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COULD PERSPECTIVE EVER

BE A SYMBOLIC FORM?
REVISITING PANOFSKY WITH CASSIRER
Emmanuel Alloa
University of St Gallen/NCCR eikones
ABSTRACT Erwin Panofskys essay Perspective as Symbolic Form from 1924
is among the most widely commented essays in twentieth-century aesthetics and
was discussed with regard to art theory, Renaissance painting, Western codes of
depiction, history of optical devices, psychology of perception, or even ophthalmology.
Strangely enough, however, almost nothing has been written about the philosophical
claim implicit in the title, i.e. that perspective is a symbolic form among others.
The article situates the essay within the intellectual constellation at Aby Warburgs
Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in Hamburg, and analyzes the role of Ernst
Cassirers philosophy of symbolic forms for the members of the Warburg circle. Does
perspective meet the requirements for becoming a further symbolic form, beyond
those outlined by Cassirer? The article argues that, ultimately, perspective cannot
possibly be a symbolic form; not because it does not meet Cassirers philosophical
requirements, but rather, because that would uproot Cassirers overall project. While
revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer unearths the wide-raging philosophical implication
of the essay, revisiting Cassirer with Panofsky means to highlight the fundamentally
perspectival nature of all symbolic forms.
Keywords: Panofsky, Cassirer, Warburg, perspective, symbolic form

INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the special intellectual momentum around the Warburg
Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in the 1920s and the trajectories of its protagonists (Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, etc.) have enjoyed renewed attention. New
studies in cultural history give an ever clearer picture of the questions examined
there; passages between the individual trajectories of thought become increasingly apparent. For Ernst Cassirer, for example, it is evident that his involvement

Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, Volume 2, Issue 1, pp. 5172. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2015
DOI: 10.2752/205393215X14259900061634

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with artistic dimensions as pursued by his art historian colleagues Warburg and
Panofsky played a more central role than had previously been assumed. Although
these topics are not given their own volume in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,
a letter from Cassirer proves that such a volume was planned, at least for a time,1
and in the scholarship a consensus has gradually formed to point out that art
should be conceived as a fourth symbolic form alongside myth, language, and
science.2
Meanwhile, strikingly little space in these historical-systematic reconstructions is granted to a text whose title at first glance seems wholly aligned with this
undertaking: Erwin Panofskys lecture Perspective as Symbolic Form,3 delivered in the circle of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in 1924, where the art
historian discusses the historical premises for the emergence of linear perspective
in the Renaissance and asks up to what point perspectival representation is a
more adequate account of natural perception at all.
There is hardly an aspect of this text that, in the ninety years of its reception
history, has not been discussed and debated from all sides and every disciplinary
angle, including the history of mathematics, art studies, perceptual psychology,
and the history of optics. Under all these aspects, one thesis has received little
attention (since, generally speaking, it has not even been posed as a thesis): the
title proposition, Perspective as Symbolic Form.
A curious acquiescence can be observed in the scholarship, as though it
had been settled that Panofskys essay is clearly not to be read as a contribution
to Cassirers philosophy of symbolization. The majority of interpretations assume that in his essay, Panofsky was seeking to denounce central perspective as
a conventionalistic construction and rehabilitate another, spheroidal/curved
perspective that he considered closer to natural seeing, according to Herrmann
von Helmholtzs discoveries in the field of optics (Figure 1).
Indeed, Panofskys supposed defense of the curved character of natural
perception drew harsh criticism from approaches oriented towards the natural
sciences (for example Pirenne, Gibson, and Ten Doesschate) or the psychology
of art (Gombrich and others). By contrast, the essays having prompted only little
discussion in the field of philosophy may be attributed to two factors: either it is
understood as a work of historiography, which therefore can only play a supporting role in the development of a general theory of symbols; or else the (alleged)
thesis of an originary, natural visual space suggests the nostalgic assumption of a
pre-Kantian, unmediated sensory datum, which peoplewith exceptions such
as Nelson Goodmanprefer not to speak about out of good taste. The fact is,
however, that the thesis implied in the title, namely, that perspective should be
construed as a symbolic form, until now has not been brought up for debate.
In the following, the objective will be to test this very thesis against the
backdrop of Cassirers philosophy of symbols. To give an early summary of the
outcome here: Perspective in fact cannot be seamlessly integrated into a philosophy
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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

Figure 1 Pincushion (Curved) perspective. In Herrmann von Helmholtz, Treatise on


Physiological Optics 1910. Ed. J.P.C. Southall. Rochester: Optical Society of America,
1925.

of symbolic forms; not because it does not meet Cassirers philosophical requirements,
but rather, because it implicitly contains its own philosophical requirements that
cannot be absorbed into the concept of symbolic form.

