A Natural History of a Disembodied Eye: The Structure of Gyorgy Kepes's "Language of Vision" Author(s): Michael Golec Reviewed work(s):

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A Natural History Eye: of a Disembodied of Gyorgy Kepes's TheStructure Language of Vision Michael Golec
I. Introduction In his book-length study on reforms in art education (1955), Frederick Logan examined three contributions to an evolving pedagogy in the United States. He praised the innovative research of Gyorgy Kepes, Hoyt Sherman, and Henry Schaeffer-Simmern on affective perception, and the role their research played in the illumination of modernist type art. Of the three educators, it was Kepes's Language of Visionthat had the greatest impact on art education. According to Logan, it was the most important book of the 1940s and 1950s on the problems of sense perception and expression in contemporary art and design.2 "Art teachers by the thousand," wrote Logan, "have through Kepes enriched the scope of their teaching by a larger understanding of what the contemporary artists are doing." 3 Apart from Logan's triadic organization of influence, Lanfor Victor Margolin 1 Iwould like to thank guage of Vision was a refreshing alternative to the largely vocationcomments andcriticisms ally motivated design and advertising primers common to the hispenetrating ofthispaper; Paul Gehl of anearly draft commercial art field in the United States.4 Kepes's book inveighed onanedited expertise forhiseditorial against a vocational type education in which students were required forInForm; Michael version of thispaper to study problems exclusively lifted from the commercial sector. forhiswonderfully insightful Shreyach Language of Vision differed radically from such texts; it allied the Aron Vinegar forlending interrogatories; Anne Simonson meanear; andfinally, commercial sector with modernist art, science, philosophy, and meto SanJoseState forinviting psychology. Language of Vision was replete with images gathered of this a version University to present from a myriad of sources-European modernists Piet Mondarin and paper. Pablo Picasso; American design professionals, Paul Rand and Lester in M.Logan, Growth 2 Frederick ofArt Beall; Bauhaus alumni Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy; and and American Schools (NewYork: Harper 255-257. Row, 1955), an ample supply of student projects drawn from Kepes's course at 3 Ibid., 257. the New Bauhaus in Chicago. W.A.Dwiggins, 4 See,forexample, Layout The book's amalgamation of diverse material may very well andLondon: inAdvertising (NewYork its appeal. No doubt, readers took for granted that Kepes explain D. andBrothers, 1928); Edward Harper intended his collection of visual source material to clarify particular of Typographic Art: Berry, Fundamentals of Page and A Discussion points relayed from his text, thereby elucidating his theory of vision Arrangement E.D. (Chicago: ItsElemental Factors as inevitably played out in modernist art and design. This is correct, C.McMurtrie, Douglas Berry, 1930); as far as it goes, which is not very far, or, in a way, not consciously and Typography Examples ofAdvertising, intended by the author. Kepes organized his visual material in such Private, 1934); and Layout(Chicago: a manner that, for the most part, the presence of particular examples H.Stuart, Typography, Layout, & Edwin of art and design appear in a random fashion. The fact that he failed E.H.Stuart, Advertising(Pittsburgh:
1947). of Technology 2002Massachusetts Institute ( Copyright 2 Spring 2002 Volume Issues: Design 18,Number 3

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Inaddition to Language of Vision, books andarticle written byKepes include "The Gyorgy Kepes, Creative Discipline of Art Visual Our Environment," College 17-23;Graphic Forms: Joumal7:1 (1947): as Related to theBook The Arts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, onArt" 1949); and"Comments inNew inHuman Knowledge Values, Abraham H.Maslow, ed.(Chicago: Henry Regnery Books edited Company, 1959). byKepes The inArt include NewLandscape and Paul Science (Chicago: Theobald, 1956); MA: The VisualArts Today(Middletown, Wesleyan University, 1960); andthe andValue influential Vision Series: inArt andScience Structure (NewYork: The Nature and George Braziller, 1965); Artof Motion (NewYork: George Education of Vision Braziller, 1965); (NewYork: George Braziller, 1965); Sign, York: Image, Symbol(New George Braziller, 1966); Module, Proportion, Symmetry, Rhythm (NewYork: George Man Made Braziller, 1966); Object(New York: andArtof George Braziller, 1966); theEnvironment (NewYork: George Braziller, 1975). of Vision Gyorgy Kepes, Language Paul (Chicago: Theobald, 1944). W.Morris, Charles Foundation of the of Signs, Rudolf Theory Carnap Otto W.Morris, Neurath, andCharles eds.Vol. 1, Intemational Encyclopedia of Unified Science of Chicago (Chicago: University 136. Press, 1938),

