Art and Ambiguity

Ambiguity occurs in various art forms: in literature, in music and in the visual arts. In this article we focus on ambiguity in the visual arts. We distinguish ambiguity from other related perceptual possibilities such as indeterminacy, paradoxicality and anamorphism. Ambiguous works are shown to be a powerful challenge to two traditional theories concerning the identity of artworks: (1) The subjectivist view that the work is identical with the viewer’s experience; and (2) The identification of artworks with material objects. The relevance of some recent studies in the philosophy of art and in artificial intelligence is discussed and, finally, the implications of visual ambiguity for aesthetic evaluation are considered.