Who Can Look? Who Can be Looked At? fileFrans Hals, René Descartes, 1649 René Descartes (March 31,...

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”