Abstract

The painter "takes his body with him."Nevertheless, Renoir was looking at the sea.Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye.The painter takes his body with him—he looks at what he sees and what he sees looks back at him. Perception takes place in the exchange, in time and in the world, not only between people or between living things but also between "subject" and "object," between perceiver and perceived. In this exchange that Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls "the chiasm"—"this mediation through reversal"—something direct and active takes place. Before we can know or say what we're seeing, before we divide what we see into things or kinds of things, before naming and measurement, assertion and...