L'Optique Moderne: Daniel Spoerri's 'Optical Readymades'

English: In the mid-sixties, American artists such as Robert Smithson, Dan Graham and Bruce Nauman got interested in the issue of vision. Probably influenced by the increasing popularity of a scientific literature that often dealt with matters of optical perception as well as by the debates triggered of by the Op Art craze, which placed the physiology of the eye under great scrutiny, these artists used obsolete optical devices such as the stereoscope or brand new technologies such as closed-circuit television to produce works that no longer were mere visual objects to be looked at, but that became optical situations staging the very processes and structures of vision. Reversing the usual (power) relation of sight, these works set up what one might call an intransitive vision. Instead of opening onto a visual content, vision materializes, shows and exhibits itself. By overexposing vision, Smithson, Graham and Nauman do not exalt the visual. On the contrary, they highlight its faults and aim at deconstructing its physiological reflexes (such as binocular vision) and its cultural biases (like perspective). Exhibiting vision can therefore be a way to escape the all-might of the visual since ultimately, as Smithson put it, “to see one’s sight means visible blindness”. Here lies the paradox this talk plans to tackle: the display of vision would equate its failure. French: Cette communication analysera la manière dont, à partir du milieu des années 1960, les artistes américains Robert Smithson, Dan Graham et Bruce Nauman s’emparèrent de la question de la vision. Influencés par un contexte artistique qui, avec le succès de l’art optique, questionnait la physiologie de l’œil et le rôle du cerveau dans la perception visuelle, exposés à une littérature de vulgarisation scientifique qui faisait la part belle aux questions d’optique, et convoquant des dispositifs optiques désuets tel que le stéréoscope ou des technologies nouvelles comme la vidéo en circuit-fermé, Smithson, Nauman et Graham produisirent un ensemble d’œuvres qui n’étaient pas tant des objets visuels (soit, des objets à voir) que des situations optiques mettant-en-scène les structures et les processus de la vision elle-même. Opérant un renversement de la relation traditionnelle qui place le regard du côté du spectateur, ces œuvres fonctionnaient en établissant ce que l’on nommera une vision intransitive, soit une vision qui n’est plus ouverture et mise en forme d’un contenu visuel, mais qui se montre elle-même, se matérialise et s’exhibe. En surexposant ainsi la vision, Smithson, Graham et Nauman n’exaltent pas le visuel. Au contraire, ils en pointent les dysfonctionnements et en déconstruisent les réflexes physiologiques (celui de la vision binoculaire par exemples) et les impensés culturels (tels que le réflexe perspectif). Exposer la vision apparaît finalement comme le meilleur moyen d’échapper à la toute-puissance du visuel puisque, ainsi que l’écrit Robert Smithson au sujet des ses Enantiomorphic Chambers : « voir sa vue, équivaut à l’aveuglement rendu visible ». Tel est le paradoxe que l’on souhaite placer au cœur de notre réflexion : exhiber la vision, ce serait la mettre en échec.

Transparency & Architecture: Challenging the Limits, 2007

Through the storefront glazing, or the protective security glass of an artwork at an exhibition, even the screen of a television set, the portrayed object acquires significant magnitude. For such a transformation to occur, the physical attributes of glass are critical. As a result, objects from the surrounding environment, including the viewer, are projected onto the glass surface along with lights and the objects behind the glass, in a momentary optical composition. In contrast, other physical properties of the glass surface, such as its cold sense, as well as its stiffness and rigidity as a physical limit, along with its hardness and sharpness in case it breaks, preserve the distance between the viewer and the displayed objects. In an attempt to further develop on such thoughts, this paper analyses the perceptive operations triggered by the interference of a glass surface between an object and the viewer. Relevant cases are being examined in which the glass also perpetuates polarizations such as between the illusionary and the real, the ephemeral and the permanent, the idol and the material as well. Index Terms  Marcel Duchamp, object of desire, voyeurism, fetishism, Robert Doisneau, Helmut Newton, Richard Hamilton, Issey Miyake, subject/object.

2009

Pictorialist photography is renowned for its use of pigment printing techniques which enabled interpretive rendering of the photographic subject. Yet a large part of the pictorialist aesthetic came from optics that furnished the ‘blurred’ effects characteristic of the pictorialist movement. Drawing on theories by the Englishman Emerson, which proposed capitalizing on the eye’s natural imperfections, specialized optics were created to obtain the desired effects. France most significantly surpassed the naturalist aesthetic through the use of lenses calculated to preserve aberrations and interpret the subject from the moment the initial image was made. This ‘aesthetic of optical aberrations’ led to controversy, with opponents decrying a ‘degenerate’ vision in photography. This study is an historical and aesthetic analysis of the role pictorialism took on: inventing a vision that was in opposition to notions of progress in modern optics, and leaning towards novel interpretations of opti...

1991

Vision, in its many forms, can be categorized into territories over which perception of the physical world reigns. However, as this vision is constituted through fallible senses, ideologies, and judgements, it can be as mediated as its counterparts. This photo-essay discusses an ongoing body of work re-envisioning visual perception within this context. Visual encounters, from physical, to simulated, to imagined are positioned as territories which are made to overlap through the outlined works. These range from moving image, to photography and installation. The thematic motor for these works is the idea of an ever-mediated reality, positioned here in the context of media studies. A brief overview of some fallacies of vision is laid out and linked to the artist's approach to research-based art production, of which three works are described. The first, " Landscape, Cutout " , deals with vision only ever revealing the past. The second, " Constructions " , consists of stereographic images proposing concurrent zones of incongruous sight. The third work, " Le marronnier " , manifests a pivotal image in existentialism depicted in Sartre's " Nausea ". Throughout, this text, the artist underlines the importance of questioning how our sight compares to one another's, and why only some visions are regarded as true.

in t er médi a li t és • n o 6 au t o m n e 2 0 0 5

This chapter explores the discursive potential of 'seeing like digital devices – the call made by the New Aesthetic – from a media-archaeological perspective and argues that we need to go beyond, below and around the visible for a comprehensive understanding of the media-theoretical implications that come along with this metaphoi.

Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 2009

When Carol Purtle published her influential study of Van Eyck's Marian paintings, it ran counter to a growing methodological tendency, which has become increasingly evident over the last twenty years or so, to favor iconographically minimalist interpretations of early ...

1998

French Forum, 2008