Ontologically Interactive Painting: On Susan Rothenberg's Three Heads

Author(s): Caleb Faul (Department of Philosophy and Ethics, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks) Year: 2024 Type: paper (Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 55:2, 184–197)

A short three-part paper that extends Merleau-Ponty's claim about artworks-and-interpretations in "Eye and Mind" to a thesis about the perceptual world and paintings: paintings are themselves transformations of the perceptual world that the world itself elicits but does not determine. Faul reads MP's logic of institution (1954–55 lectures + Course Summary in In Praise of Philosophy) into the painter-world relation, and uses Susan Rothenberg's 1990 painting Three Heads — three serpentine horse-necks intertwining over a watery field — as the case in which the activity-passivity confusion the thesis addresses becomes phenomenologically concrete. The paper closes (Part 3) by sketching what Faul calls an interactive ontology: things are neither static (complete all at once) nor self-contained but "turn into themselves" only through interaction.

Core Arguments

  1. Claim: Paintings are transformations of the perceptual world that the world itself elicits but does not determine; this undercuts the subjective/objective divide in art. Because: MP's "Eye and Mind" 139 thesis that an artwork is itself what institutes its interpretations — interpretations "change it only into itself" — generalizes from artwork-and-interpretation to world-and-painting. The world opens the perspective from which it appears anew in the painting; the painting "changes the world only into itself." Against: The subjective/objective dichotomy in modern-art commentary (Karl Ruhrberg's "outbreak of subjectivity"; Malraux-via-Ruhrberg's "more of the painter than of the person portrayed").

  2. Claim: Sense for Merleau-Ponty is instituted, not constituted: an institutional event "deposit[s] a sense in me, not just as something surviving or as a residue, but as the call to follow, the demand of a future" (Institution and Passivity 77). Because: Sense is neither produced by me (intellectualism) nor forced upon me (empiricism); I gear into it. Birth is the paradigm — sense only in relation to a future life lived on its basis. The instituted sense demands its own evolution and change ("sense by divergence, deformation, which is proper to institution," Institution 11). Against: Both intellectualist constitution and empiricist passive reception.

  3. Claim: Institution follows the logic of advent, not event: an opening onto a future that "cannot be captured in a punctual moment of presence." Because: An advent is "a promise of events" (MP, "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence," 1952, 105–106); deposited sense is "to continue, to complete without it being the case that this sequel is determined" (Institution 9). Against: Punctual / completed / event-based conceptions of meaning's temporality.

  4. Claim: Painting (individual artwork and tradition) exhibits the institution-logic. Because: An author "remakes [her work] differently" (Institution 11); each new painting "proceeds from the preceding ones" but "cannot be deduced from them" (Institution 41); the history of painting is "a logic which creates on the way" (Institution 41–42), with no determinative telos. Painters bestow on successors not declarative statements but questions. Against: Pictorial history as either pre-given telos (modern perspective as the truth ancient perspective was reaching toward — Panofsky read against this) or arbitrary succession of disconnected events.

  5. Claim: Reception of an artwork exhibits the same institution-logic: it is the artwork itself that "opens the perspective from which it appears in another light" — the interpreter is necessarily a participant, not an external imposer. Because: "Eye and Mind" 139: the artwork "transforms itself and becomes what follows; the interminable interpretations to which it is legitimately susceptible change it only into itself." Against: The objective-subjective binary that treats interpretations as wholly separate from the artwork.

  6. Claim: Three Heads (1990) makes the world's participation in painting visible because it confounds the activity-passivity distinction at the level of subject matter (horses) and painter (Rothenberg). Because: The painting is "the furthest thing from a passive transcription or photorealistic copy" yet not a subjective imposition; critics resort to paradox ("ambiguous balance," "as inscrutably private as they are publicly accessible, as formal as they are magically expressive, as figurative as they are abstract" — Joan Simon, Susan Rothenberg 1991: 9). Against: Karl Ruhrberg's "ambiguous balance" framing — Faul's stronger move is that her work challenges the very distinction, not that it occupies a midpoint within it.

  7. Claim: Rothenberg's first-person account of horses ("they're all muscle and gristle and each one's different. They step on your foot — it hurts," Simon 169) authorizes a connection register: painting horses is neither copying nor projecting; it is connecting with particular animals in a particular place. Because: Three Heads was made after Rothenberg became personally acquainted with horses in New Mexico, and yet is less recognizable than her 1970s horse paintings — personal knowledge "scrubbed away some visual clichés" (footnote 48, citing Deleuze on Bacon). Against: The expectation that intimacy with subject matter would yield greater realism.