to explain, or comment on, the majorityof the images exacerbates this randomness. The book's intention-to educate artists and designers-is frustrated with every turnof a page since any claimto a unified whole is underminedby this organizational disturbance. has implicationsfor design as it has been Such a disturbance practiced professionally in the United States since the inaugural publication of Language of Vision.If I take Logan at his word, that Kepes'sbook dominatedarteducationin the United Statesimmediately after WorldWarII, then any claim that design may have on problemsolving, on creatingunified fields of coherence,on implementing comprehensive projects toward some greater good is damagedby the very disruptionthat underminesKepes'sprojectof unification through vision. This paper is an analysis of Kepes's Language of Vision 5-the foundationsof, the deploymentof, and the implicationsof what I take to be his naturalhistory of vision. Kepes founded his naturalhistory on a linguistic model of coherence(hence"language" of vision) thatultimatelycut structural vision from its corporeal mooring; that is, he regarded vision as being apart from practical and physical activities. The specious unity of Language of Vision'sthesis masked the book's disjunctive characterinstantiatedby its organization.6 While a thoroughstudy of the context in which Kepes positioned his book remains to be written, I will forego such a history.Placing Kepes within postwar design studies would produce a snapshot of a moment, no doubt important,but such a contextualizationis not appropriateto my task. Rather,I intend to work my way into Language of Vision, digging deep into its core to unearth a potent history-Cartesian, Humanist, Realist, Positivist-that lies within its pages and its pronouncementson visual culture. In any case, an examination of Language of Vision'slatent structure-a construction of a "language of vision" that negated vision in a material sense, that promised an idealized reality,and that was to be embodied in a "positivepopular art,"advertisingrequiresthat I first briefly discuss the literatureon physiology and the psychology cited in Kepes's book, namely the influence of Hermannvon Helmholtz's alignmentof mental processes with the unconscious inferences of perception and Gestalt psychology's concept of patternformationresulting from direct experience.The formeraligns with Kepes'srelianceon perceptualpassivity,and the latterregisterswith Kepes's notion of the syntacticaldimension of visuality. Second, I will discuss the affinities apparentin Kepes's constructionof a theory of vision and philosopherCharlesMorris's semiotics, a foundationfor "themain forms of human activity and their interrelationship[...]."'Indeed, both Morris and Kepes took their distinctlypositivist views of the world from the propositional logic of the "ViennaCircle,"a loose collection of logical positivists organized around MorrisSchlick;a position that based its primary tenants on a belief that knowledge is achieved by an empirically
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verifiableobservationof naturalphenomena.8 scientific Accordingly, progressand all that it availed enabled a greaterincidenceof penetratingthe indiscriminate veil that obscuredthe "presentand invisible world."Third,I will explorea resolutehumanismundergirding Kepes's Language of Vision.Here Kepes assumed an evolutionary model in which human-type being and humanist idealism were ostensibly linked. Finally,I will conclude with an account of the problemsinherentto a naturalhistory of vision, namely how it was that Kepes could reconcilehis ontogenetic-humanist proclivitieshis naturalhistory-with what he took to be an advanced form of visual culture-contemporary advertising. II. Kepes's Aesthetic Program Kepes's philosophical interests defined natural history in accord with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, whom he cited frequentlyin Language of Vision. Whiteheadposited thatnatureis an organismunited in its parts and irreducibleto its distinct qualities as such. Furthermore,nature also evinces a teleological process, channeling its transformationstowards a single goal.9A natural history thus is an investigationof that organism,its united components, and its development.Such an examinationchartsthe vicissitudes of the system in question. Kepes slightly differed from Whitehead's"thorough going-realism," a belief thatmaterialobjects exist independentof our perceptionof them and, paradoxically, any knowledge of those objectsis perceptuallyor experientiallydependent. Augmenting Whitehead'spropositions, Kepes insisted on a melioristicepistemology-the bettermentof the world through an ongoing accumulationof knowledge. Language of Vision's principalthesis stated that our vision of the world is alterable;that is to say, the way we see the world changes as we furtherrefine our visual means. And the mutability of vision itself endorsed the possibility of a revised world, or a revision of the world. Withoutmakingany specificor practical claims, Kepes suggested that a resolution of social and psychological disharmony was predicated on humankind's natural capacity to organize discrete elements into a whole. This synthetic activity would harmonizethe chaos of a world not yet unified,but naturally inclined to being so. As each whole formed through perceptual mediation, however, furtherlevels of the unformed world would become apparent; vision would have to be constituitively therefore, refocusedinto a new vision and thus a new form of life, or "a new 10The implication was that the history of vital structure-order." visual art and design was a historyof the world being made over in an ongoing movement toward an ideal state. Language of Vision flagged the most advanced stage of that movement, and those artists and designers working from its example contributedto an ultimate goal by re-visioning the world through the productionof new visual art and design.
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Peter Galison, "Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism andArchitectural Modernism," Critical Inquiry 16(Summer 1990): 709-752.Galison discusses parallel and interrelated developments of theVienna School's logical positivism (namely Carnap andNeurath) andtheBauhaus. Hereveals thecorrespondence between of building Bauhausian notions coherent forms from primary shapes andcolors andthelogical creation of positivist logical from propositions singular componentsof rawexperience. See also, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, The NewVision: of Design, Fundamentals Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Daphne trans. York: W.W. Hoffmann, (New andVision inMotion Norton, 1938) Paul (Chicago: Theobald, Inany 1947). case,Kepes joined in Moholy-Nagy Berlin in 1930andtherefore missed visitto theDessau Carnap's Bauhaus. Nevertheless, hewascertainly acquainted withMorris, whowasa of theVienna follower School andwho was affiliated withtheNewBauhaus inChicago, where Kepes taught between 1937and1943. 9 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and AnEssay inCosmology Reality: (Cambridge: TheUniversity Press, 1929). 10 Kepes, Language of Vision, 12.

The genesis of Kepes'snaturalhistory of vision startedwith base mark-making,and worked to precipitatecoherentcommunication. This evolution was exemplified by two images that bracket the book's content. In the case of the frontispiece,the random,but still comprehensible,agitated lines, squares, and triangles are the product of a controlled but primitive hand (not pictured). These markswere, for Kepes,the rudimentary elementsof picturemaking, and were foundational to the education of artists and designers. Whencombinedto constitutea varietyof patterns,the markscollectively take on a qualityand a meaningdistinctfromthe qualityand meaning of each individual mark. This was made apparent in for the backend-paper, Kepes'schoiceof an illustration JeanCarlu's "PRODUCTION. America'sanswer!"(1942).Here the mechanic's gloved hand bolts the type to the poster's background.The image itself is emblematicof the effortthat Kepesexpended in keeping the details of his text "bolted"to any corresponding details in each image. The trope of mechanicalengineeringwas (and is) a familiar one: in philosophy,Wittgenstein'sBilder-the deliberateconstrucAufbau-the propotion of a model or picture-or RudolfCarnap's sitional constructionof logic; in art and design, the laterBauhaus's appeal to pure functionality-the artist as builder. The key, for Kepes, lay within the premise that a coherentwhole could be built frombase components.The managementof these base components was a matterof evolutionarysagacity(or astuteness)and the ostensible mutabilityof environment. "Tofunction in his fullest scope," Kepes wrote, "manmust restorethe unity of his experiences so that he can registersensory, emotional,and intellectualdimensions of the present and invisible whole." 11 Indeed, it is my contention that, the fundamentally synthetic (and philosophicallyidealist) natureof Kepes's notion of coming into wholeness-or integration-theorized a new society on the refinementof vision at the expense of the corpopredic-ated real, the material.The structuralorganizationof Language of Vision instantiatedthis point. Beginning with the plastic organizationof internaland externalforces,continuingwith multiple modalitiesof visual representation, and concludingwith the vitality of symbolic forms, the physical ground of vision receded as each section of Language of Vision proceededin its frustratedpedagogicalintent. III. The Fiber of Vision Physiology and psychology were two integral aspects of Kepes's understandingof vision. On this he wrote:"Thedynamictendency to integrate optical impacts into a balanced, unified whole acts within the field of the physiological and psychological makeup of man."He continued to explain that the "restoration of equilibrium in the human organism" rested on the immediacy of "optical impacts."The procedureof picturingthe world back to the sensing subject realized a good percentage of this equilibrium. But, in
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13. 11 Ibid., 6

