ALLOA E., Could Perspective Ever Be a Symbolic Form

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Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, Volume 2, Issue 1, pp. 5172. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2015DOI: 10.2752/205393215X14259900061634

COULD PERSPECTIVE EVERBE A SYMBOLIC FORM?REVISITING PANOFSKY WITH CASSIRER

Emmanuel AlloaUniversity of St Gallen/NCCR eikones

ABSTRACT Erwin Panofskys essay Perspective as Symbolic Form from 1924

is among the most widely commented essays in twentieth-century aesthetics and

was discussed with regard to art theory, Renaissance painting, Western codes of

depiction, history of optical devices, psychology of perception, or even ophthalmology.

Strangely enough, however, almost nothing has been written about the philosophical

claim implicit in the title, i.e. that perspective is a symbolic form among others.

The article situates the essay within the intellectual constellation at Aby Warburgs

Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in Hamburg, and analyzes the role of Ernst

Cassirers philosophy of symbolic forms for the members of the Warburg circle. Does

perspective meet the requirements for becoming a further symbolic form, beyondthose outlined by Cassirer? The article argues that, ultimately, perspective cannot

possibly be a symbolic form; not because it does not meet Cassirers philosophical

requirements, but rather, because that would uproot Cassirers overall project. While

revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer unearths the wide-raging philosophical implication

of the essay, revisiting Cassirer with Panofsky means to highlight the fundamentally

perspectival nature of all symbolic forms.

Keywords: Panofsky, Cassirer, Warburg, perspective, symbolic form

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the special intellectual momentum around the WarburgKulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothekin the 1920s and the trajectories of its protago-nists (Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, etc.) have enjoyed renewed attention. Newstudies in cultural history give an ever clearer picture of the questions examinedthere; passages between the individual trajectories of thought become increas-ingly apparent. For Ernst Cassirer, for example, it is evident that his involvement


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with artistic dimensions as pursued by his art historian colleagues Warburg andPanofsky played a more central role than had previously been assumed. Althoughthese topics are not given their own volume in Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,a letter from Cassirer proves that such a volume was planned, at least for a time,1and in the scholarship a consensus has gradually formed to point out that artshould be conceived as a fourth symbolic form alongside myth, language, andscience.2

Meanwhile, strikingly little space in these historical-systematic reconstruc-tions is granted to a text whose title at rst glance seems wholly aligned with thisundertaking: Erwin Panofskys lecture Perspective as Symbolic Form,3deliv-ered in the circle of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothekin 1924, where the arthistorian discusses the historical premises for the emergence of linear perspective

in the Renaissance and asks up to what point perspectival representation is amore adequate account of natural perception at all.Tere is hardly an aspect of this text that, in the ninety years of its reception

history, has not been discussed and debated from all sides and every disciplinaryangle, including the history of mathematics, art studies, perceptual psychology,and the history of optics. Under all these aspects, one thesis has received littleattention (since, generally speaking, it has not even been posed as a thesis): thetitle proposition, Perspective as Symbolic Form.

A curious acquiescence can be observed in the scholarship, as though it

had been settled that Panofskys essay is clearly notto be read as a contributionto Cassirers philosophy of symbolization. Te majority of interpretations as-sume that in his essay, Panofsky was seeking to denounce central perspective asa conventionalistic construction and rehabilitate another, spheroidal/curvedperspective that he considered closer to natural seeing, according to Herrmannvon Helmholtzs discoveries in the eld of optics (Figure 1).

Indeed, Panofskys supposed defense of the curved character of naturalperception drew harsh criticism from approaches oriented towards the naturalsciences (for example Pirenne, Gibson, and en Doesschate) or the psychology

of art (Gombrich and others). By contrast, the essays having prompted only littlediscussion in the eld of philosophy may be attributed to two factors: either it isunderstood as a work of historiography, which therefore can only play a support-ing role in the development of a general theory of symbols; or else the (alleged)thesis of an originary, natural visual space suggests the nostalgic assumption of apre-Kantian, unmediated sensory datum, which peoplewith exceptions suchas Nelson Goodmanprefer not to speak about out of good taste. Te fact is,however, that the thesis implied in the title, namely, that perspective should beconstrued as a symbolic form, until now has not been brought up for debate.

In the following, the objective will be to test this very thesis against thebackdrop of Cassirers philosophy of symbols. o give an early summary of theoutcome here: Perspective in fact cannot be seamlessly integrated into a philosophy


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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

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of symbolic forms; not because it does not meet Cassirers philosophical requirements,

but rather, because it implicitly contains its own philosophical requirements thatcannot be absorbed into the concept of symbolic form.

GOETHES SOAP OR, CAN PANOFSKY HAVEUNDERSTOOD CASSIRER?

In his essay Te Pictorial urn, W.J.. Mitchell praised Erwin Panofskysconference on Perspective as a Symbolic Form as being one of the most decisivetexts for the study of visual culture which, while drawing on Ernst Cassirers

neo-Kantian categories, centered around the picture, understood as the con-crete symbol of a complex cultural eld.4Berthold Hub has argued that thisseminal essay by Mitchell is only conrming a widespread misinterpretationthat mistakes symbol and symbolization: for Cassirer, there are no artifacts thatstand for concrete symbols of a complex cultural eld. Rather, the activityof culture as such is nothing but the permanent act of symbolizing the world. 5

While Panofskys iconology is thus interested in an interpretation of images assymbols, Cassirers philosophy is an investigation of how the act of interpretationis already and always an act of symbolization.

