Week 10: Phenomenology
The human being has no other way of being experienced but through the physical form. All people take information through their physical senses whether it be sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. Visual arts utilize the sense of sight far more than all the others, but what is seen can be interpreted entirely differently through the eyes of another human. Amile Jones writes, “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: The Use of Merleau- Ponty’s Phenomenology in Art History” that being the observer one cannot help but be the object too.
This can be best summarized in a quote used by Jones in her essay by Rosalind Krauss, “I am not the spectator, I am involved in the situation I view.” What a person sees reflects on to them. The person can not help but internalize the art they view. The art will change them, and they will change the meaning of the art. It is because the viewer only knows what they know their experiences become their perception and influences their view on life. Through this perception art is affected by the viewer, what it means is that there is only one truth to each person. It can change over time since that person will have more experiences that will ultimately affect their perspective. There is a loop that seems to happen when one looks at art. The effect that it is timeless but yet reflects the image of the viewer and their current perspective on life. The piece that stands out the most to depict this cycle of change between art and the viewer is Self Portrait by Leon Spilliaert. The artist is caught in the ever changing loop of identity.
Reciprocity between the world and the person living in their own sensory experiences cannot be separated. “What used to be thought of as subject and object are chemically intertwined; both are what Merleau-Ponty felicitously called ‘flesh of the world’ (where, he writes, ‘ are we to put the limits between the body and the world, since the world is flesh?’). The answer is there should not be a limit between the subject and object, there is no difference between the world, yourself and art for they reflect one another. This is the way that lives are lived. One person can interact with the world differently and that interaction is their world. Nor does it exclude other people from having the same shared experience. It boils down to this old adage, “the world is your oyster.”
I agree with you that a person can have the same shared experience and still see the world differently. An experience to me is when something that just happened and they it was all your own Sometimes when you're lucky someone will express the same experience. How often do you think viewers of an art piece experience the same type of reaction to it?
ReplyDeleteUniversal meaning happens a lot. The culture background and the education of people has shaped them, and it might be the same cultural background and education as someone else. This allows people to have more in common and the same understanding of something. And if they do not the teaching of said art piece from a different opinion can shape people into a certain understanding creating a baseline for people to experience the art piece.
DeleteI've never seen that painting before, I do like the dark stark contrast of it all. I do wish you wrote a little bit more, like just an extra sentence, about the painting, but I suppose that would probably throw you over the word limit. Great use of quotes and the flow of the writing in the piece overall. I don't really have any questions for you, good work.
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