The meta as an aesthetic category

Abstract

Philosophical logic defined a metalanguage as a language about a language. After that, the word “metapicture” was used by Mitchell to identify a picture about a picture. Once we are not dealing with language, we may think that we are not dealing with signification. However, the word “meta” and its aboutness may assume that a picture has to be interpreted and has a meaning. We think that this is not accurate in order to understand the meta. The present article proposes to define the meta as an aesthetic category and not as a logical one. The analysis takes into account viewers’ attention to self-referential works of art so as to propose an embodied aesthetic analysis. We want to show that the experience of meta in art is a reflective experience. A picture is seen as a metapicture relative to the attention that viewers have on it: they can or cannot see it as a metapicture. Obviously, activating the meta quality changes the perception of the picture. One might think that the meta quality is due to paradoxes. In fact, self-reference often leads to paradoxes. We precisely want to show that paradoxes are not a necessary ingredient to induce the meta specific feeling. Why? Probably because the mere work is not reflective; it is not a speech. The reflexivity that is supposed to be in the work is actually the reflexivity of the cognition of spectators projected in the work. Similarly to Kant's definition of the sublime, the structure “meta” lies in the subject, not in the picture. The experience of the metapicture should actually be named as the meta-experience of the picture.