THE CASE FOR PICTORIAL METAPHOR: RENÉ MAGRITTE AND OTHER SURREALISTS

Abstract

While originally the study of metaphor was the exclusive domain of literary critics and literary researchers, the last few decades have witnessed an increasing interest in the phenomenon from students of language and philosophers. There has been a growing awareness that the relevance of the concept .metaphor' is not restricted to the area of art. Despite this broadening of horizons, however, research has, perhaps not surprisingly, predominantly focused on verbal metaphor. The aim of the present contribution is to argue the thesis that there is such a thing as ,pictorial metaphor', and tentatively to explore this field by taking Surrealist art as a starting point. I focused on Surrealism for the following reason: one of the central tenets of Surrealism was that ultimately all opposites (feeling vs. reason; beauty vs. ugliness; substance vs. spirit, etc.) are merely apparent opposites. In the last resort each two antitheses' are aspects of a deeper unity. It was Surrealism's task to show this. From this point of view, it is hardly surprising that metaphor, with its crucial characteristic of rendering one kind of thing in terms of another, could play an important role in bridging the seemingly irreconcilable opposites. As, moreover, Surrealism had both a verbal and a pictorial side, I thought it would not be improbable to assume that the central ideology of Surrealism would manifest itself in each of these. Examining some ten Surrealist works of art, I propose that the paintings/collages under investigation do contain metaphors. For the analyses I draw on concepts which are borrowed from theories on verbal metaphor {Black, Miller, Ortony). The discussion focuses specifically on the role of directionality and context in the metaphors. Continual reference is made to the works of art under discussion. Despite fundamental differences between the verbal and the pictorial, I claim to have contributed to the idea that ,metaphor' can occur in the realm of the latter as well as the former, and moreover that concepts developed in the area of verbal metaphor are, mutatis mutandis, to a considerable extent applicable in the area of the visual.