The Invasive Eye, The Amusement of our Audiences And / or a Severe Case of Misplaced Identity

The Invasive Eye, The Amusement of our

Audiences

And / or

a Severe Case of Misplaced Identity

1

Natalie Nicolaides

K1129631

HA2501 Doing Research: Critical Approaches and Creative Practice

Kingston University London

To see and be seen.

Using historical facts and

psychoanalysis, in regards to the

Victorians, was the short-lived craze

of the eye miniature portraiture the

catalyst for the objectified gaze that

one finds in the photographic world?

Was this gaze borderline pornographic?

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“[…] And the raven, never flitting, still sitting, still is

sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber

Door

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is

Dreaming,

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on

The floor

Shall be lifted – nevermore!”

- Edgar Allen Poe

I chose to begin with a quote directly out of Edgar Allen Poe’s The

Raven as this is a poem about the evil and vicious stares that this

demonic, almost definitely metaphorical, bird advances towards its

subject. Sitting atop the door with a full view of the life the

subject leads it remains there, never interacting with the subjects’

life. There it stays on looking and judging as if a direct reference

to the Christian idea of the eye of God. The gaze is a phenomenon

that has haunted people for centuries, and will carry on to do so for

centuries to come. In the world in which we live nowadays we have

become accustomed to the ever-watchful eye of the ‘big brother’;

disguised as the state, in their ultimate bid to maintain utter

protection for their peoples through the uses of CCTV cameras,

webcams, mobile phones and even monitoring our movements via pin codes

and postcodes. In this essay I will be looking into the gaze

specifically through the means of eye miniature portraiture. I have

divided the essay into sections – each one to pull out the maximum

information required to argue my point of whether eye miniature

portraiture was the catalyst of the modern voyeur. I will first look

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into eye miniature portraiture as it was literally – as jewelry. I

will then move on to the gaze and try to dissect the history and the

hidden connotations behind eye miniature portraiture and why it caused

such a short lived craze among the elite classes. For research

purposes I have chosen to base my psychoanalytical side of this essay

around the Victorians, as eye miniature portraiture was a mere decade

away from the Victorian era and documentation from this era is vast.

I will look into the Victorian male and female in depth to justify the

creation of eye miniatures and why they needed such a breakthrough in

photography. Finally I will go into the reasons to why the phase of

eye miniature portraits may have died out and whether the eventual

invention of photography, and the beginnings of pornographic images

and gazes, may relate directly to the gaze produced by the eye

miniatures – I will look at whether the introduction of a mechanical

means of art production has somehow altered the notion of the somewhat

sublime to the perverse and what exactly divides the two.

WHAT ARE EYE MINIATURE PORTRAITS?

“Eye miniatures came into fashion at the end of the 18th century,”

(V&A.co.uk; 2012). A specific timeline is almost impossible to

target, as eye miniatures were still being create outside of its end

date. Regardless, the near official timeline is approximately around

the 1790s to the 1850s. However, it is certainly worth mentioning

that miniature portraiture’s origins span long before eye miniature

portraits and still span after its abandonment. “They seem to have

originated in France […]. They represented an extremely intense

manifestation of an already emotionally charged art, apparently an

attempt to capture ‘ the window of the soul’, the supposed reflection

of a persons most intimate thoughts and feelings. Often, […], the

result was a compelling piece of jewelry but sometimes the result was

merely an anatomical and unpleasing, or uncanny and disturbing,”

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(v&a.co.uk; 2012). For us in this day and age, we do not, and

probably will never, fully comprehend the ideas that went behind the

short-lived eye miniature portraiture fad. We have never known a

world without the recreation of images, as we find them everywhere we

go. In books, magazines, galleries, museums, online, as posters on

our walls on television sets and countless more places. We understand

the gaze as we are continuously producing and reproducing it. After

all, our societies are built on looks, “identity is connected with the

fateful appraisals made of oneself – by oneself and others. Everyone

presents himself to the others and to himself, and sees himself in the

mirrors of the judgments,” (Strauss, 1957). Essentially, the mere

idea of being looked at and looking on is something we live by and get

aroused by. In the 1800s, when eye miniature portraiture first began

to surface, one can only imagine the thrill its genesis produced.