But if that were the case, when did the misunderstanding come up? BertholdHub seems to consider that it was mainly a problem of the one-sided recep-tion of Panofsky within art history, which had little knowledge of Cassirers

Figure 1 Pincushion (Curved) perspective. In Herrmann von Helmholtz, reatise onPhysiological Optics 1910. Ed. J.P.C. Southall. Rochester: Optical Society of America,1925.


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epistemological background, while there are good reasons to assert, Hub says,that Panofsky himself justiably transferred the notion of symbolic form toperspective.

So what are we to understand by the notion of symbolic form? Accordingto Cassirer, the symbolic form is what allows one to explain how the worldbecomes intelligible to us. What there is to understand is how a perception asa sensory experience contains at the same time a certain non-intuitive mean-ing, which it immediately and concretely represents.6Rather than simply refer-ring to what it stands for, the symbol gives an intuitive-sensible presence to themeaningCassirer also speaks of symbolic pregnancewhich highlights thatthe symbolic form is more to be understood as a process (forming) than as agiven form. As Cassirer has it in his canonical (and Goethe-inspired) denition,

the symbolic form is a kind of mental energy, which allows a mental contentof meaning (geistiger Bedeutungsgehalt) to be connected to a concrete, sensorysign (konkretes sinnliches Zeichen) and made to adhere internally to it.7

Many posthumous publications by Cassirer allow us to get a good senseof what he exactly meant by this energy of symbolic form and of symbolicpregnance. It goes without saying that Panofsky was not in this position, andthat his knowledge of Cassirers philosophy of symbolic form, which was still inthe making, had to remain unavoidably supercial. Yet, he seemed nonethelessto have made the choice to make use of the notion of symbolic form, although

in a very unconventional way. In recent years, there has been some discussionabout whether Panofskys notion of symbolic form is compatible at all withCassirers philosophy.8In order for this question to be answered seriously, how-ever, we would need to know what Panofsky himself meant by symbolic formand what his general understanding of Cassirer had been.

Te difficulties in answering this question are, at least in part, also Panofskysown fault. Te extent to which the lecture, which appeared with many addi-tional footnotes in 1927 alongside Cassirers lecture Language and Myth inthe Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliotheks annual publication, is to be thought of

simply as an academic homage to his colleague, or whether Panofsky in factenvisioned a continuation of Cassirers program, is not easy to determine. Inthe text, statements about thisdespite repeated referencesare in any caseextremely sparse. Panofsky announces that with his contribution, he wants toextend Ernst Cassirers felicitous term to the history of art. But in the furthercourse of the text, little information is provided as to how he himself understandsthis term. Strictly speaking, he lets the matter rest by transcribing Cassirersearly denition, that through symbolic forms, spiritual meaning is attached toa concrete, material sign and intrinsically given to this sign.9

Te fact that, beyond providing this quotation, Panofsky did not feelthe need to comment further on this hardly self-evident new term has oftenprompted the allegation that he was not particularly interested in its systematic


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implications. In his defense it must be added that Cassirer only elaborated theconcept of the symbolic form in the real sense in Volume 3 of Philosophy ofSymbolic Forms, which was not published until 1929,10so Panofsky could verywell not have known it for his lecture given in 1924. On the other hand, how-ever, one must certainly assume that Panofsky was highly informed about theprogress of Cassirers project, and that the two often talked about it in the timebefore the lecture. What Panofsky took from it for himself is difficult to ascer-tain. In Hans Blumbergs memorable phrasing, Cassirer may well have providedthe theory which explains the Library.11 Te question remains: what did theLibraryand in this case one of its key gures, Panofskydo with this theory?

A stubborn preconception maintains that Panofsky specically (even more thanWarburg) failed to understand Cassirers attempts to found a new approach to

culture through symbolic forms.In her monograph on Cassirer, Birgit Recki recalls an anecdote that wastold by Ernst Gombrich: sometime in the 1920s (whether before or after theperspective lecture is not known), Panofsky made a gift to the philosopher of abar of soap, and for the occasion composed the following light verse:

Deines Geistes Reifeat mir arg Beschmutztem WohlNimm, drum, diese Goetheseifeteils als Form, teils als Symbol.12

Your spirits mellow scopeDoes me, the sullied one, so well.ake thus this bar of Goethe soapPart as form and part as symbol.

