Looking

Who is looking at whom

I suppose that’s a good question.

John Berger writes about seeing, and touch as one of our initial contacts with the world around us. We touch, we see, and eventually we will use words in out attempts at communication.  We see, we look at something, historically for various reasons.  But we are also observed, there is a point of encounter.

Is it us looking at them or is it them looking at us? Or maybe both. In some cases, it is obvious. We are being scrutinized. Perhaps because someone is trying to figure out what we are doing, or what we might be hiding. Some may however be looking at us for other reasons. What is the end result of this focusing attention on what or how we look?  Generally, one thinks of this as a one-way action. But is it? Of course, if what is being looked at is an object, there’s no problem involved. An object isn’t aware of being observed, doesn’t think about it. It’s different though if the object being observed is a human being, and human beings do think. Hopefully anyway.

Take, for example, a model in a life class, who is there so she can be “reproduced.” She (and generally it is a she) is subjected to multiple gazes that attempt to capture some of her essence on paper or canvas. On the other hand, she is not an unthinking object. As she sits or stands there motionless, for 15 or 20 minutes, or perhaps only one, exposing her body, unencumbered by clothes, so that a group of men (and it is mostly men) can draw that body, her mind is living a life of its own.

How many of those looking at her will go beyond what is being offered to their sensibilities to the living mind beneath?

“As you are observing me,” she would tell them, “I am studying you. You can’t harness my mind. It can wander where it will. I can go backwards in history, or forwards in time. I can think about what I am doing and what I will soon do. I can delve into my memory. I have a past, a present, and a future.

I look at them as their eyes go up and down, their hands in sync with the movements of their eyes as they draw a line in charcoal and then rub it out. Sometimes I feel I must burst out laughing. What part of me are they drawing? Should I wiggle my toes just to distract them? I cannot see my body and it becomes a thing I am unsure of. I have a curious feeling that my arm is raised and resting on a shelf high up above my head – but I know that when I took the pose there was no shelf and that my arm is really resting on the back of a chair. No amount of thinking my arm down convinces me that there is where it is and if the pose does not break soon I shall have to turn and look. And even then, it will seem to be not my arm there, but just an arm, until by some great power of will I move it.

As I feel within me the movements, the counter-movements, I realize what a marvelous thing my body is. A pose is not just a placing of the limbs, but a diffusion from my mind outward of an action – of a meaning, of an awareness of the fine balance which unconsciously takes place when my head is raised and my hip outthrust to meet the swing of my shoulder. I think during one pose of the next one. Of what it will look like from all sides and I twist the body of my mind into a graceful arc. But when I try to take the pose, my body refuses to comply and I must compromise with reality.

Sun streams in up high through a window. As I stand here shadows move across the floor. If I turn away but for an instant, they are longer, elsewhere, but no amount of watching can catch them in their movement. A fly appears and crawls slowly up my leg – we watch each other – we feel each other and I try in vain to horse ripple my muscles. He finds the taste of salt good, and my pride will not let me move. Soon great burning floodlights will be switched on, their light enveloping me, in a vain attempt to dispel the shadows of falsehood.

I would tell those intent on observing me not to draw the shadows, draw the roundness, curve each line about the form and draw it from behind the object. Lightly lightly crawl over my body with the flies of your eyes, stand as I am standing, look where my hip falls out over my feet. Until I am only one point of pain where the bones of my leg push up into my hip and the rest of me sinks into the earth. I want to spread my arms and rise out, float through the room to the windows and move out into the darkness. And I know that it is only the weakness of my will which keeps me bound – my will and the hundred eyes and minds drawing hundreds of little threads tight around me.

Until finally the timer rings, and I can return to the present!”