Pleaures and knowledges of the eye: confessions of a sociologist who loves painting

Abstract

In this article his author discusses the growing sophistication, and multiplication of optical equipments (lenses, glasses, binoculars, spyglasses, magnifying glasses, etc.) that take place at the same time that the also growing development of the conceptual paraphernalia of theories of Esthetics, Linguistics, and Visual Arts Criticism. Both movements change the pleasure of looking, and the enjoyment of a painting. The author proposes that the world pleasure is to be taken verbatim since there are not magical glasses that allow us to look at a painting as though it were a concept. He builds up a descriptive model by expanding the platonic analysis of inner heterogeneity of pleasure to the artistic pleasure, with the aim of interpeting the experience that declares itself and is lived like an artistic experience as the result of a mix of heteregenous components, whose synthesis is impossible.