who can look? who can be looked at? filefrans hals, rené descartes, 1649 rené descartes (march 31,...
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Bodies & Minds
Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At?
• René Descartes, “Optics”
• Georgina Kleege, “Blindness and Visual Culture:
an Eye Witness Account”
• Donna Haraway, “The Persistence of Vision”
• Amelia Jones, “The Body and/in Representation”
Bodies & Minds
Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At?
• Descartes: sight as a mechanical, physical process,
rather than divine revelation
• Kleege: Mental Imaging
• Haraway: Optics is a politics of positioning
• Jones: Who Sees? The manifestation of the human
subject. The “body extends into and is understood
as an image”—but as embodied
Frans Hals, René Descartes, 1649
“Cogito ergo sum” (French: Je
pense, donc je suis; I think,
therefore I am), found in part IV
of Discourse on the Method
(1637)
René Descartes(March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650)
“Cartesian” Philosophy
Frans Hals, René Descartes, 1649
René Descartes(March 31, 1596 – February 11,
1650)
In part, Descartes argued that a human is
essentially a mind (“a thing that thinks”)
yet the mind is attached somehow to a body.
For Descartes believed that “the body is a
tool, or machine at the disposal of
consciousness... and is a self-moving
automation, much like a clock, car, or
ship”, and the body is generally thought of
by Descartes “as a possession.” Descartes
dwelled into the components that the mind
(reason) is far superior to the body
(emotion). Therefore, the fragmentation of
the body within Cartesian discourse is to
thus recognize the body only as a vehicle for
the mind, and therefore whatever cartridge
our minds exist in is irrelevant and
meaningless.
Descartes, Rene. trans Donald A. Cress.
Discourse on Method and Meditations on
First Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1993.
Page from De Homine by Florentius
Schuyl (1619-1669)
La dioptrique (in English
Dioptrique, Optics, or Dioptrics),
1637 one of the Essays written
with Discourse on the Method.
Descartes used numerous models
to comprehend the properties of
light. It is the first publication of
the Law of Refraction
René DescartesMarch 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650)
Descartes compares light to a stick that allows a blind person to discern his
environment through touch. Descartes states:
“You have only to consider that the differences which a blind man notes among
trees, rocks, water, and similar things through the medium of his stick do not seem
less to him than those among red, yellow, green, and all the other colors seem to us;
and that nevertheless these differences are nothing other, in all these bodies, than
the diverse ways of moving, or of resisting the movements of, this stick.”
Pieter Bruegel
The Elder,
Netherlandish
Proverbs, 1559.
PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER,
Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559.
Georgina Kleege
Blindness and Visual Culture: an Eye Witness Account
“Visual culture entails a meditation on blindness, the invisible, the unseen, the unseeable,
and the overlooked”
Donna Haraway (Born September 6, 1944)
“The Persistence of Vision”
“I am arguing for politics and
epistemologies of location,
positioning, and situating, where
partiality and not universality is
the condition of being heard to
make rational knowledge claims.
These are claims on people’s
lives; the view from a body,
always a complex, contradictory,
structuring and structured body,
versus the view from above, from
nowhere, from simplicity.” Pg.
361
Feminism & Feminist Art• Feminism maintains the belief in political, social,
and economic justices of women equal to that of
men. • Feminism also recognizes that historically women have
been subordinate to men, and thus oppressed.
• Addressing and confronting opposition.
• Identifying oppression and finding ways to solve it.
• Learning of “otherness” and “femaleness”
Francois Clouet, Diane de Poiters, 1571
The female body has been
organized for the male
viewing pleasure.
“The Male Gaze”
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538
Goya, The Nude Maja, 1800
Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at.
Diego Velázquez, The Rokeby Venus, 1644
François Boucher, Odalisque, 1740
Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at.
13
Alice Neel, Portrait of John Perreault, 1972 Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863
Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At?
Postmodern Art as Political Weapon
• The civil rights movement and the women's
liberation movement rejected racism and
sexism. Feminists charged that Western
society's institutions perpetuated male power
and the subordination of women.
• One of the primary struggles of
feminist belief is to separate
sexuality from procreation.
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974-79. Multimedia, including ceramics and stitchery, 48’ x 48’ x 48’ installed.
Chicago, O‘Keeffe plate
Judy Chicago The Dinner Party, 1974
Amelia Jones “The Body and/in Representation”
How does the image relate to the self?
Caravaggio, Medusa, 1596
Amelia Jones
“The Body and/in Representation”
• Subject<The Body>Object
• “Subjects continue to be objects. Of desire”
Jenny Saville
Passage, 2004
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538 Goya, The Nude Maja, 1800
Re-Thinking the Venus Figure
Sylvia Sleigh, The Turkish Bath, 1973.
Re-Thinking the Nude &
The Male Gaze
Sylvia Sleigh, The Turkish Bath, 1973.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres,
Turkish Bath, 1862
Re-Thinking the Venus Figure
Alice Neel, Portrait of John Perreault, 1972
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538Goya, The Nude Maja, 1800
Alice Neel,
Portrait of John Perreault, 1972
Hannah Wilke, So Help Me Hannah Portrait of the Artist with Her Mother,
1978–1981
Hannah Wilke, Intra-Venus Series #1, June 15 and January 30, 1992
CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled Film
Still #35, 1979. Black-and-white
photograph, 10” x 8”. Metro
Pictures, New York.