GOETHES SOAP OR, CAN PANOFSKY HAVE


UNDERSTOOD CASSIRER?
In his essay The Pictorial Turn, W.J.T. Mitchell praised Erwin Panofskys
conference on Perspective as a Symbolic Form as being one of the most decisive
texts for the study of visual culture which, while drawing on Ernst Cassirers
neo-Kantian categories, centered around the picture, understood as the concrete symbol of a complex cultural field.4 Berthold Hub has argued that this
seminal essay by Mitchell is only confirming a widespread misinterpretation
that mistakes symbol and symbolization: for Cassirer, there are no artifacts that
stand for concrete symbols of a complex cultural field. Rather, the activity
of culture as such is nothing but the permanent act of symbolizing the world.5
While Panofskys iconology is thus interested in an interpretation of images as
symbols, Cassirers philosophy is an investigation of how the act of interpretation
is already and always an act of symbolization.
But if that were the case, when did the misunderstanding come up? Berthold
Hub seems to consider that it was mainly a problem of the one-sided reception of Panofsky within art history, which had little knowledge of Cassirers
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epistemological background, while there are good reasons to assert, Hub says,
that Panofsky himself justifiably transferred the notion of symbolic form to
perspective.
So what are we to understand by the notion of symbolic form? According
to Cassirer, the symbolic form is what allows one to explain how the world
becomes intelligible to us. What there is to understand is how a perception as
a sensory experience contains at the same time a certain non-intuitive meaning, which it immediately and concretely represents.6 Rather than simply referring to what it stands for, the symbol gives an intuitive-sensible presence to the
meaningCassirer also speaks of symbolic pregnancewhich highlights that
the symbolic form is more to be understood as a process (forming) than as a
given form. As Cassirer has it in his canonical (and Goethe-inspired) definition,
the symbolic form is a kind of mental energy, which allows a mental content
of meaning (geistiger Bedeutungsgehalt) to be connected to a concrete, sensory
sign (konkretes sinnliches Zeichen) and made to adhere internally to it.7
Many posthumous publications by Cassirer allow us to get a good sense
of what he exactly meant by this energy of symbolic form and of symbolic
pregnance. It goes without saying that Panofsky was not in this position, and
that his knowledge of Cassirers philosophy of symbolic form, which was still in
the making, had to remain unavoidably superficial. Yet, he seemed nonetheless
to have made the choice to make use of the notion of symbolic form, although
in a very unconventional way. In recent years, there has been some discussion
about whether Panofskys notion of symbolic form is compatible at all with
Cassirers philosophy.8 In order for this question to be answered seriously, however, we would need to know what Panofsky himself meant by symbolic form
and what his general understanding of Cassirer had been.
The difficulties in answering this question are, at least in part, also Panofskys
own fault. The extent to which the lecture, which appeared with many additional footnotes in 1927 alongside Cassirers lecture Language and Myth in
the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliotheks annual publication, is to be thought of
simply as an academic homage to his colleague, or whether Panofsky in fact
envisioned a continuation of Cassirers program, is not easy to determine. In
the text, statements about thisdespite repeated referencesare in any case
extremely sparse. Panofsky announces that with his contribution, he wants to
extend Ernst Cassirers felicitous term to the history of art. But in the further
course of the text, little information is provided as to how he himself understands
this term. Strictly speaking, he lets the matter rest by transcribing Cassirers
early definition, that through symbolic forms, spiritual meaning is attached to
a concrete, material sign and intrinsically given to this sign.9
The fact that, beyond providing this quotation, Panofsky did not feel
the need to comment further on this hardly self-evident new term has often
prompted the allegation that he was not particularly interested in its systematic
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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

implications. In his defense it must be added that Cassirer only elaborated the
concept of the symbolic form in the real sense in Volume 3 of Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms, which was not published until 1929,10 so Panofsky could very
well not have known it for his lecture given in 1924. On the other hand, however, one must certainly assume that Panofsky was highly informed about the
progress of Cassirers project, and that the two often talked about it in the time
before the lecture. What Panofsky took from it for himself is difficult to ascertain. In Hans Blumbergs memorable phrasing, Cassirer may well have provided
the theory which explains the Library.11 The question remains: what did the
Libraryand in this case one of its key figures, Panofskydo with this theory?
A stubborn preconception maintains that Panofsky specifically (even more than
Warburg) failed to understand Cassirers attempts to found a new approach to
culture through symbolic forms.
In her monograph on Cassirer, Birgit Recki recalls an anecdote that was
told by Ernst Gombrich: sometime in the 1920s (whether before or after the
perspective lecture is not known), Panofsky made a gift to the philosopher of a
bar of soap, and for the occasion composed the following light verse:
Deines Geistes Reife
Tat mir arg Beschmutztem Wohl
Nimm, drum, diese Goetheseife
teils als Form, teils als Symbol.12
Your spirits mellow scope
Does me, the sullied one, so well.
Take thus this bar of Goethe soap
Part as form and part as symbol.

