Visual imagery

“ To a large extent we are misled by the impressive prominence of the visual data. In vision we are presented with a system of inter-related and simultaneously occurring sensations which we find by experience to be the sure and certain indicators of the potent obstructions which our activity encounters. For this reason we habitually make use of the visual sign as the guide and instrument of our exertional activity, and this habitual use leads us to regard the visual presentation as the essential form of Reality. ”

“ Beyond the radius of twelve inches from the centre the image begins to blur, and this blur increases rapidly, until out of the tail of the eye on either side we get only an indefinite consciousness of things rather than any genuine vision of things themselves.
It is curious when you come to think of it, how many untold centuries it has taken mankind to recognize this simple visual phenomenon, which every one of the race must have been experiencing ten thousand times a day for ten million years ”

“ What chiefly concerns us here is the fact that the pictures on our retinas are flat, of two dimensions, the same as the canvas on which we paint. If you examine these visual pictures without any prejudice, as one may with a camera obscura, you will see that they are composed of masses of colour in infinite variety and complexity, of different shapes and gradations, and with many varieties of edges; giving to the eye the illusion of nature with actual depths and distances, although one knows all the time that it is a flat table on which one is looking. ”

“ If the light, reflected from a single object touched by us, had produced not two merely, but two thousand separate images in our eyes, erect or inverted, or in any intermediate degree of inclination, the visual feeling, thus excited, however complex, would still have accompanied the touch of a single object ”

“ If it be not colours, then what is it that the touch compels us to associate with the eye? We answer that it is the abstract condition of impressions as the general law on which all seeing depends, but as quite distinct from the particular visual sensations apprehended in virtue of the observance of that law. ”

“ The more one knows about what may be called the anatomy of picture-making—how certain forms produce certain 260effects, certain colours or arrangements other effects, &c.—the easier will it be for him to carry away a visual memory of his subject that will stand by him during the long hours of his labours at the picture. ”

“ These senses provide the basis for all the arts—music and poetry are arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision. And there are good reasons for their special fitness. Most cogent of all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts and feelings; so do visual sensations—the facial expression or gesture seen communicates the inner life of the speaker; and even abstract colors and space-forms, like red and the circle, have independent feeling-tones. ”

“ Work built up on outline drawing to which has been added light and shade, colour, aerial perspective, &c., may eventually approximate to the perfect visual appearance. And inversely, representations approached from the point of view of pure vision, the mosaic of colour on the retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the mental perception of form with its touch associations. And of course the two points of view are intimately connected. You cannot put an accurate outline round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the field of vision. ”

“ We learn, therefore, to react to a visual shape in a manner corresponding to how it would appear if it were in the centre of the field of vision, provided we do not immediately focus153 upon it, which is what we naturally do when anything visible interests us. ”

“ It is to be observed that there are two stages in the process by which this secernment is brought about—First, the stage in which the visual phenomena are associated with things different from the organ of vision, the very existence of which is as yet unknown. Let us suppose, then, the function of sight to be in operation. We behold a visible object—a particular colour. Let the touch now come into play. We feel a tangible object—say a book. ”

“ All those operations, therefore, which proceed from direct irritation of the nervous part of the visual organ, without the medium of the eye and of light, under the term subjective vision, are opposed to those phenomena produced by the media of eye and light, and known as objective vision. ”

“ With such an analysis, comparison and the elaboration of analogies involve no attempt to make one art legislate for another, no attempt to blur their differences or to destroy their autonomy.
In analysing the experiences of the visual arts the first essential is to avoid the word ‘see’, a term which is treacherous in its ambiguity. If we say that we see a picture we may mean either that we see the pigment-covered surface, or that we see the image on the retina cast by this surface, or that we see certain planes or volumes in what is called the ‘picture-space’. ”

“ Nor is it at all difficult to understand how this general condition comes to be associated with the eye, and how the particular visual sensations come to be associated with something distant from the eye: and further, how this association of the condition with one thing, and of the sensations with another thing, (an association established by the touch and not by the sight,) dissolves the primary synthesis of seeing and colours. ”

“ So, on the authority of repeated experience, whatever is unsuitable is gradually excluded, and only those eye movements are retained which further the proper convergence of the two retinal images.”104 Of course, the power of vision is by no means completely developed at five months, though the technique of the function, so to speak, is by that time essentially perfected. Now begin the real tasks of visual practice: acquiring familiarity with external objects, imprinting the visual images on the mind, and widening the scope of association. ”

“ We will return, for the sake of simplicity, to the sense of sight, which we chose as our example.The result of positing sensations and then constructing perception with them. Psychology has accustomed us to assume the elementary sensations corresponding to the impressions received by the rods and cones of the retina. With these sensations it goes on to reconstitute visual perception. ”

“ When the eyes are caught by something in a picture, they do not at first rest there, but proceed, as we have said, on a tour of inspection of the whole area within the frame of that picture, after which they return again to the first visual interest. In making this tour the eyes seek, or at least, follow a pattern. ”

