The Journal of Architecture

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Feeling through sight: zooming in, zooming out

Ana Araujo

To cite this article: Ana Araujo (2014) Feeling through sight: zooming in, zooming out, The Journal
of Architecture, 19:1, 1-18, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2013.851905

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Published online: 31 Jan 2014.

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 1

The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 19
Number 1

Feeling through sight: zooming in,

zooming out

Ana Araujo Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the

Arts London; Architectural Association School of
Architecture, London [Author’s e-mail address:
a.araujo@atelierdomino.com]

This article analyses Alois Riegl’s (1858–1905) notion of an aesthetics of proximity (Nahsicht),
to which he associates the dimension of the tactile and the haptic. Opposed to Nahsicht is
what Riegl calls the ‘optical-fernsichtig’: an aesthetics of spatial distance that in his view
responds more satisfactorily to the essence of architecture. While Riegl’s optical dimension
relates to linear perspective, evoking a particular model of spatial construction, the haptic,
on the other hand, alludes to planarity and to the drawing of profiles and details, promising
to engender alternative modes of vision and spatiality.
I intend to challenge Riegl’s proposed correspondence between the ‘optical-fernsichtig’
and the logic of architecture, connecting the later instead with his aesthetics of proximity:
as already suggested by Walter Benjamin’s own reading of Riegl in the text ‘The Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936). Drawing from that connection, I will
argue that some procedures typically associated to the haptic might be productively
employed to interrogate and reinvigorate current architectural practice.

Introduction historian Alois Riegl. In the book from 1901 entitled

Our eye need only become a bit sharper, our ear a Late Roman Art Industry Riegl discusses an aesthetics
bit more receptive; we need to take in the taste of of proximity (Nahsicht) prompted by some natural
a piece of fruit more fully; we should be able to and man-made constructions that allegedly have
tolerate more odours and become more conscious the ability to trigger an amplification of human per-
and less forgetful when touching and being ception.2 Riegl associates Nahsicht to the dimension
touched – in order to draw consolation from our of the tactile and the haptic, to miniatures and to
immediate experiences which would be more oriental carpets.3 Opposed to it is what he defines
convincing, more paramount, and truer than all as the ‘optical-fernsichtig’: an aesthetic of spatial dis-
the suffering that could ever torment us.1 tance that in his view better corresponds to the
An intensification of our senses may counteract essence of architecture.4
human suffering and thus neutralise violence and In Riegl’s view, architectural constructs bear little
hostility, suggests the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, a resonance to the heightening of perception envi-
year after the outbreak of World War I. sioned by Rilke as a potentially redeeming social
Reverberating with Rilke’s insight is an articulation force. However, developing his theory, Riegl’s
formulated some years earlier by the well-known art disciple Walter Benjamin suggests a different

# 2014 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2013.851905

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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
out
Ana Araujo

perspective, relating architecture to Nahsicht, and to be contaminated by touch.5 When we look too
envisioning for it a powerful social influence, closely at the surface of a painting, Georges Didi-
exerted through sensorial mobilisation. The aim of Huberman reminds us, its image gets blurred and
this article is to pursue the relationship between we gradually start to appreciate the materiality of
architecture and Nahsicht further. The text is its canvas, the texture of its pictorial field.6 Didi-
divided in two parts. The first part, ‘Zooming In’, Huberman calls the visual domain of the close up
focuses on the dimension of the miniature and the ‘panique’, meaning at the same time cloth-like and
detail, remaining true to Riegl’s own understanding panic-provoking. As he defines, the ‘cloth effect
of the haptic (Nahsicht). The second part, ‘Zooming [l’effet de pan] is like a panic [panique] assault of
Out’, expands Riegl’s vision and relates Nahsicht to the local over the global, of the detail over totality
wider spatial structures. … a punctual and poignant, insane, invasion of the
detail … ’7 Reverberating with Didi-Huberman’s
Zooming in understanding, Hélène Cixous defines close-up
The short animation Seasons, realised in 1969 by vision as inherently tactile. In this mode of seeing,
the Russian animator Ivan Ivanov Vano, takes us she states, we are led to activate the ‘delicate tact’
through a miniature landscape, a dream-like of our cornea, to allow our eyelashes to caress the
virtual scenery, accessible through the patterned flesh of the surface.8 But this domain of tactile
cover of a silver tray (Fig. 1; available at http:// vision is an unsafe one, she warns.9 In it, things
www.youtube.com). In it, the pattern leads the seem to lose their hardness. Proximity leads us into
eye into a scaled-down enchanted field opened by a dimension where ‘reality loses solidity’, as Gaston
its layered ornamental structure: a potentially infi- Bachelard defines it.10 Figures convert into texture,
nite space built out of delicate fabric and mist, a and vision becomes then incarnated. We feel as if
magical scenery where a romantic promenade we are touching the surface—or rather we are
takes place. The film suggests the existence of a touched by it—with our eyes. The materiality of
latent field hiding within the illusionary stillness of our bodies resonates with the materiality of the
ornamented patterns: an enchanted dimension world, as Cixous puts it.11 Proximity directs vision
that pretends to be nothing but an embellishment to the protrusions of the material, Bachelard
—of a tray, of a vase, of a wall—but which hides writes.12
a miniature fantasy world behind it. The message In ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
that the film Seasons conveys is that the intricacy Reproduction’, Benjamin suggestively compares the
of ornament stimulates our senses, transporting us domain opened by close-up vision to the internal
to a different dimension. landscape of our body. Aligning the distanced
The dimension that Seasons reveals operates in activity of the painter with the one of the magician
the domain of Nahsicht, close-up vision: a domain and the incisive close-up gesture of the cameraman
in which the eye gets so near that the sight starts to the one of the surgeon, he remarks:
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The Journal
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Volume 19
Number 1

Figure 1. Ivan Ivanov

Vano, Seasons (1969):
source: www.youtube.
com.