According to the story, the joke gave Cassirer only moderate enjoyment. For
Recki, this should be taken as an indication that Cassirer felt misunderstood.
Part as form and part as symbolthis line could only be written by someone
who has not understood that in this case, it is not about the usual concept of
form-or-symbol, not about crosses, stars, or anchor medals.13

THE PARADIGM OF SPATIALITY FOR A HISTORY OF


PERCEPTION
The perspective essay, however, does nothing to incur the suspicion of such a misunderstanding. In analogy to Cassirers progressive structural model, Panofsky
analyzes how space is no longer to be defined a priori, but rather is represented
differently in each historical milieu of symbolization. For Antiquity, he identifies
a relational perspective space that is different from the homogenous, unified
space of the Renaissance; the latter, however, does not have ahistorical value, but
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is rather replaced by baroque high space. But it would be incorrect to simply


attribute such conceptions of space to differences in historical time. If one takes
Panofsky at his word, at issue are rather modes of symbolization that are indeed
in part chronologically organized, but which also partially overlap and compete
with one another. Thus, the baroque view of space does not replace the systematic space of the modern period; instead, a distinction must be made here more
strongly than in the Renaissance between scientific and artistic symbolization.
It is easy to imagine what theoretical tensions resulted from this. On the one
hand, for Panofsky, there is a coinciding of concept and representation, which
materializes in a particular epochs understanding of the world and its associated
values. Thus, for example, the anisotropic concept of space in Antiquity corresponds to a qualitative pictorial space that can be observed in antique murals,
while the painting of the Renaissance devised a systematic space that corresponds to the mathematical discovery of continuous and infinite space. But if
it is certain that in the case of space there is not just (as Kant still asserted) a
single form, it is not certain how many different forms of space there can be.
Their number does not seem bounded at the top. If Panofsky most often seems
to think of the symbolic form as an epochal idea of value, which aligns it with
a Foucaultian epistm, he also seems regularly to break out of this historical
template, for instance, in order to admit the singularities of an artists identity.
Along with the systematic space of the Renaissance and the high space of the
baroque, there are also the oblique space of Altdorfer and the near space of
Rembrandt.
With such outright manipulations of the concept of symbolic form, Panofsky
offers his critics ample fodder. The expansion of symbolic form to include individual aesthetic contours, in which Panofsky himself indicates a shift from the
factor of value to the factor of style, seems to confirm the interpretation that
Panofskys approach is concerned not with the philosophy of culture, but simply
with an expanded history of style.14 An examination of the perspectival representation of space would then have at best an exemplary character; it would by
no means come close to the systematics of a cultural theory of symbolic forms.
If perspective is an aspect of style that can be described in the Casa dei Vettii and
the works of Masaccio, Saenredam, and Pablo Picasso, then this would speak
in favor of setting the whole project aside as purely the province of art history
(Figure 2). In that case, a history of perspective as a technique of representation
would be conceivable, just as a history of the dactyl, a history of the motet,
or a history of the different representations of Hercules at the Crossroads,
could also be written (the latter was actually written by Panofsky himself ).15
Ultimately then, perspective as symbolic form would merely be a contribution
to the history of style, made by Winckelmann into the central task of art history.
In the history of disciplines, this occasionally formulated assessment seems
rather strange, since Panofsky saw it as his duty to expand art history to include
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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

Figure 2 Pieter Saenredam, Nave and West Window of the Mariakerk, Utrecht, 1638, Oil
on panel, 62.5 93.5 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

the history of culture, and to liberate it from what he considered the formalistic
straitjacket of the Munich history of style (Wlfflin, Riegl, etc.). If one calls
into evidence his analytical method for the interpretation of art works, which
later was to become canonical in art historical analysis, the question of style is
predominantly addressed on the level of what Panofsky calls the iconographic
level. The further levelthe so-called iconological levelwhich, following
Panofsky, is only where the real understanding of the picture begins, cannot be
attained by an immanent reading of the picture; the analysis needs to reach beyond the art work, in order to secure its hidden and profound meaning. While,
iconographically speaking, a formal analysis might be helpful, the true iconological insight comes from beyond: the meaning of the picture must lie outside of
the picture.16
Art works are thus transpositions of a certain source texta biblical episode, a legend, an allegorybut in case there is no strictly identifiable pre-text
preceding the realization of the art work, it remains nonetheless a reflection
of something that lies beyond it: in Panofskys conceptions, art works are the
symptoms of a certain period, of an artists mentality or of the spirit of a time.
In this respect, a painting is the expression of a peculiar way of seeing. This is
where Panofsky comes quite close to Cassirer: with Cassirer, Panofsky shares
the conviction that there is a symmetrical mirroring between historical forms
of Anschauung and their modes of representation. Kants problem of how to
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mediate between sensibility and concept is thereby shifted to a rearticulation


that attempts to conceive the relationship of sensibility and meaning. The concept, with the mode of knowledge specific to it, is hereby only one among many
variants of meaning.

