WAYS OF SEEING

What we know or what we believe affects the way we see things. We only see what we actually choose to look at. We always look at the relations between things and ourselves and not just that specific thing that we are looking at. Our vision is continually active, moving and holding things in a circle around itself. As soon as we can see, we are aware that we can be seen also. An image is a sight that has been reproduced or recreated or an appearance or set of appearances detached from its original time and place. We are aware that a photographer chooses a sight from an infinity of other possible sights. The painter shows how he sees things by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper. When an image is presented as a work of art, people view of it is affected by a series of learnt assumptions about art. The power of an image comes mainly from its compositional unity.

Mystification is the process of explaining away what otherwise might be evident. Perspective structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who could only be in one place at a time. The camera destroyed the idea that images were timeless because it isolated momentarily appearances; it showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual. In paintings it was opposite because they were usually staged and

When the camera reproduces a painting it destroys its uniqueness and its meaning multiples and fragments. Paintings are also now traveling to the spectator rather than the spectator to the painting and in that the meaning is diversified. An original piece always has this uniqueness that gives it respect over reproductions. It is defined as an object whose value depends on its rarity. Authenticity makes a painting ‘beautiful’. It is noted that the majority of the population do not visit art museums. Studies show that the more educated a person is the more he or she is interested in art. The highest numbers of people come from the professional and upper management class.

The social presence of a woman is different from a man’s. A man’s presence depends on the promise of power and it may be fabricated that he pretends to be capable of what he is not; whereas a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself and defines what can and cannot be done to her. She continually watches herself because she how she appears to others is crucial. Men look at woman and woman look at themselves being watched. Women were ever recurring subjects in European oil painting especially in the category of the nude. Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder and the woman is blamed and punished by being made subservient to the man at the beginning. Initially, the images started by showing shame and then moved to some kind of display, and then the woman’s nakedness was depicted for pleasure. This nakedness was not an expression of the model’s feelings but a sign of submission to the owner’s demands and feelings.  To be naked is to be without clothes; however, to be nude is a form of art.

Buying a painting means that you also buy the look of the thing it represents. Oil painting is known for its ability to render the tangibility, the luster, texture and solidity of what it depicts. It tends to make the viewer assume that he is close to or within touching distance of any object in the foreground of the image and it gives some kind of intimacy with the persons there. The highest category of oil painting was the history or mythological picture. Landscape paintings were not as popular but each time the tradition of oil painting was significantly modified, the first initiative came from landscape painting.
It is noted that every exceptional work was as a result of prolonged successful struggle, however not all prolonged struggles were successful. An artist had to recognize that his vision for what it was and then separate it from the usage for which it had been developed. He on his own had to contest the norms of the art that had formed him. This meant that he saw himself doing what no one else could foresee.