CHAPTER 2 - Pictorial Functions and Perceptual Structures

Abstract

This chapter reviews the relationship between pictorial functions and perceptual structures. In pursuit of realistic representation, artists have investigated the nature of light and pigments, the laws of optics, the physical structures that are to be represented, and the psychology of visual perception. There is, therefore, a rich set of problems that are shared by the perception psychologist and the studious or innovative artist. Because pictorial representation appears to entail the use of illusion as its central fact, that is, the perception of scenes and objects that are not actually presented to the viewer, it is easier for some theories to deal with than for others. Realistic representation is not a simple term. If the perception of surfaces and their arrangements in space were a direct and automatic response to the information presented to the eye, a picture of a playing field must be directly perceived as an upright flat surface with converging lines drawn on it, not as a rectangular surface receding into distance. What is specified by the information in the viewer's changing retinal image as he or she moves relative to the picture is the flat plane and converging lines. To proponents of a direct theory of surface perception, therefore, these considerations have suggested that pictures need a separate and special theory of perception.