Empathy and Embodiment: "Let me see?"

From the shift of the linear to the painterly, the ideas of plane and recessions, the open versus the closed, the multiplicity versus the unity, to the interrogations of the two clarities, Heinrich Wolfflin offers a wealth of insight and amazing contributions that still hold today as some of the most central ideas for the appreciation of the arts and the alleged transformation from the Classical to the Baroque . As much as I am not eager to read the work of many aesthetic theorists, and as much as Wolfflin did not want to be considered a theorist, I must admit to be mesmerized by his “readings” of artworks. Wolfflin seemed to have been the one who taught us how to see. His theory of the five precepts mentioned above seem now so “self-evident”, that we could not imagine how to envisioned Art History otherwise.

However, what strikes me as fascinating, is the importance of the idea of the experience of seeing. This concept is so elusive and personal, that to theorize (or not) about the experience of seeing and molding it into a group of general ideas can seem extremely difficult. In other words how dare someone try to teach me how to see. Even if I am aware that it was certainly not by malicious intent Wolfflin appeared to command a certain way of seeing. I must also admit to have been a bit disappointed with some of the later Aesthetic Experientalists who appeared to behave in a Talibanesque voice when they offered “their view” on seeing. I can easily understand and respect the intellectualization of the experience of seeing but I can hardly accept that there is only one way to see. Wolfflin certainly did not see things the same way Rudolf Arnheim did.