‘Seeing and Being-Seen’:

In the second section of ‘Eye and Mind’ Merleau-Ponty describes what goes on in the act of making paintings – an intertwining of body and world that also serves as the model for perception in general. There are a number of ways of understanding this process of intertwining, all of which involve notions of mutual exchange. One idea is that of ‘material displacement’ between the body of the artist and the medium of expression, in other words: “It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings.” (1964, p. 162) One could therefore argue that whether or not a painting takes on a recognisable resemblance to objects in the world, it will always contain some reference to the body of the artist who made it, implied by the traces of the movements involved in its construction.

Another way of understanding…