The magician maintains … distance between the maintains in his work a natural distance from
patient and himself … The surgeon does exactly reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its
the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance web. There is a tremendous difference between
between himself and the patient by penetrating the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a
into the patient’s body … Magician and surgeon total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple
compare to painter and cameraman. The painter fragments which are assembled under a new law.13
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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
out
Ana Araujo

What is remarkable in the cameraman’s close-up, a liams describes, for instance, some pre-filmic porno-
derivation of Riegl’s Nahsicht, as Benjamin himself graphic devices used in the nineteenth century
acknowledges, is its unique promotion of a ‘deepen- where the observer uses the immoral imagery only
ing of [tactile] apperception’.14 Resembling the sur- as a voyeuristic means of stimulating tactile sen-
geon’s startling cutting across the body, the sations, the material ‘object’ which presumably
proximity of the camera apparatus reveals a signifi- arouses such sensations being in fact absent.
cant facet of reality that would otherwise remain ‘Touch … is activated by but not aimed at, so to
unnoticeable. Consonant with Benjamin’s allusion speak, the absent referent’, Williams observes.
to the surgical act is a classical close-up scene of ‘Though quite material and palpable, it is not a
Louis Buñuel’s surrealist film Le Chien Andalou matter of feeling the … object represented … ’. In
(1929), where, as Didi-Huberman describes it, other words, as she also defines, the close up
‘insects … cease to be a “black point”, turning into stands for ‘a “visionary” capacity of the body to
a multitude; [they] cease to be immobile, in the produce sensations divorced from referents’.18
margins of the image, and start swarming in its Albeit promoting a feeling that is essentially carnal,
very centre; [they] cease to be a simple optical close-up vision actually departs from carnality as
game, turning into a tactile wound, a scar opened such, being fulfilled with its visual enactment only.
in the middle of an infected hand’.15 What was The visual enactment of carnality is precisely what
purely visual and apparently harmlessly static is is at stake in Riegl’s concept of Nahsicht, a notion
transformed, with the close up, into a tangible and that became more widely known in art and architec-
threateningly dynamic form. Intriguingly, there ture as haptic perception. Riegl defines the haptic as:
seems to be an invisible thread bonding the shim- the plane which the eye perceives when it comes
mering and delicate landscape revealed by the so close to the surface of an object, that all the sil-
close up of Seasons and the repellent act of magni- houettes and, in particular, all shadows which
fication in Buñuel’s Le Chien Andalou. Common to otherwise could disclose an alteration in depth,
both gestures is a fascination for a peculiar condition disappear. The perception of objects … is thus
of perception, which, incited by an engagement tactile, and in as much as it has to be optical to
with the miniature dimension, is located at the a certain degree, it is nahsichtig.19
very threshold that both separates and unites the Riegl’s haptic, or Nahsicht, refers to a peculiar con-
act of looking and the act of touching. dition of tactility which, being still ‘optical to a
The film historian Linda Williams likens close-up certain degree’, is characteristic—that is, internal—
vision with pornography.16 For her, the obscene to vision. Being hooked in materiality, haptic vision
quality of the close up relates to its activation of is, according to Riegl, anti-spatial, since, in his defi-
the ‘carnal density of vision’.17 Such a ‘density’, nition, ‘space … is … not material but the negation
albeit tactile in essence, is, surprisingly perhaps, in of the material’.20 Denying depth and space, the
fact independent from actual physical contact. Wil- haptic promotes a condition of ‘tactile impenetrabil-
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ity’: in Riegl’s view, an ‘essential pre-condition of … Rather than allowing us to see something, it forces
material individuality’.21 The art of antiquity is for us to see what we cannot see. ‘What the eye of
Riegl the one which best materialises the ‘tactile the observer sees … is not simply an object but
impenetrability’ of the haptic: vision’s own … perceptions’, Williams claims.24 The
The art of antiquity … was compelled, whenever haptic reproduces the conditions of (im)possibility
possible, to avoid the representation of space as of vision, denying us the entitlement to infiltrate
a negation of materiality and individuality, not into reality.
because of awareness that space was just a Haptic perception obstructs our access to reality to
notion in the human mind, but rather because connect us to our own conditions of perception. In
of the instinctive urge to limit space as much as relation to the pre-filmic pornographic devices of
possible in the naïve search for the purest sense the nineteenth century, for example, Williams
of comprehension of material essence. Of the claims: ‘it is not a matter of feeling the absent
three dimensions, height and width (outline, sil- object represented but of the spectator-observer
houette) as dimensions of the plane or level feeling his or her own body’.25 The close-up zone
ground are indispensable in order to arrive at shifts our sensorial dynamics: we no longer
any notion of the individual material object; there- perform as mere spectators or observers, becoming
fore they were recognized from the very begin- instead materially implicated in the perceptual
ning of ancient art. The dimension of depth, process. It is not anymore a question of looking at
however, does not seem so necessary, and fur- something ‘out there’, but rather of feeling
thermore, since it may obscure the clear through sight.
impression of material individuality, it is sup- Such a perceptual condition, however intense and
pressed, whenever possible, by ancient art.22 intimate, is also inherently elusive. Conflating the
Because all it ‘sees’ is impenetrability—the absence optical and the tactile senses, the haptic works in
of depth—haptic vision implies an idea of limit, the extreme capacities of both. For, as suggested
border. Not only the material border of what it by Didi-Huberman’s reading of Aristotle, in the aes-
sees, but also the perceptual border of vision itself, thetics of proximity, not only we push our visual fac-
the limits of what can be seen: the limits beyond ulties to their very limit, in doing so, we also reach
which vision turns into something else—tactility. the frontiers of the realm of touch. In the haptic
As Didi-Huberman reveals, in Aristotle’s De Anima mode, it would seem, there would be not much
(c. 350 BC.), the tactile is ‘at the same time [as] sense in differentiating vision from touch: as the car-
that without which no vision is possible, and that nality of our eyes become activated, these two
which establishes the limits of vision – but also, senses start to operate analogously.
and precisely because of this … its télos: touch The contact with objects presents us, paradoxi-
would be both the obsession and the fear of cally, with a blurring of limits—insofar as to
vision’.23 Haptic vision is inherently ambivalent. touch an object is always to search for the exact
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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
out
Ana Araujo

