Gottfried Boehm

Iconic Knowledge
The Image as a Model

Knowing or Doing?
Working with models has always been a widespread practice in artists
ateliers and in the workshops of technicians and scientists. Related finds
date back to ancient Egypt and one can assume the use of model
sketches starting in the early stages of arithmetic and geometry in
Babylon. The role of the model has intensified markedly since the Early
Modern Period and has since experienced a rich blossoming. In the
context of the evaluation of the model from the perspective of the
discourse, it has been heavily imposed upon since the 18th century by an
antagonism that, without a semblance of connection, pits cognitive
knowledge against aesthetic experience. Kant attempted to confirm that
this was the case as well as to overcome the situation in his Critiques.
All the same, he was not able to prevent models (especially of artists
and scientists) from being relegated to the vestibules and ghettos of
applied arts or the history of science by an appraisal that oriented itself
on taste and style. This was only to fundamentally change in the 20th
century. The model shifted from the periphery into the center of art; test
experiments appeared as the artworks themselves. The dynamic of
scientific knowledge and its rapid paradigm shifts increased the need for
constructing models. Some models became popular icons of knowledge,
for example the atom model or the DNA spiral. It became clear that in
doing so, they tied in to an older tradition of models that had brought
forth revered representations of the night sky with the astrolabe or the
armillary sphere. Classrooms and living rooms alike are still furnished
with globes. All of these are examples in which representing with models

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Iconic Knowledge. The Image as a Model

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is connected with instrumental practical application. This is also a quality

of geographical maps or other forms of mappings.

This complex history makes the question of the model seem boundless
and urgent at the same time. Two main pathways would seem useful for
discussion here: the historical case study, or a reflexive procedure that
keeps an eye out for the conditions of iconic models. We have decided
to go with the first option, well aware that it always leads back to the first.

To begin, we will relate the great variety of model types, model concepts
and practices back to a single differentiation criterion, namely the
manner in which models relate to their objects, and how their individual
reference is constituted. A spectrum emerges, on the one end of which
the full-scale simulation of an (in principle) accessible original can be
found. The evocativeness of such a simulation, for example that of the
model, consists in the minimizing of difference. It looks like a real train
and moves like one too. As many of the visible details as possible are
recreated faithfully and to scale. If the users were to liliputanize to the
same scale, they would return to an original world and the real train
would appear to them as a monumentally enlarged model. Here we have
an inkling of the dialectic that can generally be observed in the
translation of originals into secondary representations: the model can
itself function again as the original.

In any case, the simultaneous model enjoys widespread usefulness in

design, industry, architecture, and art and should therefore not be
confused with simple bricolage. What characterizes it is always the
availability of an original, a precise concept of the real that would still be
accessible without a model. Nonetheless we are dealing with real
models that display some of these characteristics:
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Adherence to scale, and the shifting of scale

Selection of characteristics, and thereby:

the directing of attention, as well as:

room for interpretation.

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Simulative models capture our interest first and foremost through the
recognition that they make possible.

At the other end of the spectrum, we encounter models with a decidedly

open relationship of reference; one could thus also call them heuristic.
These stem from a practice that deals with realities that can be
inaccessible, invisible, or visible but unknown. There is no definite
concept that captures them, not even the concepts substitute:
palpability. This applies especially to models of the world and the
heavens. The night sky is certainly one of the strongest visual
sensations, a cinema open since the dawn of time, and whose iconic
substrates have likely been explored since the cultures of the Megalithic
measuring, representing, and ritualizing. Pictorial figurations were
ascribed to the twinkling chaos of the heavens, the paths of the planets
were identified, the cyclical movements of the constellations were
represented in the zodiac, and the phases of the moon and the
equinoxes were calculated. Since the earliest times, model images have
been helpful in the search for organizing patterns. Their characteristic
reduction of complexity allowed for inscrutable relationships to be
opened up in a lucid manner.

The deictic power of models always relies on the correct simplification.

