Full Answer
What is the difference between looking and seeing in art?
It is here that the viewer begins to build up a mental catalogue of the image’s visual elements. Looking is a physical act; seeing is a mental process of perception. Seeing involves recognizing or connecting the information the eyes take in with your previous knowledge and experiences in order to create meaning.
What is the art of seeing by Aldous Huxley about?
The Art of Seeing: An Adventure in Re-education is a 1942 book by Aldous Huxley, which details his experience with and views on the discredited Bates method, which according to Huxley improved his eyesight.
What is observation in art?
Observation is an active process, requiring both time and attention. It is here that the viewer begins to build up a mental catalogue of the image’s visual elements. Looking is a physical act; seeing is a mental process of perception.
What is the difference between seeing and describing?
Seeing involves recognizing or connecting the information the eyes take in with your previous knowledge and experiences in order to create meaning. This requires time and attention. Describing can help you to identify and organize your thoughts about what you have seen. It may be helpful to think of describing as taking a careful inventory.
What do you mean by art of seeing?
Developed by the Toledo Museum of Art, The Art of Seeing Art™ is a series of six steps—Look, Observe, See, Describe, Analyze, and Interpret—that you can use when looking at any work of art in the Museum's collection or any image in everyday life.
What are the four parts of the art of seeing?
Reading SummarySeeing our own seeing to work past our assumptions.Seeing Big using complex models of culture.Seeing Small and noticing how the little things matter.And putting it all together to “See it all” using the holistic perspective.
How might the art of seeing benefit us?
It can help you build better friendships, and allow you to make more friends across boundaries rarely crossed. But mastering the art of seeing offers something even more profound. When you master the art of seeing you will never be bored. You will see the strange in the familiar, and the familiar in the strange.
How do you see art?
HOW TO VIEW ART: FORMALSpend Time With Art.Determine the Basics.Notice Your Eye Movements.Do Some Homework.How Do You Feel?Find Your Like and Dislikes.Draw On Your Memory.Figuring Out the Meaning.
What is the art of seeing in anthropology?
Being able to see your own seeing and set aside your assumptions, see big to see where another person is coming from, and see small to truly understand them from their point of view can help you through the most challenging of relationship troubles.
What's the difference between looking and seeing?
The Merriam Webster Learners' Dictionary says the differences are related to your action and attention. “See” means to notice or become aware of someone or something by using your eyes. “Look” means to direct your eyes in a particular direction.
How does seeing art improve mental health?
There is a positive connection between art and mental health—artistic activities such as sculpting, painting, or drawing are known to lower stress levels and promote mental calmness. Creating art takes your mind off of your everyday life and provides a relaxing distraction.
Can viewing art reduce stress?
All but one of the studies that measured self-reported stress found a significant decrease after viewing artwork. There was physiological evidence in four studies showing lowered blood pressure and decreased heart rate in two studies.
Why is visual arts important?
Visual art is a fundamental component of the human experience reflecting the world and the time in which we live. Art can help us understand our history, our culture, our lives, and the experience of others in a manner that cannot be achieved through other means.
What is the first step in the process of seeing?
The first step in seeing is to focus the light rays onto the retina, which is the light sensitive layer found inside the eye. Once the light is focused, it stimulates cells to send millions of electrochemical impulses along the optic nerve to the brain.
Where do you see art in everyday life?
Everything from a delightfully patterned quilt on the bed, decorative tea towels or that cute pink heart covered teapot to the sleek computer case or angle-poised desk lamp can be considered a form of art.
Is the element of art?
ELEMENTS OF ART: The visual components of color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value. may be two-or three-dimensional, descriptive, implied, or abstract.
What is art of seeing in photography?
But more often, it's what and how we choose to photograph something that determines the true impact of an image. "There's nothing worse than a sharp picture of a fuzzy concept,” is the way the master himself, Ansel Adams, put it. He was talking about what some call the Photographer's Eye. I call it the Art of Seeing.
What is the first step in the process of seeing?
The first step in seeing is to focus the light rays onto the retina, which is the light sensitive layer found inside the eye. Once the light is focused, it stimulates cells to send millions of electrochemical impulses along the optic nerve to the brain.
What is techniques of seeing as reading?
the act of attending closely or carefully to an event, person, thing or scene to create an interesting text worthy of attention.
What is a key characteristic of nonrepresentational art?
Work that does not depict anything from the real world (figures, landscapes, animals, etc.) is called nonrepresentational. Nonrepresentational art may simply depict shapes, colors, lines, etc., but may also express things that are not visible – emotions or feelings for example.
What is the book The Art of Seeing?
OCLC. 644231. The Art of Seeing: An Adventure in Re-education is a 1942 book by Aldous Huxley, which details his experience with and views on the discredited Bates method, which according to Huxley improved his eyesight.
Which system does the sense and the mind do?
The eyes and the nervous system do the sensing, the mind does the perceiving.
What is the supposed incurability of visual defect?
The supposed incurability of visual defect. ...the organs of vision are incapable of curing themselves … then the eyes must be totally different in kind from other parts of the body. Given favourable conditions, all other organs tend to free themselves from their defects.
Is the book Vision an autobiography?
The book is not an autobiography, however. Although his own history fuelled his interest in vision, and there are references in passing throughout the book to his own case, it is written as a general study of the art of seeing as he came to understand it.
Is the art of seeing dangerous?