INTEGRAL OF EXPERIENCE: CASSIRERS


HISTORICIZATION OF THE A PRIORI
This expansion of a Kantian philosophy of knowledge into a general philosophy
of culture, which must now take into account other human systems of meaning
such as language, myth, and art, is expressed most memorably in the introduction to the first volume of 1923:
Along with the pure function of cognition we must seek to understand the
function of linguistic thinking, the function of mythical and religious thinking, and the function of artistic perception [Anschauung], in such a way as to
disclose how in all of them there is attained an entirely determinate formation,
not exactly of the world, but rather making for the world, for an objective,
meaningful context and an objective unity that can be apprehended as such
[objektiven Anschauungsganzen]. Thus the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture.17

Between the lines of this program can also be read the gradual break with neoKantianism. In the effort to defend Kant against all manner of misreadings that
were rampant in the nineteenth century, for instance, those which sought to
locate the pure forms of Anschauung physiologically, the Marburg school and
especially Cassirers teacher Hermann Cohen pointed out that Kants condition
of possibility of experience was to be thought of as purely logical. However,
this defense of Kantian philosophy was accompanied by a critique of Kant:
the philosopher did not carry out his own program consistently, since a second
source of knowledge (pure Anschauung) is treated as equal or even superior to
the concept:
Kant urges distinguishing pure Anschauung from pure thought. Not that they
should remain separated, but rather in order that they connect and are suited
to connection. But through this plan of his methodical terminology, to say
nothing of Anschauung, internal damage is done to thought. An Anschauung
thus precedes thought. It, too, is pure, thus it is related to thought. But thought
does have its beginning in something outside itself. Here lies the weakness in
Kants foundation. Here lies the basis for the deterioration that soon befell the
school.18

Transcendental philosophy can only be a priori if it has its bases in itself, and
the pure condition of possibility can therefore only be logical, since only in
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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

thought is nothing external mixed in. If Hermann Cohen in fact overcomes the
two great dualisms of Kantian philosophy (first, the two-worlds ontology, by
finally eliminating the thing in itself, and second, the dualism of Anschauung
and concept, by identifying Anschauung as a posteriori), through this subjectivist
about-face, transcendental philosophy thus slips into the dangerous waters of
idealism, as has often been remarked. With The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,
Ernst Cassirer takes a distinctly different route, without setting aside Kants
question as to the conditions of human experience of the world. To Cassirer,
there are indeed unified forms of Anschauung that are independent of any object
of experience. While Kant rightly stressed that these forms of Anschauung always
remain identical with themselves, according to Cassirer he disregarded that the
forms of Anschauung are modulated in a particular way according to the realm
of meaning, that they take on particular tones and colors. One is reminded
of Leibniz, for whom the human power of conception does not amount to a
mechanical and merely passive mirrorthus the popular metaphor in the medieval theory of the species in mediobut rather a living, itself active mirror. Now,
the conditions of the conception of an object are by no means exhausted by its
spatio-temporal situatedness or by the categorical determination of quality and
quantity. Rather, the category of modality must be revisited in order to be able
to reconstruct the process of the genesis of meaning.19
In this context, Cassirer refers to the example of lines (Figure 3): when we
view a line, we can conceive of it under various aspects without changing anything in its being. Accordingly, we can conceive of the line first simply in its
expressive function; second, we can recognize it as the concretization of a mathematical sine curve; third, we may interpret it as a mythic symbol; and fourth,
from a purely aesthetic standpoint, we could see it as an artistic ornament.20
Consequently, the line cannot be viewed other than in its respective mode of
viewing, alternately in the symbol system of language, science, religion, or art,
whereby the classic cloverleaf of symbolic forms is also run through. The question of the thing in itself then in fact becomes invalid, but not because itas
for Cohenis a mere construction of thought, but rather because it always can
only become a carrier of meaning in one of the particular modes of sensible
manifestation. As early as 1925, thus several years before the disputation with
Heidegger in Davos, Cassirer summarized the philosophical line of attack of
his approach in a small study: The question as to what reality is apart from
these forms [of visibility and the making visible], and what are its independent
attributes, becomes irrelevant here.21
Visibility and the making visible (Sichtbarkeit und Sichtbarmachung)an
echo of Kants doublet of receptivity and spontaneity, which still could be related
to Anschauung and thoughtare abandoned in favor of a constant rearticulation
in the sensible. In every seemingly purely receptive empirical experience a mental activity already intervenes, which Cassirer also terms symbolic pregnance:
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Figure 3 A line (E. Alloa).


By symbolic pregnance we mean the way in which a perception as a sensory
experience contains at the same time a certain non-intuitive meaning [einen
nicht-anschaulichen Sinn] that it immediately and concretely represents.22

Only through such a symbolic forming of the sensible can an experience take
place, as Cassirer writes with Kant: Through the reciprocal involvement of
these representative functions consciousness acquires the power to spell out phenomena, to read them as experiences.23
A quick reading could give the impression that this is simply a confirmation
of Kants thesis that intuition without concept is blind. But in the insistence
upon the activity of representation, the framework of the concept of reason
has been left far behind and the field of spontaneity has been expanded to all
cultural activities of symbolization. Kants question, What is the human? can
only be answered by regarding the human in the mirror of his creative involvement with the world, and thus in the mirror of his culture, as Cassirer repeatedly
stresses in the Essay on Man: as the animal symbolicum, the nature of the human
lies nowhere else than in the symbolic relationships that he creates. In this sense,
Jrgen Habermas is perfectly right when he characterizes Cassirers speculative
endeavor as a semiotic reforming of transcendental philosophy.24