The spectator had now become the victim of a solemn gaze perhaps not

explicitly erotic but definitely implicit. This is fully enforced by,

“the idea that an eye miniature, as a depiction of a point of view,

initiates a transformation of the spectator into a spectacle through

its fixating stare,” (Grootenboer, 2006). It is worth mentioning at

this point however that a fifth in all eye miniature portraits were

mourning pieces.

The first known British eye miniature portrait was that of the Prince

of Wales which was given to the love of his life Mrs. Fitzherbert in

1785. Mrs. Fitzherbert was a widow at the time that the Price was

showing his interest. He was soon told to forget such an affair by

his father, the King. She then eloped, so as to wear out the Prince’s

advances, however she found herself needing to return at once to marry

him once she received his small gift mounted on a locket. She then

had one painted of her own eye and presented that to her Prince (Fig.

1). Their marriage was kept secret, without a wedding ring that’s to

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say, and these mementoes were their only form of proof of their

affiliation. There were then stories of how they paraded around at

the opera, still secretly married, showing off their new jewelry of

their dearest miniature eye portraits. Such activities have since

been, “coined the term “gazing games” to describe a social network of

looking,” (Grootenboer, 2006).

(Fig.1: Richard Cosway, ‘The Eye of Mrs. Fitzherbert,’ Ca. 1786)

EYE MINIATURE PORTRAITURE AND ITS CASING

From the conception of the eye miniature portraiture, the great task

was the ability to conceal these ‘lovers’ eyes’, and the best-found

way was to hide them within the shells of [at that time] modern

jewelry. It seemed only natural, as, “the 18th century was not only

the Age of Reason but also the Age of Pleasure,” (oxfordartonline.com;

2012). They were mounted on rings, brooches, lockets, necklaces and

bracelets all of which were pieces, which were made to match, “a

colourful time in dress,” (Armstrong, 1976). Held within the confines

of such jewelry, these lovers’ eyes were safe from public sight yet

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their presence still pounded on the recipients’ heart as a memorial of

the love once felt but now somehow intangible either through the long

lost lover or the deceased one. “So often Victorian jewelry [such as

these lovers’ eyes] is a lost link with a half-remembered past, far

too dear for money to buy or insurance payments to replace, a tangible

and often beautiful reminder of someone deeply loved,” (Armstrong,

1976).

Despite the fact that eye miniature portraits were displayed on

numerous forms of jewelry from rings to bracelets and snuffboxes it

was mostly laid inside the clasp of the locket. “Lockets pandered to

the sentimental side of the Victorians. […] They were much handled

too, examined by friends, inspected by older relatives, opened and

closed regularly to show anything which nestled inside – pearls or

hair or a portrait,” (Armstrong, 1976). They were the perfect hiding

place for such a precious art piece. These art pieces were usually

painted with watercolours on ivory, which was a relatively new

phenomenon as the background was only changed to ivory in the 1720’s

from thin vellum, but they have also been known to be painted with

gouache on board. “The decorative frame in which an eye painting was

usually set – made of gold and encrusted with pearls or other precious

stones – transforms the tiny painting into a jewel,” (Grootenboer,

2006). However, “the accent was almost more on the reliquary or

portrait than the jeweled case, for the whole purpose of this case was

both to protect the treasure within and yet give it its due respect

[…] because they were reflecting back your most treasured possession –

your soul,” (Armstrong, 1976), or in the context of eye miniature

portraiture, the soul of your loved one. A decade later from the

first sighting of the eye miniature portrait, “lockets had become

large and heavy, made from gold, silver or pinch beck, with small

photographs of loved ones placed inside and protected by glass,

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instead of the beautifully painted (but expensive) miniatures on

ivory,” (Armstrong, 1976). This brings the end of the short era of the

painted eye miniature portraits, which had now been replaced by

mechanically produced images.

THE PREDECESSORS

Like all objects in the art realm, even eye miniature portraiture has

several predecessors one is named a Cameo. Cameo’s were directly

taken form ancient Greece and Roman culture. It is the carved

portraits that one usually finds in antique shops. The busts of

people often carved into a white stone, but also in other materials,

to give a raised relief image (Fig.2). However, unlike eye miniature

portraits, “Cameos are still being made today [but] almost entirely

[dependent] by the amount of gold or gemstones in the mounts,”

(Armstrong, 1976).

