Pictorial space and the possibility of art

This paper addresses the cognitive status of making pictures, rather than their informational function. Discussion centres on the structure of pictorial space. Space of this kind is constituted from the relation between pictorial content's modal plasticity (that is, its capacity to represent actualities, possibilities, and nomological and metaphysical impossibilities) and the formative role of planar structure and idioms of recessional organization. On the basis of this, it is argued that alternative creative realizations and aesthetic significance are inherent to the structure of pictorial space itself qua pictorial. Such space is conceptually connected to the possibility of visual art.