THE MINIMALIST VARIANT: IS PERSPECTIVE MERELY A


FACTOR OF STYLE?
If one adheres to such a definition of the philosophy of culture, then Panofskys
project at first glance not only seems congruent to it; even more, it appears to be
its methodical spelling out. In his early essay Substance and Function from 1910,
Cassirer performed the systematic groundwork for understanding the epochal
change from the Medieval to the Modern period as a reshaping of the concept
of space, which was materialized in each periods mathematical theorization. The
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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

transition from an aggregate space to a systematic space, as he then elaborated in


Individual and Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, is based on a homogenization
and thus a functionalization of space:
Space had to be stripped of its objectivity, of its substantial nature, and had
to be discovered as a free, ideal complex of lines In principle, the same
constructions must be possible from all points in space. Each point must be
conceivable as the point of departure and the objective for every possible geometrical operation.25

The scientific world picture of the Modern period, its mathematics, geometry,
and cosmology, is already prefigured in the theory of perspective, as (according
to Cassirer) Erwin Panofsky showed in his study of 1924.26 This passage suggests
that Cassirer interpreted Panofskys work as a type of prehistory of the scientific
world picture of the Modern period. The art historian also fundamentally carried out Cassirers program in a totally different way by seeking to decipher
the epochal forms of Anschauung in their visible and material manifestations.
(This has been Samuel Edgertons influential interpretation: The real thrust of
[Panofskys] was not to prove that the ancients believed the visual world was
curved or that Renaissance perspective was a mere artistic convention, but that
each historical period had its own special perspective, a particular symbolic form
reflecting a particular Weltanschauung27). As such, it could be argued that in
linear-perspectival painting, an epoch itself holds up a mirror to its own worldview; the individual perspectival painting must be considered one of these exponents, in which according to Cassirer the objectivity of this world-view and its
fully self-contained character is expressed.28 Perspective is therefore much more
than a factor of style, as Panofsky formulates rather uncertainly at one point.29
This uncertainty may explain why Panofsky critics such as Pirenne considered it
legitimate to place perspective on a level with alexandrines and thereby dismiss
them both as irrelevant to epistemology.30 All this indicates that Panofsky cannot
have his sights set on a history of style in the classical sense. Central perspective
instead presented an objectivization of the Modern eras approach to the world.
In it, the coinciding of Anschauung and Darstellung, of presence and representation can be observed that Cassirer claimed for his philosophy of symbolic forms.
However, such a surreptitiously Hegelian image of history, which John M.
Krois pointed out early on,31 is not borne out by the historical reality. Thus,
the discovery of linear perspective and the associated idea of projection size did
not yet entirely supplant Euclids optics and its concept of angular size. (Well
into the late seventeenth century, the French Acadmie Royale de peinture et de
sculpture had lively debates about which conception of optics to favor). Even
more striking are the discrepancies on an artistic level. While as author of his
scientific treatise De prospectiva pingendi, Piero della Francesca came forward as
the spokesperson of a new rigorously mathematic mode of representation, in his
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paintings, he wisely refrained from applying linear perspective consistently. Even


Masaccios famous Holy Trinity at Santa Maria Novella, which is considered the
epitome of central perspective painting and of which Vasari wrote that finally
the painter had broken through the wall,32 only partly follows the rules of central
perspective. The event of the Crucifixion in fact presents the historia in the sense
of the pictorial subject to which Masaccios frescostrictly according to Albertis
definitionis open (Figure 4).
At the same time, as a New Testament event, the Holy Trinity opens up the
historia as the space of the new history of humanity; in a manner of speaking, it
offers an eschatological view for the observer, whose eye is led along the paneled
barrel vault and beyond, behind the picture.
But if such depiction of the scene at Golgotha opens up an eschatological
perspective, the exact place of God the Father in this perspectival historia cannot be precisely determined. If he were in fact standing on the red sarcophagus
mounted on the rear chapel wall, above which his feet can be seen, then according to strict perspectival principles, his head would have to be raised backward.
But if he were indeed bending forward, his head would conversely have to appear lower and perspectivally more foreshortened. As Panofsky notes, it cannot
be stated that the perspective in this work is exactly and uniformly constructed.33 It almost seems as if the painterentirely in opposition to Panofskys
concluding observation that through perspective, the Divine becomes a mere
subject matter for human consciousness34 cleared out zones of resistance in
his own perspectival construction, almost as if it were necessary to stress that
the Divine does not conform to the new principles. Without reverting to such
a theory of deus absconditus, in any case it is possible to speak with Louis Marin
of an opacity of representation, which balks at a logic of transparency and
exposes the logic specific to the material.35 Thus, the aperspectival God can be
placed in a long history of the critique of central perspective, in which Holbeins
anamorphoses or Braques montages of incompossible views of violins are a few
exemplary stopping points.36

