0170 Chapter four (C4) concerns visual art.

Pictures have been made by humans for as long as we have been around.

The question is, “Who are we?”

0171 If “we” are the civilized people who adhere to the forms of spoken labels_2af, artifacts_2bf and standard solutions_2cf, then “we” are are not the humans who made – what experts currently call -“Paleolithic art”.

Perhaps, anthropology needs a new technical term, such as “Paleolithic cave adornment”.

0172 Here is a picture of the hand-speech interscope, with all but the virtual nested form in the category of secondness grayed out.

0173 Now, let me consider an ibex that is carved into the handle of a launcher, designed to sling rocks towards an adversary.  Does the ibex correspond to parole, since it pictures its referent?  Or does the launcher gesture for itself, since it is what it refers to?   Then, the ibex is an adornment that substantiates something that the hand-speech talker can… um… speak to.  I could say to the ibex, “Guide my rock to the bison’s flank.”, while setting my rock in the device.  The ibex will assist my aim and bless my achievements.

0174 The launcher is like a manual-brachial word-gesture_2af.  The ibex is like the corresponding spoken word_2bf.  The aesthetic work_3b of the ibex_2bf enhances the process_2cm of hunting bison with the team.  The stone will inspire the bison startle and race towards the cliff, that it does not realize is there.  A thirty-meter drop is as good as a lance.

0175 The first section of chapter four (S1C4) opines that picture-making is first order and pictorial art is second order.  Does this imply that I must turn my gaze to the speech-alone interscope, since the labels of “first-order” and “second-order” operate as explicit abstractions?

Or, do I retain the hand-speech talk interscope because it calls to mind implicit abstractions and who we evolved to be?

0176 Using, say, a Renaissance oil painting of a bowl of fruit as an example, I associate the painting itself to a hand-talk word_2af that pictures and points to its referent_2am.  The referent_2am is the subject of the painting_2am.  The referent_2am substantiates the hand-talk word_2af.  The subject matter_2am substantiates the painting_2af.

0177 Here is a view showing the confoundings.

0178 The painting as form_2af entangles the presence of an adornment, otherwise labeled a “decoration”.  Aesthetic work_3b brings the dyad, {decoration as adornment_2bm [substantiates] the beholding of the subject_2bf}, into relation with the potential of the ‘painter’s power’_1b.  Then, the situation-level form_2bf, entangles a perspective-level matter of aesthetic weighing_2cm, which may or may not be cultivated, because the human transcendentals of beauty and truth are ready to serve as perspective-level potentials_1c in the normal context of communal viewing_3c.

0179 These associations to the hand-speech talk interscope complement the early sections of chapter four, titled “Pictures in Context” (S1C4), “Surreptitious Substitutions” (S2C4), “The Painterly Attitude” (S3C4) and “The Snapshot Conception” (S4C4), and lead to the conclusion that vision is pictorial.

0180 The irony, of course, is that a painting is a technical work_3b and there are many tricks that the artist employs in order to provide the illusion that the subject matter of the painting_2am substantiates a work of art_2af that entangles matters of decoration_2bm in such a fashion that the decoration_2bm substantiates an experience that the viewer is beholding the subject_2bf.

Then, the form of that experience_2bf entangles an aesthetic weighing_2cm.

0181 Pictures generate experiences by proxy.

This is what pictures are meant to do.

This is what I see when I look at sections five (S5C4, “The Enactive Approach”) and six (S6C4, “Pictures as Proxies”).

0182 The broad strokes of an “entanglement”, where second-order pictorial arts loop down to the first-order work of picture making, demands purchase.  Do I buy it?  Pictorial art offers experiences by proxy.  Making pictures offers… something… that seems more like speech-alone talk.  Making pictures is like writing with ideograms.

Does that weave an “entanglement” between language (speech-alone talk) and thought (beholding the subject_2bf)?

What am I buying here?

0183 The author unveils an “entanglement” between making pictures and pictoriality, between first-order and second-order, and between… dare I say?… the interscopes of hand-speech talk and speech-alone talk.

Section seven (S7C4, “World Styles”) seems to mark a transit from the former to the latter.

0184 The transit remakes what seeing is.

If the aforementioned painting_2af is regarded in a hand-speech talk manner, then the viewer beholds a bowl of fruit_2bf in the painting_2af.

If viewed in a speech-alone talk manner, then the viewer beholds an artifact_2bf of what the artist is trying to say_2af.