According to the story, the joke gave Cassirer only moderate enjoyment. ForRecki, this should be taken as an indication that Cassirer felt misunderstood.Part as form and part as symbolthis line could only be written by someonewho has not understood that in this case, it is not about the usual concept of

form-or-symbol, not about crosses, stars, or anchor medals.13

THE PARADIGM OF SPATIALITY FOR A HISTORY OFPERCEPTION

Te perspective essay, however, does nothing to incur the suspicion of such a mis-understanding. In analogy to Cassirers progressive structural model, Panofskyanalyzes how space is no longer to be dened a priori, but rather is represented

differently in each historical milieu of symbolization. For Antiquity, he identiesa relational perspective space that is different from the homogenous, uniedspace of the Renaissance; the latter, however, does not have ahistorical value, but


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is rather replaced by baroque high space. But it would be incorrect to simplyattribute such conceptions of space to differences in historical time. If one takesPanofsky at his word, at issue are rather modes of symbolization that are indeedin part chronologically organized, but which also partially overlap and competewith one another. Tus, the baroque view of space does not replace the system-atic space of the modern period; instead, a distinction must be made here morestrongly than in the Renaissance between scientic and artistic symbolization.

It is easy to imagine what theoretical tensions resulted from this. On the onehand, for Panofsky, there is a coinciding of concept and representation, whichmaterializes in a particular epochs understanding of the world and its associatedvalues. Tus, for example, the anisotropic concept of space in Antiquity corre-sponds to a qualitative pictorial space that can be observed in antique murals,

while the painting of the Renaissance devised a systematic space that corre-sponds to the mathematical discovery of continuous and innite space. But ifit is certain that in the case of space there is not just (as Kant still asserted) asingle form, it is not certain how many different forms of space there can be.Teir number does not seem bounded at the top. If Panofsky most often seemsto think of the symbolic form as an epochal idea of value, which aligns it witha Foucaultian epistm, he also seems regularly to break out of this historicaltemplate, for instance, in order to admit the singularities of an artists identity.

Along with the systematic space of the Renaissance and the high space of the

baroque, there are also the oblique space of Altdorfer and the near space ofRembrandt.With such outright manipulations of the concept of symbolic form, Panofsky

offers his critics ample fodder. Te expansion of symbolic form to include indi-vidual aesthetic contours, in which Panofsky himself indicates a shift from thefactor of value to the factor of style, seems to conrm the interpretation thatPanofskys approach is concerned not with the philosophy of culture, but simplywith an expanded history of style.14An examination of the perspectival repre-sentation of space would then have at best an exemplary character; it would by

no means come close to the systematics of a cultural theory of symbolic forms.If perspective is an aspect of style that can be described in the Casa dei Vettii andthe works of Masaccio, Saenredam, and Pablo Picasso, then this would speakin favor of setting the whole project aside as purely the province of art history(Figure 2). In that case, a history of perspective as a technique of representationwould be conceivable, just as a history of the dactyl, a history of the motet,or a history of the different representations of Hercules at the Crossroads,could also be written (the latter was actually written by Panofsky himself).15Ultimately then, perspective as symbolic form would merely be a contribution

to the history of style, made by Winckelmann into the central task of art history.In the history of disciplines, this occasionally formulated assessment seems

rather strange, since Panofsky saw it as his duty to expand art history to include


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the history of culture, and to liberate it from what he considered the formalisticstraitjacket of the Munich history of style (Wlfflin, Riegl, etc.). If one callsinto evidence his analytical method for the interpretation of art works, whichlater was to become canonical in art historical analysis, the question of style ispredominantly addressed on the level of what Panofsky calls the iconographiclevel. Te further levelthe so-called iconological levelwhich, followingPanofsky, is only where the real understanding of the picture begins, cannot beattained by an immanent reading of the picture; the analysis needs to reach be-yond the art work, in order to secure its hidden and profound meaning. While,

iconographically speaking, a formal analysis might be helpful, the true iconolog-ical insight comes from beyond: the meaning of the picture must lie outside ofthe picture.16

Art works are thus transpositions of a certain source texta biblical epi-sode, a legend, an allegorybut in case there is no strictly identiable pre-textpreceding the realization of the art work, it remains nonetheless a reectionof something that lies beyond it: in Panofskys conceptions, art works are thesymptoms of a certain period, of an artists mentality or of the spirit of a time.In this respect, a painting is the expression of a peculiar way of seeing. Tis is

where Panofsky comes quite close to Cassirer: with Cassirer, Panofsky sharesthe conviction that there is a symmetrical mirroring between historical formsof Anschauung and their modes of representation. Kants problem of how to

Figure 2 Pieter Saenredam, Nave and West Window of the Mariakerk, Utrecht, 1638, Oilon panel, 62.5 93.5 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.


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mediate between sensibility and concept is thereby shifted to a rearticulationthat attempts to conceive the relationship of sensibility and meaning. Te con-cept, with the mode of knowledge specic to it, is hereby only one among manyvariants of meaning.