This is, after all, what activates the image-specific overview, and a
channeling of the gaze allows for visual evidence, despite how
provisional, historically speaking, models may have proven to be. The
history of cosmos models remains to this day an unfinished process of
revisions, accelerated once again by the Hubble photographs. The gaze
into the heavens and the model practice that conveys it both always
reflect the limits of knowledge and of reason. But hardly a more potent,
more epistemic source of impulses has emerged than our bottomless
fascination with the starry sky, the residuum of imagination. And even
the event of the so-called Copernican turn, whose model change also
deeply influences our own time, can be traced back to a dry visual
constellation, to a few spheres on prospective orbits. What a

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concentration of insight! It is the reconstruction of a model framework

with the subsequent costs of an unforeseen revolution in mentality.

In the following, we will be dealing with heuristic models. They also allow
for a plausible transition from the sphere of artifacts to that of knowledge.
The close interaction between knowing and doing, between connatre
and construire characterizes a guideline of our argument. The following
quote from Immanuel Kant might serve as the motto for what is to come:
We cannot conceive of a line without drawing it in our thoughts; nor a
circle without first delineating it. (Kant KrV B154) We add to this: the
line, guided by the eye and hand, also wants to be drawn in actuality.

Schema Image
The model constructors career success was made possible by their
inherent ability for cognitive revelation (deixis, demonstratio). They show
something that can only be seen in this way; they have specific
evidences at their disposal. Which ones?

This does not contradict the fact that, as is the case for all scientific
construction of hypotheses, a selection of external data is constantly
flowing into the practice of models. As prosaic as models might appear,
they have a surplus of the imaginary at their command, they maintain a
difference vis--vis the real. It is precisely this difference that opens up
the space for the free play of experiment that so often accompanies
models.

Lets return to the armillary sphere: the framework of wires, the swinging
of bodies into one another, is not the sky, and yet it is. A deictic power
inherent in the model attracts us; however, we gladly allow that the
model is part of the quotidian of the scientist in disciplinary discourses, a
means of scientific explication among others. We are always dealing
with an internal and an external functional relationship in models. This
doesnt just prompt the question What? but also the others, carrying a

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distinctly historical index, namely When? For what purpose? and For
whom?

Interest in the iconic conditions of knowledge brings with it, vis--vis the
self-image of the scientist, a clear shifting of attention one on which we
must insist, since it is what allows us to occupy ourselves with the
demonstratio of the model itself. How does this shift come about?

Concealed inside this question, like a matryoshka doll, is a further

elementary layout that deserves discussing before we return to the
model type in a more specific sense in the next segment.

The intended questions read:

How can knowledge be generated by images in the first place?
Does something like iconic knowledge exist?
How does it expand the horizon of experience?
How does it come about?

Since scientific knowledge must insist on a verifiable solidity, our

problem can be further honed. Now, the question is:
How do image and concept meet each other in the image itself?

What kind of question is this? How can we proceed with it? Who could
help us here? After all, categories like visual thought and the older
parler peinture are not questioned, and a discipline like art history
presupposes that in the space of its phenomena, concepts with images
come to the rescue. To really understand this discursivity of the pictoral
and thus to explain it or make it known through scientific means is one of
the biggest challenges before us.

We will employ in this matter an elementary tool of the trade, but one
that seems to be appropriate for images, namely the simple means of
precise observation and of description, which will then prove capable of
being implemented in further arguments and in particular theoretical

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didactic plays. In any case, our premise is simple and hopefully stable:
when concepts combine with images, this interlacing should also be
detectable in the images themselves in one way or another.

The elementary problem before us is that concepts are by their nature

abstract, i.e. completely invisible. If there is a way, then it must
overcome the difficult passage, the notable transition between the two
separate worlds back and forth and back , that is, it must interweave
invisibility with visibility.

But first, we are dealing with two separate evidences.

On the one hand, with the reality of the concept: We can come up with
any number of concepts, and we use them constantly, for example right
this very minute.

On the other hand, there are concretions in images that involve the
conceptual at least to the extent that they can be named. We
ceaselessly identify sky, clouds, mountain, tree, house, table, and chair
in images and call them by names.

What we are missing is a joint that flexibly interweaves the abstractinvisible with the concrete-sensory, a missing link. How can it be tracked
down? Is the thing that combines the invisible with the visible itself
visible? In what way?

