The Lens, the Mirror and the Frame

Glasses, Good Taste and the Material Culture of Looking

Bibliographic Data

ID13014254
AuthorsEllen Sampson (0000-0003-3922-2770, Metropolitan Museum of Art, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume5
Issue2
Pages129-150
Publication date2018-05-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLuxury (BOOK_SERIES)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2051-1817 • E-ISSN: 2051-1825
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/20511817.2018.1560690
OpenAlexW2946382149
LanguageEN
References cited21

This article explores the material culture of taste, examining the ways that artifacts we look with (the technologies of looking) can mediate and produce our understanding of taste. Taking a phenomenological approach to shopping and luxury it examines how processes of looking closely, of connoisseurship and distinction are bound up with the performance of good taste. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1984a Bourdieu, P. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1984a. [Google Scholar]) formulation of “distinction,” it unpacks the multiple modes of vision and roles of looking necessary to perform and maintain the capital of good taste. Much has been written on the gaze in consumer societies, building upon theories of looking and desire (Mulvey 1989 Mulvey, L. Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Berger 1972 Berger, J. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Modern Classics, 1972. [Google Scholar]). Whilst recent writing has often focused on screens and the subjectivity of desire (c.f. Rocamora, 2011, 2017, Pham, 2015 Pham, M-H T. “I Click and Post and Breathe, Waiting for Others to See What I See: On #FeministSelfies, Outfit Photos, and Networked Vanity.” Fashion Theory 19, no. 2 (2015): 221–241. doi:10.2752/175174115X14168357992436.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) this article addresses ideas of taste and looking from a phenomenological and material culture perspective, utilizing the work of sociologist Bourdieu (1984a Bourdieu, P. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1984a. [Google Scholar] ), and phenomenologists Schilder (1935 Schilder, P. The Image and Appearance of the Human Body. New York: International Universities Press, 1935. [Google Scholar]) and Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1968) to examine the embodied and bodily experience of looking with and through things

Aesthetics · Art · Frame (networking · Lens (geology · Optics · Physics · Taste · Telecommunications · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Computer Science · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Medicine · Neuroscience · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory · Optometry

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