INTEGRAL OF EXPERIENCE: CASSIRERSHISTORICIZATION OF THEA PRIORI

Tis expansion of a Kantian philosophy of knowledge into a general philosophyof culture, which must now take into account other human systems of meaningsuch as language, myth, and art, is expressed most memorably in the introduc-tion to the rst volume of 1923:

Along with the pure function of cognition we must seek to understand thefunction of linguistic thinking, the function of mythical and religious think-ing, and the function of artistic perception [Anschauung], in such a way as todisclose how in all of them there is attained an entirely determinate formation,not exactly of the world, but rather making for the world, for an objective,meaningful context and an objective unity that can be apprehended as such[objektiven Anschauungsganzen]. Tus the critique of reason becomes the cri-tique of culture.17

Between the lines of this program can also be read the gradual break with neo-Kantianism. In the effort to defend Kant against all manner of misreadings thatwere rampant in the nineteenth century, for instance, those which sought tolocate the pure forms of Anschauungphysiologically, the Marburg school andespecially Cassirers teacher Hermann Cohen pointed out that Kants conditionof possibility of experience was to be thought of as purely logical. However,this defense of Kantian philosophy was accompanied by a critique of Kant:the philosopher did not carry out his own program consistently, since a secondsource of knowledge (pure Anschauung) is treated as equal or even superior to

the concept:

Kant urges distinguishing pureAnschauungfrom pure thought. Not that theyshould remain separated, but rather in order that they connect and are suitedto connection. But through this plan of his methodical terminology, to saynothing ofAnschauung, internal damage is done to thought. AnAnschauungthus precedes thought.It, too, is pure, thus it is related to thought. But thoughtdoes have its beginning in something outside itself. Here lies the weakness inKants foundation. Here lies the basis for the deterioration that soon befell theschool.18

ranscendental philosophy can only be a prioriif it has its bases in itself, andthe pure condition of possibility can therefore only be logical, since only in


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thought is nothing external mixed in. If Hermann Cohen in fact overcomes thetwo great dualisms of Kantian philosophy (rst, the two-worlds ontology, bynally eliminating the thing in itself, and second, the dualism of Anschauungand concept, by identifyingAnschauungas a posteriori), through this subjectivistabout-face, transcendental philosophy thus slips into the dangerous waters ofidealism, as has often been remarked. With TePhilosophy of Symbolic Forms,Ernst Cassirer takes a distinctly different route, without setting aside Kantsquestion as to the conditions of human experience of the world. o Cassirer,there are indeed unied forms ofAnschauungthat are independent of any objectof experience. While Kant rightly stressed that these forms ofAnschauungalwaysremain identical with themselves, according to Cassirer he disregarded that theforms ofAnschauungare modulated in a particular way according to the realm

of meaning, that they take on particular tones and colors. One is remindedof Leibniz, for whom the human power of conception does not amount to amechanical and merely passive mirrorthus the popular metaphor in the medi-eval theory of the species in mediobut rather a living, itself active mirror. Now,the conditions of the conception of an object are by no means exhausted by itsspatio-temporal situatedness or by the categorical determination of quality andquantity. Rather, the category of modality must be revisited in order to be ableto reconstruct the process of the genesis of meaning.19

In this context, Cassirer refers to the example of lines (Figure 3): when we

view a line, we can conceive of it under various aspects without changing any-thing in its being. Accordingly, we can conceive of the line rst simply in itsexpressive function; second, we can recognize it as the concretization of a math-ematical sine curve; third, we may interpret it as a mythic symbol; and fourth,from a purely aesthetic standpoint, we could see it as an artistic ornament.20Consequently, the line cannot be viewed other than in its respective mode ofviewing, alternately in the symbol system of language, science, religion, or art,whereby the classic cloverleaf of symbolic forms is also run through. Te ques-tion of the thing in itself then in fact becomes invalid, but not because itas

for Cohenis a mere construction of thought, but rather because it always canonly become a carrier of meaning in one of the particular modes of sensiblemanifestation. As early as 1925, thus several years before the disputation withHeidegger in Davos, Cassirer summarized the philosophical line of attack ofhis approach in a small study: Te question as to what reality is apart fromthese forms [of visibility and the making visible], and what are its independentattributes, becomes irrelevant here.21

Visibility and the making visible (Sichtbarkeit und Sichtbarmachung)anecho of Kants doublet of receptivity and spontaneity, which still could be related

toAnschauungand thoughtare abandoned in favor of a constant rearticulationin the sensible. In every seemingly purely receptive empirical experience a men-tal activity already intervenes, which Cassirer also terms symbolic pregnance:


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By symbolic pregnance we mean the way in which a perception as a sensoryexperience contains at the same time a certain non-intuitive meaning [einennicht-anschaulichen Sinn] that it immediately and concretely represents.22

Only through such a symbolic forming of the sensible can an experience takeplace, as Cassirer writes with Kant: Trough the reciprocal involvement ofthese representative functions consciousness acquires the power to spell out phe-nomena,toread them as experiences.23

A quick reading could give the impression that this is simply a conrmationof Kants thesis that intuition without concept is blind. But in the insistenceupon the activity of representation, the framework of the concept of reasonhas been left far behind and the eld of spontaneity has been expanded to allcultural activities of symbolization. Kants question, What is the human? canonly be answered by regarding the human in the mirror of his creative involve-ment with the world, and thus in the mirror of his culture, as Cassirer repeatedlystresses in the Essay on Man: as the animal symbolicum,the nature of the humanlies nowhere else than in the symbolic relationships that he creates. In this sense,

Jrgen Habermas is perfectly right when he characterizes Cassirers speculativeendeavor as a semiotic reforming of transcendental philosophy.24

THE MINIMALIST VARIANT: IS PERSPECTIVE MERELY AFACTOR OF STYLE?

