Seeing Things: Deepening Relations with Visual ArtefactsGifford Lectures series, 2007 Seeing Things is a highly original book that will have appeal across humanity departments including visual studies, theology, art history, sociology, anthropology and ethics. The book considers in detail, the experience of perceiving visual objects, from high art to everyday artefacts. It looks in particular at the problems encountered with the ways we in Western culture look upon the world and things, and encourages and argues for ways to look and visualise the world more critically, broadly and widely. Sight is one of the main ways we perceive and relate to the world, and yet it is mostly assumed rather than actively reflected on. Objects designated as art and the realm of aesthetics attract some active attention and reflection, but most of the visible world is ignored in the context of what Pattison describes as our ordinary blindness (TM). The book argues that the range of things we choose to see and value is arbitrary and limited and the ways in which we relate to things and objects are mostly crude and un-nuanced. Pattison argues that it is desirable to consider more person-like relationships with all manner of visibly perceived objects, from classical sculptures to tennis rackets. If we begin to apply this person-like relationship with things, we transgress the Western secular and religious practice and belief that maintains that the realm of the manufactured is dead (TM) and so can be treated by humans exactly as they wish without consideration. Pattison argues that this person-like relationship does not mean re-animating or re-sacramentalising the world, rather he argues for observation and exploration of the actual phenomenology of the object. |
Common terms and phrases
abstract art aesthetic agency animate animists appreciation argues artist aspects attention beautiful become camera obscura Christ Christian complex contemporary context created creation culture divine effects Elkins embodied emotional engage everyday example experience factors gaze Gell haptic vision human ideas idolatry images and artefacts important inanimate Ingold intellectual intentions invisible John of Damascus living logocentric look Mary of Burgundy material objects material world McFague meaning metaphor mimesis mind modern nature Nicholas of Cusa notion ocularcentric paintings particular perceived perception perhaps person personhood personlike relations personlike relationships perspectivalism phenomenological reality photographs physical practice Protestantism reality realm relationships with artefacts relationships with objects religion representation response scopic regime semiotic sense shape sight and vision significance social symbolic tactile theology things thought tion toby jug touch tradition understanding viewers visible visual artefacts visual images visual objects visual perception visual relationships Western words and images