THE MAXIMALIST VARIANT; OR, PERSPECTIVE IN PLURAL


The persuasive power of Panofskys essay thus stands and falls with the question
of how narrow or wide the concept of perspective is to be understood. The
answering of this question is all the more difficult since the manner in which the
term is used in the course of the text is not consistent. In a footnote, Panofsky
writes that he understands perspective as
the capacity to represent a number of objects together with a part of the
space around them in such a way that the conception of the material picture
support is completely supplanted by the conception of a transparent plane
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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

Figure 4 Masaccio, The Holy Trinity, c. 1426, fresco,


6.67 3.17 m, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
through which we believe we are looking into an imaginary space. This space
comprises the entirety of the objects in apparent recession into depth, and is not
bounded by the edges of the picture, but merely cut off.37

Such a conception of the image as a cut through the visual pyramid thus implies
that by perspective, Panofsky simply means the unified, geometric, linear or
central perspective. But in other places, Panofsky virtually insists that the question is not only whether particular cultural epochs have perspective, but also
which perspective they have,38 whereby the implication is that there is more
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than just one. This crucial point in the essay perhaps contains the most important evidence for our question. It is here that we may start addressing the issue
of whether and, if yes, how it is that perspective could ever be a symbolic form.
While Panofsky, on the one hand, expounds the tremendous cultural
achievement of central perspective, on the other, he emphasizes that this principle was not simply available in nature, but rather already itself represents a
cultural invention through which the world can be reconfigured. It is therefore
as incorrect to interpret within Perspective as Symbolic Form the naturalization
of a historically arising process of symbolization, as it would be conversely to
read the essay as a diatribe against perspective as mere societal convention, as
has occasionally transpired in the American reception. Although the discussion
about the so-called curved perspective at points could suggest that his goal is
to pit a perspective of natural perception against a merely conventional representational ordering, Panofsky makes clear at the end that central perspective is
indeed an ordering, but an ordering of the visual phenomenon.39 Whether the
perspective is parallel, elliptical, curved, or linear: it is not an abstract datum,
but rather results from the dynamic forming of the material of Anschauung itself.
In Cassirers expression, perspective can be called the integral of experience.40
Thus, to be sure, the domain of the mere history of art and optics has been left
far behind, and the concept of perspective has been understood no longer as a
symbolic form, but as an overall principle of formation of Anschauung. So Cassirer
speaks, for example, of perspective as an optical inversion or change in attitude,
when we place the experience of perception into a figure/ground relationship.41
But are we not thereby implementing a figurative conception of perspective?
Have we not interpreted the term, which Panofsky in his terminological history
derives from the optics of antiquity, from the retrospective standpoint of philosophical perspectivism, for which Leibniz or Nietzsche were the driving forces?
In his book The Poetics of Perspective, James Elkins persuasively demonstrates
that such an expanded concept of perspective is by no means subordinate to
Panofskys narrower definition of perspective as a technical guide for representation, but rather, that, in a manner of speaking, the latter became the condition
of possibility for the former.42 Only when one assumes that any approach to the
world is always carried out through its particular perspective can it be appreciated what an inventive accomplishment is contained in the specific development
of a central-perspectival technique of representation. However, along with the
so-called central perspective, there are numerous other perspectival formations
that Elkins discusses. Axonometric (so-called parallel) perspectives are manifold (they can be isometric, diametric of trimetric) and they are not only relevant
for the immense field of geometric projections (mathematical objects, virtual
objects, 3D visualizations, etc.), but also for understanding certain non-Western
forms of painting (in traditional Chinese and Japanese paintings, cityscapes are
often represented according to a combination of parallel projection and a view
64

Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

Figure 5 Parallel Perspective. Qing Ming Shang He Tu (Along the River during Qing
Ming Festival). Detail from the scroll painting, c. 10451145. China Online Museum.

from above; Figure 5). Most importantly, the issue of perspective forces to shift
the problem of representation from a mere representation of a given thing, scene
or event towards representation as performativity: perspectivity is not just a matter of different viewpoints on a given object, but also about bringing about what
it refers to. It is compelling that even the so-called impossible objects (impossible, because self-contradictory) are still under the condition of perspectival
representation (Figure 6). In this sense, perspectivity is not just another name

Figure 6 Impossible objects.


65

EMMANUEL ALLOA

for a given (cultural, historical or subjective) standpoint: it hints at the general


condition of what it means for something to become visible and to be seen at all.

