An Analysis of Some Abnormal Pictorial Structures in a Painting by Juan Gris.pdf

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Unusual Pictures: An Analysis of Some Abnormal Pictorial Structures in a Painting by JuanGrisAuthor(s): John WillatsSource: Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 3, Special Issue: Psychology and the Arts (Summer, 1983), pp.188-192Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574911

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Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 188-192, 1983Printed in Great Britain 0024-094X/83$3.00+0.00Pergamon Press Ltd.

UNUSUAL PICTURES:AN ANALYSISOF SOMEABNORMALPICTORIALSTRUCTURES IN A PAINTINGBY JUAN GRISJohn Willats*

Abstract-A distinction s madebetweenpictureswhichare unusualbecauseof theirsubjectmatter(forexample,some surrealistpaintings),andpictureswhichare unusualbecausetheyare basedon unusualpictorial structures.Two kinds of pictorial structures are described: transformation systems, such as oblique projection andperspective;and denotation systems, such as the use of linestodenoteedges.It is argued hatJuan Gris and otherCubistpaintersused both thesepictorial systems in unusualways. Thisargument s illustratedby analysingGris''Breakfast', 1914. The analysis shows that Gris used a numberof unusualtransformation ystems, includingverticaloblique projection, inverted linearperspectiveand invertedatmospheric perspective.Theanalysisalsoreveals the use of a numberof unusualpictorial structures related to the denotationsystems: the use of falseattachments, bothwithin hepictureand between hepictureandtheframe;thereversalof the normalrulesfor therepresentation of occlusion; and the use of real surfacesen collage. It is suggestedthat Gris usedthese unusualstructuresdeliberately in order to point to, and investigate, the nature of normalpictorial structures.

There are two kinds of unusualpictures:pictureswhich astonishus because of their unusual subject matter, and pictureswhich,although their subject matter may be quite ordinary, surpriseorpuzzle us because of their unusual structure. Picturesof the firsttype, such as Salvador Dali's 'The Great Masturbator' (1929)may contain objects or scenes which are themselves outrageousor unusual, or they may, like Rene Magritte's'Time Transfixed'(1939) be made up of ordinary objectscombined in incongruousways. In pictures of this first type, the composition andtechnique are nearly always realistic, and for a good reason:themore the artist can persuade us to look through the picturesurface to the objects themselves, the more likely we are to beshocked or intrigued by the subject matterof the picture. This'looking through' is also characteristic of the way in which weuse most ordinary pictures: we concentrate on what the artist,draughtsman or photographer is saying, rather than how it isbeing said. With ordinary pictures, we forget that they arecontrived, and their surface becomes so transparent that weimagine that we have the real world itself in front of our eyes.What spoils this illusion is when we come across pictureswhich deal with quite ordinary scenes, but which are based onpictorial structures which are unusual or unfamiliar. Chineseand Japanese paintings, which are based on various kinds ofoblique projections rather than perspective, must have seemedextraordinary to Europeans of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies; and, even today, whenwe areso usedto seeing theminreproduction, they still seem strange to us. Pictures of this kindprovoke in us the most banal responses: was there somethingwrong with the artists' eyesight, or werethey just not very goodat perspective?Similar responses are often provoked by modern paintings,especially perhaps by Cubist paintings like Juan Gris''Breakfast' (1914) (Fig. 1).This paintingdepicts a scene which isboth ordinary in itself, and is made upof ordinary objects: cups,glasses, a coffee pot and similareveryday objects on a breakfasttable. But although we can identify these objects without muchdifficulty, they are so jumbled that the picture at first seemsalmost incomprehensible. Why should anyone want to paintsuch a confused picture, we wonder? Are our legs being pulled,or does the artist really see the world that way?

*Honorary Research Fellow, North East London Polytechnic,Faculty of Art and Design, Greengate House, Greengate Street,London El 5 OBG, U.K.

p ~~~~~'

Fig. 1. Juan Gris, 'Breakfast', collage, crayon and oil on canvas, 80.9 x59.7 cm, 1914. Collection,Museumof ModernArt(LilleP. BlissBequest),New York.For psychologists, orfor people like myself who areinterestedin pictorial structures, the great merit of pictures of this kind isthat they drawour attention away from the subject matter, andmake us realise that even the most ordinarypictures must havesome kind of a structure. Thus, although unusual picturesmaybe intriguing in themselves, their chief value for us lies in what