borders of our own bodies. The touched object touching the object, the object is scarcely per-
tends to vanish, while the skin starts to feel a ceived any longer, but we have a distinct feeling
strange swelling outside itself. ‘The outline of in the tips of our fingers … It is as if the skin
the skin is not felt as a smooth and straight were protruding over the surface and forming a
surface; this outline is blurred. There are no slight cone, which almost reaches for the object.27
sharp borderlines between the outside world Vision and touch are in the haptic mode always
and the body’.26 approximate: near but remote, present but lacking,
The borderlines become dissolved, suggesting a con- concrete but elusive. Unlike distant vision, which in
dition of continuation between our body and what it theory can provide ‘a centered human subjectivity
sees/touches. Precisely because of this, it becomes a view of the things of the world’, the haptic, or
impossible for us to infiltrate the outside world. the effet panique, as Didi-Huberman puts it,
What we perceive ceases to be something external, always resists our grasp, leading us too close and
to be captured by our eyes or hands, seeming rather yet refusing us actual access or control over external
to exist almost in continuation to our own material reality.28
substance. Nevertheless, this promised fusion with
the world turns out to be, in the end, also precarious. Zooming out
In proximity, reality reveals itself to be at the same Echoing Riegl’s notion of Nahsicht, and translating
time too near for optical control and too distant the qualities of the haptic from the miniaturised
for a full tactile amalgamation. As the Austrian psy- scale to a wider architectural dimension, the cultural
choanalyst Paul Schilder (a pupil of Sigmund Freud) critic Jane Graves observes that when enclosed ‘in a
observed: room where all the walls are patterned’, we are com-
When subjects compare what they feel and per- pelled to ‘look desperately for a point of focus, for
ceive tactually on their body with the optic imagin- the centre of the light’, without ever being able to
ation or the optic perceptions of the body, they do so.29 Because such a space presumably contains
find that there is a discrepancy. The skin that is an illogical multiplicity of focal points, it fails to
felt is distinctly below the surface of our body … provide the eye with a singular point of reference,
It is a remarkable psychological fact that though leaving it astray, and generating a sense of elusive-
we distinctly feel the object and distinctly feel ness comparable to the one invoked in the close-
our own body and its surface, yet they do not up look. This affinity with the haptic relates to the
touch each other completely. They are not fused principles of construction that rule pattern-based
together. There is a distinct space between artefacts, which, as Graves sustains, radically
them … It is an interesting experiment to diminish oppose the ones that define linear perspective. For
the pressure of the fingers against the object. We while the latter, reproducing the conditions of
feel the object less and less and the fingers more distant vision, implies that ‘the vanishing point and
and more. When the fingers are finally only just the viewing point must be geometrically synon-
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The Journal
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Volume 19
Number 1

ymous’, providing the observer with a fixed, stable meaning the connection between the viewer
standpoint from where to look, the former bom- and the figures depicted in the painting—
bards the beholder with a potentially infinite profu- depends on an already resolved internal coher-
sion of targets, providing no clue as to where to ence – meaning a subordinate relationship
direct the eye.30 among the figures portrayed.32
As Riegl explains, in linear perspective: Subordination within the picture plane would there-
The eye, on its own, can take in a multitude of real fore guarantee visual control over it: an opposite
bodies simultaneously, along with the space they effect to the one of the patterned room described
fill; here the tactile sense is not effective. The artist by Graves. Because the general tendency in tra-
must therefore remove himself several steps from ditional Dutch art was to counter the Italian prin-
a group he means to depict until he can survey it ciples of subordination, privileging, instead, non-
in something close to a normal view. This did not hierarchical coordination, this art was for Riegl less
happen during the entire ancient era. No single effective in catching the attention of the beholder.
relief or painting from Antiquity adhered rigor- As a matter of fact, focused attention appears in
ously to a unitary vantage point.31 Riegl’s theoretical scheme as a major aspect not
The position of the viewer figures as an essential only of portraiture painting but also of art in
theme in Riegl’s iconic text The Group Portraiture general, something to be pursued through a
of Holland (1902). When comparing, for instance, correct manipulation of form and composition:
Rembrandt’s art with that of one of his presumably aspects considered in his theory as more important
inferior contemporaries, Riegl argues that, adhering than content and narrative (Fig. 3).33 In Forms of
to the Italian perspective-based model, this master Representation in Alois Riegl’s Theory of Art
stands out precisely due to his unique ability to pre- (1992), the critic Margaret Olin interestingly claims
determine the way the viewer looks at the picture that even though Riegl chooses the figurative
(Fig. 2). As he remarks: genre of portraiture to illustrate his vindication for
The most important of the numerous aspects of the ‘attentive act’ in art, he is in fact more concerned
[Rembrandt’s] work that reflect Italian influence with spatial issues than with representational
is undoubtedly, from the beginning of his ones.34 As she argues, Riegl’s discussion is essentially
career, his resolute espousal of subordination as centred on ‘the spatial position of the viewer’: an
one of his principle means of artistic expression architectural, rather than a pictorial problem, as
… Nevertheless, Rembrandt’s ultimate goal was Riegl himself declares in his analysis of the work by
to attain a perfectly resolved external coherence the sixteenth-century portraitist Dirck Jacobsz:
with the viewer, which … is the indispensable This kind of composition is architectural in nature,
raison d’être of all group portrait painting. He for it resembles a two storied façade articulated by
must have realized early in his career that com- a base, a subsidiary, and a main cornice. The com-
plete and well-defined external coherence— ponents of the upper story, which can be thought
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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
out
Ana Araujo