CONCLUSION: PERSPECTIVE AS MEDIALITY


As it were, the question posed at the beginning may now be answered: perspective is not a symbolic form in Cassirers sense, and this is so for two reasons.
First, perspective is not a symbolic form becauseunderstood as central perspectiveit does not meet the requirements of Cassirers symbolic form and does
not appear in all cultures and at all times (it would therefore be located somewhere between art, technology, and science). Second, understood as perspectivity
in general, it overshoots Cassirers heuristically structured classification from the
outset. With a felicitous analogy suggested by Hubert Damisch, perspective can
be compared with what linguists call a root paradigm, which ever only exists in
its already flected forms, but is empirically never present in a pure state.43
The perspective analyzed by Panofsky therefore does not fit into Cassirers
mold for two reasons: it is either less or more than a symbolic form. More, because
fundamental perspectivity characterizes any symbolic approach to the world
or any approach to the world at all. In place of perspective, Panofsky also speaks
in other contexts simply of relativity. The systematically larger-scale essay The
History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline discusses a general cultural theory of
relativity that transcends physics.44 Through this relativization of the condition
of possibility, infinity also acquires a new meaning: perspective, which is finite,
bounded, and always partial, is at once a precondition for and a restriction of
the human relationship to the world. Perspective is thereby that medium that
enables access to reality, inasmuch as it, in Cassirers words, allows a new side
of reality to emerge, but also always already blocks and obstructs this access.
Perspective as a principle of formation and deformation in one.
Something very similar was formulated by Cassireralbeit not with regard
to perspectivein the introduction to the third volume of Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms: The primal stratum of reality can only be glimpsed as through a foreign medium, and
whence it follows that in these forms reality is cloaked as well as revealed. The
same basic functions which give the world of the spirit its determinacy, its imprint, its character, appear on the other side to be so many refractions which
an intrinsically unitary and unique being undergoes as soon as it is perceived
and assimilated by a subject. Seen from this standpoint, the philosophy of
symbolic forms is nothing other than an attempt to assign to each of them,
as it were, its own specific and peculiar index of refraction. The Philosophy
of Symbolic Forms aspires to know the special nature of the various refracting media, to understand each one according to its nature and the laws of its
structure.45
66

Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

It is regrettable that the refracting medium par excellenceperspectivewas not


included in Ernst Cassirers philosophy of culture.
Emmanuel Alloa (Ph.D. Sorbonne/Freie Universitt Berlin) is Assistant Professor in
Philosophy at the University St Gallen (Switzerland) and Senior Research Fellow at the
NCCR iconic criticism at Basel. His research fields cover phenomenology, French
philosophy, visual studies, aesthetics, and political philosophy. His publications include
Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen Phnomenologie (2011), Erscheinung
und Ereignis. Zur Zeitlichkeit des Bildes (ed.) (2013) and Penser limage II: Anthropologies
du visuel (ed.) (2015). emmanuel.alloa@unisg.ch

Notes
1. Letter of 13 May 1942 to Paul Schilpp. As quoted in J.M. Krois and D.P. Verene,
Introduction. Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 4: The Metaphysics
of Symbolic Forms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), xxiii.
2. See P.F. Bundgard, The Grammar of Aesthetic Intuition: On Ernst Cassirers
Concept of Symbolic Form in the Visual Arts. Synthese, 179(1) (2011): 4357;
M. Van Vliet (ed.), Ernst Cassirer et lart comme forme symbolique (Rennes: Presses
universitaires de Rennes, 2010); M. Lauschke, sthetik im Zeichen des Menschen:
Die sthetische Vorgeschichte der Symbolphilosophie Ernst Cassirers und die symbolische
Form der Kunst (Hamburg: Meiner, 2007); B. Recki, Die Flle des Lebens: Ernst
Cassirer als sthetiker. In J. Frchtl and M. Moog-Grnewald (eds) sthetik in
metaphysikkritischen Zeiten (Hamburg: Meiner, 2007); M. Hinsch, Die kunststhetische Perspektive in Ernst Cassirers Kunstphilosophie (Wrzburg: Knigshausen
& Neumann, 2001). See also the somewhat older chapter Kunst als symbolische
Form in H. Paetzold, Cassirer zur Einfhrung (Hamburg: Junius, 1993), 95104.
Specifically with regard to the unpublished lecture manuscripts from Yale: T.I. Bayer,
Art as Symbolic Form: Cassirer on the Educational Value of Art. The Journal of
Aesthetic Education, 40(4) (2006): 5164. M. Jesinghausen-Lauster, Die Suche nach
der symbolischen Form: Der Kreis um die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg
(Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1985) is still worth reading for Cassirers intellectual milieu
at the Bibliothek.
3. E. Panofsky, Die Perspektive als symbolische Form. Vortrge der Bibliothek Warburg
1924/25 (Leipzig/Berlin: Teubner, 1927[1924]); English translation: Perspective as
Symbolic Form. Trans. C. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
4. W.J.T. Mitchell, The Pictorial Turn. In Picture Theory: Essays of Verbal and Visual
Representation (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994).
5. B. Hub, Perspektive, Symbol und symbolische Form. Zum Verhltnis Cassirer
Panofsky. Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, 47(2) (2010): 146.
6. E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Vol. 3 (Darmstadt: WBG, 1929),
235; English translation: The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Trans. R. Mannheim
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), 202.
7. Quoted in Krois translation (J.M. Krois, Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 50).
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EMMANUEL ALLOA