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UnusualPicturesthey can tell us about ordinary pictures. I want to argue thatGris' motive wasverymuch the same. What he was investigatingwas the nature of pictorial structures;and the way in which hedid this was to experiment with, and sometimes reverse, theordinary rules of painting.Of all the different kinds of pictorial structures, the bestknown are the various drawing systems [1]. Of these, the bestknown (though perhapsthe leastunderstood) isperspective;butthere are a number of other systems, such as orthographicprojection and oblique projection, with which we are almostequally familiar. Perhaps a better name for these systems wouldbe transformation ystems(the nameby which they are knowninmathematics), because they transform spatial relationships inthe real world into corresponding spatial relationships on thepicture surface. All these different systems can be seen asdifferent ways of coming to grips with the problem ofrepresenting the three-dimensions of the real world on the flatsurface of the picture, and they all have various advantages anddisadvantages accordingto the purposesfor whichthey are to beused.In orthographic projection, for example,which is thesimplestof all the projection systems,vertical directionsinthe real worldare represented by vertical directionson the picturesurface,andhorizontal directions in the real world are represented byhorizontal directions on the picture surface. Front-to-backdirections in the third dimension are simply ignored.Orthographic projection is an ideal system for engineers,because it shows the true shapes and dimensions of rectangularobjects, and the disadvantage of the absence of the thirddimension is compensated for by showing more than one view.For rounded objects in paintings, however, the system is oftenless suitable. An orthographic projection of the side view of acup, shown in Fig. 2a, does not bringout its roundness;while thetop view fails to reveal its true shape.An alternative to orthographic projection, which solves theproblem of the third dimension, is obliqueprojection. In thissystemfront-to-back directions in the realworld arerepresentedby oblique directions across the picturesurface.This formed thebasis of most Chinese and Japanese paintings before the impactof nineteenth-century Western culture. Oblique projection isstill widelyused for technicalillustrations, and its nearrelations,such as isometric projection and axonometric projection, aremuch in demand for architects' drawings. Children who wereasked to draw a scene consisting of a number of objects on atable, and then shown drawings of the scene in various otherdrawing systems, chose oblique projectionsas the most realistic,clearest and best liked, regardlessof age; and this was true evenfor those children who had produced drawings in perspective[2]. Again, however, this system is less suitable for roundedobjects: the cup shown in oblique projection in Fig. 2b appearsdistorted.

a b

A system intermediate between oblique projection andorthographic projection is vertical oblique projection. Here,vertical directions across the picture surface are used torepresentfront-to-back directions in the real world. In the Westthe system is relatively unfamiliar, but vertical obliqueprojection formed the basis of most traditional Persian andIndian paintings, and in children's drawings it is the most usedof all theprojection systems [3]. Drawings of rectangularobjectsin this system tend to be ambiguous, since one direction acrossthe picture surface is used for both vertical and front-to-backdirections in the realworld,but for roundedobjects the systemisideal. Figure 2c shows a drawing of a cup in vertical obliqueprojection, and another glance at Fig. 1shows that this was thesystem which Gris used for the cups, the glasses and the variousother rounded objects in his picture.A tracingof the table on which these objects arestanding(Fig.3) shows that it is drawn in axonometric projection, a version ofvertical oblique projection in which objects are shown turnedthrough an angle. By this means the ambiguity inherent inordinary vertical oblique projection is avoided; and since thissystem shows the tops of objects as true shapes, it is ideal forrectangular objects where the plan or top view is the mostimportant. This is the reason why the system is often used forarchitects' drawings, and Gris would presumably have beenfamiliar with it since it was introducedby Auguste Choisy at theend of the nineteenth century. In Gris' Breakfast the top of thetable is its most important feature, so axonometric projection iswholly appropriate. Gris, then, chose a transformation systemfor his picture which gave the clearest and most realisticpossibleview of the scene. Pictures, however, do not just depend ontransformation systems; and what Gris gave us in clarity andrealism with one system, he took away with the other.

C

Fig. 2. Drawing of a cup in (a) orthographic projection, (b) obliqueprojection, and (c) vertical obliqueprojection.Fig. 3. Cupsandotherroundedobjects nverticalobliqueprojection,with atracing of the table showingthat it is in axonometricprojection a versionof vertical obliqueprojection).