Kepes's analysis, there were perceivable limits to both vision and picture: Just as limitations of the picture-surface serve as the necessary frame of reference in the transformation of the optical impacts into spatial forces, so the characteristics of the physiological and psychological mechanisms serve as the conditioning factors in experiencing forces of integration, that is, transforming spatial forces into plastic forces.12 Thus, a conception of the world was one-part presentation (things in- and of-the-world) and an equal part representation (things inand of-the-world pictured). Both should have struck the sensing subject with the same sensorial charge. "Visual representation operates by means of a sign system based upon a correspondence between sensory stimulations and the visible structure of the physical world." 13To harmonize both ends of the representational scale was the ultimate goal. Kepes drew this particular component of his theory of vision from Hermann von Helmholtz, whose PhysiologicalOptics (1867) he cited, and who maintained that aesthetic principles were environmentally conditioned. Any perception of objects in the world was, as Helmholtz submitted, a matter of memory and built from the sensing subject's ongoing engagement with the world. Helmholtz based his theory on the presumption of symmetrical relationship between sense nerves and sensations. Holding to a "Cartesian perspectivalism," or a geometrically arranged monocular vision, Helmholtz maintained the passivity of the eye, favoring the mind as the organ of image construction. Through a process of unconscious inference, a sensing subject arranged sensations into images of external objects in the world. Helmholtz maintained that sensory impressions were signs for properties of the external world, the meaning of which were acquired through experience. Accordingly, for Helmholtz, sensory experience depended on a priori conditions for correlating manifold sensations.14 From Helmholtz's perspective, a vision of the world was contingent and based on the internal history of the sensing subject in the world.15Correspondingly, the historical development of representation unfolded, for Kepes, as a gradual triumph of vision in relation to advances in the production of two-dimensional picture surfaces: "The visual assimilation of space time events [as pictures]." 16 Architectural historian Sigfried Giedion established a similar concept of representation based on a definition of "space-time" in art, whereby artists "sought to extend the scale of feeling, just as contemporary science extends its descriptions to cover new levels of material phenomena." 17 In other words, artists advanced beyond single-point perspective, and opted for an extension of pictures in line with temporal and spatial extensions-a literal unfolding of both time and space. As a result of this advance, artists adopted
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12 Ibid.,34 13 Ibid.,67. 14 Hermann von Helmholtz, Helmholtzon Perception (New York: John Wiley& Son, 1968). 15 Onthe historicist aspect of Helmholtz's theories, see GaryHatfield,"Helmholtz and Classicism: The Science of Aesthetics and the Aestheticsof Science" in Hermann vonHelmholtz and the Foundations of NineteenthCentury Science, DavidCahan,ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 16 Kepes,Language of Vision,66. 17 SigfriedGiedion,Space, Time and Architecture: TheGrowth of a New Tradition, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963 [1941]),432.

