Phenomenology & Art

    In this week’s reading, Amelia Jones described French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideas on phenomenology as it relates to interpreting art. Phenomenology is the study of consciousness and the human experience, and Merleau-Ponty’s model says that we are embodied subjects, meaning our physical bodies not only cannot be separated from our conscious minds, but that we make meaning through how our bodies interact with the world around us. In that way, the world around us is just as important to our understanding and interpretation as our own body-mind - the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of phenomenology is that all we are able to experience and understand is done so through reciprocity with others. There is no human experience - no philosophy, understanding, connection, or meaning - in a vacuum.

    So what does this have to do with art? By this point in the semester, we have spent a significant amount of time learning about different ways critics and historians have gone about interpreting art throughout history. At polarized ends of the spectrum are critics like Immanuel Kant and Dave Hickey that believe a work of art is either objectively good or bad, completely independent (supposedly) of the viewer. And in their opposition are those that use the artist’s biographical context to find the “answer” to the piece. But Jones argues, through Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, that they’re all wrong… and also all right, sort of.

    Through the lens of reciprocity and the human consciousness, Jones argues that each individual viewer, through their cumulative life experience, is valid in their own interpretation of the images they come in contact with. Once again, we see emphasis put back on the viewer as the one to make meaning from the work. If a person’s consciousness is a sum of all of their experiences, then it’s no surprise a wealthy white man may interpret something differently than a working-class black woman, for example.

    The reason Jones emphasizes this way of thinking when it comes to interpreting art is because it automatically assumes that, like our experiences, our interpretations will be as fluid and ever-changing as we are. The way men and women may understand a work of art differently, a person at 12 and that same person at 32 probably understand a work of art differently. And the reason we should embrace this idea of fluidity in meaning is to escape the confines of a single “correct” interpretation - which has been historically monopolized by wealthy white men to maintain their narrative, and therefore, power.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Origin_of_the_World_at_Orsay.jpg

     For continuity, I’m going to use the same painting Jones referenced to illustrate her point. Gustave Courbet’s painting The Origin of the World is a painting that always elicits strong reactions and has been interpreted in many ways by many people. As Linda Nochlin recognizes, her feminist interpretation of the painting is based largely in her experience as a woman in a patriarchal society. By embracing this Merleau-Ponty model of phenomenology, we can take Maxime Du Camp’s critique of Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of Life as a direct reflection of Du Camp’s life experiences and understanding of the subject at that moment in time, instead of as any inherent truth about the subject, artist, commissioner, or self.

    For me as an artist, this study felt like the other side of the coin to the Death of the Author idea - where that revelation seemed to suggest that I cannot succeed in connecting to others through my art because the meaning I attach to it doesn’t matter, this revelation seems to suggest that I cannot fail in doing so for the same reason. That even if it doesn’t mean to others what it means to me, it will, phenomenologically, mean something.




Works Cited

ChrisPsi. “Gustave Courbet's paining Origin of the World at the Orsay museum in Paris.” Photograph, 2021. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Origin_of_the_World_at_Orsay.jpg

Courbet, Gustave. “The Origin of the World.” Oil on canvas, 1866.

Jones, Amelia. “The Uses of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in Art History.” In Meaning, Identity, Embodiment. 71-84.

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