“ But even from the point of view of the true visual perception (if there is such a thing) that modern art has heard so much talk of, the copying of the retina picture is not so great a success. The impression carried away from a scene that has moved us is not its complete visual aspect. Only those things that are significant to the felt impression have been retained by the mind; and if the picture is to be a true representation of this, the significant facts must be sorted out from the mass of irrelevant matter and presented in a lively manner. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV - IMAGINATION AS AN AID TO VISION
WE see very largely with the mind, and only partly with the eyes. The phenomena of vision depend upon the mind's interpretation of the impression upon the retina. What we see is not that impression, but our own interpretation of it. Our impressions of size, color, form and location can be demonstrated to depend upon the interpretation by the mind of the retinal picture. ”

“ A visual image is modified not only by other sensations just previously experienced, but also by all those experienced simultaneously with it, and especially by such as proceed from contiguous portions of the retina. This is the phenomenon of simultaneous contrast. In this, as in successive contrast, both brightness and hue are involved. A bright object appears still brighter when its surroundings are darker than itself, and darker when they are brighter than itself. ”

“ Her beauty and glory, visible in her tints and hues, are in the brain of the observer,—a play of light reflected from the myriad objects upon which it breaks in infinite diversity of ethereal wavelet's. One may see colors which do not exist as undulations. For example, let one look fixedly at a brilliant red object for a while, and then close his eyes. He will behold an image of the same object of a green color. ”

“ Not speech abstractions, the highest conquest of the mind, but the development of the visual conceptions, which are its earliest spontaneous achievement, should be the first object of systematic training. Forms and colors are the elements of all visual impressions ”

“ The substitution of simultaneous retinal perception of form for successive perception has the effect of bringing together the terms of the relations of variety and contrast, unity and similarity, under what is approximately one act of attention. If we watch the movements of a painter's hand as he draws the outline of a human figure on a canvas, our eye may attain a rough perception of the successive directions and distances ”

“ If there were such a medium, acting as a mirror to nature or life, and retaining the impression, it must be universal as the supposed æther of the scientist; and how could impressions on this medium intelligible to us be focussed as the vibrations of light are through the needlepoint of the eye to record a single view-point? In our visions of the memory of nature we see undistorted figures. If we could imagine the whole body to be sensitive to light, as is that single point in the brain on which the optic nerves converge, what kind of vision would we have? ”

“ The Visual Sense Organs. The details of the anatomy of the eye can be looked up in a physiological textbook. The essential principles are very simple. The eye is made on the principle of a photographer’s camera. ”

“ This is the interesting side of visual perception, that, owing to the vast complex of distinguishable sensations of light and colour of various qualities and intensities, together with the muscular sensations attending the varying positions of the organ, the eye is able to recognize at any instant a whole external world with its fundamental properties and relations. ”

“ Here, in this book, for example, are one hundred photographs of one hundred of the most famous sights, scenes and monuments in the whole world. To see these sights, these scenes, these monuments, is to attain a liberal education. Now what is seeing? Seeing, the philosopher will tell you, is to have certain waves of light strike your eye and create an impression on your retina of the objects that are in front of you. The retina, in other words, is nothing but a natural camera obscura. And what is a photograph? ”

“ That many images of objects rove In many modes to every region round— So thin that easily the one with other, When once they meet, uniteth in mid-air, Like gossamer or gold-leaf. For, indeed, Far thinner are they in their fabric than Those images which take a hold on eyes And smite the vision, since through body's pores They penetrate, and inwardly stir up The subtle nature of mind and smite the sense. ”

“ A visual image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever [Pg 189] the shape, position and relation of objects in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handicraft and profession where design is required. The best workmen are those who visualize the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in their hands. ”

“ What is required will be found if we turn our attention from the sensory qualities of the imagery to the more fundamental qualities upon which its efficacy in modifying the rest of the experience depends. It has been urged above that images which are different in their sensory qualities may have the same effects. ”

“ VISION is performed by having a picture, formed by the rays of light which are reflected from the object, painted in one piece, instantaneously, on the retina, or last nervous part of the eye. Or, according to others, there is but one point of any object painted on the eye in such a manner as to be perceived at once; but by moving the eye, we gather up, with great celerity, the several parts of the object, so as to form one uniform piece. ”

“ The visual image is continuous, notwithstanding the retinal stippling and the existence of the blind spot. When we lay our hands on a smooth table we fill in the interstices between the sensational points, and feel the surface as continuous. ”

“ In fact it represents a mixture of the classical and the naturalistic motive.
Firstly, the naturalistic. We know at a glance what the man is doing. The forms in the picture, the colors, the light and shade, make an impression on the eye which is immediately telegraphed to one of the centers of the brain. The result is that we know the picture represents a man in a field sowing{97} grain, while from the color and light in the sky, and the shadows creeping over the field, we know that it is twilight. ”

“ Well, if you have carefully studied your portrait in the mirror, I think you must have discovered how large a part the contrast of light and shadow plays in the appearance of the figure, and therefore, what an equally important part it plays in producing an illusion of reality in the picture. I do not forget that an artist by simply drawing an outline with a pen or pencil can also suggest to us the appearance of an object. ”