MILAN – Today, images , photos or videos, whatever they are, constantly overwhelm the society that incorporates, assumes and finally “accumulates” visual content of all kinds.
In this context where the world is dominated by images, how has the way of seeing culture and in particular art changed . Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM), theorist and art critic, author of the book “A Loss eye. Visibility and invisibility in contemporary art “ . “Start seeing art again”
The book presents itself in a singular way already for the choice of the cover image: a razor about to cut a woman’s eye; in reality this image is the most famous frame of the well-known surrealist film of 1929 “Un chien andalou” , by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali . Although the frame in question still has an effect due to its crudeness, in reality it is linked to that theme of “seeing”, of the “vision” that Francesca faces, since the “cut” of the eye is nothing more than the metaphor of a change , of a “starting to see things differently” . Everything, inside the book, is connected with the world of contemporary art through the analysis of artistssuch as Fabio Mauri, Gino De Dominicis, Jannis Kounellis, Oscar Munoz, Claudio Parmiggiani, On Kawara among others. The interview
We participated in the presentation of the book (which were present as speakers, the film critic Gianni Canova, the stylist Romeo Gigli and the astrologer Marco Pesatori) and then we interviewed the author for some insights: What prompted you to to write this book The ‘annoyance’ towards the omnipotence of images in the society of the spectacle. The book was born from this discomfort and from the awareness that the most beautiful journeys are those that the eyes welcome with memory , the passage that penetrates the visual and critical language of our body, leaving amplifications that suggest discovery.
Discover and language. In a forest an agronomist and a person who lives in the city do not ‘see’ the same things, the perceptual processes are completely different. The boredom of vision produces a vision to be corrected. If this is true in reality, it is even more true in art, where it is possible to see only what is already known. Because the choice of contemporary art as the central point of analysis of that theme which is “vision”, “looking”, “observing” Because this is what I deal with and this is what I investigate day by day; and day by day I realize how many are the works that by their nature, by choice of the artist, escape their destiny of becoming mere images .The contemporary often puts the viewer in front of something that he cannot understand because it is not immediate, because it seems that he is speaking an encrypted and indecipherable language. There is a way to understand this message without being an expert or connoisseur of contemporary art
What advice would you give to a non-expert viewer who finds himself in front of a work of contemporary art and does not understand it
I try to understand by studying, how it happens for all things in the world … asking myself questions, questioning what I ‘see’, having no prejudices, and above all not thinking that what I don’t understand I reject. Why don’t we ask ourselves this question in relation to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy or in relation to the Odyssey or in relation to a work by Joice
We do not ask ourselves this question because we know that if we do not study we cannot read the Divine Comedy as if it were the report of a news story… They explained to us, as children, that we need to study to understand . In art this does not happen, and many think that simply by looking one can understand a work. I don’t know if there is a way to understand art like this … I trivially understand what I understand by studying. And anyway, I don’t think there is a difference in looking at an ancient or contemporary work of art. Even looking at an ancient work, if I don’t know the narration that lives behind the work, I don’t ‘see’ anything …If the contemporary poses these obstacles and seeing the works leaves the observer puzzled because it confronts him with something complex, the solution to understand contemporary art is to “cut the eye” to start “seeing” beyond what we have seen so far
And perhaps this is the “method” of vision and observation
Seeing not with the eyes but with the soul
The contemporary does not pose any obstacle to seeing … Art is not a game of obstacles … We are just spoiled by the flatness of the civilization of images that wants to convince us that everything is representable, immediately understandable and that we are all able to do and understand everything … But this happens not only for what concerns art, it happens for all sectors of knowledge: we all feel like doctors, judges, football coaches, actors and school teachers. Instead we are none of this, and if we are not aware that we have to demand competence from the interlocutor, everything is lowered in level … that is what is happening. See and see with the mind, with knowledge, with sensitivity, with one’s passions, with curiosity… And don’t worry about just one aspect of the complex visual process: the physiological aspect. Many focus their attention exclusively on the eyes and nothing at all on the mind which uses the eyes to see.