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Denotationsystems say what the marksin the picturestand for[4]. Since pictures, like sentences, can neverliterally contain theobjects they represent, even the most realistic pictures are, inreality, only made up of blobs of ink or patches of paint whichstand for, refer to, or denote the tables and cups of the realworld. Just as there are various transformation systems,characteristic of different periods and cultures, so there arevarious denotation systems. Before the advent of photography,probably the most familiarsystemwasthe one in which lines areused to stand for edges: either true edges, like the edges of atable, or smooth edges (or occluding contours, as they aresometimes called) like the edges of a cheek or an apple [5]. Inphotography, on the other hand, and in Impressionist andPointillist painting, there are no lines as such, but only smallareas of colour or tone which denote the intercepts of smallbundles of light rays. Impressionist painting was greeted withcries of outrage when it first appeared, but photography is onlythe same system, using(as a rule)smallerareasof colour or tone.Gris' painting revertsto an earliersystem, using (mostly) lines todenote edges-but with a difference.In 1971 two writers,Huffman in the U.S.A. [6] and Clowes inEngland [7], working in Artificial Intelligence, analysed adenotation systemfor line drawings of rectangularobjects. Oneof the things that Huffman pointed out was that in normal linedrawings the lines stand for edges which we can see from aparticularpoint of view. If all the edges are put in, irrespectiveofwhether they can be seen, the drawing becomes very confused.This is what happens as a rule when line drawings are producedusing a computer, and the removal of these hidden edges (aprocess known as hidden ine elimination or HLE) is a long andtedious part of the program. Compare, for example, thedrawings shown in Figs 4a and 4b. Figure 4a is almostincomprehensible, simply because the hidden lines have notbeen removed.Another importantcontribution which Huffmanmadewas topoint out that the clarity and realismof a drawing depend verymuch on whether or not it contains what painters call falseattachments, or what Guzman [8] in an earlier paper callednasty coincidences . Compare the three views of the sameobject shown in Figs 4b, 4c and 4d (all shown in trimetricprojection). Figure4b contains no false attachments and gives aclear and realistic view of the object. Figure 4c contains a falseattachment between two edges, and the clarity and realismhavealready begun to disappear. Figure 4d contains a falseattachment between two corners, and here the effect is evenmore marked. Because the junction on the right can stand formore than one corner, it becomes difficult to tell what the other

a b

c dFig. 4. Fourdrawingsof an object,with(a) no hidden ine removal, b) thehidden ines removed, c) afalse attachmentbetween two edges and(d) afalse attachment betweentwo corners.

marks in the picture stand for, and the pictureis almost reducedto a flat pattern. In 1912, only two years before Gris painted hispicture, the critic Jaques Riviere had pointed out the crucialimportance of the position of the spectator, and the weaknessofperspective as a basis for painting because it shows us objectsfrom just one particular point of view. False attachments canhardly ever happen in the realworld, because as Riviere[9] said:... in reality, we can change position: a step to the rightand astep to the left complete our vision. The knowledge we have ofan object is, as I said before, a complex sum of perceptions . Inpaintings and drawings we cannot do this, so the position of theobject must be carefully chosen. As Huffman said: Oneassumption we shallmake ... is that allpicturesare taken from a'general position'; that is, that a slight change in the positionfrom which the picture is taken would not changethe number oflines in the picture, or the configurations in which they cometogether (p. 298).Writingin the sameyearas Huffman,Clowespointed out thatpictures for computer analysis ought always to be enclosed by aframe, otherwise the computer would be unable to distinguishbetween the real world and the marks in the picture. Withintheframe is a symbolic world, in which marks stand for or denoteedges and corners, or objects such as cups and tables. Outsidethe frameis the real world of cups and tables. Betweenthese twoworlds is the frame,which prevents the real world from leakinginto the symbolic world.All these three kinds of pictorial structures-hidden lineelimination, false attachment and the picture frame-can beregardedas aspects of the picture's denotation system. Hiddenline elimination restricts the referenceof the lines to just thosefeaturesof thescene which can be seen from a particularpoint ordirection of view. Avoidance of false attachment prevents onepictorial mark from standing for more than one feature of thescene. And the pictureframeseparatesthe symbolicworld of thepicture from the real world to which it refers.In his Breakfast Gris has chosen a transformation systemwhich shows a breakfast table with the utmost clarity andrealism,but a denotation systemwhich destroys this clarityandrealism. To begin with, the normal rules for hidden lineelimination are inverted or ignored. Not only are variousfeatures included in the picture which ought to have beenhidden, but a number of other features are eliminated whichought to have been included. Figure 5 shows some of thesefeatures. Parts of the faredge of the table ought not to have beenshown, because they would have been hidden by the coffee pot;in Fig. 5 these edges areshown usinga zig-zag line. Onthe otherhand, part of the saucer in the middle of the picture,partsof theglass and parts of the coffee pot have been eliminated, althoughthey would have been visible in the scene. In Fig. 5 these edgeshave been replaced, using a dotted line.Secondly, there are numerous instancesof falseattachmentinthe picture. The rim of the cup in the centreis falselyattached tothe tablecloth; the rimof the cup on the right is falsely attachedto the side edge of the table;and the edge of the coffee pot andthe far edge of the tabre are falsely attached together to an areaof collage; these false attachments are marked with asterisksinFig. 5.Finally, the distinction between the real world and thesymbolic world of the picture has been blurred by the falseattachments between the marks in the picture and the pictureframe. The corner of the table on the right,and the cornerof thearea of collage at the top are falsely attached to the frame,andthere are other instances or near instances of false attachmentsbetween objects in the picture and the picture frame. Two ofthese instances are marked with double asterisks in Fig. 5.

