is put in place of

(or stands for) something else – not replacing that other

thing as a whole, but representing some aspect of it or

replacing it in some of its capacities for the purpose of

a particular practical use

Two implications emerge from this denition. The rst

is that, stricto sensu, nothing can be said to be a sign. In

and of itself, nothing is a sign. We can take as signs things

such as words, images, sounds, smells, avours, acts or

objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning – they

become signs only when, mentally relating them to some-

thing else, we invest in them some form of meaning. One

of the central principles of semiotics is that signs are not

a class of objects. They only exist in the conscience of

We follow here the explanation of Umberto Eco [17, p. 27].

30 Dorota Maria Kurażyńska, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras

an interpreter. As Peirce states, Nothing is a sign unless it

is interpreted as a sign [16, CP 2.172]. Put another way,

Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it

as “signifying” something – referring to or standing for

something other than itself [18, p. 17]. The second im-

plication is that if there is no consciousness that, when

perceiving a certain thing, correlates it with another, then

there is also no sign.

With this in mind, it is understood that Mitchell’s ar-

gument is semiotically awless. When it is assumed that

image = sign (and, from here, it is concluded that […] an

image cannot be seen as such without a paradoxical trick

of consciousness, an ability to see something as “there”

and “not there” at the same time), we must also accept

that images do not exist the way ducks and lakes exist –

whose existence does not depend on a consciousness that,

when perceiving them, relates them to something else. In

the apocalyptic scenario conceived by Mitchell (“if … my

mind, yours, all human consciousness were annihilated”),

the ducks and the rest of the physical world “would con-

tinue to exist quite nicely” [1], but the existence of the

images would vanish.

The tatusas

Let us now place ourselves in the apocalyptic scenar-

io conceived by Mitchell. Imagine what would happen to

duck decoys arranged on the waters of a lake by a hunter

who, just before the catastrophe, was about to hunt there.

The ducks would still be there. Given that there are no

consciences endowed with the “ability to see something

as ‘there’ and ‘not there’ at the same time”, we should not

use the term “image” to refer to things that, rocked by the

undulations of the water, sway on the surface of the lake

among ducks made of esh and blood – in order to relate

to them in the same way as ducks, because “they are see-

ing other ducks”. We are abiding by Mitchell’s dictum, so

when we speak of these things we will not say that they

are images. We will instead refer to them as tatusas.

After demonstrating that tatusas (in and of itself) are

not images, Mitchell abandons them to their fate. How-

ever, we might be interested in them and ask a question.

Even if we accept that we should not refer to as images

those things that sway on the surface of the lake, that cast

a shadow on it, that generate reections in the water that

are indiscernible from those produced by real ducks, and

that such esh and blood ducks see as other ducks, does

this necessarily mean that we should not talk about them?

We think not.

Conclusion and proposal of

an alternative approach to the study of images

Although we admit that we should not refer to images

as tatusas, this does not annihilate our interest in them or

our willingness to study them seriously and objectively

for the purpose of rigorously shaping scientic knowledge

about them. Although tatusas are not used as signs, they

can still be employed in other ways – as hunting decoys,

for example.

We certainly agree that to speak of something as a sign

is to say very little about it. Anything can be said to be

a sign. Thus, to refer to something as a sign is no different

to saying that it is a thing. There is nothing (object, being,

or entity) that cannot be declared a thing (it is for this rea-

son that philosophers have coined the expression “thing-

in-itself”). So, to answer the question “what is an image?”

by answering, “it is a sign” is to devalue the notion of

image to the status of atus vocis. In the nominalist tradi-

tion of medieval philosophy, this Latin expression (which

refers to the action of expelling air through the mouth,

emitting “voices of air”) refers to the argument that the

“universals” do not exist at all – that is, they do not refer

to something (an “essence”) that has a “real” existence.

Umberto Eco has linked the expression atus vocis with la

reexio ad phantasmata, stating that Language names by

blurring the irrepressible proof of the existing individual

[19, p. 32], We use it to suggest that to settle the issue of

“What is an image?” by declaring that “images are signs”

is to hollow out the notion of the image in a way that ren-

ders it useless.