8. For Allister Neher, despite some very different terminologies, the two perspectives are ultimately compatible (A. Neher, How Perspective Could Be a Symbolic
Form. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63(4) (2005): 35973). Audrey
Rieber talks of a critical shift in Panofskys use of Cassirers notion of symbolic
form: for Panofsky, the symbolic form is not so much the expression of an activity of the mind but an issue of meaning. Both however ultimately converge,
Rieber argues, in the possibility of interpreting artistic forms as the expression of
a certain worldview (A.Rieber, Art, histoire et signification Un essai dpistmologie
dhistoire de lart autour de liconologie dErwin Panofsky (Paris: LHarmattan, 2012)).
To Maud Hagelstein, Origine et survivance des symboles: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky
(Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Olms, 2014), 183) Perspective as symbolic
form should be read as Panofskys most audacious essay, which, although shaky in
its use of Neokantian conceptuality, aims at unravelling the transcendentality of the
work of art, i.e. perspective as the condition of possibility of painting.
9. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 41.
10. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Teil 3: Phnomenologie der Erkenntnis;
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: The Phenomenology of Knowledge.
11. H. Blumenberg, Ernst Cassirer gedenkend. In Wirklichkeiten, in denen wir leben:
Aufstze und eine Rede (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 165.
12. As quoted in B. Recki, Kultur als Praxis: Eine Einfhrung in Ernst Cassirers Philosophie
der symbolischen Formen (Berlin: Akademie, 2004), 37.
13. Recki, Kultur als Praxis, 36.
14. This is, for instance, the critical verdict of Gottfried Boehm (Studien zur
Perspektivitt: Philosophie und Kunst in der Frhen Neuzeit (Heidelberg: Winter,
1969), 15).
15. E. Panofsky, Herkules am Scheidewege. Leipzig/Berlin: Teubner, 1930).
16. E. Panofsky, Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der
bildenden Kunst. Logos, 21 (1932): 10319. On this topic of the pre-text of the
image, see my article Iconic Turn: A Plea for Three Turns of the Screw (E. Alloa,
Iconic Turn: A Plea for Three Turns of the Screw. Culture, Theory and Critique
(2015): forthcoming). However, within art history, attention was mainly given
to the new, fundamentally reworked English version of the essay, Iconography
and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art from 1955
(E. Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of
Renaissance Art. In Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers In and On Art History (New
York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955)).
17. Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 1: 7980.
18. H. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. In H. Holzhey (ed.) Werke, Vol. 6
(Hildesheim: Olms, 1977), 12 (my translation).
19. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 1: 94sqq. and Vol. 2: 60.
20. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 2001. The same example appears in the essay of 1927 (E. Cassirer, Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung
in der Philosophie. In E.W. Orth and J.M. Krois (eds) Symbol, Technik, Sprache
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1985[1927]), 5sqq.).
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Could Perspective Ever Be A Symbolic Form? Revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer

21. Die Frage, was das Seiende an sich, auerhalb dieser Formen der Sichtbarkeit
und der Sichtbarmachung sein und wie es beschaffen sein mge: diese Frage muss
jetzt verstummen (E. Cassirer, Sprache und Mythos: Ein Beitrag zum Problem der
Gtternamen, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 6 (Leipzig/Berlin: Teubner, 1925),
6; Language and Myth. Trans. S.K. Langer (New York: Dover, 1953), 8).
22. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 202.
23. Ibid., 191.
24. J. Habermas, Die befreiende Kraft der symbolischen Formgebung. In Vortrge aus
dem Warburg-Haus, Vol. 1 (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), 1011.
25. E. Cassirer, The Individual and Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy. Trans. Mario
Domandi (New York: Harper & Row, 1963[1927]), 182.
26. Panofsky has shown that this discovery was made not only in mathematics and
in cosmology but in the plastic arts and in the art theory of the Renaissance as
well; and, in fact, that the theory of perspective anticipated the results of modem
mathematics and cosmology. (Cassirer, The Individual and Cosmos in Renaissance
Philosophy, 182, footnote).
27. Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York:
Basic Books, 1975), 156.
28. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 2: 32.
29. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 41.
30. M.H. Pirenne, The Scientific Basis of Leonardo da Vincis Theory of Perspective.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 3 (19523): 170.
31. Krois, Cassirer: Symbolic Forms and History.
32. G. Vasari, Life of Masaccio. In G. Milanesi (ed.) Opere. Florence: Milanesi, 1973),
Vol. 2: 291.
33. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 62.
34. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 72.
35. L. Marin, Opacit de la peinture: Essais sur la reprsentation au Quattrocento (Paris:
Editions EHESS, 2006).
36. On Masaccios Trinity in the context of what the author calls a history of aperspective, see T. Hensel, Aperspektive als symbolische Form: Eine Annherung
(IMAGE 1: Zeitschrift fr interdisziplinre Bildforschung. http://bit.ly/1KhYY6L,
2005). A. Perrig, Masaccios Trinit und der Sinn der Zentralperspektive
(Marburger Jahrbuch fr Kunstwissenschaft, 21 (1986): 1143) is still topical.
37. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 77, note 5.
38. Ibid., 41.
39. Ibid., 71.
40. Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 203.
41. Ibid., 158.
42. Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective.
43. Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, 25.
44. Here is the original wording: The world of the humanities is determined by a
cultural theory of relativity, comparable to that of the physicist (E. Panofsky, The
69

EMMANUEL ALLOA

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline. Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York:
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955[1939]), 7).
45. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 3: 1.

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71

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