ANT376H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Optical Illusion, Human Eye, Gabriel Von Max
Document Summary
Vision as cognition and aspect of rationality. Painting reflects theme of cognition in enlightenment. Descarte, etc. doing studies of human eye - camera obscura; awareness of how human sight works. Shows human eye is an error; optical illusions. Girl turning away -> other criteria to seeing. Modernity = period of dominant ideas and other story threads and confusion. Refuses modern desire to render it as a passive object/blank space ready to be defined by experts etc. Subjects of painting = outside of the painting. True subjects are dull in the background in comparison to the other humans. Nothing that shows a human being making something/representing something. Pure representation; not something experienced in real life. Already been described and rendered as objects through science; merely appear already made. Routine encounter with pet cat in paris. Feeling of being seen (naked) by cat. Shifted from seeing the animal to being seen; see oneself naked.