Figure 2. Rembrandt
van Rijn, The Night
Watch (1642): source,
The Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.

of as pilasters, create a serene pattern of verticals whole façade together into a single, serene
and horizontals, with a definite emphasis on the plane. This is basically the same architectural
latter. The components of the lower row, on the process that was taking place in Italy, starting
other hand, are in conflict with the whole: some with the vestibule of Michelangelo’s Biblioteca
of the vertical elements have attempted to break Laurenziana.35
through the constraints of the subsidiary cornice, In Riegl’s understanding, the most remarkable
while others struggle free from the wall and step aspect of Jacobsz’s painting is his gesture of zigzag-
out in front of each other, as first seen in the mul- ging the figures of the lower row, making them
tiple pilasters of Michelangelo’s courtyard in the ‘break up the plane and … recede in depth’.36 By
Palazzo Farnese. Struggle below, constraint doing this, the artwork starts to point towards
above, while symmetry succeeds in tying the three-dimensionality, promising to interact with the
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The Journal
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Figure 3. Dirck Jacobsz,

Civic Guard Group
Portrait of 1529 (1529):
source, The
Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.

beholder in the same way that the protruding the frame; the direction of his gaze simply does
columns of Michelangelo’s building supposedly not happen to be where one would normally
invited the spectator to penetrate into space. expect the viewer.37
However significant, Jacobsz’s gesture is from What mainly upsets Riegl in Jacobsz’s work is its lack
Riegl’s point of view still rather modest in relation of interaction: the sense of apathy that the painted
to what a master like Rembrandt would later figures suggested, with regards to each other as
achieve. On the whole, Riegl concludes that well as in relation to the beholder. This notion of
Jacobsz’s composition is still predominantly planar, indifference, Riegl argues, is a direct consequence
failing to convey the sense of spatiality that would of the multi-focal composition of the painting,
potentially ‘break through’ the flatness of the which denies the observer a safe point of reference,
frame and engage the attention of the viewer: preventing them from fully interacting with the
There are still no instances where two figures work. Jacobsz’s painting exists for itself, not for the
interact with each other on a psychological beholder, Riegl states. Unlike perspective-based,
level. All of the guardsmen in Jacobsz’s painting three-dimensional constructs, which boldly step
look out of the painting toward where a viewer ‘forward to relate to the viewer’, the planar,
would normally stand, with one important pattern-like composition of the Dutch painter was
exception: the man to the extreme left of the apparently oblivious to its spectators.38
lower row who gazes off at an acute angle Riegl’s discontentment about the sense of self-
almost parallel to the picture plane. However, sufficiency conveyed by the haptic logic of Jacobsz’s
he is not interacting with any of his comrades. portrait resounds with a well-known anecdote
Like the rest of them, he is looking out beyond recounted by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
out
Ana Araujo

