Ways Of Seeing

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. Our knowledge of things can be affected by the things we see or the way we see them, and vice versa. The awareness of the relationship between us and the things we see is constant. Since our vision constantly active, we never stop taking in our surroundings, and we are continually holding things in a circle around itself. After we see we become aware that we can be seen. An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance or set of appearances which has been detached from the place and time in which it first appeared. Every image embodies a way of seeing, even photographs which are the result of a selected sight out of an infinity of other sights. The marks made on canvas or paper show us the way the painter sees things. Even though images embody a way of seeing, and our own perception and appreciation of an image depends on how we ourselves see.

Mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident. If we can clearly see the present, we ask the right questions about the past. The way we see art today is perceived differently than it was in the past.

By isolating momentary appearances, the camera has destroyed the idea that images were timeless. In other words the camera has showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual. What you saw depended on where you were when. The camera also changed the way we saw paintings. The uniqueness of the painting was once part of the place where it resided. The painting now travels to the spectator to the painting, thus becoming diversified.

A woman's social presence is different from that of a man's. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power he embodies. If it is large and credible his presence is striking, but if it is small or incredible, he is then found to have little presence. A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you, although his presence may be fabricated, where he is truly incapable of what he claims. 

While on the other hand a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, defining what can and cannot be done to her. Her every action contributes to her presence. The way a woman appears to a man determines the way he will treat her. Women therefore demonstrate to others the way she wishes to be treated. To put it simply men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. Women were a recurring subject in European oil paintings often seen in the nude. These images initially depicted shame, then later as a kind of display.

Oil paintings often depict things which in reality can be bought. To buy such a painting is also to buy the look of the thing it represents. Oil painting refers to more than just a technique, but also an art form, which has the ability to render the tangibility, texture, luster and solidity of  what it depicts. Allowing the viewer to feel as though they could actually touch or interact with the painting. They also celebrated a new kind of wealth, which was dynamic and which found its only sanction in the supreme buying power of money. Oil paintings of the highest category was the history or mythological picture, with landscapes being the least popular. The essential character of oil painting has been obscured by an almost universal misreading of the relationship between its "tradition" and its "masters".

Our vision continues to play a role in the way we interact with our surroundings, the way things leave an impression on us,the way we are seen and the way we also leave impressions. The way art is seen, and the way it influences us to see things is constantly changing.