week 11 Phenomenology

  

Phenomenology

Yves Klein, Leap into the Void, 1960

    During our reading we read about the idea of a reciprocal relationship between the viewer and the object/person being viewed. We learned that not only do we as the viewer experience an interaction with the object but the object/person being viewed also has an interaction with us. An example in the class discussion was our interaction with a coffee cup and how we feel and experience that moment the object is also having a forced interaction of being picked up, carried, sipped from, and put down. These interactions create a type of story and when this idea is put to art you’ll understand that these artworks are interactive and we can feel emotions from something that we view; This idea plays on all of our own personal experiences and that is how we interpret art work, how we see it, and how we interact and feel about an art piece. Not all people will feel exactly the same about one piece but many may relate or interpret a piece differently just because they’ve been through something different therefore their perspective is gonna look at something and feel completely different about art than another person would. In the beginning of the course we saw this image of a man falling/ jumping and much of the class felt tense or uneasy these emotions were evoked from our own experience while then the teacher talked about how before she had some students say that the image above was making them feel free and like he’s escaping he was flying to them; they felt this way because viewing the art work evoked that emotional response for them. The way we interact with things around us and the people around us will shape us into the people we are and it influences the way we think for future experiences. Another way you can think of this is with relationships; someone who has been hurt many times in a relationship is gonna feel uneasy when getting into new relationship while someone who may have had only a few bad relationships is going to feel less uneasy about starting a new relationship because both people have experienced relationships but their experiences/ interactions with the relationships are different.

    When thinking about the way that we discuss an artist biography or intentions of their artwork can really reflect on our own identity by the way we interpret their work and feel about the artist, if we know an artist first off it may create a kind of bias towards the work especially if we like the artist, lots of our thoughts on the artwork would be positive. Knowing about an artist helps us understand the artist better and by learning about the artist this gives us the room to think about their life and interpret how we feel they felt. Without actually speaking and knowing the artist we can only play on our thoughts with the artist. We get to leave it to our minds to understand the artist now without knowing the artist then it becomes very personal. The way we interpret an artwork comes from how we feel about the work. We may wanna observe the work to see what emotions are felt, we’d use the knowledge we know about art to help us, or we may study the way the art was made to understand what the art means. As I said before in the first paragraph, our experiences shape the way we think. With all things we go through over the years these moments shape the way we think about things including art and even the artist.

    The way we interpret art is tied to our identity because it can really show the way we think and how we feel. An art piece can bring forward a person's true thoughts as they analyze an artwork. Hearing how an artwork makes someone feels or how they interpret the art piece reveals a lot about their inner thoughts and the way they tend to feel. When I think about art I think art is a form of expression and the way we interpret it can show how we express ourselves and how we see an art’s form of expression. In our reading the author mentions flesh of the world and how flesh interacts with flesh. This idea is meant to refer to our individual interactions and experiences in the world and the way we interact with the other flesh around us shapes us and our thoughts which then becomes part of the way we begin to think; we use those experiences and our understanding of the world to then interpret an artwork that we view. Looking at art and having many interpretations just means that many people are analyzing the work through their own lens. We are one with our mind and body, there is a connection with our experiences and the way we think.

    Personally I believe that the mind and body are connected and shouldn’t be separated, I believe that sensory experience is how we know the world, and how we think about it, how we interact with the world. Our bodies; since babies start learning through interaction with the world. We learn so much by feeling, smelling, tasting, and seeing. All our experiences as we grow end up shaping us into who we’ll become in the end of our lives, we can change from interactions, stay the same. Or learn new things from how we interact with people, objects, or even with ourselves. Treating ourselves properly can help us to have a better outlook on the world as we’d be more open to exploring new things, we’d have better understanding of our thoughts as we’d be more connected to ourselves through the interactions of self care and we’d develop great understanding of our own thoughts because we are so connected with the bendy and mind when we really care for ourselves and let our interactions with the world benefit us for better.







Citations:

   Jones, Amelia. “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: The Uses of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology in Art History.” Art and Thought, pp. 72–90., https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470774199.ch4.