  8. Claim: The horses themselves participate in the institution of Three Heads: it is the horses, through their connection with Rothenberg, that "open the perspective" from which they appear in the painting. Because: To paraphrase E&M 139, the horses transform themselves and become what follows; the coherent deformation Rothenberg's painterly activity brings about changes the perceptual sense of horses only into itself. The textual hook is V&I 124: "the thing ready to be seen, pregnant — in principle as well as in fact — with all the visions one can have of it" — Faul extends this to: pregnant also with all the paintings one can make of it. Against: A panpsychic over-reading is anticipated and qualified — the openness of perceptual things is making-possible, not consciousness-attribution. The qualification is gestured at, not extensively defended; Faul acknowledges (footnote 60) that "clarifying what such an interactive view of individual specificity implies will require future work."

  9. Claim: Every theory of painting is a metaphysics; the institution-reading of painting motivates an interactive ontology — things are neither static (complete all at once) nor self-contained (sealed off from interaction). Because: Sense develops only by becoming different (institution thesis), and this development through divergence only occurs through interactivity; the horses' perceptual sense develops differently in interacting with Rothenberg than with Rosa Bonheur. Things are "a reaching beyond themselves, a manner of interacting." Against: Both substance-ontology (things as self-enclosed presences) and pure-flux ontology (things as nothing but transformation); also subject-object framings that treat the painter as the locus of agency and the world as a passive given.

Argumentative Movement

The paper unfolds in the order: aesthetic problem (§1) → conceptual apparatus from the secondary author (§2 / Part 1, the institution concept walked through Institution and Passivity) → case-study application (§3 / Part 2, Three Heads) → metaphysical generalization (§4 / Part 3, interactive ontology). The movement is upward in scope: from a particular painting's interpretive puzzle to MP's general logic of sense, then back to a specific painting that makes the thesis audible, then outward to the ontology the thesis presupposes. The structural argumentative move is the paraphrase-extension at line 44: Faul takes E&M 139's wording about artworks-and-interpretations and substitutes "the perceptual world" for "the artwork" and "paintings" for "interpretations" — a homological extension of the same institution-logic to a new relata-pair. The move is asserted on the authority of V&I 124's pregnant and Rothenberg's first-person animal-encounter register, not extensively defended.

Key Findings

  • The institution-logic (Course Summary; Institution and Passivity; "Indirect Language" advent-vs-event distinction) is not a 1954–55 confined doctrine but a structural account of how sense develops; it applies to the painter-world relation, not only to the painter-tradition relation.
  • Three Heads is a case in which the activity-passivity confusion in painter-and-painted is phenomenologically visible — the painting is neither passive transcription nor subjective imposition, and critics' paradoxical formulations register this without resolving it.
  • An "interactive ontology" is the metaphysical view to which the institution-reading of painting commits us: things are open, developmental, and individual-without-being-self-contained.
  • Painting becomes a privileged domain of metaphysical insight because it makes the institutional structure of sense-development visible at a single moment of operation.

Methodology

Phenomenological-interpretive: close reading of MP's Institution and Passivity, "Eye and Mind," "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence," and The Visible and the Invisible (especially V&I 124's pregnant passage) cross-cut with interpretive engagement of Susan Rothenberg's Three Heads (Simon's Susan Rothenberg 1991 as the principal mediating source) and Rothenberg's own first-person testimony. The argumentative form is systematic argument — premise-conclusion structure with a secondary-author exposition (§2), a case-study application (§3), and a metaphysical generalization (§4) — but the transition from §2 to §3 turns on a paraphrase-extension of E&M 139, which is a formal move rather than an extended deductive argument.

Concepts Developed

Concepts the source is primary on — where it does original work:

  • interactive-ontology — Faul's coined synthesis-term and central thesis of §4 / Part 3. Things are neither static nor self-contained; they "turn into themselves" only through interaction; individuality is "a reaching beyond [the thing] itself, a manner of interacting." This is the metaphysical view Faul extracts from his reading of painting.
  • susan-rothenberg — the entity, treated extensively as the case study; Faul's reading of Three Heads through institution-logic is the original interpretive contribution.
  • The painter-world extension of MP's institution-logic — Faul's structural extension of MP's claim about artwork-and-interpretation to world-and-painting. This is original to Faul (or so the paper presents it); previous secondary literature treats institution as artwork-and-tradition or artwork-and-interpretation, not world-and-painting.