In order to shed light on this matter, we will take a look at a drawing that
Paul Klee published for didactic purposes in his pedagogical
sketchbook from 1925. We will detach it from its context and transfer it
to that of our argument. We see a strange concretion of the concept
house, or more precisely, the facade of a house. Contrary to our
expectation, this house lies flat on the ground, but yet does not show its
floor plan. Put plainly: it is lying in the horizontal and attempts with all its
might to raise itself from it. This effort is supported by a perspectival

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shortening, but one that disregards its own laws at a critical juncture.
Klee himself highlights this section in his monosyllabic commentary: the
animal and by that he most likely means the observer (wants), for
the benefit of his balance, to see all of the verticals of reality also
projected as verticals... He says it, but he doesnt follow through.
Technically speaking, he undermines perspectival convention by not
combining the floor plan and vertical section together at a right angle.

Klees offensive exposes first and foremost simply the fact that
representations follow rules that guide them. Apparently, there are quite
different rules than just the traditional ones of perspective. A glance at
Klees work in the twenties, which shows him occupied with, among
other things, using the house to question a classic paradigm of
perspective, also teaches one to discover other rules of possible houses.
The L-Platz under Construction (1923), the Houses-Projection (1923),
or House-Inside (1919), all of them water-colors, confirm this activity.
Klees very different houses contort and stretch, play out their ground
lines to all sides, overlay inner and outer, allow the focal point to wander,
operate with paradoxes, and so forth.

Thus, Klee shows that a plethora of rules can be devised with the means
of the image: rules that represent the same thing, that allow themselves
to shape ways of worldmaking (Goodman), and that lead to quite
unseen houses. These rules, like maps, complete a projection onto a
plane it is not just by coincidence that we find the word PLAN written
into the picture field of the L-Platz ; but frontal projections also appear
abruptly, one encounters the overlay of color onto a squared ground with
a linear frame, and so forth.

The concept of the rule, which encompasses the most varied modi of
representation, has involuntarily crept into our description. Could it
perhaps be that it is trying to alert us to that ominous joint that conveys
the invisible concept (house) with its manifold manifestations?

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In order to pursue this suspicion, we will now take up the drawing pencil
ourselves, keeping in mind our motto and the expansion that KIee
granted it. He doesnt want to think the line drawn, but rather to let it
promenade, to activate it as an agent, as a point that shifts itself (6).

We will now draw a house, adhering to a series of the simplest steps

with the intent of better understanding the modus operandi of the rule.
We will even abstain from using a ground line, i.e. the thought of any
projection, and head off, quite mundanely, to drawing-kindergarten. We
will take what appears: a straight, vertical line on a bright surface as
literally as possible.

First, the line itself appears, along with the distances to the edges. The
numerical comes into play, which would allow itself to be checked, but
which as it stands remains under the threshold of attention.

Then, a second vertical line, parallel at a distance. What we have just

observed becomes more complicated. What remains manifest is the
sparse structure lines of lead on paper in an undecided order. One can
already recognize here that two lines were placed onto a field, and begin
to constitute themselves vis--vis an Inner and an Outer.

The third line branches off of the first one diagonally to the upper right.
Since we are on our way to a concept of the house, it now begins to ring
a bell. It is at this point that we can finally say something more: This is
not simply a third line, but at the same time also half of a roof. The
factualness of the lines changes into something meaning-bearing. We
are close to our goal.

And voil: the fourth line, which turns off to the left from the second line,
meets up with the first slant: and the house is complete! An elementary
viewness built itself up step by step and became optically discernible in
the fourth move. One can imagine that children explore the possibilities
of drawing in a similar way once they have left the phase of spontaneous

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actions behind them. We are dealing here with forms of what one could
call the arch, the beginning, the ur-scene of the iconic: the emergence
of meaning from out of material substrates.

The other drawings demonstrate how arriving at the sight of a house

through drawing is by no means a matter of course. Just one wrong line,
just one that is out of control, and one exits the perimeter of possible
houses.

