Federico Fantelli

This chapter proposes a critical reading of Sartre's phenomenology of physical images and provides some points of comparison with Husserl's position. The first necessary step is to distill Sartre's view on physical images from his overarching theory of imagination. The physical images considered here are paintings and photographs (i.e., ordinary physical images), schematic drawings (e.g., stick figures and silhouettes), and images by chance (e.g., faces in clouds). For Sartre, the further we move away from ordinary physical images, which appear at a glance, the more the bodily movements of the beholder actively contribute to the constitution of the image. On this basis, Sartre's theory can accommodate the diversity of pictorial phenomena. However, this view raises some concerns and risks overemphasizing the role of the beholder. Husserl's theory of physical imaging posits that all pictorial phenomena have the same structure: their differences do not stem from their constitutive processes. He puts forward a distinction between the extensity and intensity of depiction that can be used to track their diversity. The final section suggests that Sartre's position aggravates a critical issue in Husserl's theory–the idea that image consciousness depends on an apprehension that bestows meaning on the available sensuous contents–and hints at the direction for novel research into the phenomenology of the pictorial.

Caricature undeniably excels at mocking people and their foibles. But is this mode of depiction limited to human beings? Can animals, objects, or even abstract concepts be caricatured? The first goal of this paper is to trace the limits of the caricaturable and see how far they extend beyond the human figure. The second goal is to understand how the wondrous modification enacted by caricature works. To do so, I analyze the features that caricature selects, and argue that such features have a relational nature—they are instantiated by the depicted subject but their sense hinges on implicit norms. I then outline the deep structure of reference exploited by caricature for depicting. Finally, I use this account to unravel the paradox of caricature: how can a picture both misrepresent its subject and prompt an accurate recognition? I defend the controversial claim that caricature per se does not amount to misrepresentation.