(Fig. 2: Jasper cameo of Medusa by Benedetto Pistrucci, mounted by Carlo Giuliano in gold with

enamel, c. 1840)

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The most famous, however, of the predecessors is miniature portraiture

(fig.3). Miniature portraiture, which was more of a three quarter

portrait of a person, is dated as far back as the 1520s and where

first sighted in French and English courts (vam.co.uk). However

similar eye miniature portraiture and miniature portraiture are there

is a fundamental difference between the two, “An eye miniature can

never serve as substitute for an absent loved one in the same way that

a portrait miniature can. […] The small likeness could be superior,

one might say, to the sitter in the sense that the owner could look at

or touch the likeness when it was impossible to even catch a glimpse

of the original. […] An eye picture will always fail to make its

sitter present […] because it is unable to serve as a stand-in,”

(Grootenboer, 2006).

(Fig.3: Lens, Bernard. Miss Elizabeth Weld. Ca. 1720)

THE GAZE AND A SENSE OF VOYEURISM IN EYE MINIATURE PORTRAITS

“[…] the painted eye is not a synecdoche; it does not metonymically

represent the whole face, and to go further, does not stand in for a

loved one’s face, and not even for his or her eye. Rather, it stands

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in for his or her gaze,” (Grootenboer, 2006). As a major visible

factor of eye miniature portraiture, I will first immerse us into the

theories of the eye and what exactly we need as an audience, as a

spectator, and as an onlooker through the approach of psychoanalysis.

In psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud was first to attack humanity’s need

to look. He later named this concept of the pleasure of looking as

scopophilia, which is alternatively known as the act of voyeurism.

“Freud commented on the impure pleasures of looking, observing that

vision is always implicated in a system of control,” (Linker, 1990);

alternatively, the one who produces the gaze is the one who is in

control. However, it is Jacques Lacan who truly dives in deep into

the actions and habits that a young human goes through as a child

specifically through discovering its identity and in extension how it

perceives and looks out onto the world. He speaks of desire and needs

and how we deal with our desires to fulfill it. “For example, Lacan

saw the mirror phase – the moment when a child recognises and

idealises itself in its reflection – as a meaningful visual act that

is key to an individual’s psychological development,” (Sturken,

Cartwright; 2001).

“In the intimacy of the exchange the eye picture becomes a sign of

desire that may be defined as the other’s desire to see you,”

(Grootenboer, 2006). But what is desire anyway? The direct

definition for desire however, as realized through Lacan’s writings,

is as follows: “Desire is another word for ‘lack’, for something that

is missing: the object of desire,” (Hill, 1997). Alas, can we

therefore conclude that our desires would never become actuality and

yet as humans we continue to strive for them, as we foolishly believe

in hope? Yes, this is what makes us human. This is what identifies

us. And when we, within ourselves, cannot satisfy our desires and

cravings for love especially since, “love is inexhaustible, because

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its object cannot be grasped,” (Hill, 1997), we then look outwards on

