This paper examines two foundational frameworks in visual communication theory. The first section applies Louis Althusser's four hypotheses on ideology and ideological state apparatuses — drawing on Jacques Lacan's linguistic theory — to the analysis of visual culture, arguing that individuals are always already interpellated subjects within an inescapable ideological fabric. The second section outlines the four core principles of Gestalt Theory — proximity, similarity, orientation, and closure — and demonstrates through concrete visual examples how each principle shapes the way viewers perceive and unify compositional elements. Together, the two frameworks illuminate how both ideology and perceptual psychology govern the reception of visual images.
In his theorizing on the nature of ideology and ideological state apparatuses, Louis Althusser drew on Jacques Lacan's linguistic theory to better understand the way a state's enforced and often invisible ideology functions within any given societal context. The constructed nature of language, for both Althusser and Lacan, meant it was impossible to access any truly "real" conditions of existence. Language is referential and arbitrary: there is no intrinsic sense of "catness" attached to any given animal unless one understands what is not a cat. Likewise, one has no state identity as a citizen of America unless one understands what is anti-American, or at the very least, not American.
This endlessly relational nature of language and state ideology is equally true of visual culture as it is of verbal culture and ideological references. Only through an analytic and deconstructionist approach to visual culture and society can one understand the transient nature of what is construed as real — whether in linguistic, ideological, or visual terms. Althusser does not believe that language, verbal or visual, is inherently "bad," for to be locked within such a system is inevitable. Rather, Althusser posits a series of hypotheses that he explores in order to clarify his understanding of ideology.
The first of Althusser's hypotheses is that ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. In terms of state ideology, the state transmits a message that citizens believe because the citizenry — given the limits of human perception and cognitive understanding — can imagine no other relationship, even if that relationship is socially constructed. Likewise, a visual work communicates a version of the "real" that may appear deceptively authentic. A still-life photograph of fruit, for instance, may seem more "real" than a Cézanne portrait of the same bowl of fruit; yet both communicate only — because of the visual's inherently subjective nature — the image present in the artist's mind at a particular moment in time, along with the artist's ideological assumptions about what his or her medium should transmit to a viewer.
Althusser does not deny the potent nature of ideology and its material effects. He states, secondly, that ideology has a material existence. The ideology of capitalism, for example, has real and tangible effects upon the body of the worker in its yoke. In the language of visual communication, a fashion photograph can motivate a young woman to starve herself — or at the very least, to purchase a new outfit. Because one swims in a sea of culture, breathing in its water like air, one cannot — except by temporarily removing oneself from it through heightened, critical analysis — reflect upon it from outside.
As a corollary to his second proposition, Althusser states thirdly that all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects. By "interpellates" he means that, living within the ideological and visual fabric of a culture such as the United States, one will have certain conditioned reactions to the visual and verbal language of the world around oneself. Even to burn a symbolic image of the flag is to acknowledge its historical and emotional power, if only to react to it in anger. The emotional jolt one feels at the sight of a police car while speeding — as opposed to an ordinary sedan — is testimony to the power of a specifically visual texture of state ideological culture.
"Subjects formed at birth within ideology"
The central insight of Gestalt Theory — and no pun is intended — is that the sum of a whole composition is greater than, or may produce a different effect than, that composition's individual parts. Visually speaking, this relates to the perception of a composition as a unified whole rather than a series of isolated images, colors, brushstrokes, or lines. While each individual element of a picture or photograph carries meaning on its own, when all elements are taken together by the eye and mind as a single unit, the overall meaning of the piece will change. The gazer's perception is thus shaped by his or her understanding of all the parts working in unison.
"Proximity, similarity, orientation, and closure explained"
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.