67. of Vision, 18 Kepes, Language 19 Ibid. of Composition," "Principles 20 Anonymous, Literary Supplement, London Times this 1951.Kepes found September See Letter from review "devastating." 27 November to Paul Theobald, Kepes Theobald Papers, ArtInstitute 1951,Paul of Chicago, Chicago. of 21 See especially Kurt Koffka, Principles York: Harcourt, Gestalt Psychology(New of gestalt For a history Brace, 1935). andcultural development psychology's influence see Mitchell G.Ash,Gestalt inGerman Psychology Culture, andtheQuest for Holism 1890-1967: York: Cambridge Objectivity(New Press, 1995). University
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varied and multiple models of representation.This version of the development of vision led Kepes to propose an ever more exacting configurationof the world, to know the world from all sides as it were. Kepes's "new standardof vision," however, fragmentedthe world, takingit apartat its joints and recomposedit into a picture.18 "[T]hishistorical challenge," as he referred to it, "calls him [the painterand the graphicdesigner]to assimilatethe new findingsand to develop a new sensibility, a new standard of vision that can 19 releasethe nervous system to a broaderscale of orientation." as one criticreferredto his Kepes's"strangeesotericjargon," While writing, obscuredthe pragmaticvalence of visual acumen.20 he never once remarkedexplicitlyon the distinctionbetween image and picture, Kepes followed a line of thought which maintained the raw data that images were traceelementsof sensoryperception: of experience.(Herehe closely followed Helmholtz.)Kepes'satomistic view-discrete partsadding up to a whole-held that the accumulation of images gave way to picture making, to painting, to sculpture, to photography,and to graphic and industrial design. And as picturesbecame part of the externalenvironment,they too were capable of image generation and thus led to more pictures. Simplyput, vision yielded image, and image yielded picture.Image was not picture,but both were representational. In addition to Helmholtz's influence, Kepes's notion of a unified vision borrowed directly from the experiments of gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology, notably practicedby KurtKoffka and WolfgangK6hler,took as a psychologicalfact that things do not always appear as they actually exist in the world. We make inferences from appearances. Perceptual illusion should be taken as being real, as being phenomenally verifiable.And the problemfor gestalt psychology was to explain why things appear precisely as they do. In generalterms,gestaltpsychologyfocused on the phenomenal nature of perceiving the wholeness, or "gestalten,"of a pator an organizedpatternfromwhich propertiesexist tern'sstructure, apart from the isolated parts. To do so, the discipline rejectedthe atomisticviews, or the reductionof complex phenomena to aggregate formsthat aremechanistically combined,of nineteenth-century Koffka physical sciences and humanisticpsychologies. Specifically, was skepticalof a representation theoryof perception,that ideas (or images) are constructedreplicationsof the external objects of the world. Unlike Helmholtz's theory, in which sensations are not copies but signs of the world, gestalt psychology preferred a phenomenologicalmethod, wherebycontingencieswere eliminated and only appearancewas maintainedas an objectof study.21 of gestalt theoAs it was understood,Kepes'sappropriation ries contradictedhis reliance on Helmholtz's nineteenth-century optics.Kepesresolvedthe tension,however,by collapsinga moreor less metaphysical assumption apropos the physiology of sense
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perceptioninto a realistconcept of the psychology of sense perception. (It may very well be that the two were not incommensurable. Rather, the distinctionlay between the strictmethodologiesof physiology and psychology.) No doubt, Kepes's book was realistin its intent.As Giedionobservedin his introduction to Language of Vision, Kepes revealed how the "optical revolution" constructed a mid22 century "conceptionof space and the visual approachto reality." Indeed, Giedion's "space-time"theory explained how a conventional view of realitywas mistakenbecause it could not conceive of a spatial dimension necessarily linked to a temporal dimension: space and time collapse and unfold reality.As I stated above, the process of unfolding does damage to the world by dismantling it and reconfiguring those partsinto a pictureof the world, one that is seemingly more accurate,more real. Both Kepes and Giedion agreed that reality was a "morereal world than the real behind the real"(to cite Kepes's quotationof Andre Breton'stheory of "surrealism"). Toget at the realbehind the realrequiredthe construction of a "languageof vision"-a visual equivalentto syntacticalmodes of representation.Kepes privileged the mind's work over sensory work;he adopted a language of vision whereby discreteunits were assembled and disassembled and reassembled to more exactly configurethe world. In fact, such a view undercutvision, releasing the eye from the materialbody that paradoxicallymust be the site of a realistapproachto vision.
22 Gideon, "Art Means Reality," introduction to Language of Vision byGyorgy Kepes 7. (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 23 Kepes, 23. Language of Vision (1944), 24 James J. Gibson, "The Information Available inPictures," Leonardo 4 (1971): 27-35.Modern painters, as Gibson to haveasserted, understood Kepes do more thaninform thesensing subject through their pictures. artists Rather, reconfigure vision bydeveloping a new visual grammar. Countering Kepes's symbol theory of pictures, Gibson defined a picture as "Asurface so treated that a delimited optic array toa point of observation is made available that contains thesamekind of information that is inambient found optic of anordiarrays nary environment." (31) Therefore, pictorialquality is available through experience. Pictures areobjects of the What "phenomenal visual world." is in theworld is whatis perceived. Depicting theworld as onesees itwas not,for a matter of pictorial convention, Gibson, likethesyntactical conventions of orgrammar. language

IV.Model Language A generative and universal structureof language lay at the very core of Kepes'sLanguage In fact, Kepes elaboratedhis theof Vision. on sis an analogy that bridged the gap between pictorialmodes of and a syntacticalmodel of language: representation Justas the lettersof the alphabetcan be put togetherin innumerableways to form words which convey meaning, so the opticalmeasuresand qualitiescan be brought togetherin innumerableways, and each particular relationship generatesa differentsensationof space. The variations to be achieved are endless.23 Accountingfor the infinitevarietiesof space was less a matterof the materialityof the optic arrayand its physiology,as J.J. Gibsonconcluded.24 Rather,per Kepes's observation,the apprehensionof spatial order,of the world in its full blown dimensionality, was by and large the apprehensionof a symbolic order and its formalization, hence "language"of vision. Kepes'sanalogy implied that the quality of a picture was a consequence of something other than mere sensation, other than the physiological fiber of vision. Therefore, Kepes registeredspatialorder,things in the world arrangedand rein the same arranged,fittingtogetherin innumerable combinations,
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to Theobald, 6 October 25 Letter from Kepes 1943,Paul Theobald Papers, ArtInstitute of Chicago, Chicago. 26 Recently, Howard Singerman addressed inthe Kepes's influence onarteducation on United States.Singerman remarked book. theconstructivist import of Kepes's Accordingly, vision structures theworld, butvision is itselfstructured to a signifiattributed a cantextent. Singerman similar to the "structural linguistics," to Kepes's Saussurian Bauhausian model, "language of vision." This association for requires further explication, however, thereis ample proof to viewthe linguistic turn to be more inaccord oftheBauhaus posiwiththestructural logic of logical Art Subjects. tivism. See Singerman, intheAmerican Making Artists of Ulniversity(Berkeley: University California Press, 1999), 78,89.Astudy to Singerman the tracks produced prior inart andrevolutions developments from to the education theRenaissance significant.29 present. Inthisstudy, Kepes is only of briefly mentioned, andhisLanguage Morris constructedthe core of his semiotics from Ludwig is ignored. Goldstein, Vision See Carl Wittgenstein'sand Rudolf Carnap'stheoriesof propositionallogic. Art. andSchools Teaching Academies FromWittgenstein's Morrisforgeda position that all propoTractus, and from Vasari toAlbers (Cambridge are the truth function of "elementary or whatsitions propositions," NewYork: University Press, Cambridge ever can be minimally asserted. He then combined this with Deitcher, 1996). Also,see S. David theLate From Carnap's conception of elementary experience to create a formal Modern Artist: "Teaching to theTechnology Mnemonics of Gestalt" semantictheory,wherebyall meaningfulpropositionsare reducible TheCity of New (Dissertation, University to propositions about experience. As an applied methodology, York, 1989). Morris's semiotics conceivably could explain the multitude of 11 27 Letter from to Theobald, Kepes conceptsintegralto the productionof culture. Art Theobald Papers, February 1944,Paul In addition to Wittgenstein and Carnap, Morris drew on of Chicago, Institute Chicago. from to Theobald, 15March such diverse sources as Ernst Cassier, Edmund Husserl, G. H. 28 Letter Kepes ArtInstitute Mead, and Charles Peirce. He developed a theory based on the 1944,Paul Theobald Papers, of Chicago, Chicago. pragmaticbelief that signs play a vital role in the formationof hu29 See alsoCharles "Man-Cosmos Morris, man behaviorand human culture.In "Science, Art and Technology," in The inArt NewLandscape Symbols" andScience, ed.(Chicago: Morrisproposedthat a theoryof signs assist in gaining "insightinto Gyorgy Kepes, the essentials of human culture."30 Significantly,Morris defined Paul Theobald andCo.,1956).
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manner as he registered the order of letters that constructa word and the orderof words that constructa sentenceand so on-a structural syntax. In this sense, representationwas less a matterof perceptual constancy, and thus one part of the phenomenal world. Rather,it was a matterof symbolic conventionand its multifarious permutations. In a letterto his publisher,Paul Theobald(11February 1944), Kepes wrote that the suggested edits to Language of Visionwere so extensive that he requireda retyped manuscript.25 Thereis no way of knowing who solicited the edits, and I can only speculate as to the actual extent of the suggested revisions. They were, if truthbe told, substantialenough to warrantthe labor and the expense of a revamped text (which Theobald begrudgingly approved). I am certain,however,that the analyticphilosopherof language,Charles Morris,played a significantrole in the book's rewrittenform and its espousal of a symbolic theory of vision. In the first place, Kepes acknowledged Morris's contribution as a reader of Language of In the second place,the book's most coherentsectionwas the Vision. which drew chapter entitled "Towardsa Dynamic Iconography," In the third place, exclusively from Morris's linguistic theories.26 once the edits were made and the manuscriptwas retyped, Kepes spent much of his time designing the book, ratherthan attendingto its textual content.27 He also was less then capable of adequately proofreading the final draft of Language of Vision.As Kepes expressed to Theobald,his Englishwas too poor for him to embarkon I conclude from these three such a task with any proficiency.28 factors, if only hypothetically, that Kepes's involvement in the conceptualizationand writing of Language of Visionwas integral from the beginning. But, toward the final stages of the book's production, Morris's contribution,if not essential, was certainly

