Lana Skender: THE SPECTATOR PHENOMENON AND THE POWER OF THE GAZE
Scientific paper
Lana Skender, Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59014/GONK4945
Keywords:
observer, spectatorship, theory of gaze, relativistic perception, scopic regimes
Abstract
This paper explores the relevant knowledge in philosophy, psychology, art theory,
and visual culture dealing with the phenomenon of the spectator. Spectatorship is
explored through complex relationships between authors, works, observers, and the
environment, which condition the view and consider how social and cultural patterns
mediate the image. In this approach, interest is no longer primarily focused on the
visual object but on visuality, a complex set of conditions in which a work of art is
created, observed, and interpreted, researching the history of the gaze theory: perception
and its physiological and cultural conditioning, the implicitness of the observer
in the aesthetics of the reception, psychoanalytic theories about the constitution of
the subject with a gaze, feminist ideas of voyeurism, and the male gaze, theories on
technological and cultural conditioning of the scopic regimes, the cultural history of
gaze and the gaze politics that approach viewing as possession of power. An analysis
of the theory shows that the role of the body as a perceiving mechanism is present
in the naturalistic approach to observation but is avoided due to its subjectivity and
relativity. Although it was created in the 1960s, the theory of gaze has roots in the
hermeneutics of art history and the aesthetics of reception. The cultural determination
of gaze, its dependence on social norms, and the technological conditions of the
medium indicate that our view of art and the visual world has been learned, which
opens spaces for the acceptance of other gazes that are equally valuable.
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