Skilled visions: ecologies of belonging and sensorial apprenticeship
I learned from Cristina that there is a way of SEEING for KNOWING that is highly specialized, practical, and that can be associated with an unexpected appreciation of beauty. As an anthropologist, Cristina is an expert in skilled visions and strongly believes these skills are developed through apprenticeship.
I was amazed by her demonstration: she presented how cattle breeders produced a highly sophisticated set of visual standards to evaluate the value of the cows, only based on looking at them. By SEEING, these experts KNOW. Cristina also read comments of cattle specialists using a beauty vocabulary to describe the bovines.
I would love that Cristina study the community of contemporary artists with the same anthropologic eye that she put on cow experts: Is there such a thing as a standardized and skilled artistic eye? How would it affect our taste? What would be the gold standard: the now consensual eye of Picasso for example (picture 1)? Are there a lot of cow expert deviants, who question the standardized definition of a nice or valuable cow (picture 2), as there are numerous painters who don't follow the flow? This could lead to a fascinating and controversial anthropology/art joint presentation at an upcoming conference on neuroesthetics.
I was amazed by her demonstration: she presented how cattle breeders produced a highly sophisticated set of visual standards to evaluate the value of the cows, only based on looking at them. By SEEING, these experts KNOW. Cristina also read comments of cattle specialists using a beauty vocabulary to describe the bovines.
I would love that Cristina study the community of contemporary artists with the same anthropologic eye that she put on cow experts: Is there such a thing as a standardized and skilled artistic eye? How would it affect our taste? What would be the gold standard: the now consensual eye of Picasso for example (picture 1)? Are there a lot of cow expert deviants, who question the standardized definition of a nice or valuable cow (picture 2), as there are numerous painters who don't follow the flow? This could lead to a fascinating and controversial anthropology/art joint presentation at an upcoming conference on neuroesthetics.
I also learned from Cristina that the process of developing skilled vision involves three steps: looking (technique of the body); learning how to look through apprenticeship; and developing a sensibility through repeated acts of looking. Therefore, I imagine apprenticeship could twist our brain to develop either a funny eye (to be able to appreciate picture 3), a prehistoric eye (picture 4), or a butcher eye (picture 5). It makes me reflect on the way art schools train the artistic eye. Wouldn't it be great if Cristina did an anthropological comparison between the set of visual standards developed by artists with an MFA background versus those with none for example?
Finally, if I apply the 3-step theory of Cristina to visual arts, it confirms that developing a visual artistic eye as a skilled vision, regardless of what it means in terms of taste, requires looking, looking, and looking. And practicing. Seen that way, Cezanne, who was known to take an average of 20 minutes between two brushstrokes in order to look again and again at the Montagne Sainte Victoire, had indeed a highly skilled visual eye!
This is part of a series of posts on the 11th International Conference on Neuroesthetics (September 2014).