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human culture as a "web of sign-sustained and sign-sustaining activities." 3'Objectsthat are produced as a result of these activities posses additionalmeaningonce linked to additionalobjects.Morris assertedthat The use of certainpropertiesof things as clues to further properties,and the functioningof behaviorof subsidiary spoken or writtenlanguages correlated both with human activitiesand the things upon which the activitiesare
directed, are distinctive features of human activity. 32

30 Charles W.Morris, and "Science, Art, Technology," Kenyon Review(Autumn 1939): 409-423.For a more philosophitechnical cally version of thesesame W.Morris, points, see Charles "Esthetics andtheTheory of Signs," The of Journal Ulnified Science VIII (Erkenntnis) (1939/40): 131-150. Themain text,from which thesetwoarederived, is Charles W.Morris, Foundation of the Theory of Signs, Rudolf Carnap, Otto and Neurath, W.Morris, Charles eds.,Vol. 1, Intemational of Unified Encyclopedia Science(Chicago: of Chicago University Press, 1938). 31 Morris, "Science, Art, andTechnology," Kenyon Review (Autumn 1939): 409. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 413-418. 34 Ibid.

Thus, language, commonlyused and expressingthe primacyof exfrom which all furtherspecialized disperience, forms a "matrix" coursesflourish.Thereare threespecializeddiscoursesaccordingto Morris:scientific,artistic,and technological.33 These primaryforms of discourse interrelateto createsecondaryforms of discourse that have greaterculturalimplicationsthan their primarysources. "All three primaryforms of discourse,"Morriswrote, "aresimply the development of threebasic functions found in everyday language, which permitsmakingstatements[science],presentingvalues [art], and controllingbehavior[technics]." The laws of naturalorganizationthat Morrisapplied to discourses likewise were applied to visual signs by Kepes, but with a slight twist. According to Kepes, prior to the formation of a new vision, there was a necessary process of disintegrationof conventional systems of meaning-organization. As examplesof radically disintegrative practices, Kepessuppliedthe image/text experiments of Dada and the surrealist'sdialectic of the conscious and the unconscious of surrealism.The mechanical conversions of surrealist automaticwriting targeted the order of traditionalmodes of writing. The manifest disorganization of automatic writing, and its ungrammatical novelty,functionedas an affrontto readerexpectations. The intention, however, was to restore a new order via the shock of bizarrerandomnesswhich would result in a transformation of sorts, or what Kepes termed "reintegration." The process of reintegrationwas operative in aestheticperceptionas the complex play of unifying all component parts of the new picture and its "connectedtissue of references." An ongoing procedureof disintegration and integration fueled a dynamic iconography-an everevolving symbology and an advancementof the tripartiteprimary discourses. Both Kepes and Morris assumed that the order of things necessarilycrystalizedinto ever sharperand more coherentpatterns of meaningfulness.Language of Visionnaturalizedorderand meaning by giving both over to the mind exclusively. Within the constructednarrativeof this final chapterof Language of Vision,Kepes effectively cut the eye from the body. Here a disembodied eye, the mind's eye, assembled the fragmentsof the world and performed the imminenttransformations essentialto the semioticprocess.The
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to Kepes, Henry Dreyfuss 35 Letter from Kepes Papers, 18August 1970,Gyorgy Art, Washington, Archives of American DC. 31August to Kepes, Dreyfuss 36 Letter from of Kepes Papers, Archives 1970, Gyorgy DC. Washington, American Art, 37 Letter Adelbert Ames, Jr.to Kepes, from 4 April Kepes Papers, 1947,Gyorgy Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. three 38 TheGyorgy Kepes Papers holds theDartmouth letters from Eye Institute. wasdated 30April 1947and Thesecond 15 March 1948. Of thethird wasdated thethree, thefirstletter is specifically to theconcerns ofthispaper. relevant 11 to Kepes, 39 Letter from Panofsky November 1958,Gyorgy Kepes Papers, Art, Washington, Archives of American to inform that DC. wrote Kepes Panofsky to thelatter's he could notcontribute issueof Daedalus. Apparently, special was notadequately conversant Panofsky withcontemporary art.Writing parenhequalified, "The only contrithetically, Icould bution make would be,as Itold a brief dinner, youat theCambridge onBetsy, thepainting ape," implyreport artwasonpar ingthatcontemporary withartmade byanape. 40 After the 1957 conference of attending H.W. theAmerican Federation ofArt, Janson thata critic stated that reported hecould not"distinguish Betsy's work thedomifrom abstract expressionism, inpresent-day nant trend painting." "After What?" See H.W.Janson, Betsy, 2 XV: Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists 68. 1959): (February 41 Idonotdoubt tookape thatPanofsky Thedevelopment seriously. painting very mark of primate is welldocumaking mented. animal behavioral Nevertheless, haveyetto identify coherent scientists inapedrawings and/or paintings. images For see Desmond primate painting The ofArt: of the Biology Study Morris, Behavior of theGreat Picture-Making toHuman Art ApesandItsRelationship andThierry Methuen, 1962) (London: Caroline Monkey Painting, Lenain, trans. 1997). (London: Reaktion, Beamish,
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implicationswere that only a mind, an intellectof the human kind, could achieve such a goal. And this mind, this disembodiedmind's eye, was unencumbered,unfettered from the weight of the body and from the gravity of the earth. It raised itself above all else so that vision itself would be unencumbered-free. V. "KeepYourEyes Peeled" In a letterto Kepes(18 August 1971),designerHenryDreyfusscommented on the ongoing production of his "symbol sourcebook." Providingno great detail on the book's contents,Dreyfuss queried Kepes on a section entitled "ColorSymbology."Dreyfuss was well aware of Kepes's interest in the semantic nature of color and how color-codingcould be used to signify aspectsof the world, such as a factory pipe painted red to denote that it contained hot water, for example.35 Or,takingan examplefromDreyfuss'sbook, red denotes temperaturewhen applied to a graphic representationof a thermometer:Hot! In a follow-up letter,Dreyfuss lamented the lack of such examples, writing: "Youwould think color would be used
more often this way, but I can find very little evidence of it." 36

