“Like some up-ended boulder split into two, was in her clouded eyes: they saw no fear there” – Robert Frost’s Two look at Two.
There is an art to looking, an art to seeing, and an art to simply being. This ‘story’ through lenses encourages awareness and acceptance of our world. English filmmaker and writer Mark Cousins explores vision through his story of seeing. Is this a textbook, a field guide, a lament to the vision of others? Spread over cultures, countries and centuries, Cousins’ exploration of truth is inspiring, even if we cannot determine the medium. What could be regarded as a textbook on ‘life’, Cousins expertly combines history, art, film, politics and even science into a somewhat novel genre, notions of developing ‘looking’ change; the verb becoming a way of life.
“Looking can be an act of empathy or aggression”
Part 2, ‘Expanding’ explores horizons through the Middle Ages, crusades and conquests. Caesar, hierarchy and power are all about perspective. It comes as a surprise to some, looking is not only contextual, but timely. Twenty-first century ‘views’ on the world are so often key holed – focused – distracted even. Taking time to open our eyes, to be amazed and to learn something new, is infrequent. Cousins urges us to focus more on the “eye”, rather than the “I”. When we refocus on something other than ourselves, we can see beauty in others. Chapter 11 Romantic portrayal of Early 1800 relays connections between Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Titanic and Rousseau’s Romantic reveries.
Cousins somehow restores sight to the blind man, his descriptions sensational. His knowledge of the visible world is far reaching, from Cleopatra to Cézanne. Extended by his background in filmic visions, Cousins’ The Story of Film: An Odyssey presents an equally fascinating tale. ‘Looking out at the world’ depicts Casper David Fredrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea Fog, proving art can allow us to look from the point of view of the artist. Following this, artist Ian Hamilton’s Scottish stone wall ‘Little fields, long horizons’ humors Joseph Campbell’s philosophy of the ‘rapture of self-loss’ and x-y-z axis’ in space perception. As we move on to color and its crucial importance in ancient worlds, or even worlds we recorded in black and white, Cousins truly has an eye for it. The division between seeing and looking is greater than anticipated.
The art of developing ones looking it also present. Whether landscapes, emotions or the act of eye contact, what we see defines who we are. His understanding of John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’, Van Gogh’s Starry Night and da Vinci’s ‘Virgin Of The Rocks’, Cousins was taught to live with his eyes open to the world. There is something to be said for this acute awareness for not only one’s surroundings, but understanding what it is we see. And, apparently, there are many ways to see; abstract, passive, active. This story of the gaze is interesting, unfathomable and odd – in the best way. A nod to the present with lessons from the past treat The Story of Looking as a ‘how-to’ on life.
“Serbian artist Marina Abramovic turned the eye line lock into a Homerian epic”. Her art, sensual, exhausting and true, in this instance, in New York, was to simply look. 16th Century Italian theatre, Commedia dell’Arte uses masks to cover their identity. However, their eyes are always visible, no matter the mask. Are our eyes really the clichéd ‘windows to the soul’, or are they more than that? The breadth of information is incredible. Quite unusual to learn of Byzantine art and surveillance cameras in one book, Cousins has a talent for genuinely teaching people. Chapter 17 ‘The Unseen’ delves into Jean Starobinski’s ‘The Living Eye’, scientific understanding as equally accurate as the cultural and artistic.
Coming to a close, Cousins leaves us with more to do. One word, one action. ‘Look’. Reading the words with our eyes, Cousins asks we simply open our eyes to the world. A truly groundbreaking story (if you could call it that) into the art, that is looking. Cousins teaches his pupils to the use their own pupils more often.
Jamie Binder – On The Town
