The White Cube & Extracts From Camera Lucida
The White Cube & Extracts From Camera Lucida
Brian O’Doherty’s has an interesting way of talking about how art is viewed. His ideas about the Spectator and the Eye are a confusing way to tell the history of installation art. He separates the viewer into pieces and tries to explain what different types of art do to the Spectator and the Eye separately. He comments on collage and how it was the start of changing how people viewed art in a space. The art was not just in a frame but coming out at you. He moves quickly into installation art where he references many names of artists that if you don’t lookup their art you wouldn’t know what he was talking about. The different types of installation also do different things for your eye or your spectator. At the end of this chapter the type of installation art he is commenting on is Body Art. He says that “The eye disappears into the mind, and the Spectator, in a surrogate’s phantom suicide, induces his own elimination”. And when you think of an installation where someone is shot (Chris Burden) you start to understand what he is saying.
Roland Barthes’ strong feelings for photography are very evident in his piece Camera Lucida. He talks about photography generally but also with a very personal manner, it feels feminine because of the emotion that is present. He tells how he feels that photographs are better for studying history because you can learn so much from just one photo. Then he relates that to feelings of his mother after she died and looking through pictures of her. He was not interested in saying anything scientific but explain feelings for photos.
-Taryn Hammer
