The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing
Language: English
Published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: LEFT COAST BOOKS, Santa Maria, CA, U.S.A.LEFT COAST BOOKS
AbeBooks seller since May 3, 2004
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 9.57
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
271 pages, illustrations; 24 cm. Tight, clean copy. Dogeared a couple of times. Dust jacket with light edgewear. *** "At first it appears that nothing could be easier than seeing. We just focus our eyes and take in whatever is before us. This ability seems detached, efficient, and rational - as if the eyes are competent machines telling us everything about the world without distorting it in any way. But those ideas are just illusions, Elkins argues, and he suggests that seeing is undependable, inconsistent, and caught up in the threads of the unconscious. Blindness is not the opposite of vision, but its constant companion, and even the foundation of seeing itself. Elkins asks about objects that are too violent, too sexually charged, or too beautiful to look at directly. When we see a naked body, we either stare lasciviously or look away in embarrassment: in those moments our eyes are not ours to command. Bodies, Elkins says, are among the fundamental things that the eye seeks in every scene: when we are presented with something new, we first try to find a body, or the echoes of a body, and if we fail, our seeing becomes restless and nomadic. The same is true of things that are dead or inert. The world is full of objects that catch our eye, and that seem to have eyes of their own. The sun is an eye, perhaps the most powerful of all. It sees us as much as we see it, and when we stare at it, the sun stares back. Using drawings, paintings, diagrams, and photographs to illustrate his points, Elkins raises intriguing questions and offers astonishing perceptions about the nature of vision. Ultimately, he concludes, 'Seeing alters the thing that is seen and transforms the seer'--As this remarkable book will transform the viewpoints of all who read it." - Publisher. Size: 8vo.…
Seller Inventory # 105843
- Title
- The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing
- Author
- Elkins, James
- Publisher
- Simon & Schuster, New York
- Publication year
- 1996
- Condition
- Very Good
- Dust jacket
- Very Good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0684800950
- ISBN 13
- 9780684800950
- Edition
- 1st.
- Seller catalogs
- Aesthetics & Art Criticism, XO::Standard
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LEFT COAST BOOKS
Santa Maria, CA, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since May 3, 2004
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LEFT COAST BOOKS specialises in ART BOOKS, new & used, offering thousands of titles on painting, sculpture, graphic arts, architecture, design, photography, film, video & performance art. *** Simon Taylor, the business owner, was a NYC-based art critic and museum curator, who worked as Archivist for Dover Publications before launching Left Coast Books in 2003.
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LEFT COAST BOOKS
CA, U.S.A.
Simon Taylor
LEFT COAST BOOKS
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Santa Maria, California 93454
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