about an incident that happened to him when he opaque—I mean the screen’.40 Lacan’s screen, it
went fishing in Brittany. As he narrates: seems, like Graves’s patterned room, resembles a
One day, I was on a small boat, with a few people pan (textile, cloth), provoking an effect that is,
from a family of fishermen in a small port … as we characteristically, panique, perceptually as well as
were waiting for the moment to pull in the nets, psychologically.
an individual known as Petit-Jean … pointed out Riegl’s anxiety towards the haptic logic of
to me something floating on the surface of the Jacobsz’s pattern-like portrait appears to be tainted
waves. It was a small can, a sardine can. … And with a fear of the perceptual and psychological
Petit-Jean said to me—You see that can? Do implications of the effet panique. His promotion of
you see it? Well it doesn’t see you! … He found an ‘ethics of attention’ would in this sense work as
this incident highly amusing —I less so … The a defence against the condition of thick impene-
point of this little story … the fact that he found trability imposed by the haptic mode of percep-
it so funny and I less so, derives from the fact tion.41
that, if I am told a story like that one, it is If Riegl endorses focused attention, Benjamin,
because I, at that moment—as I appeared to although drawing largely from Riegl’s ideas, is
those fellows who were earning their livings rather inclined towards distraction—a feature that
with great difficulty … looked like nothing on he links not specifically to patterned walls, but,
earth. In short, I was rather out of place in the rather, to architecture and film. As Benjamin claims:
picture.39 Distraction and concentration form polar oppo-
Like the neglected observer of Jacobsz’s tableau, or sites which may be stated as follows: A man
the disoriented viewer of the patterned room who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed
described by Graves, Lacan feels at this moment by it … In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs
bracketed out. He finds himself in an environment the work of art. This is most obvious with
that is oblivious to him. Being cut off from the fish- regards to buildings. Architecture has always rep-
ermen’s world, Lacan experiences the ‘certainty of resented the prototype of a work of art the recep-
impenetrability’ that Riegl speaks of when describing tion of which is consummated by a collectivity in a
the perceptual structure of the haptic. As he defines state of distraction. The laws of its reception are
it, the fishing incident introduces him to a condition most instructive … Buildings are appropriated in
of spatiality ‘that was elided in the geometral a twofold manner: by use and by perception—or
relation—the depth of field … which is in no way rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation
mastered by me’. To be in that position, Lacan cannot be understood in terms of the attentive
concludes, ‘is something of another nature that geo- concentration of a tourist before a famous build-
metral, optical space, something that plays an ing. On the tactile side there is no counterpart to
exactly reverse role, which operates, not because it contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appro-
can be traversed, but on the contrary because it is priation is accomplished not so much by attention
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as by habit … This mode of appropriation, devel- The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply
oped with reference to architecture, in certain cir- render more precise what in any case was
cumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new
which face the human apparatus of perception at structural formations of the subject … Evidently a
the turning points of history cannot be solved by different nature opens itself to the camera than
optical means, that is by contemplation, alone.42 opens to the naked eye—if only because an
While Riegl contends that the haptic, lacking a sense unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for
of depth and distance, is by principle anti-spatial and a space consciously explored by man. Even if
therefore foreign to architecture, Benjamin, on the one has a general knowledge of the way people
contrary, defines it as inherently architectural. Even walk, one knows nothing of a person’s posture
though he also observes that in his time, it is film, during the fractional second of a stride. The act
and not architecture, which best develops the full of reaching for a lighter or spoon is familiar
potential embedded in the haptic mode of appro- routine, yet we hardly know what really goes on
priation. between hand and metal.45
In ‘Haptical Cinema’ (1995), Antonia Lant remarks Cinema breaks with the linear logic of perspective
that Benjamin performs an intriguing subversion of through the recourse of amplification. In doing so
Riegl’s theory in calling haptic or tactile a medium it promotes the intensification of the senses envi-
that in fact has ‘no actual tactile properties of its sioned by Rilke as a means to counter human suffer-
own’. For, as we know, the dark screen of the ing. It is perhaps counterintuitive to refer to this
cinema offers ‘no modulated surface to feel’.43 intensified mode of perception as a form of ‘distrac-
Yet, even if apparently lacking in materiality, such tion’, as Benjamin’s text suggests; but the use of this
a medium, being structured by a regime of visual term starts to make sense if we think, again with
nearness, is, according to Benjamin, still capable of Benjamin, that the haptic provides a shift from ‘a
promoting an effect that is essentially physical and space consciously explored by man’ towards ‘an
jolting, rather than contemplative and ‘auratic’. unconsciously penetrated space’. ‘Concentrated’,
Therefore, as Lant concludes, cinema is for the auratic perception communicates with our conscious
German-Jewish theorist ‘not fernsichtig but rather selves; ‘distraction’ seizes our unconscious.
nahsichtig’: not distant but close, not optic but In The Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and
haptic.44 Through the techniques of the close up Hearing (1953), Anton Ehrenzweig provides a scien-
and slow motion most notably, the camera appar- tific explanation for this. As he states, there exists a
atus simultaneously reproduces and amplifies our considerable amount of information that is assimi-
perceptual processes, providing access to an lated by our senses but that our brain is just not
unknown dimension of reality, and attuning our swift enough to process. Because the camera appar-
bodies to a more intense and nuanced way of per- atus magnifies our very process of seeing, it pos-
ceiving. As Benjamin writes: sesses a unique ability to account for the
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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
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Ana Araujo