Concepts Referenced

Concepts the source touches on but does not develop:

  • institution — the central technical concept, used throughout §2 / Part 1 in the Course Summary–framed register; not developed beyond MP's own articulations.
  • coherent-deformation — used as the operative form of how a transformation can change something "only into itself" (raw lines 44, 56, 58, 72); the Malraux/Valéry genealogy is not engaged.
  • advent vs event — single-citation (raw line 32) reference to MP's 1952 distinction.
  • every theory of painting is a metaphysics — single citation of E&M 132 as warrant for the §4 transition.
  • pregnant / pregnance — V&I 124 cited and extended.
  • perception / perceptual world — the world as that which institutes the painting; not separately developed.
  • "Lending body to the world" / active becoming passive — single citation of E&M 123.
  • stiftung — never named explicitly (Faul writes only in English; "institution" carries the Stiftung register).

Terminology

The source is in English throughout; no bilingual technical apparatus. Faul does not use "déformation cohérente" in French and does not engage the Malraux/Valéry genealogy. The paper's idiomatic vocabulary tends toward English ("connection," "inaugurate," "resume / take up") rather than the French/German of MP's working vocabulary.

Key Passages

"In the midst of his landmark essay on painting 'Eye and Mind,' Maurice Merleau-Ponty makes a striking claim about the relationship between artworks and the seemingly endless interpretations to which they give rise... legitimate interpretations of an artwork serve only to change it 'into itself.' ... I will push it a step further: it is the case, not only that artworks engender interpretations that are not separate from them, but also that artworks are themselves transformations of the perceptual world itself" (Faul, p. 184; raw line 20). The thesis-statement of the paper. Anchors core arguments 1, 5, 8.

"[Painting] is a matter of, again, actively becoming passive, of rendering one's body sensitive to the world so as to draw out – to ex-press – its latent but hitherto-unactualized perceptual possibilities in paint" (Faul, p. 187; raw line 28). Anchors the embodied-painter premise of core argument 2.

"An instituted sense – as opposed to a constituted sense – is thus a sense that demands its own evolution and change. As Merleau-Ponty ultimately says, it is 'sense by divergence, deformation, which is proper to institution'" (Faul, p. 188, citing Institution 11; raw line 30). Anchors core argument 2's sense-by-divergence register and supplies Faul's English gloss on institutional sense.

"Paintings are not just things whose sense gets coherently deformed, rather they themselves already are transformations of the perceptual world.... To paraphrase Merleau-Ponty's descriptions of artworks vis-à-vis their interpretations, I am arguing that the perceptual world transforms itself and becomes what follows in the painting; the interminable paintings to which the perceptual world gives rise change it only into itself" (Faul, p. 192; raw line 44). The structural argumentative move of the paper — the paraphrase-extension. Anchors core argument 8 and the entire §3 / Part 2 application.

"I used to think of [horses] as flat, quiet images. Now I know they're all muscle and gristle and each one's different. They step on your foot – it hurts" (Susan Rothenberg, in Joan Simon, Susan Rothenberg 1991: 169; quoted by Faul at p. 193, raw line 52). Faul's textual hook for the connection register; anchors core argument 7.

"It is neither the one nor the other – neither the horses nor Rothenberg – that institutes this painting on their own. The institution of this painting arises only between them, in their connection or interaction. There is thus a way in which it is the horses themselves that have 'opened the perspective' from which they appear in a new way in the painting" (Faul, p. 194; raw line 58). Anchors core argument 8 — the horses' participation thesis.

"Things become themselves, so to speak, only by changing, only by going beyond themselves in interaction with others" (Faul, p. 187; the introductory formulation of the interactive-ontology thesis, repeated at p. 195–196). Anchors core argument 9.

"Perhaps all this talk of things exceeding themselves and existing beyond themselves in interaction with others smacks of mysticism, but I would hasten to add that this is a thoroughly everyday mysticism, one which even the most basic perceptual experience can teach us if only we pay attention. This way of speaking is nothing more than the attempt to convey something of the experience of someone standing before a painting who is suddenly struck by a perceptual possibility hitherto unknown to them, someone who excitedly rushes to their friend, grabs them by the arm, and says, 'Look!'" (Faul, p. 197; raw line 72). The closing image — performs core argument 9 phenomenologically.

