THE PURPOSE OF AN IMAGE – RECOGNITION OR IMAGINATION
Photographers make recordings of the scene in front of the lens. There is nothing else that they can do. The whole art of photography consists in selecting and arranging this scene.
Painters also select and arrange scenes, but they go on to represent them in lines, shapes and colours – using one thing (a line) to stand in for something else (an object or shape observed in the scene). But this is to simplify drastically, because the process of perception is not separated into the scene and the means of its representation. One sees what one is looking for. With a large paint-brush and a palette of colours, one tends to look for masses of colour. With a sharp pencil, one tends to look for clear outline and detail. The imagination comes first, its correction from observation comes second. So the imagination of the artist may construct a scene that does not necessarily match the scene closely. In fact many great paintings are totally imaginary.
The scene is translated into schemata, which may range from a simple line or rough circle, to very fully worked out figures drawings. Any memorised drawing or painting can serve as a schema, a framework which can by used as it is, or modified to make it a closer match for something in reality. This development of schemata is really the development of an imagination, the power to deploy memorised images and to invent new combinations. This is how classical renaissance art, such as that by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, and their many followers, often depicts idealised figures. These schemata allow the viewer to consider form and movement in a way which would be impossible if the figures were more realistic. So classical art is a logical extension of normal observation, but taken to the limit of sophistication.