perceptual surplus that our brain fails to take in. In its from one corner of our visual field to the other. Yet
capacity to alter our natural conditions of percep- consciously, we know nothing of this unconscious
tion, the technical apparatus of the film exposes storm of images. The objects in the external world
the gap between what we knowingly see and keep their ‘constant’ localization in a stable space.47
what we take in unconsciously. In order to conform to an illusionary picture of con-
The phenomenon of binocular parallax, theorised stancy, our consciousness needs to repress the out-
in the early nineteenth-century by the physiologist burst of visual information received by our senses.
Charles Wheatstone, provides a clear picture of the Wheatstone’s theory demonstrates that close-up
process of perceptual disposal magnified by the vision is significantly more prolific in producing
camera apparatus.46 It is founded on the self- excessive perceptual material than the distant
evident, though not conventionally acknowledged sight. For the nearer our eyes are to a given object
fact that, when confronted with an object or an or image, the greater the discrepancy between
image, each of the human eyes perceives it from a what each of them sees. Conversely, in faraway
slightly different angle, as a consequence of their vision, our optical axes are virtually parallel, implying
distinct position in the visual field. The ocular dis- that the pictures imprinted in each retina are in such
parity that results from this phenomenon remains, conditions not so dissimilar. Moreover, as micro-
however, largely unnoticed, meaning that a good scopic or other instrumentally magnified forms of
portion of what we visually absorb remains uncon- observation attest, vision in proximity is much more
scious. We have two eyes that are positioned in dis- sensible to oscillation than the naked-eye, distant
tinct locations of our face, but, perplexingly, our look, implying a more intense intake of different
brain mostly behaves as if we had only one, situated visual information in similar temporal intervals. This
in the centre. In addition to that, each time our eyes explains why the near sight feels often unstable
blink or shift, dependently or independently from and even physically demanding sometimes. For in
the rest of our bodies, they potentially produce a it, the phenomenon of binocular parallax becomes
slightly different picture of reality, increasing the particularly accentuated, forcing our brain to work
surplus of visual information that needs to be dis- harder to dispose of the surplus of information
carded in the name of visual stability. As Ehrenzweig that needs to be blocked off in our mind in order
enunciates: to sustain the false illusion that vision is stable,
When our eyes or our whole body move, as for centred and monocular.
instance in a railway train, the objects outside, in Even though it technically reproduces the mon-
reality stationary, often seem to move and indeed ocular (optic, fernsichtig), rather than the binocular
are moving on the retinal image. Something (haptic, nahsichtig) model of vision, the film appar-
similar, but far more violent and spasmodic, atus may nonetheless account for the surplus of per-
happens with every oscillation of our eye which ceptual material that we unwarily repress in the
sends the retinal images of the things tumbling process of seeing.48 Through its unique ability to
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manipulate time – as in slow motion for instance, Like a white sheet of drawing paper, to be filled
and space – as in the close up, the camera with rocks, trees, groves, mountains and extensive
manages to unpack the internal mechanisms of distances, landscape was a surface to be deco-
vision, exposing its inherent contradictions. rated. Details gave the landscape depth and
‘Modern cinematography can, to a certain extent, volume and provided it with character and visual
imitate the space-distorting movement of the eye interest. Details are thus crucial to the Picturesque;
by moving the film camera itself’, Ehrenzweig in fact, one could say that … they are the land-
observes. ‘The potent emotional effects of this cine- scape.51
matographic technique may be connected with their It is as if the picturesque garden was a spatial mate-
hidden relation to the unconscious storm of images rialisation of the fictional landscape of Seasons; a
in our retina’.49 Film directors have, since the birth of field composed of shifting perspectives resulting
this medium, explored the irrational potential from an overlaying of contrasting scales, viewpoints
embedded in the technical apparatus of the film and materials. Due to their disjunctive constitution,
camera. Remarkable in this register is, for example, picturesque gardens have often perplexed observers
the work by the English director Alfred Hitchcock, for their deceptive portrayal of size and distance, as
who extensively employed visual tricks addressing well as for their strong susceptibility to change: as if
the unconscious aspects of vision. Amongst such mimicking the instability of close-up vision. A ruin
tricks is, for instance, the custom of surreptitiously that, from a certain point of view, evoked the
inserting random frames into a coherent temporal image of a castle would from another angle turn
sequence—flashes of discontinuity to be glimpsed into a rough pile of stones; a lake could resemble
in the fraction of a second—as if alluding to the con- sometimes an ocean, sometimes a pond; a mountain
dition of instability implicated in binocular parallax. could perform as a material barrier or as an abstract
Likewise, many of Hitchcock’s films are famous for outline.52 The twentieth-century theorist Christo-
their uneven juxtaposition of foreground and back- pher Hussey claims that the picturesque aesthetic
ground, as if replicating the disparate conditions of enables ‘the imagination to form the habit of
perception of each different eye.50 feeling through the eyes’.53 It translates to the
Not many spatial constructs explore the sensorial scale of the landscape that condition of perception
surplus alluded to by Hitchcock in his films. A (haptic, Nahsicht) commonly associated to the min-
notable exception to this is the eighteenth-century iature. The picturesque ‘points to another world’,
English picturesque garden. Echoing the interpretation writes the architectural historian Katja Grillner.54 At
of the film Seasons proposed in the beginning of this the same time it enhances our senses it also com-
text, an important theorist of the picturesque, the prises an elusive, dreamlike dimension, reminiscent
Reverend William Gilpin, compared it to a ‘decorated of the perceptual surplus of our unconscious it
surface’. Reading Gilpin, Ann Bermingham writes: comes to rescue.
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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
out
Ana Araujo

Figure 4. Antonino
Cardillo, House of Dust,
Rome, Italy (2013;
photograph by
Antonino Cardillo):
source Antonino
Cardillo Archive.

To conclude this discussion, I will point to some as well as to other protuberant surfaces previously
aspects of a recently completed interior design illustrated here. The ceiling of the House of Dust is
scheme by the Sicilian architect Antonino Cardillo.55 haptic in the conventional sense Riegl understood
This is a project modest in size that nonetheless illus- this term: it communicates a strong sense of tactility;
trates well in my view how the dimension of the it calls for the near look, but then it blurs the vision.
haptic may be integrated to architecture. The work Dust also has a temporal dimension—the dimension
is entitled House of Dust, and it consists of a dom- of time passing, to be more precise—and this adds
estic space in the centre of Rome, Italy (Fig. 4). The to this ceiling a somewhat archaic feel.
intriguing title refers to the coarse texture applied Another notable feature of the House of Dust is a
to the ceiling of the living room, a rustic volume series of openings framed as arches: sometimes con-
made of brownish-yellow cement mixed with aggre- necting the rooms, sometimes acting simply as
gate, which in its materiality evokes the image of a cabinet doors (Figs 5, 6). In their proportion as well
cave or of a grotto in a picturesque garden. Dust as in their chromatic scale, these arches call to
is, of course, minuscule, and, alluding to it, the mind some religious paintings of the fourteenth
scheme relates to the miniature world of Seasons, century (Duccio and Giotto, more specifically). In
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The Journal
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Figure 5. Antonino
Cardillo, House of Dust,
Rome, Italy (2013;
photograph by
Antonino Cardillo:
source Antonino
Cardillo Archive).

