Engage in a physical relationship with the work
Here we are facing the work, as in a duel. The relationship is physical, involving the whole body. Generally, we observe it from afar, then we approach it, with more or less reserve, envy, a priori. We can circumvent it, scrutinize it from all angles. Sometimes to the limit of touch, this moment when the material reveals itself and the subject disappears, when the suave sculptures of Barbara Hepworth become real temptations, when the subtle reflection of an object painted by Velázquez, of a veracity absolute seen from afar, is no more than a rough brushstroke.
This paradox amuses philosopher Marie-Dominique Popelard: the closeness desired with the work which slips away as soon as one approaches it. With an artist like Van Gogh, the effect reaches its climax. His tormented landscapes and self-portraits are no more than impastos seen through a magnifying glass. Another type of sensation with Betty Thompkins: her close-ups, to say the least equivocal, taken from pornographic images turn out to be of great graphic beauty if the idea takes us to stick our nose in them – we can imagine the smirk of the artist and exhibition curators observing the spectators immerse themselves very seriously in the study of an XXL coitus scene...
The visual arts use and abuse our perception. From antique trompe-l'oeil to the prowess of kinetic art, they play with the spectator's vision, divert it, deceive it, multiply focal lengths and vanishing points. You have to play the game, even if it means losing your mind. Sometimes the solution will come from a side step – thus from the most famous of the anamorphoses in the history of art, the Ambassadors painted in 1533 by Hans Holbein the Younger, where a vanity is revealed when one places oneself at the far left of the painting.
The work interacts with its environment, sometimes it is even a sine qua non of its reality.
Another magician of vision, Herri Met de Bles, a contemporary of Bruegel, requires patience and concentration to see the profile of an ogre or that of an eagle appear in his strange landscapes. Same process with the surrealist Man Ray. To understand his Rebus(painted in 1938), you have to turn away from the black silhouette in the center of the painting and let your gaze wander to the horizon… Suddenly a pair of buttocks appear, a naked body on the left and a phallus at its side – no , you don't have a bad mind, you just took the time to watch. For the sculptures by Tim Noble & Sue Webster, a pile of various salvaged objects, it is no longer enough to look at the work itself but at its projected shadow drawing the silhouette of the two artists on the wall – a nice way of saying not to take things at face value.
The work interacts with its environment, sometimes it is even a sine qua non of its reality. What would a Soulages be without the light he absorbs, revealing to the viewer all the shades of black, or the paintings of his white alter ego Robert Ryman which reflect light to the point of dazzling? Vibrant as soon as they take over the space, the white canvases are never the same, varying in support, format, material and surface, revealing the painting for what it is. Everyone is free to screen their own film there.
You can see everything there!
Not content to play with the viewer's sight, artists have also made it the subject of their works. In his installation Champ de vision, in 2009 at the Center Pompidou, Damián Ortega had stretched from the floor to the ceiling colored garlands among which the visitor could walk. Seen from afar, from the peephole in the wall at the back of the room, they formed a gigantic eye. Or how to physically experience the process of perception by distancing oneself. Same literal demonstration, but in an inverted approach with the Visible World series by David Fischli & Peter Weiss. The thousands of slides gathered on a light table are so small that you have to bend over and stick to them to see them.
Seen in Beaux-Arts Daphne Betard