On Jonathan Crary’s Thought Of Visual Modernity

The thesis takes Jonathan Crary’s thought of visual modernity as the research issue,focusing on three historical stages: the early 19th century,the late 19 th century and the late 20 th century,exploring the modern transformation of vision in the evolution of visuality related to observers and attention issues.The thesis is divided into three parts except introduction and conclusion.The observer is the subject of the transformation and break of modern experience,which is shaped by the discourses,society,technologies and institutions in the specific historical period.In the 17 th and 18 th century,the camera obscura’s apparatus dominated the classical visual mode.Descartes,Locke and others excluded the perceptual function of physiological binoculus in the monocular mode of camera obscura,unified the perceptual space with the Eye of the Mind,and generated inner incorporeal observers.In the early 19 th century,the visual order dominated by the camera obscura was gradually denied.Goethe cancelled the division between the inner and outer space by color experiments,explored the necessary conditions of vision through the physiological color of the observer’s body,and advocated the generation of subjective vision.Schopenhauer combined with physiological theory to investigate the visual subject,and emphasized the meaning of visual autonomy through the pure perception without will.In Crary’s view,the possibility of subjective vision advocated by Goethe and Schopenhauer lies in the shift of the optical paradigm on which the camera obscura depends.Physiological optics represented by Muller transformed light perception into a dynamic process,canceled the stable reference point of the camera obscura,breaked the continuity,and enriched the source of vision.Vision no longer refered to fixed objects,began to have the potential to generate illusions and absent things.In the 19 th century,the breakthrough of the representational mode in vision technology mainly occurred in stereoscopes,which is independent of photography technology and different from the optical design for reproducing motion.Stereoscopes promoted the restudy of binocular disparity,transcended the traditional understanding of the unity of visual field,and advocated that vision and object were not the identical relationship,but the synchronous experience of differentiated images.Modern visual experience is closely related to the problem of attention and its perceptual synthesis.Crary selected modernist paintings represented by Manet,Seurat and Cezanne from 1970 s to 1990 s,and advocated that these artists intervened in the widespread problem of perceptual dissociation with different attentive practices and recreated a brand-new visual modes.Manet’s painting space presented a dissociative structure,but it constantly produced cohesive visual effects with elements such as the faces of the characters and the folds of clothes in the painting.The perceptual tension between the external space and the internal vision made the production of meaning a temporary process and stimulated the automation of perceptual experience.In Seurat’s painting,divisionist technique lied in revealing the non-self-sufficiency in the process of perceptual construction;breaking through the painting space of classical representational space,the reset of visual vanishing point showed that perception was constantly in a harmonious state of opposing experiences;in addition,Seurat integrated the theater structure at that time,trying to disassemble the attentive perception by parodying the illusion effect of the theater in his paintings,and creating an opportunity for the emergence of new perceptual experience.Cezanne’s paintings revealed the diversity of perceptual synthesis through double vision,in which the fracture of clarity and vagueness was mainly based on the difference of photosensitive ability in different areas of retina,indicating that the dynamic synthesis of vision is based on body;The visual memory traces and the novel experience of perceptual reception coexisted with the same intensity,removing the hierarchical order existing in the traditional perceptual synthesis ways;The removal of the stable position of the observing subject by the painting made the relationship between vision and the outside world more open and interactive.Spectacle constitutes the main dimension of Crary’s critique of visual modernity.Spectacle is based on the development of separation technology,especially the comprehensive promotion of electronic media,the technologies of image production and other technologies,which promotes the transformation of visual experience at different levels.The widespread popularity of TV indicated that the market had begun to occupy the private space-time experience that had not been eroded before.The imitation of the representational space made the vision virtual,which not only made the heterogeneous experience entering the screen homogeneous,but also reflected the control of spectacular power on the flowing experience.The technologies of computerized image production intervened in visual shaping from different dimensions.Digital images canceled the single-dimensional representation of television,and relied on mathematical operations to gradually get rid of the dependence on reality,and no longer produced certain significance and strong emotional reactions.The development of mixed media technology kept the vision in the adaptable stage,and gave birth to the modern experience with the pervasive and routine joylessness as the core.Spectacle power has achieved extreme control over vision,which is embodied in 24/7 and uninterrupted time control.At the end of the century,observers no longer have the ability to shut their eyes and focus on vision,and their imagination as a visual perception ability is destroyed,and visual erosion goes deep into the internal experience field from the visible world.Spectacular power is not pervasive.Crary tries to restore the possibility of perceptual experience through aesthetic practice such as art in the discussion of sleep and its metaphorical connotation.