Integrating analytic and phenomenological approaches to pictorial representation: Paul Crowther’s philosophical project

Paul Crowther’s theory of depiction combines such diverse issues as visual media ontological qualities, planar structure and non-referential semantics of pictures (described in terms of modal plasticity) as well as various modes of their relations to human identity. By virtue of interpreting (instead of imitating) the pre-given external world pictorial representations acquire the quality of distinctive ontological impact on visible reality: they literally transform it in unpredictable ways. Analyzing the temporal, spatial, body-oriented and perceptual conditions of depiction, Crowther postulates its “phenomenological depth”: pictures visibly exemplify the various modes of our interactions with our world and thus obtain cognitive, intersubjective, aesthetic and even metaphysical significance. At the same time Crowther explicitly rejects the relevance of historical, social, political and other contextual matters for his methodology, which therefore tends to bear essentialist presuppositions closely related to traditional normative aesthetics. Despite this controversies and overall eclecticism of this philosophical system, Crowther’s project provides an instructive case demonstrating how cultivation and elaboration of relevant theoretical interrelations between analytic and phenomenological traditions may be heuristically fruitful for the philosophical understanding of pictorial representation.