Sensuality afoot at the Metropolitan Museum
The gift that just keeps giving…I don’t think there is a single page of my copy of Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Eyes of the Skin that isn’t marked up and annotated. Although Pallasmaa is an architect and writing primarily about that metier, his book is full of passages that are a parallel reflection of my own views on the visual arts (and painting in particular.)
I hope my ongoing reference to his work is of interest to some of you too.
Beyond architecture, contemporary culture at large drifts towards a distancing, a kind of chilling de-sensualisation and de-eroticisation of the human relation to reality. Painting and sculpture also seem to be losing their sensuality; instead of inviting a sensory intimacy, contemporary works of art frequently signal a distancing rejection of sensuous curiosity and pleasure. These works of art speak to the intellect and to the conceptualising capacities instead of addressing the senses and the undifferentiated embodied responses. the ceaseless bombardment of unrelated imagery leads only to a gradual emptying of images of their emotional content. Images are converted into endless commodities manufactured to postpone boredom; humans in turn are commodified, consuming themselves nonchalantly without having the courage or even the possibility of confronting their very existential reality. We are made to live in a fabricated dream world.
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September 2, 2010 at 8:24 am
Sensing the Flow of Water Against the Skin « Slow Muse
[…] My favorite thought provocateur these days (actually “these days” is actually now several months) is Juhani Pallasmaa, architect and author of The Eyes of the Skin. Here are a few more of his insights about seeing, the dominance of the eye, modes of vision. (Other great quotes from Pallasmaa that I have posted here: Focused vs Peripheral Vision; Inside and Outside, at the Same Time; Mind and Eye;The Eye in the Hand; Human Rootedness; Fully Engaged; Sensory Intimacy, in Art and in Architecture.) […]
April 28, 2023 at 7:12 am
Gaurang Katyayan misra
We are made to live in a fabricated dream world.
that’s keep on human race to live on since centuries, otherwise there would have been more destruction. thus such dream world give fuel to creativity or inspire a creative world!
this sculpture is of Celestial Beauty (thereby not seen by Human eyes) but “beauty” as conceived by an artist took shape & his or their patrons approved, thereafter these Apsara found place in walls of temples- abode of God, that ought to have all things “perfect” beauty