Embodied Visions: What Does It Mean to Look at a Work of Art?: Mit dem Körper sehen: Was bedeutet es, ein Kunstwerk zu betrachten?

by Siri Hustvedt

Art is not possible without the human capacity of reflective self-consciousness, and looking at a work of art always partakes of mirroring—one’s sense of another person’s intention in the object. With such a theme at its center, this work shows how the meanings created in the perception of art are not purely cognitive but bodily and creative. Additionally, this instructional work illustrates how perception is an active process that relies heavily on unconscious, learned motor-sensory abilities and a relation to space. Both making and appreciating art would be impossible without imaginative play, and this work explains how one inhabits the real world and occupies another: the land of pretend. This bilingual edition includes English and German.

Genres: Art

72 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2010

About the author

Hustvedt was born in Northfield, Minnesota. Her father Lloyd Hustvedt was a professor of Scandinavian literature, and her mother Ester Vegan emigrated from Norway at the age of thirty. She holds a B.A. in history from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University; her thesis on Charles Dickens was entitled Figures of Dust: A Reading of Our Mutual Friend.

Hustvedt has mainly made her name as a novelist, but she has also produced a book of poetry, and has had short stories and essays on various subjects published in (among others) The Art of the Essay, 1999, The Best American Short Stories 1990 and 1991, The Paris Review, Yale Review, and Modern Painters.

Like her husband Paul Auster, Hustvedt employs a use of repetitive themes or symbols throughout her work. Most notably the use of certain types of voyeurism, often linking objects of the dead to characters who are relative strangers to the deceased characters (most notable in various facits in her novels The Blindfold and The Enchantment of Lily Dahl) and the exploration of identity. She has also written essays on art history and theory (see "Essay collections") and painting and painters often appear in her fiction, most notably, perhaps, in her novel, What I Loved.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, writer Paul Auster, and their daughter, singer and actress Sophie Auster.