to the world in the hope that something out there will be the cure to

our itch. We chase after the ultimate desire – to fully comprehend

oneself through the usage of fantasy. The fantasy of being a more

successful person than we really are, the fantasy of becoming lovers

with an unattainable lover and the fantasy as a child to crawl back

into our mothers womb; “the most important function of fantasy is to

help keep desire going,” (Hill, 1997). We identify ourselves through

our desires. We constantly pass between the inner self and the outer

self in our attempt to identify ourselves. The gaze plays a major

role within this series of inner and outer self-studies. However, the

gaze has now become victimized and now is mainly considered to be a

negative notion. For instance, it is not ‘politically correct’ for us

to stare at objects or other people as it ‘gives off’ a sexual feel to

the object we set our gaze upon; however there truly are some people

who do sexually objectify objects. There is an art of seeing named

analytical looking (Huxley, 1982). The instructions for such looking

are as follows: “do not stare; stop trying to see all parts of the

object equally clearly at the same time. Instead, deliberately tell

yourself to see it piece-meal, sensing and perceiving, one at a time,

all the more significant parts of which it is composed,” (Huxley,

1982), rip apart the object with ones eyes defining what it is that

has your attention. Your desire lies there between ones desire to see

and ones fantasy of what one could do with the perceived object once

(or if ever) obtained. “By peering outward – the only act that occurs

in these paintings – the tiny eye creates a situation in which the

beholder has no choice but to subject himself or herself to the

painted gaze, and such a submission is expected. Thus watched by a

painted eye, the beholder can imagine himself or herself seen by the

absent beloved, posing, as it were, as he or she would like to be

seen,” (Grootenboer, 2006).

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IMPLICIT OR EXPLICIT?

Despite the fact that a large percentage of these eye miniature

portraits were made as mourning jewels the remainder of the percentage

functioned, “as a surrogate in the void left by the lover’s absence

[…],” (Grootenboer, 2006). Baring this ‘void’ in mind can we say that

eye miniature portraits can possibly be defined as an erotic piece?

Erotic art is defined on oxford art online as, “art with a sexual

content, and especially to art that celebrates human sexuality,”

(2013). And I ponder, what are the gazes depicted by the eye

miniatures if not a sexual gaze? It aims to possess the observer and

at the same time become the observed. They act as a replacement gazer

when the person is no longer available and as a trait of human kind we

must admit that voyeurism suffers from a poor reputation also.

Despite what many people think it means (a person who gains sexual

pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual

activity), it is also defined as, not entirely sexual but merely

watching people in situations considered that of a private manner. I

shall return to this concept later in more detail.

“I want us to watch, to gaze, to see, to stare at the moment, every

moment, silently and hidden, openly and bravely and in turn to be

indicted by and participate in what we see,” (Ledbetter, 2012).

Like all objects in the art realm, the successor of the painted eye

miniature portraits was photography. It took the place of the eye

miniature portraiture inside the lockets of loved ones and has since

not moved. “Photography has been the voyeur’s stand-in from the

beginning of the medium,” (Phillips, 2010). Can we not therefore say

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that its predecessor too was a stand-in for the onlooker and also a

means of sexual arousal for its subject? Thus, let’s bring fourth the

notion of the pornographic gaze. The most notable differences between

the pornographic and such small frail objects of jewelry is that

indeed, pornography is on the borders of sexual voyeurism but eye

miniature portraits are much more personal and ride deeper into the

emotions of its receipitant whereas pornography, “tends to be more

mechanistic, even clinical; it lacks the sense that we are invading a

person’s privacy, even though, in some cases, there are the trappings

of the personal,” (Phillips, 2010). When someone takes the time and

patience to enclose his or her eye within an invaluable piece of stone

bares no resemblance to the more obscene eye we take on whilst

observing something of an ‘intimate’ nature.

The Victorians where no stranger to images of an indecent manner.

“[…] Pictures of nudity were often designated academies, models for

artists’ use, as a cover for soft pornography and a way to elude

censorship. These pictures appropriate the iconography of the nude in

painting, from Titian and Velazquez to Ingres and Delacroix,”

(Phillips, 2010). The Victorians also needed to see. They hid their

scopophilia they endured yet there were enough people of the same

desire to create a place where their imaginations and fantasies could

dwell in (fig. 4).

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(Fig.4: Hacker, Arthur. Work 143, ca. 1901)

But why now all of a sudden people of that era had the desire to see

to fantasize about objects and lovers they could never truly get to?

“At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was

still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of

secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done

without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the

illicit […] it was a period when bodies “made a display of

themselves,”” (Foucault, 1976). But alas, such a time soon hid back

into the darkness and, “sexuality was carefully confined; it moved

into the home. […] The conjugal family took custody of it and

absorbed it into the serious function of reproduction. On the subject

of sex, silence became the rule,” (Foucault, 1976). Baring this in

mind let’s return to the notion of desire as approached by Lacan.

REPRESSION AND EXPRESSION

When one cannot fulfill their desires one represses. The more one

tries to hide their desires, from public or even from oneself; the

desire will always find a language to express itself often through the

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use of signifiers. “Signifiers are public, communal property, not

belonging to any one individual but to all who use them,” (Hill,

1997). Can we not now apply this formulaic statement to the spaces of

a gallery or a museum where all those infamous female nudes reside?