If one adheres to such a denition of the philosophy of culture, then Panofskysproject at rst glance not only seems congruent to it; even more, it appears to beits methodical spelling out. In his early essay Substance and Function from 1910,

Cassirer performed the systematic groundwork for understanding the epochalchange from the Medieval to the Modern period as a reshaping of the conceptof space, which was materialized in each periods mathematical theorization. Te

Figure 3 A line (E. Alloa).


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transition from an aggregate space to a systematic space, as he then elaborated inIndividual and Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, is based on a homogenizationand thus a functionalization of space:

Space had to be stripped of its objectivity, of its substantial nature, and hadto be discovered as a free, ideal complex of lines In principle, the sameconstructions must be possible from all points in space. Each point must beconceivable as the point of departure and the objective for every possible geo-metrical operation.25

Te scientic world picture of the Modern period, its mathematics, geometry,and cosmology, is already pregured in the theory of perspective, as (accordingto Cassirer) Erwin Panofsky showed in his study of 1924.26Tis passage suggeststhat Cassirer interpreted Panofskys work as a type of prehistory of the scienticworld picture of the Modern period. Te art historian also fundamentally car-ried out Cassirers program in a totally different way by seeking to decipherthe epochal forms of Anschauung in their visible and material manifestations.(Tis has been Samuel Edgertons inuential interpretation: Te real thrust of[Panofskys] was not to prove that the ancients believed the visual world wascurved or that Renaissance perspective was a mere artistic convention, but thateach historical period had its own special perspective,a particular symbolic formreecting a particular Weltanschauung27). As such, it could be argued that in

linear-perspectival painting, an epoch itself holds up a mirror to its own world-view; the individual perspectival painting must be considered one of these expo-nents, in which according to Cassirer the objectivity of this world-view and itsfully self-contained character is expressed.28Perspective is therefore much morethan a factor of style, as Panofsky formulates rather uncertainly at one point.29Tis uncertainty may explain why Panofsky critics such as Pirenne considered itlegitimate to place perspective on a level with alexandrines and thereby dismissthem both as irrelevant to epistemology.30All this indicates that Panofsky cannothave his sights set on a history of style in the classical sense. Central perspective

instead presented an objectivization of the Modern eras approach to the world.In it, the coinciding ofAnschauungand Darstellung, of presence and representa-tion can be observed that Cassirer claimed for his philosophy of symbolic forms.

However, such a surreptitiously Hegelian image of history, which John M.Krois pointed out early on,31 is not borne out by the historical reality. Tus,the discovery of linear perspective and the associated idea of projection size didnot yet entirely supplant Euclids optics and its concept of angular size. (Wellinto the late seventeenth century, the French Acadmie Royale de peinture et desculpture had lively debates about which conception of optics to favor). Even

more striking are the discrepancies on an artistic level. While as author of hisscientic treatise De prospectiva pingendi, Piero della Francesca came forward asthe spokesperson of a new rigorously mathematic mode of representation, in his


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paintings, he wisely refrained from applying linear perspective consistently. EvenMasaccios famous Holy rinityat Santa Maria Novella, which is considered theepitome of central perspective painting and of which Vasari wrote that nallythe painter had broken through the wall,32only partly follows the rules of centralperspective. Te event of the Crucixion in fact presents the historiain the senseof the pictorial subject to which Masaccios frescostrictly according to Albertisdenitionis open (Figure 4).

At the same time, as a New estament event, the Holy rinityopens up thehistoriaas the space of the new history of humanity; in a manner of speaking, itoffers an eschatological view for the observer, whose eye is led along the paneledbarrel vault and beyond, behind the picture.

But if such depiction of the scene at Golgotha opens up an eschatological

perspective, the exact place of God the Father in this perspectival historiacan-not be precisely determined. If he were in fact standing on the red sarcophagusmounted on the rear chapel wall, above which his feet can be seen, then accord-ing to strict perspectival principles, his head would have to be raised backward.But if he were indeed bending forward, his head would conversely have to ap-pear lower and perspectivally more foreshortened. As Panofsky notes, it cannotbe stated that the perspective in this work is exactly and uniformly construct-ed.33 It almost seems as if the painterentirely in opposition to Panofskysconcluding observation that through perspective, the Divine becomes a mere

subject matter for human consciousness34

cleared out zones of resistance inhis own perspectival construction, almost as if it were necessary to stress thatthe Divine does not conform to the new principles. Without reverting to sucha theory of deus absconditus, in any case it is possible to speak with Louis Marinof an opacity of representation, which balks at a logic of transparency andexposes the logic specic to the material.35Tus, the aperspectival God can beplaced in a long history of the critique of central perspective, in which Holbeinsanamorphoses or Braques montages of incompossible views of violins are a fewexemplary stopping points.36

THE MAXIMALIST VARIANT; OR, PERSPECTIVE IN PLURAL

Te persuasive power of Panofskys essay thus stands and falls with the questionof how narrow or wide the concept of perspective is to be understood. Teanswering of this question is all the more difficult since the manner in which theterm is used in the course of the text is not consistent. In a footnote, Panofskywrites that he understands perspective as

the capacity to represent a number of objects together with a part of thespace around them in such a way that the conception of the material picturesupport is completely supplanted by the conception of a transparent plane


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Figure 4 Masaccio, Te Holy rinity, c. 1426, fresco,6.67 3.17 m, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

through which we believe we are looking into an imaginary space. Tis spacecomprises the entirety of the objects in apparent recession into depth, and is notbounded by the edges of the picture, but merely cut off.37

Such a conception of the image as a cut through the visual pyramid thus impliesthat by perspective, Panofsky simply means the unied, geometric, linear or

central perspective. But in other places, Panofsky virtually insists that the ques-tion is not only whether particular cultural epochs have perspective, but alsowhich perspective they have,38whereby the implication is that there is more


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than just one. Tis crucial point in the essay perhaps contains the most impor-tant evidence for our question. It is here that we may start addressing the issueof whether and, if yes, how it is thatperspective could ever be a symbolicform.

