“Historia y arte de la mirada”. Mark Cousins Takes Up the Baton from John Berger
Published in October 2018, the book by the film director and writer has already become a reference essay within the art world. Cinema, painting, sculpture, photography and science flow through its pages, creating a text as interesting as it is revealing.
Cover of the book Historia y Arte de la Mirada. Editorial Pasado y Presente, 2018. Translation by Gonzalo Ponton.
“About three years ago, after I was given a DNA test, I was told I had a high chance of developing macular degeneration, an illness that can leave you blind when you reach your sixties. It was then that I decided to write a celebration of looking, which would end up becoming this volume.” This is how Mark Cousins recounted the origin of this great essay, which takes up the baton from John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing and offers a commented journey through the history of the human gaze. Of what the gaze captures, wants to capture or believes it captures. Of what a simple gaze seeks, achieves and unleashes. The essay, a complete and ambitious volume, has been described by The Observer as “A revelatory history of human observation; an indispensable reference book”. Cousins, film director and essayist, uses these pages to convey the importance of “knowing how to look” and considers visual culture as the universal language par excellence.
The Irish film director and essayist Mark Cousins, at the Seville Film Festival 2019
The text traces the evolution of the human gaze. From the most ancient civilizations to the screens that today accompany us everywhere; from Greek sculpture to Pokemon Go!. And, as could not be otherwise, in its pages several references appear to John Berger’s essential text. However, there is something fundamental that distinguishes the points of view of the two writers: while Berger used his essay Ways of Seeing as a warning against the manipulation of the gaze (and of what is looked at), Cousins exalts it as a celebration, a stroke of luck. The pages of the essay contain visual examples that are essential to understanding how, according to the writer, the perception of reality through the gaze changes over time. With free and often transgressive writing, magnificently captured by Gonzalo Ponton’s translation, the text dazzles, surprises and reveals in equal measure. Thus, Historia y arte de la mirada is an essential book that goes far beyond a mere examination of the visual: it is a reference volume that investigates what we are, through what, how and why… we look.
Historia y arte de la mirada available on Amazon
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