絵を読む? : ゴンブリッチと美術の解釈学

抄録

Gombrich gets much attention from aestheticians for his linguistic approach to imagery. According to him, pictures are "read" rather than merely seen, because a picture is not a natural sign which transmits a copy of nature to the innocent eye, but a conventional sign whose "making" is shaped by its cultural frame of reference. Therefore, beholders of a painting must always interpret it by projecting and correcting their own imagination as a schema. And so, historians of art, whose task is to determine the one true meaning of a picture, must also try to verify (or more precisely falsify) their hypotheses to get near to the historical reality. I quite agree with him in admitting that picture reading is indispensable especially for the professional interpreter of art. We must take special care not to get into the danger of mystifying the image. But does this necessity of reading really guarantee the possibility of complete rationalisation of the image? So, my aim in this article is to make clear the limits of the linguistic approach to the visual image by pointing out the ideological background on which Gombrich's theory of image and image interpretation is based.