What's Not Obvious

Three things about this paper that would not appear in a conventional summary or book review:

  1. The structural argumentative move is a paraphrase-extension, not an argument. At raw line 44 / p. 192, Faul takes E&M 139's wording about artwork-and-interpretation and substitutes "the perceptual world" for "the artwork" and "paintings" for "interpretations": "I am arguing that the perceptual world transforms itself and becomes what follows in the painting." The structural homology between the two relata-pairs is asserted on the authority of V&I 124's pregnant passage (extended from "all the visions one can have of it" to "all the paintings one can make of it"); it is not extensively defended. This is a philological move dressed as an argumentative one. A reader looking for an argument that the institution-logic applies to world-painting (rather than the artwork-interpretation case it was originally articulated for) finds the move performed but not justified at length. This connects to the wiki's existing concern (per claims#cryptic-institution-extends-beith (candidate) Counterpressure) that the institutional reading of painting requires Faul as the rival framework: the rival is now anchored, but its argumentative move is more a paraphrase than a deduction.

  2. "Connection" is a positionally load-bearing term Faul barely defines. In §3 / Part 2 (raw lines 52–58) Faul names Rothenberg's stance as connecting with horses—instead of copying or projecting onto them (raw line 52). The term is used a handful of times but does the work of distinguishing Faul's third-mode from the activity-passivity binary: connection is neither the painter's active imposition nor the world's passive surrender. The term is a modal concept doing structural work; if it were replaced with "interaction" the argument would lose nuance (interaction sounds bi-directional but neutralized; connection has practical-relational, embodied, situated tone). Faul borrows it from Rothenberg's own self-understanding (Simon 168: her painting as "a connection to and a way of locating herself in the new landscape" of New Mexico) — so the practical-relational register comes from the artist, not from the philosopher's vocabulary.

  3. The most counterintuitive claim — that the horses themselves "open the perspective" — risks panpsychism, and Faul knows it, but he does not extensively defend the metaphysical commitment. At raw lines 58–60, Faul says the horses, through their connection with Rothenberg, "transform themselves in order to become what follows" and "open the perspective" from which they appear in the painting. The claim attributes a kind of active openness to perceptual things — not consciousness, not willful agency, but calling-forth, making-possible. Faul cushions this through (a) V&I 124's pregnant, (b) Rothenberg's "muscle and gristle" first-person register, (c) the connection register's practical character. But footnote 60 acknowledges: "This is a necessarily brief sketch or preliminary articulation of the point. Clarifying what such an interactive view of individual specificity implies will require future work." The metaphysical implication of the interactive ontology is gestured at, not argued for. This connects to the wiki's embodied-act-of-framing page (van Sorge 2025), which makes a structurally parallel correction of MP's painterly rhetoric but routes it through Derrida's parergon rather than through institutional openness.

Critique / Limitations

  • The paraphrase-extension is asserted on the authority of two passages. E&M 139 and V&I 124 carry the structural argument from §2 to §3. A more developed treatment would defend the homology between artwork-interpretation and world-painting at greater length — perhaps engaging the question of why the painter is not in the same role as the interpreter, given that both are recipients of an institutional sense. (Faul gestures: footnote 38 acknowledges that "Merleau-Ponty's use of the term 'legitimate' opens up the question of what counts as a legitimate interpretation. This is an important and worthwhile question of normativity, but for reasons of space and thematic focus, it must be left for future work.")
  • The metaphysical claim about perceptual things' "openness" is sketched but not defended. Faul self-acknowledges (footnote 60) the preliminary character of his interactive-ontology proposal. A reader looking for a defense of why perceptual things must be conceived this way (and why this view does not collapse into panpsychism) will find the question raised but not resolved.
  • The Rothenberg case is generative but not necessary. Faul argues (footnote 54) that "the same analysis could be extended even to the most representational or abstract paintings." If so, Three Heads is illustrative rather than constitutive; the strong reading (the painting makes the thesis visible) is not the only available reading (the painting is one example among many).
  • The "ambiguous balance" position (Ruhrberg) is treated as the polemical target, but more nuanced adjacent positions are not engaged. Faul does not engage MP-secondary literature that also tries to undercut the subject/object distinction in painting (e.g., Galen Johnson's Retrieval of the Beautiful — cited in footnote 5 but not discussed; Fóti's Merleau-Ponty at the Gallery — cited in footnote 61 but only for a different point). The paper's bibliography overlaps with the wiki's MP-secondary corpus but it does not fully position itself within that secondary literature.
  • The paper does not engage the coherent-deformation genealogy. Faul uses "coherent deformation" as if it were a transparent technical term. The Malraux/Valéry/MP genealogy now anchored on the wiki's coherent-deformation page is invisible in Faul.