Our kindergarten visit has allowed us an insight into how the rule
functions. It is, one can now say, itself invisible, but guides the formation
of the visible, of a view in a fundamental manner. It is also for this reason
that Kant, falling back on rhetorical conceptuality, called it a schema and
assigned it to the image. In doing so, he also employs the rhetorical
concept of the hypotypose, which literally means: draft, outline, essential
trait, also: what lies beneath. In short: the schema rule is not itself a
picture, but it serves, steering, as its basis. The verb to steer is not
unimportant here, since it implies that we are dealing with a process.
Indeed: without this transfer, without the transition from the factual to the
effect, without this act, viewness, that is, the image, would never
appear. In its structure it is not reality, but a condensate of the real. The
joint of the schema that opens the way from the factual to representation
is itself of a temporal nature. Images must build themselves up if they
are to appear. They imply an act of showing, through which they still
and mute as they are visibly come before us as an event, as their
coming-to-be. But the schema doesnt just sort out what belongs to the
perimeter of possible houses a boundary that may not be overstepped
but also the How, the form of possible appearance that only unveils
itself when a real hand draws a real pencil over a real page.

Lets keep in mind that the schema rule articulates iconic difference and
determines its moments reciprocally. Itself invisible, it makes decisions
that become visible. It allows an infinite amount to disappear into the
abyss of the simply possible, thereby precisely making visible. When this

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house appears, millions of others have disappeared into the nirvana of

potential.

The simplicity of our examples should not lead astray. We find ourselves
in an area that structures the entire appearance of representation, as
complex as it may be. A schema already exists when we bring a sign
into a material field and activate a boundary against the Outer, thereby
making it into representation. A schema exists when as in this case
the lines appear in front of, that is, on the ground. The in- and on-, the
upper- and lower-schema and so forth, fall into place as a motoric
schema of an overview, that as our drawing showed activates the
visual forces of the field. Let us now move the lower left line to the upper
right it then appears optically lighter, it appears elevated, making
something like gravity indirectly noticeable, and brings our bodily
experience into play. Even the simplest pictorial relationships thus
implicate the eye, the force of seeing. The approaching observer is a
methodical fictional character who has always come too late.

At the same time, it becomes clear that the iconic has been governed by
the number from the start; that a mapping of the gaze arises, especially
when its a matter of simultaneously honoring the field. Incidentally,
cognitive science has begun using strong arguments to derive the
inherence of mathematics as an episteme from the visual field.
Viewness or aspectation thus proves itself to be a key to
understanding number, as does language (because in linguistics, aspect
also refers to temporal changes of the same verb: it transports it into
very different viewnesses of reality, for example: to go, I go, I had
gone, I will go, etc...). We have now arrived at the point at which images
emerge. Their origin is puzzling, since it consists of the process of an
immemorial transfer through which the perceptual can be experienced
as something conceptual, the material as a spatial or logical
determination. The schematism is thereby only circumscribed in passing,
and we can only point out here that the ability to pre-conceive the
perimeter of possible images corresponds with an inner pictorial ability

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that functions as the governor of the imaginary. Drawing even the

simplest house requires recourse to imagination. Its no coincidence that
Kant granted the imagination a decisive role in his philosophical project
of integrating the concepts of the intellect with outlook. A theory of
images, however it may look in its details, will confront this theme.

To conclude this line of thought, lets take a look once again the L-Platz
with its houses. How do things really stand with the relationship between
the concept and a house; in other words, one of the houses in the
variety of the possible?

What do we see?

We see how this house looks

We see how houses can look in general

We see how Klee represents houses

We see the difference between houses in art and those on the real LPlatz

We see the logic of the moved focal point and patterns of

perspectival deviations

We see the difference of line and color

We see, We see... much, much more and nothing that is arbitrary.

In other words, this image opens up a room for play of the possible that
is just as distinct as it is broad, and within which certain decisions have
been made. So in the image, what is revealed is not the concept of a
house in the sense of a repraesentatio singularis, but rather: something
like a house. Something like this is a linguistic turn of phrase with quite
a bit of freedom as it were, it states what opens the perimeter of the
schema rule. The invisible unity of the concept reveals itself in different
sensory views. The room for play must not be damaged in the process.
There is also a tower on the L-Platz. A tower is not a house. Here, one
schema is transgressed in order to make room for another one.

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The Specifics of the Model-Image

Can our house drawings be called models? Only in a very unspecific
sense. Because what houses are in general, what they are in
principle, is so well known that no models are required for them, even
though they would undoubtedly do justice to this role in a pinch.
However, an architectural model in a strict sense, displaying a very
specific construction, looks completely different. It is structured on the
basis of specific data, and reaches a high level of precision opening at
the same time a view onto something that exists, does not yet exist, isnt
conceivable or doesnt exist anymore. It creates a paradigm or an
exemplum which we will talk about later.