At the simplest level, then, the picture can be seen as abattleground in which straightforwardtransformation systems-the good guys-are pitted against inverted denotationsystems-the bad guys. The transformationsystems show us the

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UnusualPictures** u

Fig. 5. Parts of the scene whichwouldhave been hiddenhave been ncludedin the picture (shown here using zig-zag lines). Parts of the scene whichwould have been visible have been left out (dotted lines). Thereare a ig. 6. The rectangularformsfanoutfromthe bottom f the picture,givingnumberof instancesoffalse attachment,bothwithin thepicture(asterisks) an effect of invertedperspective. The vertical axes of the coffee pot, theand between the picture and theframe (double asterisks). bottle, the egg cup,and a thirdcup converge owards hetopof thepicture,giving an effect of normalperspective.Normalatmosphericperspective sreversed,swinging the backgroundof the scene at the top of thepicturescene as clearly as possible, but the denotation systems spoil theeffect by confusing us about what the various marks stand for.Who wins out?Well, the transformationsystems seemto win onrecognition, because we can still see reasonably clearlywhatthevarious objects are, but the denotation systems seem to win outon spatial relationships, because it is difficult, in the originalpicture, to see where the various objects go. This is perhapsslightly surprising, since denotation systems, as a rule, tell usabout what the marks standfor, and it is transformationsystemswhich tell us where the marks go. The fact is that neithertransformation nor denotation systems act on theirown: it is theinteraction between systems which is important. But, in anycase, the picture is not quite as simple as I have suggested.To begin with, two other transformation systems are used inthe picture in addition to vertical oblique projection. Inordinary pictures in perspective the edges of objects below eye-level converge to a vanishing point towards the top of thepicture. In Gris' picture the edges of the table areparallelratherthan converging; but other lines are added which confuse theissue. The picture contains a numberof rectangularforms withno particularreference,and these fan out from the bottomof thepicture, giving an effect of invertedperspective, and disguisingthe underlying systemof verticaloblique projection(Fig. 6). Butsomething even more extraordinary is happening. In allordinary projection systems,vertical directionsin the realworldremain vertical in the picture. But in this painting the verticalaxes of the coffee pot and the bottle incline to the left, while the

axes of the egg cup, and a cup which can just be seen in the topcentre of the painting, incline to the right.Since these axes seemto converge upwards owards the top of the picture, the effect isto introduce a suggestion of normal linear perspective (Fig. 6).

towards the observer.

In normal atmospheric perspective, the warmest and mostfully saturated colours appear in the foreground of the scene,shown towards the bottom of the picture.Most of Gris'paintingis in dull browns, greys and blues, all recessive colours; the onlyareas of strong warmcolour appearin the parceland, to a lesserextent, in the coffee pot lid, both of which arein the backgroundof the scene at the top of the picture. This has the effect ofswinging the top of the picture,where one would expect to findthe greatest depth, towards the spectator. Thus, while theprimarytransformationsystemis used in astraightforwardway,two of the three secondary systems are reversed, and the thirdused in an extraordinaryway to give an effect of normal linearperspective (Fig. 6).As if to redress the balance, Gris introduces a secondarydenotationsystemwhich ought to makefor the maximumclarityand realism. In the primary denotation system, lines in thepicture are used to stand for edges in the real world. This is arelatively abstract system, since the lines in the picture arephysically quite different from, for example, the smoothrounded sides of the cups and glasses. In the secondarydenotation system, in contrast, areas of real wallpaper, realwoodgrain paper, and realnewspaperare used to stand for realareas of wallpaper,wood and newspaper n the realscene. Since,as indicated before, pictures can never literally contain theobjects they represent, using these fragments of the real worldwithin the frame of the picture further confuses the distinctionbetween the real world andthe symbol systemof thepicture, likethe false attachments between the pictureand the pictureframe.

