ABSTRACT
Depiction is a form of representation exhibited by figurative, but not abstract, paintings, drawings and photographs. Both abstract and figurative paintings can represent: a slash of red paint may symbolize lust and a painting of a lamb may symbolize Christ. However, all and only figurative works depict. Let us use the term “picture” to refer exclusively to figurative representations. A picture may symbolize Christ in virtue of depicting a lamb. We can ask two distinct philosophical questions about depiction. Firstly, we can
ask a metaphysical question: what is it for one thing to depict another? Secondly, we can ask an epistemological question: how are we able to work out that one thing depicts another? These two questions are related. We interpret a picture by determining that it bears some relation to an object in virtue of which it depicts that object. Any adequate answer to one question must therefore be consistent with an adequate answer to the other. Some accounts of depiction seek to answer both questions. Such accounts must specify a relation whose existence between two objects is both necessary and sufficient for one to depict the other and whose existence interpreters could, in principle, ascertain without first knowing that one object depicts the other. The accounts must then explain how interpreters who do not know that one depicts the other are able to determine the existence of this relation. However, some accounts seek solely to answer the metaphysical question. It is possible to do so without either addressing or presupposing any particular answer to the epistemological question. One might, for example, analyze depiction as involving a certain form of reference, without saying anything about how we can work out whether or not the relevant referential relation obtains. In what follows, let’s discuss the metaphysical question first, and then consider
how one might address the epistemological question in a manner consistent with an adequate answer to the former.