The generation of iconic knowledge, as we said, is a necessary, but not

yet sufficient component of model construction. Further specifics enter
into the picture, a few of which we will now discuss. In doing so, we will
move along two paths:
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On the first one, we are dealing with a quantitative exactitude that

avails itself of mathematical means in order to narrow the margins of
the indeterminate, thereby creating the clearest evidences possible.

On the second path, what is of interest are the inherent

determinations visible in the model itself and their referencibility,
which can be reflected in a simultaneous overview. A sort of standing
observation, a thoughtful lingering sets in that we are certainly
familiar with for example in old models of the heaven. Its no
coincidence that they also play over to modalities of aesthetic
perception again and again.

But this inner rule-boundness and its play of reflection isnt a means in
itself, but rather it establishes a relationship of analogy to the
represented circumstances.

Both paths, the quantitative as well as the reflexive, cross one another,
and differentiating the two does not necessarily imply completely

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separating them from one another. On both paths it is a matter of

coherence and evidence in the face of a thing.

We have already encountered a subliminal presence of number

relationships in the simplest positings of an image. Models raise them
as a rule up to a thematic level, without this necessarily leading to a
unified standard of representation, as is the case for example in modern
maps with their accompanying legends. There are still very different
kinds of iconic adherence to scale, and we have determined that they all
are also closely related to one another in terms of their conditions with
the intention of an overview, of an evident view. Some models
emphatically carry a simultanizing framing characteristic, for example a
strong, partially repeated circle or the sphere. Others achieve a directing
of size, whereby the circumstances are very rigidly structured in the
anticipation of the whole. It dominates over the parts, the details.

There are any number of examples of this, such as the medieval T-Omaps, which divest the structure of the three continents known then,
Europe, Africa und Asia, of their individual geographic characteristics, in
order to insert it into the form of a cross, which functions as the scale of
the terrestrial world, within the circle.

Other premodern models of the world are based on a mare nostrum, i.e.
on a relatively common living world, around whose central basin the
neighboring and the distant lands, peninsulas, islands, and
subcontinents accumulate far removed from a continuous or metric
adherence to scale. It was only the practice of complete surveying,
initiated by military strategists of the 19th and 20th centuries, which
make exact maps possible despite the projection, introduced by
Mercator in the 16th century, of the spherical surface of the earth onto a
plane. These maps, to which one can ascribe model quality, distinguish
themselves precisely due to very selective choosing from the total data.
And vice versa: any observer of detailed travel maps knows that he or
she could easily miss the forest for the trees. Those attempting to travel,

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for example, with the aid of the Ebstorfer map of the world, would most
certainly not have arrived at their destination. The marching maps of the
Romans or those of coastal shipping or of the Periplous offer a flow of
significant characteristics, but practically no model-like valence.

The premise of the number is no less applicable to models of the

heavens. The zodiac divides the whole of the circle into exactly twelve
segments that allow for the exact angular calculation of aspectations, as
well as for the creation of an order of relationships among the houses,
the foundations of astrological knowledge, which operates on the
premise of calculating the constellations of the stars for a particular
individual. In this case, the adherence to scale combines exact geometry
with the idea of the human being as a central focus of the cosmos
model. If the suspicion should prove true that the zodiac developed from
out of the model of the tree of life with six fields each on the left and
right , then it would be an indication of the need to endow the model
with more mathematical precision and calculability. The shift from an
organic founding metaphor to a construed one emphasizes the role of
the mental component of model determination.

One final example involves models of the cosmos under the augury of
the harmony of the spheres. The Pythagorean one could also say the
historical discovery that the fleetingness and affectivity of the tones
could be traced back to a rational order of number relationships also left
behind deep traces in certain model designs. We see the orbits of the
planets, whose relationships constitute the harmonia mundi, represented
in a precisely calculated proportional order.

The role of the number in the iconic model, along with its increasing
precision, become clear when we observe their allocation to empirical
reality. We again follow an argument that was already contained in our
line motto. But its not enough that the line has to be drawn; if one
wishes to imagine it, the act of drawing itself can be subjected to a
continuous rationality. This thought also plays a fundamental role in what

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is probably the oldest mathematically-oriented image-theory model, the

point-line-plane postulate. From late antiquity through Leon Battista
Alberti and up until Kandinsky, it returns in different variations. It evolves
the bold idea that the abundance of phenomena in the visible world - or
the world worthy of representation - can be pictorially verified via a
rational calculation. The rationale is that the invisible ideality of the
geometrically defined point is explicated to the empiricism of a concrete
point and from there, following the logic of geometry, further to line,
surface, and complex bodies.

