On Particularity in Painting

Paintings are usually thought of as unique or particular in some way that grounds their aesthetic and cognitive interest. This article examines what makes paintings particular, arguing that their visual particularity distinguishes them from other entities, including other kinds of picture. It focuses on the constitution and function of paintings’ fine-grained marks, contrasting these with mechanical, projection-based depiction. I show how painting’s fine-grained marks are ‘complex traces’ whose compound structure and multifactorial constitution differ from the ‘simple traces’ underlying mechanical depiction. Turning to the representational function of each kind of mark, I argue that complex traces cannot – unlike simple traces – generally be considered contentful. Based on this twofold contrast, I conclude that a painting’s visual particularity consists in a unique configuration of complex traces and the unique way these marks bear content, before showing how this goes beyond the particularity of mechanical depictions and generically conceived pictures.