Perception Discussion- April 1 2009

To begin last night’s session we reviewed Cezanne’s paintings and the significance of his works to phenomenologist. Besides it being a French thing, Merleau-Ponty admired Cezanne for painting reality as he saw it in his mind and not as one would see it in a photograph. Cezanne would change angles and dimensions to have them make sense to his reality, he was among the first of impressionist to do this. Cezanne also used geometrical shapes and symmetry for the base of his paintings. The conversation then proceeded into perception and how it matters. Why does perception matter? Don’t we all see the same thing? Scott used the example of driving down the highway. Everyone driving down the highway must perceive the same thing or we’d all crash. This is a example. Yes. All of them see the road, the painted lines, the cars nearby; however everyone is acting in a different circumstance. Take for example a woman who just received terrible news. She is frantic and upset, emotionally displaced. And she is driving down this highway with little focus on her surroundings. Perception is distorted due to the circumstance of emotional conflict. She is less aware of her surroundings; her reactionary time will be delayed due to her focus being elsewhere. So it’s not just about the act of perceiving but rather how we react to what we perceive. And the woman’s emotional circumstance can applied to everyone else on that highway. Each human is equipped with their own concept of meaning. All things perceived lead to a meaning.

Just the same Tim asked, “was Cezanne trying to say something through his paintings” and “how would we know”… we don’t. Art is unique in that it leaves the door open for interpretation. we applied the example of Cezanne’s still life of the apples. Say that when you were a child you had apples thrown at you by the neighborhood kids. Staring at Cezanne’s apples would generate anxiety which stemmed from your fear of apples. Now say you had vivid memories of picking apples with your grandmother every autumn Cezanne’s apples might bring you peace and clarity. In both circumstances we apply our own meaning to Cezanne’s apples. Again we only know meaning through perception. We know it because we have lived it. This then led us to photographs. Ryan state that “photographs are objective”. Interesting thought… but we apply meaning to the photograph making it subjective. And how we perceive a photo now isn’t going to be the same as when we perceived it 10 years ago. Why? Because we have more empirical knowledge. Scott gave the example of a picture of the world trade center. He said on September 10, 2001 he would look at the towers as two buildings, two really big buildings…but after September 11, 2001 when the buildings crash to the ground the photo takes on a whole new meaning. Why? Because of the events that took place between September 10^th and September 11^th.

to be continued...