It renders it useless because, as we have seen, there is

nothing (idea, thing or phenomenon) of which cannot be

said “this is a sign”. So, considering what in Linguistics,

Logic, Semiotics, etc. is named “the law of inverse ratio”,

namely, the greater the comprehension of a term, the less-

er its extension and vice versa – we could say that to an-

swer the question “what is an image?” by answering, “it is

a sign” is to provide a rather poor explanation of what im-

ages are – of what images are de facto, as a matter of fac-

tual facts. On the other hand, if instead of talking on im-

ages as a whole (= in abstract & in vacuo), we talk about

a certain concrete image, certain image of a duck used as

a decoy, e.g., we nd that this concrete tatusa-duck can

be related with some idea of ducks in general, or with

that of a specic duck, or with that of a specic variety

of duck, or perhaps with a down feather pillows brand,

or also with the gray gyrfalcon, as it feeds mainly on

ducks, and, of course, even with Mitchell’s speech about

duck decoys. Any of these applied developments of the

Mitchellian “trick of consciousness” – which consists of

to see something as “there” and “not there” at the same

time – is a circumstantial and contingent interpretation

(an occasional reading) of the tatusa that is there – and

an interpretation in nothing different from the very di-

verse interpretations we can make of anything else in the

world: a duck of esh and blood, a lake, a stone, a frog,

the rainbow, the behavior of our neighbor, the meaning

of a poem, etc. However, it is obvious that the same as

a ball admits to be employed in applications in which

the drawing of a circle may not be used (and vice versa),

a tatusa-duck can do things that cannot be done by a pho-

to of a duck, nor by a drawing of Donald Duck, nor by

the plane drawn by an engineer, nor by a mental image

of a duck that I handle in my head while I dream (and

vice versa). But, when we place ourselves in the phan-

tasmagorical sphere of signs, this disparity of the uses

of images is eclipsed or becomes irrelevant – as well

as the factual (and not merely “symbolic”) correlation

between the physical conformation of a concrete image

Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis /Obraz: Od bycia bogiem[boginią] do stania się flatus vocis 31

and the concrete functions in which it can be employed

as a tool-artifact (or “technical-artifact”)

. The fact that

we make images as disparate as duck decoys, ducks pho-

tos, Donald Ducks, plans drawn by engineers, Artworks,

For notion of “tool-artifact”, readers can refer to Martin Hei-

degger’s classic essay The Origin of the Work of Art (Der Ursprung des

Kunstwerkes, 1935–1937, 1950 and 1960) [20]. For notion of “technical

artifact” readers can refer to Peter Kroes’s Technical Artefacts [21]. (In

general technical artifacts are material objects that have been delibera-

tely produced by humans in order to fulll a practical function. As it is

known, Aristotle explained his doctrine of the four causes – material,

formal, efcient and nal – by referring to technical artifacts such as

houses and statues [Physics II.3]). We consider important to remind re-

aders also of the notion of “affordance”, coined by James J. Gibson (one

of the most important contributors to the eld of visual perception) in

1966. An affordance, in Gibson’s sense, must be understood as an action

possibility available offered by an object (or surface) – an image, e.g.

– to a particular living being in a specic environment. The notion of

affordance is perhaps most easily understood through a simple example.

Among others examples, Gibson gives the following one: If a terrestrial

surface is nearly horizontal (instead of slanted), nearly at (instead of

convex or concave), and sufciently extended (relative to the size of

the animal) and if its substance is rigid (relative to the weight of the

animal), then the surface affords support [22, p. 127]. We think that

the idea of affordance, borrowed from perceptual psychology, can be

helpfully applied to the domain of images understood as tool-artifacts

– i.e. as utensils intended to be handled (even manipulated) in different

ways, and not only as objects for sight, either being readed, or being

aesthetically contemplated.

etc. evidence that images are – and should be seen as

– tool-artifacts which are intentionally produced to be

employment in a disparate diversity of uses – in a dispa-

rate diversity of uses that a good theory of images should

not neglect.

So, we think that to settle the issue of “What is an im-

age?” by declaring that “images are signs” is to hollow

out the notion of the image in a way that reduces it to the

condition of an empty atus vocis.

However, to claim that something is a thing that, with-

out being a duck, has the virtue of being seen as a duck by

other ducks, reminds us of a fact that is certainly remark-

able and worthy of being taken into consideration. In fact,

if we have been making duck decoys for centuries (and

other things like this), because of this and for this. We

assume that this is one of the reasons why we, and also

Mitchell, talk about duck decoys and other tatusas – in

addition to, of course, talking about how we make images

work as signs.