Challenging the "male
gaze": Giving women a
voice. Women are no
longer rendered silent.
Erasing the Boundaries
• Pluralism in the arts is the inclusion of not
just a white, male master, rather exploring
and embracing women artists, artists of
color, non-western art, and folk art.
MAGDALENA
ABAKANOWICZ, artist
with Backs, at the Musée
d’Art Moderne de la Ville de
Paris, Paris, France, 1976-
1982.
• Amelia Jones: The wafer “as” Christ, the
artist/ filmmaker “as” god
Mel Gibson directing The Passion of Christ, 2004
Caravaggio,
The Entombment
1602-03
In early Christianity, the
issue of punishment and
forgiveness via penance for
the absolution of sins was
practiced through various
methods from minor to
severe punishment: and in
most cases with the penitent
inflicting their own form of
punishment.
F. Holland Day, The Entombment, 1898
The act of penance through suffering was a common practice in
Medieval Europe, but flourished in Spain with penitential
confraternities that reenacted the moments of the Passion of Christ.
Francisco de Goya, A Procession of Flagellants, 1812-14
Caravaggio,
Flagellation of Christ
1607
Through this practice
explores the
corporealness and un-
corporeal in the body and
mind of Christ and
Christian tradition,
whereas a living Christ
through mortality
experiences suffering and
compassion, and is
subject to not only mind
and soul but also body.
Thereby through this
perpetually binding unity
of a living soul
administers corporeal
pleasures and
punishments.
• Amelia Jones The wafer “as” Christ, the
artist/ filmmaker “as” god
Mel Gibson directing The Passion of Christ,
2004
Gibson’s film labors to ‘“prove’
Christ’s transcendence of the
flesh and the ‘truth’”.... And
gives the “viewer the ‘real’
body of Christ but
paradoxically via the hyper-
simulacral time-honored
representational codes of
conventional Hollywood
cinema”
Caravaggio, Ecce Homo, 1605
Mel Gibson, The Passion of Christ, 2004
James Caviezel as Christ
36
Caravaggio,
The Entombment
1602-03
Mel Gibson, The Passion of Christ, 2004
Mel Gibson, The Passion of Christ, 2004
Caravaggio, The Entombment, 1602-03
Mel Gibson, The Passion of Christ, 2004
James Caviezel as Christ
“Where his body was ‘real’—the
paradoxes, and bodies (Caviezel/
Christ as Gibson—the author as
god).
F. Holland Day, "detail from “The Seven
Words”" 1898
Fred Holland Day (Boston July 8, 1864 - November 12, 1933)
Reginald Craigie, F. Holland Day, 1900
F. Holland Day, "detail from “The Seven
Words”" 1898
Fred Holland Day (Boston July 8, 1864 - November 12, 1933)
F. Holland Day, "detail from “The
Seven Words”" 1898
Käthe (Schmidt)
Kollwitz, (July 8, 1867
– April 22, 1945)
Zertretene (The
Downtrodden), 1900
Hans Holbein the Younger, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, 1520–22.
F. Holland Day,
The Entombment,
1898
F. Holland Day, Youth sitting on a stone, 1907,
Model is the Italian Nicola Giancola.
F. Holland Day, Evening, 1896
Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At?
Search for Facets of Identity
• In recent decades,
many artists have
produced works
prompted by socio-
political concerns,
dealing with aspects
of race, gender, class,
age, creed, and other
facets of identity.
Diane Arbus, Young man in Curlers at
Home, NYC (1966)
Catherine Opie, Bo, 1991
Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy,
1920-21
Romaine Brooks, Self-Portrait, 1923
Catherine Opie, Bo, 1991
Graciela Iturbide,
Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas,
Juchitán, Oaxaca (Our Lady of the
Iguanas, Juchitán, Oaxaca), 1979
Graciela Iturbide, Magnolia,
Juchitan, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1987
Diego Velázquez, The Rokeby Venus,
1644.
50
Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-portrait,
1980Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989),
Self-Portrait (1988)
51
Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988
52
Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863.
Yasumasa Morimura,
Portrait (Futago), 1988
53
Yasumasa Morimura, Daughter of Art History (Theatre A)1989.
54
ÉDOUARD MANET, A Bar at the
Folies-Bergère, 1882.
Yasumasa Morimura, Daughter of
Art History (Theatre B)1989.
Jenny Saville
Passage, 2004
Jenny Saville
Matrix, 1999
57
Alice Neel, Portrait of John Perreault, 1972 Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863
Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At?
Alice Neel, Portrait of John Perreault, 1972
Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988
Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At?
Graciela Iturbide,
Magnolia,
Juchitan, Oaxaca,
Mexico, 1987
Jenny Saville, Passage, 2004
F. Holland Day, Youth sitting
on a stone, 1907,
Amelia Jones “The Body and/in Representation”
How does the image relate to the self?
Caravaggio, Medusa, 1596Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988
F. Holland Day, The Entombment, 1898
Amelia Jones
“The Body and/in Representation”
• Subject<The Body>Object
• “Subjects continue to be objects. Of desire”
Jenny Saville, Passage, 2004
Titian, Venus of
Urbino, 1538
F. Holland Day,
Evening, 1896
Bodies & Minds
Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At?
• René Descartes, “Optics”
• Georgina Kleege, “Blindness and Visual Culture:
an Eye Witness Account”
• Donna Haraway, “The Persistence of Vision”
• Amelia Jones, “The Body and/in Representation”