Concernedthathis book would remainincompleteon this point, he concludedhis letterwith, "Keepyour eyes peeled."In otherwords, Dreyfusshoped that Kepeswould continuethe designer's quest for similarinstancesof the concretesymbolicvalue of color. Aside from the letters' contents, Dreyfuss's vernacular"eyes peeled"-would have held a positive affinity for Kepes in both its literaland metaphorical senses. And this affinityalso points to the underlyingtension between the materialand the metaphysical in Language of Vision.First, in the literal sense, "eyes peeled" would have takenon a clinicalinflectionfor Kepes.As earlyas 1947, three years after the initial publicationof Language of Vision, Kepes was in contactwith the DartmouthEye Institutein Hanover,New In the first of several exchanges of correspondence, Hampshire.37 Kepes received collateralmaterialthat related to a demonstration the author had apparentlyattended on "the origin and nature of visual sensations."38Of the eight attached documents, "SomeDemonstrationsConcernedwith the Origin and Nature of Our Sensations (WhatWe Experience):A LaboratoryManual"stands out. The Dartmouthpaper elucidatedthe Institute'sclinicaldemonstrations on the physical sourceof vision, literallypeeling the eye so as to reveal its fibrousproperties. Second,in the metaphorical sense, "eyespeeled"would have connoted the vigilance or the alertnessof verticalityand the unencumberedline of sight that such a posturewould have suggested to Kepes. Dreyfuss's colloquialism capitalized on a practicalnotion that one should strip away that which clouded vision, clearing all the debristhat obscuredthe world. And clear-sightedness necessarily accompanied an upright posture, for to be on-the-look-out,to remain ever alert, would have meant to see from a somewhat
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elevated vantage point. To do so would entail the attainment of a distinctly human-type posture. 42 Intheintroduction to hisMeaning inthe Such an evolutionary confluence of opticality and verticality thefinal recounts Panofsky VisualArts, was made apparent in an exchange between Kepes and the eminent Kant. Thestory daysof Immanuel goes that, whenvisited Kant byhisphysician, art historian, Erwin Panofsky. Sometime in the later half of the raised himself from hischair to greetthe 1950s, Kepes and Panofsky attended a dinner in Cambridge, gooddoctor, refusing to retake hisseat Massachusetts.3" During the course of this event, Kepes and Panthedoctor until hadtaken his.Once the ofsky discussed ape paintings. It seemed that Panofsky was condoctor hadacknowledged thephilosocerned with similarities between Betsy, the painting ape's recent pher's civility hisseat,Kant bytaking followed suitandsaid,"'The senseof activities, and contemporary art practices.40Panofsky might have hasnotyetleftme."' humanity For thought primate mark-making to be semiotic in structure, and that and Panofsky, bodily comportment the marks were signs of a sort.41He may not have considered, humanism werethesame,both connothowever, marks made by primates as being representational in the andtragic ing"man's consciousproud semantic sense that paintings were representational (they might not nessof self-approved andself-imposed See Panofsky, be symbolic). If Panofsky considered ape paintings and contempoprinciples [...L." "Introduction: TheHistory ofArt as a rary art to have been analogous, then contemporary art's lack of inthe Humanistic inMeaning Discipline" semantic structure would have posed serious problems for the TheUniversity VisualArts(Chicago: of iconographer/iconologist. The dribbled and poured paint of a 1. Iwould to Chicago Press, 1982), like Jackson Pollock may very well have struck Panofsky as regressive, Aron thank forbringing this Vinegar as sub-human, as ape-like. Crouching artists bent over puddles of to myattention. passage 43 Kepes, andVision Language (Chicago: paint did not square with the uprightness of a humanist tradition 14.Beginning inhisearly twen1944), that most appealed to Panofsky, a tradition that, in part, equated ties,Kepes wasa committed social bodily comportment with principles of self conduct.42 In1928, activist. heJoined a Munka, Nor would such a bodily posture befit Kepes's notion of artandpolitical Hungarian action group. artistic and social advancement. (His example of ink blots exempliFrom allaccounts, radihowever, Kepes's calpolitical activities fied a turn away from naturalistic representations and toward the waned bythetime he arrived intheUnited Statesin 1937, plasticity of thinking, of the mind as it were. I don't believe, howafter moving first to Berlin andthen ever, that this example embodied a "proud and tragic consciousLondon. Hedid,nonetheless, a receive ness...") As Kepes wrote, "Visual language thus must absorb the citation from theU.S.StateDepartment dynamic idioms of the visual imagery to mobilize the creative imagforwartime activities. support See ination for positive social action, and to direct it toward positive of Gyorgy Kepes Papers, Archives American Art, Washington, DC. social goals."43 Indeed, Kepes had hoped that the visual arts had 44 Thegestaltpsychologist, Wolfgang developed beyond mere stooping and grubbing, transcending the as part ofthePrussian Kohler, Academy ground plane. The artist's unseemly posture, his or her carriage ofScience, Study conducted experiments oriented towards the earth, rendered him or her visually incapacionanthropoid of apesontheIsland tated.4'Under these circumstances, the artist could not see what was Tenerife. Asa part of hisassignment, Kohier studied gesture, and before him or her, only what was below. Admittedly, Kepes linked language, intheapes,determining their perception primitive representational naivete to an unfiltered view of the ona developmental scale.The place world. Void of the burden of Western pictorial convention, the primto a seriesoftests apesweresubjected itive artist was connected to the world, rendering his art semiotiinwhich theywould have to overcome a cally potent. While Kepes preferred the reduction of pictorial of obstacles to obtain variety food, convention that resulted in a direct mode of communication, what bananas. usually Kbhler observed thathis apes,"Sultan" showed especially, signs he attributed to primitive picture making, he in no way condoned of genuine andinsight. intelligence See an affected primitivism in art but rather a refined directedness.45 Wolfgang Kohler, The Mentality ofApes, Most certainly, a perceived disorder of the contemporary art scene Ella Winter, trans. (NewYork: Vintage was contrary to what Kepes had proposed as art's natural course: 1956[19171). Books, That is, visual expression, predicated on a comprehension of the 45 Kepes, of Vision Language (Chicago: 1944), 96-97. dynamic structure of visual imagery, was invaluable in readjusting
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human patterns of thought and action as a dynamic process towards progress.Kepes was optimisticon this point. Optimism notwithstanding, not long after his Cambridge dinner,a disillusionedKepesbroachedan alarmingpredicamentin the arts.In his article,"Commentson Art,"(1959)he wrote: The presenthuman situationresemblesthat of a lost child. [...]We are incapableof absorbingthe new landscape,with its wealth of new sensations;therefore,we cannotreinforce ourselveswith the joys of light, color,and forms;the rhythmof sound and movement essentialto healthy
growth.46