In his Picture Theory, after stating, Although we have

thousands of words about pictures, we do not yet have a sa-

tisfactory theory of them, Mitchell suggests: Perhaps the

problem is not just with pictures, but with theory [5, p. 9].

We also agree with this suggestion.

Translated by

Michelle Symonds

References /Bibliografia

[1] Mitchell W.J.T., What is an Image?, „New Literary History” 1984,

Vol. 15, No. 3, 503–537.

[2] Mitchell W.J.T., Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, University of

Chicago Press, Chicago 1986.

[3] Bell J., What is Painting? Representation and Modern Art, Thames

& Hudson, London 1999.

[4] Mitchell W.J.T., What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of

Images, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2005.

[5] Mitchell W.J.T., Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Rep-

resentation, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.

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Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2011.

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genes en la era de la cultura visual, Servei de Publicacions de la

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona 2005.

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Princeton University Press, Princeton 2011.

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University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania 2011.

[10] Belting H., Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image before

the Era of Art, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.

[11] Wittgenstein L., Philosophical Investigations, G.E.M. Anscombe,

R. Rhees (eds.), Blackwell, Oxford 1958.

[12] Danto A.C., After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of

History, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1997.

[13] Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, A.P. McMahon (ed. &

transl.), Princeton University Press, Princeton 1956.

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Kahnweiler D.-H., Crémieux F., My Galleries and Painters, Thames

and Hudson, London 1961.

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University Press, Cambridge 2013.

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Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1958, https://colorysemiotica.

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tion, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York 2000.

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Basic Writings, HarperCollins, New York 2008, 139.

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Jersey 1979, 127.

Abstract

The subject of this work is the images, or more accurately said, the state of our knowledge about the set consisting of artifacts such as the Venus de

Milo, the Gioconda, the duck decoys (or “fake birds”) used to hunt ducks, toys such as a doll or a paper airplane and drawings such as the planes

drawn up by engineers or architects. Our purpose is to discuss the understanding of images currently considered canonical – i.e., the theory that

states that images are a modality of signs. We will do this by analyzing “The Family of images” a proposal developed by W.J.T. Mitchell in a famous

essay entitled “What is an image?”. After introducing readers to the subject and outlining a diagnosis about the current status quæstionis of theory of

32 Dorota Maria Kurażyńska, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras

images, we will study Mitchell’s proposal and criticize the thesis (assumed and brilliantly presented by this author) that states that images are nothing

more than a more or less sui generis modality of signs. Finally, in the section dedicated to the conclusions, we will outline a proposal of an alternative

approach to the study of the images that, instead of seeing them as signs, considers them as tool-artifacts.

Key words: W.J.T. Mitchell, image, sign, artifacts, tools

Streszczenie

Tematem artykułu są obrazy, a ściślej mówiąc, stan naszej wiedzy o zbiorze artefaktów, takich jak Wenus z Milo, Gioconda, bałwanki kaczek

( alternatywnie „Fake birds” lub „Bird decoys”) używane w myślistwie, zabawki, takie jak lalka lub papierowy samolot oraz rysunki zrobione przez

inżyniera czy architekta. Naszym celem jest omówienie rozumienia obrazów, uważanych obecnie za kanoniczne, czyli de facto przedstawienie

teorii stanowiącej, że obrazy są modalnością znaków. W tym celu zamierzamy przeanalizować koncepcję „Rodziny obrazów” opracowaną przez

W.J.T. Mitchella w jego słynnym eseju zatytułowanym „Czym jest obraz?”. Po zapoznaniu czytelników z tym tematem i przedstawieniu próby dia-

gnozy przyczyn dyskomfortu wywoływanego przez status quaestionis na podstawie teorii obrazów chcemy przyjrzeć się propozycji rozumienia tej

kwestii przez Mitchella i krytycznie zanalizować przyjętą przez niego tezę, która głosi, że obrazy nie są niczym więcej niż modalnością znaków

sui generis. Na koniec w części poświęconej wnioskom zaprezentujemy swoją propozycję alternatywnego podejścia do badania obrazów, które to

stanowisko każe traktować je jako artefakt-narzędzie, nie zaś postrzegać jako znaki.

Słowa kluczowe: W.J.T. Mitchell, obraz, znak, artefakt, narzędzie

Image: From Being a God[dess] to Become a Flatus vocis – Mitchell’s “Family of Images” (part 1)

Dorota Maria Kurażyńska, Juan J. Cabrera-Contreras

doi:10.37190/arc190304

Abstract