Speaking for pictures: the rhe!

oric of art criticism

JAMES A. W. HEFFERNAN

Seminario

Prof. Ana La Gabrieloni

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It has long beco a eornmonplacc that pictures say mOfe

lhan words: that a picture is llol only worth a thousand
words, but also speaks to everyone. Wbile Abstraet
Exprcssionism has shaken this old assumption, it has
nonethelcss proved rcmarkably tenacious. In late seventecnth-eentury England, John Dryden dedared that
painting speaks 'the tongue of ev'ry land. >l In lhe late
twentieth eentury, a poster published by lhe International
Photography Couneil says lhat 'the world speaks in 1994
languages, bUl sees in ooly OIle: Photography, the universal
language.' It should not be a surprise that prolessional
photographers want liS lo consider their language universal,
bUl most readers ofthe paster probably do not evcn realise
that it makes a daim -- let alone wondering if the claim
is truco For pictures can sometirncs ambush lhe mind,
circurnventing our logic and verhal defcnscs. Part oC what
makes pielarial language secm universal is its seemingly
privileged access to thc vicwer's hcart or soul. Q:Jintilian,
th~ celebrate? teaeher of rh~toric in ancient Rome,
! aflIrmed: -A plcture, though a sllcnt work, may penetrate
the feclings so de epI y thal it sometimes surpasses the very
" ':' force of spcaking.".l Scventcen ccnturies later, Quintilian's
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Oinl was eited and amplified by the English c1er''Yman
Roberl Anthony Bromley. [n the eourse of' his history of
lhe arts, Bromlcy compared the cartoons al" Raphael tlw paintings he made on papcr (cartom) for the Sistine
Chape! lapestries to be eopied by tapestry weavers - Wilh
the seriptural passagcs thc)" dcpict:

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Let an}' man read any 01' those subjccts in the sacrcd book,
and then takc a view 01' the cartoll [s:J. Let him turn over
the divinc paR{~ evcr so aflen, and as alten return to the
canon; he will assurt'dly carry back rrom tht", picture not
only nohlcr ami mOfe clllarged conceptions al' the grcatest
pan 01' those subjects than thc sacrcd writer has len upon
him, but noblcr amI more cnlargcd cOllceplions ncvdy
cncrcasil1~ at CVCT)' vicw. Thesc clfcets are not produccd,
becausc the sacrcd writcrs werc dcfeetive, but becaWie they
\ ..:efC writers, ami becau~e words can Ilever convey such
ideas as Illay be brollghl lJ.l ~f1O\v ti'orn ~u('h a pcncil [i.c.
paintbrush I as Raphacl's.: ~I. ~,.~ '''''''}\
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1 quote this passagc from an obscure historian ol" art

not because it bears <lny great weight of authority but
because it conveniently excmplifics the highest possiblc
claim that can be made for the cloqucncc 01' painting:
even the inspired words 01' Scripturc can 'nevcr' match
WORD &

IMA(,E, VOL.

I,JANlJAH-Y

the expressiveness 01' pictures wrought by artists such a:::i

Raphael. Such a claim inevitably provokcs resistance, and
Quintilian ~ whose authority indirectly sponsars ir ~
would probably be the tirst to disavow it. He granted that
a picture might 'sometirnes' speak more forccful1y than
words, but he condemned the practice of using a picture
of a erime lo rouse the feelings of a judge. 'For the pleader
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who prefers a voiccless (mutam) picture to speak for hirn
in place of his own eloquence must be singularly
ineompetent. '4
The differenee between Raphael and the ancicnt
Roman precursor of the police photobJTapher must be
respected, but regardless of the artist, Quintilian \vould!
never allow a 'voicelcss' art to usurp or supplant the art I
of rhctoric, to speak for the orator himself.s Ql:lintilian)
\Y?Td. for pictorial J.ft is tacens,.silent. Recalling Simonides~J
d~-finition oC painting as '~ute p~try' (poiesin sioposan),
Quintilian's word suggests that painting cannot even speak
for itsclf: much less for the victim of a crimc 01' for anyonc
else. Art history springs /rom this eonvietion. As W. J. T.
Mitehell observes,
The 'otherness' of visual representation from the standpoinl
01' tcxtuality may be anything- from a professional competi
tion (the paragone of poet ami painter) to a rclation of
political, disciplinary, or cultural domination in which the
'self' is undcrstood to he an active, spcaking, sceing subjcct,
while the 'othcr' is projcctcd as a passive, secn, and (usual1y)
silcnt ohjccl. Insofar as an history is a verbal rcpresentacion
01' visual rcpr;Cltati6~elevation 01' ekph-';s's to a
disciplinary principie. Like the masses, the colonizcd, Lhe ....
PO\vcrlcss and voicelcss c\'crywherc, visual represcntation
cannot rcprcsent itsclf; it must be reprcsctltcd by discourse.f'i

The history of art cannot be toldw,thout eKp!ir",1.J, t~ I

vel'bal representation of visual representili(ii.. When Leon <~
Battista ~ in De Pictum (1435-6) explains Timanlhcs'
[mmolation of [ph(~enia and Apelles' Calurnny, or when
Fr~<:iscus ~ trcats the paintings of Apelles and
Parrhasius in his Painting qf lhe Ancienls (1 (311), they are
both writing of works they never sa\v ~ cxcept in ancicnt
descriptions 01' thcm. vVords are the on1)' form in which
most anciera painting sUI\/ives. And in spite al" the old '
adage, evcn works of art that have survived in their
original fonn remain silent. Since thcy cannot speak for
thcmselvcs, art histary and art criticism must spcak lor \
them.
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