The contemporaryartist,like the lost child (and Betsy),was unable to meet Kepes's evolutionary demands. Art suffered from a crippling point-of-view. Seeingthe futureas a "new landscape"suggested that Kepes based his linguistic theory of pictorialrepresentation, his language of vision, on a naturalhistory of vision: an evolution from primate activity to human activity and beyond where the horizon of progress was available to those beings who stood upright and looked straight-ahead-those who kept their eyes peeled.47 VI. Conclusion Tosummarize,a new vision, as Kepeshad it, depended on an active relationshipbetween disparate items that were reconciled in the mind as image, a physio-mental syntax of sorts. Following Whitehead and Morris,Kepes located meaning in relationsbetween distinct things, not in the things themselves. Furthermore, the integrationof "meaningfulsigns," accordingto Kepes, was indicative of a naturalhuman compulsiontowardsorderand uprightness. All one had to do was to read a culture'saccumulationof meaningful signs-mediating and reflectinghuman action-to apprehend the manifoldof human activity.And Kepes locateda bevy of meaningful signs-both pictorialand linguistic-in contemporary advertising and its attention-grabbing character.48 Kepes wrote, "Ifsocial conditionsallow advertisingto serve messages that arejustifiedin the deepest and broadestsocial sense, advertisingartcould contributeeffectivelyin preparingthe way for a positive popular art, an art reachingeverybody and understood by everyone."49For Kepes, the key to advertising's impact was its communicativeimmediacy.Advertising art was free from restriction, it did not feel the weight of arthistory,nor of institutional practice. As Kepes explained: Advertisingart,unhandicappedby traditionalconsideration, was free to develop a visual presentationin which every figure is picturedin the perspectivewhich gives the strongestemphasis to its connectednessin a meaning.50