While Panofsky, on the one hand, expounds the tremendous culturalachievement of central perspective, on the other, he emphasizes that this prin-ciple was not simply available in nature, but rather already itself represents aculturalinvention through which the world can be recongured. It is thereforeas incorrect to interpret within Perspective as Symbolic Formthe naturalizationof a historically arising process of symbolization, as it would be conversely toread the essay as a diatribe against perspective as mere societal convention, ashas occasionally transpired in the American reception. Although the discussionabout the so-called curved perspective at points could suggest that his goal is

to pit a perspective of natural perception against a merely conventional repre-sentational ordering, Panofsky makes clear at the end that central perspective isindeed an ordering, but an ordering of the visual phenomenon.39Whether theperspective is parallel, elliptical, curved, or linear: it is not an abstract datum,but rather results from the dynamic forming of the material ofAnschauungitself.In Cassirers expression, perspective can be called the integral of experience.40Tus, to be sure, the domain of the mere history of art and optics has been leftfar behind, and the concept of perspective has been understood no longer as asymbolicform, but as an overallprinciple of formationofAnschauung. So Cassirer

speaks, for example, of perspective as an optical inversion or change in attitude,when we place the experience of perception into a gure/ground relationship.41But are we not thereby implementing a gurative conception of perspective?Have we not interpreted the term, which Panofsky in his terminological historyderives from the optics of antiquity, from the retrospective standpoint of philo-sophical perspectivism, for which Leibniz or Nietzsche were the driving forces?

In his book Te Poetics of Perspective, James Elkinspersuasively demonstratesthat such an expanded concept of perspective is by no means subordinate toPanofskys narrower denition of perspective as a technical guide for representa-

tion, but rather, that, in a manner of speaking, the latter became the conditionof possibility for the former.42Only when one assumes that any approach to theworld is always carried out through its particular perspective can it be appreci-ated what an inventive accomplishment is contained in the specic developmentof a central-perspectival technique of representation. However, along with theso-called central perspective, there are numerous other perspectival formationsthat Elkins discusses. Axonometric (so-called parallel) perspectives are mani-fold (they can be isometric, diametric of trimetric) and they are not only relevantfor the immense eld of geometric projections (mathematical objects, virtual

objects, 3D visualizations, etc.), but also for understanding certain non-Westernforms of painting (in traditional Chinese and Japanese paintings, cityscapes areoften represented according to a combination of parallel projection and a view


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Figure 5 Parallel Perspective. Qing Ming Shang He u (Along the River during QingMing Festival). Detail from the scroll painting, c. 10451145. China Online Museum.

from above; Figure 5). Most importantly, the issue of perspective forces to shiftthe problem of representation from a mere representation of a given thing, sceneor event towards representation as performativity: perspectivity is not just a mat-ter of different viewpoints on a given object, but also about bringing about what

it refers to. It is compelling that even the so-called impossible objects (impos-sible, because self-contradictory) are still under the condition of perspectivalrepresentation (Figure 6). In this sense, perspectivity is not just another name

Figure 6 Impossible objects.


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for a given (cultural, historical or subjective) standpoint: it hints at the generalcondition of what it means for something to become visible and to be seen at all.

CONCLUSION: PERSPECTIVE AS MEDIALITYAs it were, the question posed at the beginning may now be answered: perspec-tive is nota symbolic form in Cassirers sense, and this is so for tworeasons.

First, perspective is not a symbolic form becauseunderstood as central per-spectiveit does not meet the requirements of Cassirers symbolic form and doesnot appear in all cultures and at all times (it would therefore be located some-where between art, technology, and science). Second,understood as perspectivityin general, it overshoots Cassirers heuristically structured classication from the

outset. With a felicitous analogy suggested by Hubert Damisch, perspective canbe compared with what linguists call a root paradigm, which ever only exists inits already ected forms, but is empirically never present in a pure state.43

Te perspective analyzed by Panofsky therefore does not t into Cassirersmold for two reasons: it is either lessor morethan a symbolic form. More, becausefundamental perspectivity characterizes any symbolic approach to the worldor any approach to the world at all. In place of perspective, Panofsky also speaksin other contexts simply of relativity.Te systematically larger-scale essay TeHistory of Art as a Humanistic Discipline discusses a general cultural theory of

relativity that transcends physics.44

Trough this relativization of the conditionof possibility, innity also acquires a new meaning: perspective, which is nite,bounded, and always partial, is at once a precondition for and a restriction ofthe human relationship to the world. Perspective is thereby that medium thatenables access to reality, inasmuch as it, in Cassirers words, allows a new sideof reality to emerge, but also always already blocks and obstructs this access.Perspective as a principle of formation and deformation in one.