One finds pleasure in the mere observation – we enjoy feeling their

image roll off the back of their iris’ and onto their retina. Too

much repression, like too little repression, is problematic. ‘Trauma’

is the name for the excess of repression and is defined as a truly

distressing or disturbing experience. Applying this idea one can dare

to say that the desire for a more sexual expression after all this

sexual repression was overwhelming for Victorians. They no longer

wanted to merely procreate; they wanted to project themselves onto the

world free of all bounds especially in the sexual arena. Being

sexually liberated was the object of their desire. They wanted to

defy the written rules of expression of sexuality. Repression

continued as they found themselves wanting. The needed to speak of

their desires and, “because language is the privileged expression of

desire,” (Hill, 1997), they continued on into their lives sometimes

without the possibility of expressing their desires to an audience.

They had become a slave to their repressed desires. This is perhaps

the invention of photography was a (naughty) blessing and a form of

release for them and in the context of eye miniatures, men were able

to translate their sexuality and desires by producing and gifting such

a precious piece of jewelry to their admirers.

Up to now I have been writing strictly baring men in mind, as men

where the mostly the subjects of such eye paintings – or at least

without a specific gender in mind but presumably the male gender as

the texts I have been quoting are almost all men and only apply their

formulae to the same species. And like the pornography, it is usually

women who are objectified and consumed by men as women are known for

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suffering to what John Berger refers to as a women’s need, “to-be-

looked-at,” (Berger, 1972). “Indeed, the underlying theme that women

had to appeal to men turned modesty into a sexual ploy, emphasizing

women’s sex objectification,” (Cott, 1978). However, It would only

seem fair now to recognize the female role within the context of eye

miniature portraits as they where the ones most prone to wear them

along with their dress – often masked as jewelry as previously

examined – and not necessarily as the objectified subject but more of

the objectify-er. Circling around this point, can we say that it is

not true that women of that era suffered from passionlessness?

Passionlessness is defined as a lack in women’s, “sexual

aggressiveness, that their sexual appetites contributed a very minor

part (if any at all) to their motivations, that lustfulness was simply

uncharacteristic,” (Cott, 1978). One reason why this would be a

symptom of the time is that religion was a strong in such times. “[…]

the ideology of passionlessness was tied to the rise of the

evangelical religion between the 1790s and the 1830s,” (Cott, 1978).

This subsequently coincides with the time span of the craze I speak of

– eye miniature portraiture. One should not take this word to be set

in stone though, as, “desire is desire for difference,” (Hill, 1997),

which is to say, women by nature are animals with needs – just as men

are. This sudden empowerment of underestimation is what may have

caused this sudden demand in eye miniature portraits, women knew that

they could not express themselves sexually but they will always have

that hidden eye of their lover. And so the fantasies begin. “Fantasy

interested me, as well, female fantasies, and how they may involve

things women don’t even talk about among themselves. I think I’m

still interested in that. When women fantasise about being held down

and made to fuck, it’s about not wanting to take responsibility for

desire. In a society where sexual desire is so repressed, it makes

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sense. For men, it’s easier to find an outlet for sexual desire […],”

(Gordon, 1993). Women want to be objectified by men. They also feel

the need to release their sexual desire through men and not simply

because the release of multiple sexual desires are social taboo - even

nowadays, which is to say, alas, women need men to fantasise about

them so they can fantasise about men. Almost like a vicious carnal

circle. It seems unjust that women were subjectified to such taboos

and such sexual repression – and as previously looked at it was not

simply a woe for women. However, it was not unheard of that as wives

they felt no obligation to be the mother and housekeeper as well as

their husbands method of sexual release and so it was the husbands

business to find this sexual release with courtesans. “As a matter of

public knowledge, […] large numbers of Victorian middle-class men will

have had mistresses – who were courtesans. It further assumes that

the Victorian wife will not have sexual desires […]” (Marcus, 1966).

