Viewing as touching

I have to admit, I really enjoy the Harvard Divinity School bulletin. Yes, I get it because I’m an alum, but it makes me proud to claim that status because the magazine is always full of really excellent pieces. This time around there’s a review of an exhibit that’s written by Margaret Miles, and in it she makes some comments about “viewing” and images:

What difference does it make whether one sees Shinjo Ito's work as art or as religious images? How does a religious viewing differ from a viewing of an artwork? In devotional looking, the viewer expects to be shaped by her engagement with the sacred object. She expects, not to be entertained or to analyze, but to be acted upon, and to participate in a conversation with the image. The devotee expects the object to affect him at the level of feeling, even though he may not be able to articulate precisely how that occurs or to name the feeling that is evoked. Plato described vision as a kind of touch. Vision occurs, he said, when a stream of light, a visual ray, proceeds from the eye and touches an object. This ray is generated from the same fire that animates and warms the body, a fire that is at its most intense and concentrated in the eye.3 Moreover, the visual ray is a two-way street; as it touches an object, the object moves back up the ray into the eye and imprints itself on the viewer's memory. In the act of vision, the worshiper is connected to the sacred figure through the visual ray.

Museums and exhibitions almost always prohibit viewers from touching the art. But, according to the visual ray theory, seeing is touching—a kind of touch that does not change or harm its object. In fact, although visual ray theory has long ago been superseded by theories of vision that are more accurate physiologically, it nevertheless describes to perfection the act of religious viewing. It pictures a two-way street that connects viewer and object, a space in which the viewer communicates with the object and, in turn, receives the message the object represents and embodies.</blockquote>