On ‘Visual Implication’: Outline of a Theory

Most of us are ready to accept the view that the front elevation of a building is essentially determined by such openings of the wall as windows, doors, bays, and niches. Especially their location and their sizes create a compound of parts and details that appear as an orderly arrangement, as it might be called. Normally we are able to feel when everything seems to be in order, in the right place, thus creating a good and balanced picture of the wall. The lack of such an order can be felt equally easily. One reason of seeing such a balanced order, and/or the lack of it, is the system of rectangles presented by the openings within the parameter rectangle formed by the whole wall. It is easy to see that the main reason for the feeling that everything is in the right place is depending on some of the diagonals of the rectangles and their mutual directions as we experience them in accordance with the movement of our eyes. But then, where do we see all these diagonals when we look at the architectural object or the photo picturing it in its corporeal and factual actuality? Indeed, there are no lines to be seen, no lines present either in the photo or in the front wall of the house! Le Corbusier called the lines of his drawings “les tracés régulateurs” and “linee occulte”. For him they were, though lines not to be presented, extremely important anyway. He wrote that his buildings become visual poetry, cast in reinforced concrete—thanks to these guiding lines. How is it possible that our eyes can be guided to see the front elevation, according to lines that are not drawn and are nowhere to be seen? Assuming that they are actually so important for our aesthetic experience, the problem comes up urgently: how is it possible that we see the diagonals though they are not made visible at all, how is it possible to see what cannot be seen? I have claimed that in all these cases the diagonals and lines are implicitly given in our perceptions. They are implied by those details we can see because they are there, although unseen and as if hidden, but actually present in some obscure way of absence. I introduced the term visual implication in order to refer to all these cases. I have continued to think whether it would be possible to add to the phenomenological theory of perception a corollary that would solve this problem. The present paper drafts such a corollary. It is based on the role of imagination involved in our capacity of visual perception.