46 Gyorgy onArt" in "Comments Kepes, NewKnowledge inHuman Values, H.Maslow, Abraham ed.(Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959), 86-87. 47 Thebook thatdirectly followed Language of Vision, The NewLandscape inArt and Science, tookKepes's goalto theextreme a vastarray of microbycollecting and thestark telephotographic images, of "Grain beauty Boundary Migration in Arc-Melted Hafnium" forexample. This "photomicrograph" is emblematic of Kepes's search foranidealized order. Science andadvances inoptics gavehim themeans to penetrate thefilthand of theworld disarray as hesawit.See The NewLandscape inArt andScience Paul (Chicago: andCo.,1956). Theobald
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48 Inhis"Attention andModernity inthe Nineteenth Jonathan Crary Century," remarked ona move awayfrom a Kantian whathe transcendental vision toward Theshiftfrom refers to as "attention." transcendental vision to attentive vision, orthephilosophical notion of distraction of replaced bya physiological notion intense regard, marked thesensing subject's regulation andmanagement. Theattentive wasa construction, viewer onethatarose a discourse onoptics from andvision. assumes Crary's argument thatattention andsensory perception wereconstructed from discourse-from "texts rather than andtechniques" from a hard-wired physiological capacity. Crary thattheemergent argues industrial econthatproduced forconsumer omy products to this wasdirectly related consumption shift. Attention wasfocused epistemic thatwereforsale.By onthoseproducts following lineof argumentation, Crary's onecould claim thatKepes's Language of Vision wasyetanother ofa example textconstructing vision-literally pointingto whatit is thatwe areto see inthe attention world andturning our toward forconsumption. consumer products of Vision Admittedly, Language promoted a discourse onvision thatwascommensurate witha post-war industrial econthequestion remains omy. Nevertheless, as to whether textliterally Kepes's formed orwhether vision his materially, textbroadened theparameters ofwhat wasacknowledged as a wayof seeing theworld. And was yes,thatworld withmerchandise. See Jonathan deluged "Attention inthe Crary, andModernity inPicturing Nineteenth Science Century" Producing Art, Caroline A.Jonesand Peter withAmy Gallison, Slaton, eds. andLondon: (NewYork Routledge, 1998). 49 Kepes, of Vision Language (Chicago: 221. 1944), 50 Ibid., 98. 51 Walter Dill Scott,The Psychology of York: Advertising(New McBride, 1932), 43-53. tivism. 52 Rene Girard, "Mimetic Desire" in Things In "The Creative Discipline of Our Visual Environment" Hidden SincetheFoundation of the (1947),Kepes clarifiedthe underlying bias of Language of Visionby Wor/dlStanford: Stanford University 294-298. Press, 1987), summoningfortha "healthyvision" free from the toxic mess of the
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A "positive popular art"was unschooled, primitive in its conception-in its directness-but not in its execution.As I stated earlier, in no way did Kepesmean to suggest thathis "new structure order" was analogous to the regressive tendencies of an affected primitivism in art,hence "new."Indeed, Kepes'examples of advertising art were the very instantiation of technological sophistication in terms of image production. Photographicmontage, image transparency, breadthof scale, line contrast,color saturation, and fidelity of reproduction were all put in the serviceof commerce.In drawing attention,the advanced technicsof advertisingart then were capable of engaging an audience on the level of visual experience, where, Kepesbelieved, meaning resided. Accordingly, visual experience was the key to effective communicationbecause knowledge itself was built from the discrete units of what was gathered from the optical array. Yet, a positive popular culture would have to come at a price.As Kepessought to revealthe "structural laws"of an expanded sensory field's manifestation in experience, and to unveil its "socialmeaning,"he inadvertently revealedthe repressivenatureof an evolved sensory field, a transitionfrom the embodied eye to the disembodied eye. What was the social meaning of an expanded sensory field, a field dominated by vision? If advertising were the most advancedform of pictorialrepresentation, the apex of human communication,then it would have to repressa great deal. Indeed, advertising showed its audience a horizon of possibilities through an accumulationof capital,or revenue-producing assets, that regulated perception.Those possibilities were predicatedon what one theoristobserved to be "interest incentives"based on personalwelfare.5' The underlying structure, however, was a logic of desire whereby advertising ritualized cultural assimilation. It offered images that capitalized on a human propensity for mimesis, for assimilatingthat which one desiredbut could never acquire.52 The ever-present,unattainablefuture that advertising presented to Kepes,however,was contraryto his belief in the primacy of visual experienceand its connectednessto meaning.Afterall, the groundwork of post-war American advertising was to suspend directexperience,if for only a moment, therebysubstitutingit with a commodity form. The underlying logic in Language of Vision-an imminenceof order,a world-finding cohesion ratherthan a cohesive world in-and-of-itself-confirmedthe social meaning of an evolved sensory field dominated by vision. And desire born from economicideology accommodatedKepes'snaturalistapproachto a social history that was analogous to a naturalhistory of vision. It also exposed the metaphysicsundergirdingKepes's so called posi-

of Discipline Creative "The Kepes, 53 Gyorgy Art College Our Visual Environment," 19. Journa7:1 (1947): onArt" "Comments Kepes, 54 Gyorgy 90. (1959), 55 Ibid.

world, from the filth of the body. He referredto men who were not "fully"men due to distortedvision. He also denigratedthe sensual body and its proximityto otherbodies. Healthyvision requiredthat the eye disengage from the body, to rise above the ground, and to dominateits surroundings.Kepes made this point explicitwhen he wrote, "A visual controlof the environment,guided by [...1healthy vision would give man not only a healthier,sounder physical set53 ting, but also what is as important,it would increasehis stature." in its literalsense:the height of I takeKepesto have meant "stature" a human body. Such a gain in height, in vertical carriage,was not to be, however. Twelve years later in "Commentson Art" (1959) Kepes complainedthatthe world still sufferedfromrapiddecay.Industrial and technologicalprogress had not supplied a nurturingenvironment for visual acumen nor social progress. Instead, Kepes saw a world that "shocksand numbsour sensibilities." 5 He continued,"... our gesturesand facialexpressionsmount up to grotesque,formless He claimedthat aggregateslackingsincerity, scale,and cleanliness." our physical comportment was deformed, and that we lacked "cleanliness" due to the body's stupefaction.Sufferinga regression, we were getting closerto the ground. "Ourdistortedsurroundings, by distortingus, have robbedus of the power to make our experi55 While optical adroitnessentailed loss of ence rich and coherent." visual static, of complexity,of contradiction,and of palimpsestic depth due to an accumulation of all unnecessary fragments, constructionsof the world would foreverbe sullied, tainted by the culture. brutishnessof contemporary The wholeness that Kepes desired, the unrealizedaggregate form, did not resultin a positive social goal. In the final analysis,he was unable to reconcilethe appearanceof the world and the world as it exists materially.Kepes's rhetoricappealed more to hygiene not realizedclarity. His theoryof visual than logic:idealized clarity, representation,a language of vision, could not accommodatethe possibility that the physiological fiber of sight-the way we seeremainsstableand is not essentiallycontingent-as is what we see. Kepes's theory of vision fell into the gap that kept the way and the what of vision at some distance.I do not believe thatKepes claimed he inadvertently underscoredthe fact that any greatmystery;rather, a strict theory that explains the way we see does not necessarily disclose the meaning of what we see. Kepes preferredthe latter of the two; and his preference resulted in a symbolic world at the expense of a materialworld.

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