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UAL Research Online

The case for an external spectator

Wilder, Ken (2008) The case for an external spectator. British Journal of Aesthetics, 48 (3). pp. 261-277. ISSN 00070904

Type of Research: Article
Creators: Wilder, Ken
Description:

I question the assumption that painting always presents a self-contained world. I use Masaccio’s Trinity to claim that in certain works, integrated into their architectural
settings, the internal onlooker is fused with the external spectator. Here the imaginative engagement is situated. I highlight differences afforded internal and external spectators: with the former, the viewer identifies with a spectator who already occupies an unrepresented extension of the ‘virtual’ space; with the latter, the beholder enters that part of the fictive world depicted as being in front of the picture surface, the work thus drawing the ‘real’ space of the spectator into its domain. I claim that this distinction mirrors two distinct types of visualization: where a scene is presented as elsewhere, and where it is juxtaposed with an existing reality.

Official Website: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/aesthj/about.html
Keywords/subjects not otherwise listed: aesthetics
Publisher/Broadcaster/Company: Oxford University Press
Your affiliations with UAL: Colleges > Chelsea College of Arts
Date: July 2008
Copyright Holders: Btirish Journal of Aesthetics
Related Websites: http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/3/261.full.pdf+html
Related Websites:
Projects or Series: Research Outputs Review (April 2010 - April 2011)
Date Deposited: 21 Feb 2012 12:03
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2015 22:52
Item ID: 3642
URI: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/3642

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