Something very similar was formulated by Cassireralbeit not with regardto perspectivein the introduction to the third volume of Philosophy of Symbolic

Forms:Te primal stratum of reality can only be glimpsed as through a for-eign medium, and

whence it follows that in these forms reality is cloaked as well as revealed. Tesame basic functions which give the world of the spirit its determinacy, its im-print, its character, appear on the other side to be so many refractions whichan intrinsically unitary and unique being undergoes as soon as it is perceivedand assimilated by a subject. Seen from this standpoint, the philosophy ofsymbolic forms is nothing other than an attempt to assign to each of them,as it were, its own specic and peculiar index of refraction. Te Philosophy

of Symbolic Forms aspires to know the special nature of the various refract-ing media, to understand each one according to its nature and the laws of itsstructure.45


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It is regrettable that the refracting mediumpar excellenceperspectivewas notincluded in Ernst Cassirers philosophy of culture.

Emmanuel Alloa (Ph.D. Sorbonne/Freie Universitt Berlin) is Assistant Professor in

Philosophy at the University St Gallen (Switzerland) and Senior Research Fellow at theNCCR iconic criticism at Basel. His research elds cover phenomenology, Frenchphilosophy, visual studies, aesthetics, and political philosophy. His publications includeDas durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen Phnomenologie (2011), Erscheinungund Ereignis. Zur Zeitlichkeit des Bildes (ed.) (2013) and Penser limage II: Anthropologiesdu visuel (ed.) (2015). [email protected]

Notes

1. Letter of 13 May 1942 to Paul Schilpp. As quoted in J.M. Krois and D.P. Verene,Introduction. Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,Vol. 4: Te Metaphysicsof Symbolic Forms(New Haven, C: Yale University Press, 1996), xxiii.

2. See P.F. Bundgard, Te Grammar of Aesthetic Intuition: On Ernst CassirersConcept of Symbolic Form in the Visual Arts. Synthese, 179(1) (2011): 4357;M. Van Vliet (ed.), Ernst Cassirer et lart comme forme symbolique(Rennes: Pressesuniversitaires de Rennes, 2010); M. Lauschke, sthetik im Zeichen des Menschen:Die sthetische Vorgeschichte der Symbolphilosophie Ernst Cassirers und die symbolischeForm der Kunst(Hamburg: Meiner, 2007); B. Recki, Die Flle des Lebens: ErnstCassirer als sthetiker. In J. Frchtl and M. Moog-Grnewald (eds) sthetik inmetaphysikkritischen Zeiten (Hamburg: Meiner, 2007); M. Hinsch, Die kunsts-thetische Perspektive in Ernst Cassirers Kunstphilosophie (Wrzburg: Knigshausen& Neumann, 2001). See also the somewhat older chapter Kunst als symbolischeForm in H. Paetzold, Cassirer zur Einfhrung(Hamburg: Junius, 1993), 95104.Specically with regard to the unpublished lecture manuscripts from Yale: .I. Bayer,Art as Symbolic Form: Cassirer on the Educational Value of Art. Te Journal of

Aesthetic Education, 40(4) (2006): 5164. M. Jesinghausen-Lauster, Die Suche nachder symbolischen Form: Der Kreis um die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg(Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1985)is still worth reading for Cassirers intellectual milieuat the Bibliothek.

3. E. Panofsky, Die Perspektive als symbolische Form. Vortrge der Bibliothek Warburg1924/25 (Leipzig/Berlin: eubner, 1927[1924]); English translation: Perspective asSymbolic Form. rans. C. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991).

4. W.J.. Mitchell, Te Pictorial urn. In Picture Teory: Essays of Verbal and VisualRepresentation(Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994).

5. B. Hub, Perspektive, Symbol und symbolische Form. Zum Verhltnis CassirerPanofsky. Estetika: Te Central European Journal of Aesthetics, 47(2) (2010): 146.

6. E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Vol. 3 (Darmstadt: WBG, 1929),235; English translation: Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. rans. R. Mannheim

(New Haven, C: Yale University Press, 1957), 202.7. Quoted in Krois translation (J.M. Krois, Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History(New

Haven, C: Yale University Press, 1987), 50).


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8. For Allister Neher, despite some very different terminologies, the two perspec-tives are ultimately compatible (A. Neher, How Perspective Could Be a SymbolicForm. Te Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63(4) (2005): 35973). AudreyRieber talks of a critical shift in Panofskys use of Cassirers notion of symbolic

form: for Panofsky, the symbolic form is not so much the expression of an ac-tivity of the mind but an issue of meaning. Both however ultimately converge,Rieber argues, in the possibility of interpreting artistic forms as the expression ofa certain worldview (A. Rieber, Art,histoire et signication Un essai dpistmologiedhistoire de lart autour de liconologie dErwin Panofsky(Paris: LHarmattan, 2012)).o Maud Hagelstein, Origine et survivance des symboles: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky(Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Olms, 2014), 183) Perspective as symbolicform should be read as Panofskys most audacious essay, which, although shaky inits use of Neokantian conceptuality, aims at unravelling the transcendentality of thework of art, i.e. perspective as the condition of possibility of painting.