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Thus the pictureas a whole can be seenas a verycarefullyanddelicately controlled balancing act, in which both transforma-tion and denotation systems are used both normally and inreverse. But what is the point of this balancing act, if all we endup with is a rather confused picture?I would like to suggest atleast three possible motives.Some writers [10] have suggested that pictures, likelanguages, depend on symbol systems which are purelyconventional, and that realism in pictures is a matterof habit.That is, pictures which at first seem unintelligible may appearquite realistic when we get used to them. Sixty years on, thishasstill not happened with Cubist paintings. Although we are bynow quite familiar with Cubist paintings, and even though wemay understand some of the rules on which they arebased, theystill do not seem as realistic as pictures in perspective.On the other hand, it is no longer possible to claim, as otherwritershave suggested, that pictures arejust 'natural', and thatpictures in systems other than perspective are just naive orincompetent. By using mixturesof systems, Gris shows us whateach system can and cannot do; but far more important thanthat, he shows us that pictures are symbol systems, not justfragments of the real world.The second of Gris' possible motives is that by using some ofthe rule systems in a normal way and some in reverse,he is ableto show us that there are different kindsof pictorial rules. Themotive here seems very similar to that of the linguistChomsky[11], who invented the sentence colorless green ideas sleepfuriously to illustrate the difference between syntactic andsemantic rules. In this sentence the syntactic rules-the rules ofgrammar-are used in the normal way, and the sentence as awhole is perfectly grammatical. But the semantic rules-therules of meaning-are used in an abnormal way. Colourlessthings cannot be green; ideas cannot be either green orcolourless; ideas cannot sleep; and so on. As in Gris' painting,using one set of rules in a normal way and another set in anabnormal way draws attentionto the fact that there aredifferent

kinds of rules.Finally, by using painting to investigate its own nature, Grisbrought it firmly into line with other disciplines. By the middleof the nineteenth century the receivedtruthsof perspectiveandEuclidean geometry had begun to be questioned, and bothmathematicians and painters began, increasingly, to investigate

first the truth and then the natureof their own symbol systems,rather than just using those systems to give descriptions of theexternal world [12]. The emergence of linguistics as a separatediscipline at the beginningof this centuryisperhapsthe supremeexample of this tendency. As if to illustrate this link with othersymbol systems, Gris signs his name with a fragment ofnewspaper: ... ourn... (Juan) Gris .Acknowledgements-I would like to thank the School of Graphic Arts,Royal College of Art, for supporting myattendanceat the InternationalConference on Psychology and the Arts and the North East LondonPolytechnic for help in the preparation of the manuscript.

References1. F. Dubery and J. Willats, Perspectiveand OtherDrawing Systems(London, The Herbert Press, 1983; New York, Van NostrandReinhold, 1983).2. E. A. Saenger, Drawing Systems: a Developmental Study ofRepresentation (unpublisheddoctoral thesis, HarvardUniversity,1981).3. J. Willats, How Children Learn to Draw Realistic Pictures,QuarterlyJournal of ExperimentalPsychology 29, 367 (1977).4. J. Willats, Whatdo theMarks n the PictureStandfor? The Child'sAcquisition of System of Transformationand Denotation, Reviewof Research in Art Education13, 18 (1981).5. J. M. Kennedy, A Psychologyof PicturePerception San Francisco,Jossey-Bass, 1974).6. D. A. Huffman, Impossible Objects as Nonsense Sentences, in B.Meltzer and D. Mitchie (eds.), Machine Intelligence, Vol. 6(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971).7. M. B. Clowes, OnSeeing Things,ArtificialIntelligence2, 79 (1971).8. A. Guzman, Decomposition of a Visual Scene into Three-dimensional Bodies, Proceedings of the Joint Fall ComputerConference(Washington, Thomson, 1968) pp. 291-306.9. J. Riviere, Sur les tendances actuelles de la peinture, Revued'Europeet d'Amerique1, 384 (1912). [Cited in E. F. Fry, Cubism(London: Thames & Hudson, 1966)].10. R. Wollheim, Representation: the Philosophical Contribution toPsychology, in G. Butterworth(ed.). The Child'sRepresentationofthe World(London: Plenum Press, 1977).11. N. Chomsky, Aspectsof the Theoryof Syntax (Cambridge,Mass.,M.I.T. Press, 1965).12. E. Nagel and J. R. Newman, Godel'sProof (New York:UniversityPress, 1978).

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