Women were homebound, “the best mothers, wives, and managers of

households, know little or nothing of sexual indulgences. Love of

home, children, and domestic duties, are the only passions they feel,”

(Marcus, 1966). This presumably was a very unsatisfactory position

for their wives. It didn't make them feel aroused and perhaps, even

the women didn't want their partners aroused by them, was this not

considered part of their marital duties? It would seem not, but it

would be wrong to say that women of the time did not need sexual

gratification also. Perhaps this is where their thrill laid, with the

clasps of their lockets enclosing an illicit partner. In regards to

these early Victorians – and in extension for all men and women – are

we all as independent as we are dependent on other people to liberate

us sexually? “The desire to grasp and be united with another human

body is so fundamental a part of our nature […],” (Nead, 1993). In

this retrospect, we will always need two to make our world turn.

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EROTIC CULTURE VERSUS THE PORNOGRAPHIC CULTURE

Now lets dig into the borderlines, which divide eye miniatures as an

art form of the sublime to that of the perverse. “The opposition of

art and pornography, or the aesthetic and the obscene, is one which

has structured much […] cultural discourse,” (Nead, 1993). In such a

delicate time social culture was of great importance. Bourdieu’s

understanding of the legitimate cultural significance surrounding

erotic art are as follows: “the cultural sphere is maintained by the

evacuation of vulgar, coarse and venal pleasures and the assertion of

pure, disinterested and sublimated ones. […] those who are satisfied

by purified pleasures are assured social superiority; cultural

consumption thus fulfills the function of legitimating social

differences,” (Nead, 1993). Society splits the pure from the impure

in such conditions. In regards to women, eighteenth century women,

there was no space to be impure especially in social circles. But

what is truly the line that differs the erotic from the pornographic?

Pornography is made to be mass produced and mass consumed. It is the

great indecent success that many producers of such work dwell in. Its

only purpose it to produce a feeling of somatic euphoria. Whereas,

erotic art lacks this need of production for the mass media. It is a

much more private but perhaps not a more innocent form. Its roots are

based in love. Erotica is the Greek translation for Eros, which

directly translates as love. THIS is what makes eye miniature

portraits not pornographic even if it is implicit. They were NOT mass

consumed, in fact a very little amount remain in the world today. It

was a private form of euphoria. “Erotic art legitimizes the

representation of the sexual through the assertion of form which holds

off the collapse into the pornographic. Erotic art takes the viewer

to the frontier of legitimate culture; it allows the viewer to be

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aroused but within the purified, contemplative mode of high culture,”

(Nead, 1993). Either way they are bound by one very similar notion,

they both provoke, “the desire for sexuality,” (Wicke, 1993). Erotic

art and pornography are conjoined by their aim: “pornography is both

the object and the subject of desire, the representation and the

reader, the consumer and the consumed, in one inextricable package,”

(Wicke, 1993). “A gazing eye, or rather the return of the beholder’s

gaze, is the sole event of the painting. The eye miniature’s subject

matter, in fact, is intimate vision,” (Grootenboer, 2006).

Henceforth, we can assume that they are just as similar as they are

different yet there is a hair of audience and content which divides

them.

THE SUCCESSOR AND CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE

Like all objects in the art realm, the successor of the painted eye

miniature portraits was photography. In the 1830s, photography made

its debut. If we are to place this on our mental timeline, the debut

of photography ran right over the age of eye paintings but was at a

noticeable distance away from the extinction of eye miniature

portraits. By this I mean that, there photography loomed over the

remaining pieces of eye miniature portraiture to make its move and

subsequently throw the audiences into the new simple medium of image

reproduction and subsequently bring into the world photographs of a

new type of voyeuristic manner. Indeed, photography has now become as

easy as a tap on a screen. Anybody anywhere and any moment could be

looking on to you and documenting you. The gaze now means a

tremendous amount of things as we are now part of a very visual nature

unlike the lives lived by those in the Victorian times. We are now

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used to objectifying and somewhere in the space of all this visual

culture we find such small eye miniature portraits of no great

significance. This is almost a crime in the making. And what is the

difference between photographs and paintings in general? According to

Baudrillard, “photography […] enables a technical perfection of the

gaze (through the lens) which can protect the object from aesthetic

transfiguration,” (trans. 2000), whereas a painted image is purely

subjective and as such the gaze is how the artist or painter perceives

it. Through photography we only see what the lens sees however in a

painted image we see what the eyes of the artist has translated for us

to see. If I were to apply this notion to the eye miniature paintings

I may have just buried my subject matter however that's an entire

other discourse. Either way, the factor still remains, the gaze is

there to observe regardless of what form it is taken with be it a

mechanical means or a painterly means.