Here, the one recognizes the notion of descriptio, which gains

considerable importance with increases in the precision of models.
Descriptio doesnt simply mean description in the sense of ekphrasis,
which creates the image of a reality with rhetorical or at least linguistic
means. Instead, descriptio is much more the construction of a primarily
geometricizable circumstance, from a mathematical arch. This meaning
of the word description has been pushed back into the realm of
technical terminology in German, where one hears people speak, for
example, about the description of a geometrical curve.

It is apparent that this valence of constructive descriptio stands to gain a

great deal of importance for models. Its showing becomes substantially
more precise, due to the possibility of substituting geometric guidelines
for the visible and of describing it in this way. Thus, the inner
consistency of the model increases as does its chance of accurately
hitting a circumstance, of creating the suggestion of an evidence for
the reason alone that within the theoretical economy of European
thought, the axiom verum et factum convertuntur (the true and the
created converge), in various manifestations, has played a role that can
hardly be overestimated.

And yet: the guiding of the gaze in the model along a mathematically
conceived order of images does not mean that the result can be seen or

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understood to be the simple explication of calculations. Quite the

contrary.

Despite constructive descriptio, what is decisive in the end are the

demonstrative arguments in the model and their power to bring before
the eyes, to convince. This can be quickly explained with models of the
heavens. The different radii of the planetary orbits which incidentally
have been recognized since Kepler as ellipses are not represented in
the models. On the contrary: they are consistently purged, just when
one should have known better, for the reason that their extreme
differences would have exploded any demonstrative model conception. If
one were to conceive of the earth as the head of a pin, then the moon
would circle it at a distance of three centimeters as a piece of a grain of
sand, while the sun, a sphere with a diameter of 11 centimeters, would
be positioned at a distance of twelve meters. It was only the model
theater of the planetariums that was better equipped to handle this
image-negating disproportion. It engenders a combination of knowledge,
teaching, amazement, and grandeur by means of a most technical
artifact whose importance for the broader history of knowledge deserves
a more thorough analysis.

The second way to incorporate the specific possibilities of the modelimage is that of an indirect representation based on reflection. As a
reminder: Classical architectural models offer structure and scale at the
same time, as well as the direct view of what they stand for. Heuristic
models are much more open; they generally dont achieve a direct
reproduction of their circumstances structure and dimensional
accuracy provided for the sake of visualizing, as shown by the models of
the heavens, are able to cope with substantial deviations. Nevertheless
they also achieve the purposes for which they were created, namely
setting up analogies between the construction and reality. Of course, the
concept of analogy circumscribes references of a very particular kind,
namely correspondences without similarity. This concept of
representation can easily be explained with the help of an example. One

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thinks of a balance the epitome of precise equivalents such as those

used at markets. An object on the one side, for example a piece of fruit,
can be balanced by a completely dissimilar, different object on the other
side, generally using standard weights. Of course, a radical selection of
all characteristics also takes place here that tends towards the sole
determination of the weight. Be that as it may: the notion of analog
representation, of accurate representation functions under a complete
relinquishing of similar depictions. Kant took up this notion and continued
it when he introduced the concept of symbolic representation. His
example is often cited. It draws a comparison between political
despotism and the hand mill, whereby two methods, two inner forms of
reflection enter into an evident relationship with one another.

It will come as no surprise that modern art - since Czanne and up to

and including Abstraction - also offers many examples of dissimilar
analogies, in which an inner coherence, created in the image, explicates
an unknown reality and functions as its model of interpretation. This can
involve formal structures of image organization, of movement, energy, or
of constellation, in short, anything that lends itself to being judged
through reflection.

We will take this opportunity to briefly return to the previously mentioned

antagonism between an autonomous concept of art and scientific
images and to suggest a conceivable way out of this dead-end.