Connections

  • extends institution — Faul takes MP's institution-logic from artwork-tradition and artwork-interpretation to world-painting; the wiki's institution.md page can pick up Faul's extension under the painter-world relation.
  • applies institution to the painter-world relation — distinct from the painter-tradition or artwork-interpretation applications of institution that the wiki already records.
  • uses coherent-deformation — broadly and unanchored; Faul treats the term as MP's working vocabulary without engaging the philological genealogy.
  • uses advent vs event — single citation; reception-side application.
  • enacts every theory of painting is a metaphysics — Faul's §4 / Part 3 transitions from aesthetics to metaphysics on this warrant.
  • contrasts with the "ambiguous balance" reading of Rothenberg (Ruhrberg, Simon) — a contrast Faul polemicizes against; the difference is whether her work occupies a midpoint within the subject/object distinction or challenges the very distinction.
  • is structurally parallel to vansorge-2025-painting-as-framing — both correct MP's "rendering visible" rhetoric where it slides toward universal accessibility (Faul: routes the act through the world's openness; van Sorge: routes the act through the embodied subject's framing-decision). The two corrections converge at "painting is partial, non-totalizing, responsibility under undecidability"; they diverge at the operative figure (institution / coherent deformation vs. parergon / framing-decision). See interactive-ontology §"Connections" and embodied-act-of-framing §"Connections" for the cross-link.
  • is the institutional-camp framework against which Paper A's cryptic-institution thesis distinguishes itself — see claims#faul-institutional-camp (live, post-2026-04-28 ingest) and claims#cryptic-institution-extends-beith (candidate; Counterpressure updated post-ingest).

Sources

This is a secondary source. Its own primary sources are listed in the paper's bibliography. Selected key citations within Faul's argument:

  • merleau-ponty-1961-eye-and-mind — the principal MP source; cited heavily, especially p. 139 (the artwork-and-interpretations passage, the structural hook of the entire paper); p. 123 ("It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings"); p. 124 (the embodied self caught up in things); p. 132 ("every theory of painting is a metaphysics"); p. 129 (gestures emanating from the things themselves).
  • merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity — the primary source on institution; Faul cites the Course Summary register heavily (p. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 41, 42, 48–49, 77, 77–78). The painter-tradition discussion is cited but not extensively engaged.
  • merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — cited at p. 124 ("the thing ready to be seen, pregnant"). The textual hook for Faul's extension to world-painting.
  • "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" / merleau-ponty-1964-signs — cited at Aesthetics Reader pp. 88, 91, 105–106 (advent vs event distinction; "perception already stylizes"; "the accomplished work... reaches its viewer").
  • merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — cited at lxxxiv ("at the intersection of my experiences"); 429–30; 496 fn 47 (Landes on l'engrenage / engrener / en prise).
  • Joan Simon, Susan Rothenberg (Harry N. Abrams, 1991) — the principal Rothenberg secondary; cited at pp. 9, 168, 169, 170 (Rothenberg's first-person quote on horses; Three Heads description).
  • Don Beith, The Birth of Sense (Ohio University Press, 2018) — cited at pp. 6, 69–70, 71 (institution / generative passivity / temporal-depth).
  • Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form (Zone Books, 1991) — cited as the secondary source on Renaissance perspective MP engaged in Institution and Passivity.
  • David Morris, "Body" (in Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts, eds. Diprose and Reynolds, 2014) — cited at p. 111 for the exposed body register (footnote 9).
  • Joseph C. Berendzen, Embodied Idealism (OUP 2023) — cited (footnote 32).
  • Karl Ruhrberg, Painting (Taschen 2005) — Faul's polemical target (footnote 3, footnote 50, footnote 59).
  • Véronique M. Fóti, Merleau-Ponty at the Gallery (SUNY 2020) — cited at p. 14 (footnote 61).
  • Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals — cited (footnote 58) for "no right to isolated hits and misses."
  • Karl Ruhrberg's citation of André Malraux, in Ruhrberg, Painting, p. 10 — Faul's only Malraux engagement, and only at second hand.
  • Jessica Wiskus, The Rhythm of Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2013) — cited at pp. 63–64 (footnote 12).
  • Galen A. Johnson, "Ontology and Painting: 'Eye and Mind'" + The Retrieval of the Beautiful (Northwestern, 2010) — cited (footnote 5) but not extensively engaged.
  • Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation — cited (footnote 48) for "visual clichés."