In contemporary culture the gaze still haunts people. This is evident

even in the works of Barbara Kruger from the 1980s (fig. 5). This

particular works context is that of the feminist movement of the 1970s

and reached out until the 1990s. Again we can see a woman, who has

fallen victim to the gaze of (presumably) men. Symbolically this

image is almost referring to the gaze of the mythological character

known as Medusa, whom used to turn men to stone once she set her eyes

upon them. It would appear that we have not moved far from the idea

that women desire to be gazed upon – and so the circle continues to

spin.

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(Fig. 5. Kruger, Barbara. Untitled (Your Gaze Hits The Side Of My Face Ca. 1981)

There is one last work that I will mention for the sake of eye

paintings. The work of pop surrealist painter Mark Ryden. His works

are much more contemporary to that of Ms. Kruger expect his truly hits

upon the notion of eye portraits (Fig.6). In this painting (on wood)

he paints a solemn eye with its gaze securely fixed upon you. This

image almost acts as a warning especially relevant to modern times as

we desperately try to maintain our rainforests. It seems menacing and

threatening almost as if it is genuinely saying ‘I’m watching you’.

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(Fig. 6. Ryden, Mark. Redwood Spirit 2 ca. 2006)

TO CONCLUDE

Power was the key factor behind this short-lived art craze. The power

to behold and be beheld. One cannot simply go into the little know

arena of eye miniature portraiture without moving behind it to pull

apart the connotations that surround it. Despite all the

information, that may not seem directly attached to the subject matter

but which you, as a reader, have had to endure for the many pages, I

believe that all these partitioned texts provide a look into the

subculture of the eye miniature portraits that they desperately

needed. In the many texts I have read surrounding them, I don’t

believe the discourse between whether they are classified as erotic

art or not have come up at any point. But why? Where the people of

these eras too pure for such notions? After such a large essay

dedicated to them, I would say that they were definitely not. I do

now believe that the genesis of eye miniature portraits played an

important subtle role to how we now receive and produce the gaze.

Unfortunately, it may not have affected my generation or future

generations as we are growing in a very visual world however, it was

important for the generation whom welcomed the invention of the camera

and photography. “In accordance with the horizon of expectations

created by the painted eye, the spectator-turned-spectacle initiates a

transformation into an image. Apparently, in this prephotographic

era, there existed a manner of performance before a gaze that could

not see that is uncannily similar to the behavior of sitters before

the non seeing eye of the camera,” (Grootenboer, 2006). The gaze that

one needed to be subjected to by the eye miniature paintings can be

22

seen as a stepping-stone for the manner required posing for a

photograph. Does this not validate my point?

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Cosway. (1786).‘The Eye of Mrs. Fitzherbert,’ Private Collection.

Hacker, Arthur. (1901). ‘Work 143.’ [Oil on Canvas] 127.7 x 130cm.

Exhibited at: Tate Britain, 1 November 2001 – 27 January 2002

Jasper cameo of Medusa by Benedetto Pistrucci, mounted by Carlo

Giuliano in gold with enamel, 53 mm, c. 1840 (New York, Metropolitan

Museum of Art, Purchase, Assunta Sommella Peluso, Ada Peluso, and

Romano I. Peluso Gift, in memory of Ignazio Peluso, 2003, Accession

ID: 2003.431); image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Kruger, Barbara. (1981). ‘Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My

Face).’ [Photograph] 60” x 40”. Collection Vijak Mahdavi and

Bernardo Nadal-Ginard.

Lens, Bernard. (1720). ‘Miss Elizabeth Weld’. [Watercolour on Ivory]

72mm x 62mm. Permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum

London.

Ryden, Mark. (2006). ‘Redwood Spirit 2’. [Oil on slab] 10” x 10.5

“.

23

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