Distorted Perception

"The power of all visual representation," Arnheim writes, "derives primarily from the properties inherent in the medium and only secondarily from what these properties suggest by indirection.  Thus the truest and most effective solution is to represent squareness by a square." (Arnheim, 116).  Arnheim contends that even the most "lifelike" of images are not completely accurate visual representations. "The depth effect is diminished and therefore constancy of shape is quite incomplete (Arnheim, 115)," Arnheim writes. Thus, our eyes correct inaccuracies in even the most accurate of images.  Arnheim calls this process "translation." This quote interested me because of what it suggests about the human eye's ability to make visual sense of an artistically rendered distorted object.  When a form is distorted, our eye naturally works fit it into a coherent visual category.  In this way, we are able to make some sense of even the most abstract images. 

 A basic example of this is Figure 87, on page 114 of the Arnheim reading.  It depicts a tracing of a painting by Oskar Schlemmer, from a side vantage point.  The image is of three people sitting around a rectangular table, but because of the vantage point, the table appears more trapezoidal than rectangular.  Despite this, the viewer immediately understands that the trapezoidal shape is a table, and furthermore, that the table is rectangular.  In doing this, we are perceptually bypassing the more obvious category  (trapezoid)  and matching it to a category that is further removed from the actual shape of the image itself (rectangle).  The goal of this process is to convert a distorted image into a more coherent one, and to perceptually correct any visual ambiguities that might impact the degree of clarity with which we view the image.  

A square may well be the most effective solution to representing squareness, but various vaguely square-like shapes can also effectively represent a square.  There is room in art for perceptual distortion, because the eye naturally corrects it.  With this understanding, I have difficulty agreeing with Arnheim that "Western art has suffered a serious loss...in relinquishing directness."  He seems to think that distortion should only be present in an image if it has a purpose. While I agree that distortion should not be sloppily unintentional, or the product of an artist's self-indulgence, I do think that that art can impact a viewer on a visceral level while depicting an completely unidentifiable image.  It seems that Arnheim believes that the purest version of an image can never be represented by abstraction, and I disagree with that.  I don't feel that art should necessarily be translatable, and that its impact does not need to be understood in order to be felt.  I think that, if we viewers can make a trapezoid into a rectangle, we can meaningfully experience an artwork while remaining completely unoriented in it.