9. Panofsky, Perspective as SymbolicForm, 41.10. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, eil 3: Phnomenologie der Erkenntnis;

Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: Te Phenomenology of Knowledge.

11. H. Blumenberg, Ernst Cassirer gedenkend. In Wirklichkeiten, in denen wir leben:Aufstze und eine Rede(Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 165.

12. As quoted in B. Recki, Kultur als Praxis: Eine Einfhrung in Ernst Cassirers Philosophieder symbolischen Formen(Berlin: Akademie, 2004), 37.

13. Recki, Kultur als Praxis, 36.

14. Tis is, for instance, the critical verdict of Gottfried Boehm (Studien zurPerspektivitt: Philosophie und Kunst in der Frhen Neuzeit (Heidelberg: Winter,1969), 15).

15. E. Panofsky, Herkules am Scheidewege. Leipzig/Berlin: eubner, 1930).

16. E. Panofsky, Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken derbildenden Kunst. Logos, 21 (1932): 10319. On this topic of the pre-text of theimage, see my article Iconic urn: A Plea for Tree urns of the Screw (E. Alloa,Iconic urn: A Plea for Tree urns of the Screw. Culture, Teory and Critique(2015): forthcoming). However, within art history, attention was mainly givento the new, fundamentally reworked English version of the essay, Iconography

and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art from 1955(E. Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study ofRenaissance Art. InMeaning in the Visual Arts: Papers In and On Art History(New

York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955)).

17. Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 1: 7980.

18. H. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. In H. Holzhey (ed.) Werke, Vol. 6(Hildesheim: Olms, 1977), 12 (my translation).

19. Cassirer, Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 1: 94sqq. and Vol. 2: 60.

20. Cassirer, Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 2001. Te same example ap-

pears in the essay of 1927 (E. Cassirer, Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellungin der Philosophie. In E.W. Orth and J.M. Krois (eds) Symbol, echnik, Sprache(Hamburg: Meiner, 1985[1927]), 5sqq.).


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21. Die Frage, was das Seiende an sich, auerhalb dieser Formen der Sichtbarkeitund der Sichtbarmachung sein und wie es beschaffen sein mge: diese Frage muss

jetzt verstummen (E. Cassirer, Sprache und Mythos: Ein Beitrag zum Problem derGtternamen, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 6 (Leipzig/Berlin: eubner, 1925),

6; Language and Myth.rans. S.K. Langer (New York: Dover, 1953), 8).22. Cassirer, Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 202.

23. Ibid., 191.

24. J. Habermas, Die befreiende Kraft der symbolischen Formgebung. In Vortrge ausdem Warburg-Haus, Vol. 1 (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), 1011.

25. E. Cassirer, Te Individual and Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy. rans. MarioDomandi (New York: Harper & Row, 1963[1927]), 182.

26. Panofsky has shown that this discovery was made not only in mathematics andin cosmology but in the plastic arts and in the art theory of the Renaissance as

well; and, in fact, that the theory of perspective anticipated the results of modemmathematics and cosmology. (Cassirer,Te Individual and Cosmos in RenaissancePhilosophy, 182, footnote).

27. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Te Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective(New York:Basic Books, 1975),156.

28. Cassirer, Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 2: 32.

29. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 41.

30. M.H. Pirenne, Te Scientic Basis of Leonardo da Vincis Teory of Perspective.Te British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 3 (19523): 170.

31. Krois, Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History.32. G. Vasari, Life of Masaccio. In G. Milanesi (ed.) Opere. Florence: Milanesi, 1973),

Vol. 2: 291.



35. L. Marin, Opacit de la peinture:Essais sur la reprsentation au Quattrocento(Paris:Editions EHESS, 2006).

36. On Masaccios rinity in the context of what the author calls a history of aper-spective, see . Hensel, Aperspektive als symbolische Form: Eine Annherung

(IMAGE 1: Zeitschrift fr interdisziplinre Bildforschung. http://bit.ly/1KhYY6L,2005). A. Perrig, Masaccios rinit und der Sinn der Zentralperspektive(Marburger Jahrbuch fr Kunstwissenschaft, 21 (1986): 1143) is still topical.

37. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 77, note 5.

38. Ibid., 41.

39. Ibid., 71.

40. Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 203.

41. Ibid., 158.

42. Elkins, Te Poetics of Perspective.

43. Damisch, Te Origin of Perspective, 25.44. Here is the original wording: Te world of the humanities is determined by a

cultural theory of relativity, comparable to that of the physicist (E. Panofsky, Te


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History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline. Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York:Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955[1939]), 7).

45. Cassirer, Te Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 1.

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Blumenberg, H. 1981. Ernst Cassirer gedenkend. In Wirklichkeiten, in denen wirleben: Aufstze und eine Rede, pp. 16372. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Boehm, G. 1969. Studien zur Perspektivitt: Philosophie und Kunst in der Frhen Neuzeit.

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Cassirer, E. 1925. Sprache und Mythos: Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Gtternamen,Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 6. Leipzig/Berlin; 1953. Language and Myth.rans.S. K. Langer. New York: Dover.

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