Merleau-Ponty

At the beginning of Eye and Mind, Merleau-Ponty seems to be setting the table by arguing down a scientific approach to philosophy (I assume he is articulating the split between phenomenology, or continental schools of philosophy, and analytical philosophy as described the first week or two of class) and advocating an empirical, experiential approach to thinking as it filters into and radiates from the body, "not that possible body which we may legitimately think of as an information machine but that actual body I call mine." (pg 160)

I think what he refers to as "brute meaning" is this kind of purely experiential knowledge of the world as best expressed (or "[done] so in full innocence") in art.



In James Broughton's This Is It, a young boy (a type of Adam) is discovering the world in a purely physical way while a red ball chants to him that "this is it" as if to say, "there's nothing else you need to know but what's right in front of you."

"It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings." I don't totally understand this equation. I only partially understand that Merleau-Ponty is inferring something about vision and the similarity between visible objects and the visibility (object-ness?) of the body. I think he is saying something about where the act of "seeing" takes place: is it in the object, or is it in the subject? This doesn't seem to be merely aesthetic experience, but visual experience, or perhaps even sensual experience all together.

"The enigma is that my body simultaneously sees and is seen...It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible ans sensitive for itself."



The Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson used the phrase "seeing yourself seeing" in the program notes to his show Take Your Time that recently exhibited in Dallas. He was referring to the nature of the experience he was attempting to instill in the viewer: one that draws attention to the process of seeing and experiencing. The piece which seems most exemplary of this is Room for One Color. Not only is the light one color within the room, but the type of florescent light used effectively desaturated all other color that makes its way into the room, providing a truly monochromatic experience. Whenever someone first enters the room, you will invariably hear the sound of their slow realization of this fact in the form of, "oh wow, your shirt's black and white, i mean gray, i mean yellow." And all the statements are true.

But I'm not convinced this is what Merleau-Ponty is getting at. I don't think he means this as a result of the work of art so much as the process by which the world is sublimated into the work of art. Or perhaps he means that the experience of a work of art, such as the wall paintings at Lascaux, is like seeing according to the world in that you are seeing within (or "according to") the painting's world. In this way, Eliasson creates an alternate world for us to see ourselves seeing according to.

Hopefully this is an ok start. I'll finish the rest of this tomorrow...






for some reason this one won't let me embed, so click here!