Our example involves Mondrian, who between 1915 and 1919, the years
during which he approached and crossed the threshold of abstraction,
developed strikingly model-oriented picture forms. The first work that
comes to mind is Pier and Ocean (also more cautiously referred to by
the technical title of composition), in which perspectival projection fuses
together with the horizontal of a map. The perception changes
accordingly between a frontal view and the overview or glance of an
unfixed eye. The artist, incidentally, has done much not to place the
simple pattern of lines coordinated at right angles on the surface, but

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Iconic Knowledge. The Image as a Model

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rather to allow them to emerge out of the chromatic white which also
fundamentally changes the meaning of the representation. On a
symbolic level, the picture resembles a visually eventful world-egg, and a
cursory glance at the chessboard-images that follow it or the worldsquares of abstraction that came afterwards clarify Mondrians adoption
of the model into his artistic representational practice. We add to these
few hints the fact that Mondrian also annuls the rationality of calculation
by using it. Constructs are so saturated with visual agitation that the
observer is confronted with paradoxical experiences of suspension that
take possession of the apparent explicitness.

In the case of other artists of his time, the drawing-out of the figureground-relationship emerges even more clearly, including the emphasis
of the pictorial underside or reverse. A plethora of alternative world
models developed in the context of modernity, which plumb beyond
mimesis, the unfixed-complex and energetic character of reality, and
avail themselves of an aesthetic heuristic. For Mondrian, it is not a
matter of pictorially constituting a specific object driven by scale, but
rather, with recourse to elementary conditions of the image or of
painting, of discovering reality, not reconstructing it. Art, especially that
of the 20th century, thus offers in its own way models for interpreting the
world, for understanding it. The key used here is, as already mentioned,
not mimetic, but formed according to the pattern of symbolic reflexivity,
i.e. of analogy. It should be possible to overcome in this way the
widespread opinion that the practices of art, science or mathematics
mutually and essentially exclude one another. Not because their
individual specificity which could be referred to as an indispensable
increase in the differentiation of cultural development should be
leveled; the level of the relationship between the various areas of
knowing (including mathematics) and of doing seems a given in the
context of their exemplarity. The mixed image-form of the model is the
prime example of the crossing of epistemic with artistic methods a
crossing that, as we have shown, is enacted on iconic terrain.

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Iconic Knowledge. The Image as a Model

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The catchwords exemplarity or paradigmatic lead into a few

concluding remarks that will attempt to situate the role of the very
different models in the household of thought. When it is a matter of
teaching and proving, in other words of epistemes Aristotle used the
verb DEIKNYNAI (which corresponds with deixis or demonstratio) in his
rhetoric the model is granted the character of a beginning, of a first
reason, of an arch. Models are necessary and irreplaceable because
they can bestow a demonstrative plausibility upon work with concepts,
laws, formulas, and hypotheses, which these would never be able to
generate on their own. What reveals itself implies a conclusiveness that
cannot be trumped by concepts, only by more powerful image designs.
Aristotle referred to this as a proteron.

The power of model-images lies in the fact that most of their visual roots,
for example the tree, the body, the wheel, the spiral, proportional
relationships, the circle or sphere, etc. were pre-shaped in the sphere of
the living world and the everyday, and have been saturated with
evidences. The vehicle of the imagination, of which the model-images
avail themselves, thus come from metaphors that have deeply engrained
themselves in the observers and their worlds of experience.

The discussion of the model-image, like that of images in general, learns

from its historical variety, from the precise demonstrative analysis, but
also from didactic plays of theory, especially those that endeavor to
implant an eye into thought, to discuss the mutual reliance of the empty
concept and blind visualizing. Coming to terms with this transition,
however, relies, as we have seen, on representation.

Model-images belong therefore to the category of paradigms, i.e. of the

example. The exemplary opens up a view - in every excluded and
optimized segment; in the most visually intense one that it opens - onto
something that is otherwise inaccessible or uninterpreted. It offers
criteria and arguments, makes orientation possible, and additionally
allows those at a distance from the sciences comprehensibility by

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Iconic Knowledge. The Image as a Model

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providing connections to otherwise too-difficult and hermetic knowledge.

Seen from this angle, the model resembles windows which can be
both looked into or out of.

Put to the test, used thoughtfully and in reflection, the model mobilizes
the most potent resource humans possess and the only one that holds
up against reality in the long run: their imagination.

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