Twofoldness and Three-Layeredness in Pictorial Representation

In this essay, I defend a Wollheimian account of a twofold picture perception. While I agree with Wollheim’s objectors that a picture involves three layers that qualify a picture in its complexity – its vehicle, what is seen in it, and its subject –, I argue that the third layer does not involve perception, even indirectly: what is seen in a picture constrains its subject to be a subject of a certain kind, yet it does not force the latter to be pictorially perceived, not even indirectly. So, even if a picture is three-layered, pictorial experience remains a twofold experience, as Wollheim claimed. Neither the proponents of threefoldness nor Wollheim himself, however, have convincingly explained how the experience really is a perceptual experience. My Wollheimian account thus aims to reconceive the pictorial experience in properly perceptual terms.