It may be dangerous in the hands of the impressionable who happen to suffer from glaucoma or detachment of the retina. . . Martin Gardner described The Art of Seeing as "a book destined to rank beside Bishop Berkeley ’s famous treatise on the medicinal properties of ‘tar-water’". Philip Pollack commented.
Why is it important to master the art of seeing?
It can help you build better friendships, and allow you to make more friends across bounda ries rarely crossed. But mastering the art of seeing offers something even more profound. When you master the art of seeing you will never be bored. You will see the strange in the familiar, and the familiar in the strange.
What is the anthropological perspective of seeing?
The Anthropological Perspective: The Art of Seeing. There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?”. And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ...
Why are differences so hard to see?
And then there are differences that shake you to your core. They are hard to see because they challenge your most foundational ideas, ideals and values. They might make you question everything about what you thought was right and wrong, real and unreal, possible and impossible.
What is the essence of learning?
Learning to see in this way is the essence of learning. As Neil Postman points out, “The ability to learn turns out to be a function of the extent to which one is capable of perception change. If a student goes through four years of school and comes out ‘seeing’ things in the way he did when he started … he learned nothing.”
Why do we see things beneath the surface?
Cultural structures can be difficult to see , so there is often a sense of “seeing beneath the surface of things” in order to understand why we do the things that we do. This is an especially exciting part about obtaining the ability to “see big.” When we see big we are seeing big patterns and structures that are usually hidden from our everyday consciousness.
Can you understand any part of a culture?
You cannot understand any one part of a culture without understanding how it is related to other parts in the cultural system. Understanding culture will ultimately require that we take a holistic perspective. We have to practice “seeing big.”. Given the complexity of culture, it can be useful to have a model.
Can you see the world as they see it?
No matter how good you get at seeing your own seeing, seeing big, and seeing small, you can never really see the world as they see it. You can’t “go native” and be just like them. Despite my best efforts, I could not really bring myself to believe that Kodenim had been killed by witchcraft, and that the death could have been avoided if my father had nurtured a healthier relationship with him.
Reading Summary
We can respond to human differences with hate or ignorance, or we can choose to open up to them and ask questions we have never considered before.
Recommended Additional Materials
Anthropology is the study of all humans in all times in all places. That means that it is not only the study of the remote and exotic, but also cultures that might seem more familiar to you. In this podcast, an anthropologist sets off to explore college nightlife at a Midwestern university, using the Art of Seeing:
Overview
The Art of Seeing: An Adventure in Re-education is a 1942 book by Aldous Huxley, which details his experience with and views on the discredited Bates method, which according to Huxley improved his eyesight.
Huxley's own sight
In the preface to the book, Huxley describes how, at the age of sixteen, he had a violent attack of keratitis punctata which made him nearly completely blind for eighteen months, and left him thereafter with severely impaired sight. He managed to live as a sighted person with the aid of strong spectacles, but reading, in particular, was a great strain. In 1939 his ability to read became increasingly degraded, and he sought the help of Margaret Corbett, who was a teacher of the Bat…
His aim in writing
Huxley writes that his aim in writing the book was
… to correlate the methods of visual education with the findings of modern psychology and critical philosophy. My purpose in making this correlation is to demonstrate the essential reasonableness of a method, which turns out to be nothing more or less than the practical application to the problems of vision of certain theoretical principles, universally accepted as true.
Huxley writes that his aim in writing the book was
… to correlate the methods of visual education with the findings of modern psychology and critical philosophy. My purpose in making this correlation is to demonstrate the essential reasonableness of a method, which turns out to be nothing more or less than the practical application to the problems of vision of certain theoretical principles, universally accepted as true.
The supposed incurability of visual defect
According to Huxley, the prevailing medical view is that
...the organs of vision are incapable of curing themselves … then the eyes must be totally different in kind from other parts of the body. Given favourable conditions, all other organs tend to free themselves from their defects. Not so the eyes. … it is a waste of time even to try to discover a treatment which will assist nature in its normal task of healing. …
Sensing+Selecting+Perceiving=Seeing
He goes on to analyse the whole process of visual perception, using ideas and vocabulary taken from the philosopher C. D. Broad. He sums the analysis up as follows:
Sensing is not the same as seeing. The eyes and the nervous system do the sensing, the mind does the perceiving. The faculty of perceiving is related to the individual’s accumulated experiences, in other words, to memory. Clear seeing is the product of accurate sensing and cor…
Variability
The most characteristic fact about the functioning of the total organism, or any part of the organism, is that it is not constant, but highly variable. … People with unimpaired eyes and good habits of using them possess, so to speak, a wide margin of visual safety. Even when their seeing organs are functioning badly, they still see well enough for most practical purposes. Consequently they are not so acutely conscious of variations in visual functioning as are those with bad seein…
Relaxation
The majority of the book is devoted to the specific techniques of the Bates method, all designed to bring about "relaxation". There is "passive relaxation", a state of complete repose, which has its place. But there is also "dynamic relaxation", which is "that state of the body and mind which is associated with normal and natural functioning".
Mal-functioning and strain tend to appear whenever the conscious "I" interferes with instinctivel…
Criticism of the book
The established ophthalmological and optometric professions have not been convinced. For example, Stewart Duke-Elder wrote
Whatever be the value of the exercises, it is quite unintelligent of Huxley to have confused their advocacy with so many misstatements regarding known scientific facts. It has been shown that the hypothesis upon which these methods of treatment are based is wrong; but Huxley, while ad…