How to “see” with the whole body

Bibliographic Data

ID18985689
AuthorsJoyce Brodsky (University of California, Santa Cruz, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume17
Issue2
Pages99-112
Publication date2002-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1472-586X • E-ISSN: 1472-5878
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1472586022000032189
OpenAlexW2023180866
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited8

While their work is not explored, this article is indebted to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's and John Dewey's theories about perception and embodiment. In it, I propose that a multi-sensory “whole body” experience – Merleau-Ponty's “lived body” – is engaged in both the making and the viewing of artworks. In two sections, the first exploring practice and the second theory, the prevailing mode of interpreting art works exclusively as representations to be seen and read like linguistic signs is contested. W. J. T. Mitchell's works on images and texts, and Martin Jay's Downcast Eyes are interrogated in order to critique the “eye/mind/image” model of perceiving artworks. Ironically, while desiring to advocate for the power of the visual, both authors still bifurcate mind and body in the making and the viewing experience. This separation not only pervades theories about art in modernity, but is equally present in the postmodern critique of the “enlightenment” project. Embodied interaction is explored in order to discuss the various models of engagement in play in viewing traditional art, new genres, and in relation to electronic art and virtual reality constructions

Aesthetics · Art · Embodied cognition · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Modernity · Perception · Postmodernism · Sociology · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Art Education and Development · Computer Science · Philosophy · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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