Figure 6. Antonino
Cardillo, House of Dust,
Rome, Italy (2013;
photograph by
Antonino Cardillo:
source Antonino
Cardillo Archive).

their unlikely arrangement (for if they all led to differ- In connecting architecture to the realm of the
ent rooms those would be too small to be inhabited) haptic, both on a more tactile, micro scale (ceiling)
the arches follow a spatial logic akin to the one of and on a more visual, macro scale (arches), Cardillo’s
the picturesque garden. They trick your expec- architecture promotes the sensorial mobilisation
tations; they ‘point to another world’ (to the rep- envisioned by Benjamin as a potential force for
resentations in the fourteenth-century paintings, social/political transformation. It also responds to
for example; Cardillo also mentions ‘Alice in the Rilke’s call for an intensification of the senses as
Wonderland’ as an inspiration). They are, percep- the only possible antidote to human suffering and
tually, ‘excessive’: tenaciously repetitive; uncanny, violence. It is a hopeful piece that suggests that
almost. architecture still holds the power to awaken our
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Feeling through sight:

zooming in, zooming
out
Ana Araujo

senses and emotions for a deeper, more intimate 9. In ‘Savoir’, Cixous identifies myopia with the domain of
and fulfilling engagement with the world. unsafe, tactile vision. ‘Short-sighted’ people aren’t able
to see things from a distance and therefore they can
never see safely, she claims: ‘[a]s the myopic people
know, myopia has its shaky seat in judgment. It
Notes and references opens the reign of an eternal uncertainty that no pros-
1. Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘Letter to Princess Marie von Thurn thesis can dissipate.’ (Cixous, ‘Savoir’, op. cit., p. 6).
and Taxis Hohenlohe’ (6th September, 1905), quoted in Conversely, the myopic is more prone to train the eye
Gert Mattenklott, ‘Karl Blossfeldt—Photographs’, to look close and thus to develop a sensibility for the
p. 17, in Karl Blossfeldt: Art Forms in Nature (Munich, tactile properties of seeing. For more on myopic
Schirmer Art Books, 1999), pp. 13–27. vision and tactility, see also Amy Landesberg, Lisa Qua-
2. See Alois Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry (first published trale, ’see angel touch’, in, Debra Coleman, Elizabeth
1901), trsl., Rolf Winkes (Rome, Giorgio Bretschneider, Danze, Carol Henderson, eds, Architecture and Femin-
1985), pp. 19–20, 31. ism (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996),
3. See, for instance, Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: pp. 60–71.
Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film (New York, 10. Gaston Bachelard, Essai sur la Connaissance
Verso, 2002), p. 247. Approchée (Paris, Vrin, 1927), p. 257; see also
4. See Alois Riegl, ‘Late Roman or Oriental?’ (first pub- G. Didi-Huberman, La Peinture Incarnée, op. cit.,
lished 1902), trsl., Peter Wortsman, in, Gert Schiff, p. 52.
ed., German Essays on Art History (New York, Conti- 11. See H. Cixous, ‘Savoir’, op. cit., p. 9.
nuum, 1988), pp. 173–190; 188. 12. G. Bachelard, Essai sur la Connaissance Approchée, op.
5. The connection between the trompe l’oeil and close-up cit., p. 253.
vision is also discussed in Anton Ehrenzweig, The 13. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mech-
Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing: an intro- anical Reproduction’, pp. 235–236, in, Walter Benja-
duction to a theory of unconscious perception min, Illuminations, ed., Hannah Arendt, trsl., Harry
(London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), pp. 242– Zohn (London and Glasgow, Collins, 1973), pp. 219–
244. See also Georges Didi-Huberman, La Peinture 253 [emphasis mine].
Incarnée (Paris, Minuit, 1985), pp. 52–61. 14. Ibid., ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Repro-
6. See Georges Didi-Huberman, Phasmes: essais sur l’ap- duction’, pp. 224, 237.
parition (Paris, Minuit, 1998), p. 83. 15. G. Didi-Huberman, Phasmes, op. cit., p. 29. (Trans-
7. G. Didi-Huberman, La Peinture Incarnée, op. cit., p. 54. lation mine; in the original: ‘Cette inquietude prolifère
(Translation mine; in the original: ‘L’effet de pan serait par example, dans Un Chien Andalou, sous la forme
ainsi comme le rabattement panique du local sur le d’insectes qui ne sont plus un “point noir”, mais une
global, du detail sur le tout … l’envahissement ponc- multitude; qui ne sont plus immobiles au bord de
tuel et poignant, insensé, du detail’.) l’image, mais grouillent en son centre même; qui ne
8. See Hélène Cixous, ‘Savoir’, p. 9, in, Hélène Cixous, sont plus un simple jeu optique, mais une blessure
Jaques Derrida, Veils, trsl. Geoffrey Bennington (Stan- tactile, stigmate ouverte au beau milieu d’une main
ford, Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 1–16. crispée’.)
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The Journal
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16. See Linda Williams, ‘Corporealized Observers: Visual L’objet effleuré tend en effet à “s’évanouir”, tandis
Pornographies and the “Carnal Density of Vision”’, que la peau est ressentie comme quelque étrange tur-
pp. 3–21, in, Patrice Petro, Fugitive Images: From Pho- gescence hors de soi’.) The extract between quotation
tography to Video (Bloomington and Indianopolis, marks is from Paul Schilder, The Image and Appear-
Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 3–41. ance of the Human Body: Studies in the Constructive
17. Ibid., ‘Corporealized Observers’, p. 11. As she Energies of the Psyche (first published 1950; London,
acknowledges, the expression comes originally from Routledge, 2000), p. 85.
Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: on 27. P. Schilder, ibid., pp. 85–86.
vision and modernity in the nineteenth century (Cam- 28. See L. Williams, ‘Corporealized Observers’, op. cit.,
bridge and London, The MIT Press, 1990). pp. 6–13.
18. Ibid., ‘Corporealized Observers’, pp. 15; 11. 29. Jane Graves, ‘On Seeing Through Pattern: Glass and
19. A. Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, op. cit., pp. 24–25: the Lacanian Gaze’, p. 79, in, Ana Araujo, Jane
the dimension of the Nahsicht is referred to as ‘tactile’ Rendell, Jonathan Hill, ‘Pattern’, special issue of Haec-
in this translation of Riegl’s text. The term ‘haptic’ ceity Papers, vol. 3, issue 1 (Autumn, 2007), pp. 77–94.
appears only in the German edition of 1927, published 30. See Rosalind Krauss, ‘The /Cloud/’, in, Barbara Haskell,
posthumously, after Riegl’s lecture manuscripts. Here- ed., Agnes Martin (New York, Whitney Museum of
after I will privilege the use of ‘haptic’, to keep with American Art, 1992), pp. 155–166; 160.
the terminology used by most of Riegl’s contemporary 31. Alois Riegl, Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, trsl.,
commentators. See, for instance, A. Riegl, Late Roman Jaqueline Jung, first published 1966 (New York, Zone
Art Industry, op. cit., p. xv; G. Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, Books, 2004), pp. 218–219 [emphasis mine].
op. cit., p. 247; G. Didi-Huberman, La Peinture Incar- 32. Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland (first pub-
née, op. cit., p. 55. lished 1902), trs, Evelyn M. Kain, David Britt (Los
20. A. Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, op. cit., p. 21. Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 1999), p. 253
21. Ibid., p. 22. [emphasis mine].
22. Ibid., pp. 23–24. 33. As the Riegl states when contrasting Rembrandt’s
23. G. Didi-Huberman, La Peinture Incarnée, op. cit., p. 56. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (1632) with
(Translation mine; in the original: ‘le sense tactile … est Thomas de Keyser’s The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor
à la fois ce sans quoi la vision ne peut avoir lieu et ce qui Sebastian Egbertsz Vrij (1619), ‘the most important
fait l’eschaton de la vision, sa limite–mais aussi, et pour distinction between the two anatomy lessons con-
cela même … son télos: toucher serait comme la visée cerns not so much what the painting depicts but
(obsession ou phobie) de la vision’.) how things are depicted’: see A. Riegl, The Group
24. L. Williams, ‘Corporealized Observers’, op. cit., p. 11. Portraiture of Holland, op. cit., p. 257 [emphasis
25. Ibid., p. 15. mine].
26. G. Didi-Huberman, La Peinture Incarnée, op. cit., p. 56. 34. Margaret Olin, Forms of Representation in Alois Riegl’s
(Translation mine; in the original: ‘Le contact avec les Theory of Art (Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State
objets reserve lui aussi, paradoxelment, un brouillage University Press, 1992), p. 158.
des limites,–alors que toucher un objet, cela fait aussi 35. A. Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, op. cit.,
pour chercher l’exactitude des limites de notre corps. p. 109.
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Feeling through sight:

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Ana Araujo

36. Ibid., p. 110. 47. A. Ehrenzweig, The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision

37. Ibid., p. 111. and Hearing, op. cit., p. 186.
38. See M. Olin, Forms of Representation, op. cit., p. 158. 48. For a discussion on the monocular basis of the cine-
In The Sense of Order: a study in the psychology of matic apparatus, see J. Crary, Techniques of the Obser-
decorative art (Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1984), Ernst ver, op. cit., pp. 25–66.
Gombrich expresses a similar anxiety around the non- 49. A. Ehrenzweig, The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision
hierarchic composition of pattern: see especially and Hearing, op. cit., p. 187.
pp. 151–155. 50. See Dominique Païni, ‘Les Égarements du Regard’: À
39. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Propos des Transparences chez Hitchcock’, in, Domin-
Psycho-Analysis, ed., Jacques-Alain Miller, trsl., John ique Païni, Guy Cocheval, eds, Hitchcock et l’Art:
Forrester (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Coincidences Fatales (Milan, Gabriele Mazzotta,
1988), pp. 95–96. 2000), pp. 51–78.
40. Ibid., p. 96 [emphasis mine]. 51. Ann Bermingham, ‘The Picturesque and Ready-to-
41. The expression ‘ethics of attention’ is borrowed from Wear Femininity’, in, Stephen Copley, Peter Garside,
M. Olin, Forms of Representation, op. cit., pp. 155–161 eds, The Politics of the Picturesque: literature, land-
42. W. Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan- scape and aesthetics since 1770 (Cambridge, Cam-
ical Reproduction’, op. cit., pp. 241–242: Benjamin bridge University Press, 1994), pp. 81–119; 82
uses here the term ‘tactile’ in place of the ‘haptic’, [emphasis mine].
keeping with the terminology first used by Riegl (see 52. See, for instance, Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque:
Note 19 above). studies in a point of view (London and New York,
43. Antonia Lant, ‘Haptical Cinema’, in October, 74 G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927), pp. 121–123.
(Autumn, 1995), p. 47. 53. Ibid., p. 4.
44. Ibid., p. 69. 54. Katja Grillner, Ramble, Linger, and Gaze: dialogues
45. W. Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan- from the landscape garden (Stockholm, Royal Institute
ical Reproduction’, op. cit., pp. 238–239. of Technology, 2000), p. 119.
46. See J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, op. cit., p. 119. 55. See www.antoninocardillo.com.