Windows as Subject
Beyond the obvious framing, light source, and voyeur metaphor, windows figure often as art subjects in themselves for a variety of reasons.
They are, as any symbol, conveyers and containers of opposites, vital emotional opposites. They connect and distance at the same time. They open onto or open into worlds both enticing and off putting. The subtleties are various and intriguing because placing the viewer on one side of the window or another, looking into or looking out of, is more than simply a matter of position. At first impression, a window may be as good as a compass point showing us the direction of the artist's and our gaze. Taken with the light it accepts or reveals it can depict a clear eyed cardinal direction. A window in a work of art may place the viewer in a room looking out, or outside looking into a room, a shop, a diner. But mere position is only one aspect. Sometimes a wonderfully deceptive aspect. The light, the character of what surrounds the window, what we see within its frame and outside its frame, all enable the window to also counter our initial expectations_are we looking in just because we are standing outside? Are we neither? Are we both? Within the same work may be all of these possibilities_in the best work all of these possibilities enter into something like a dance of meaning and nuance.
A window intimates simultaneous duality and unity, immanence and distance, intimacy and discretion, the forbidden, furtive, or guilty gaze and the open, knowing display.
Beyond the obvious framing, light source, and voyeur metaphor, windows figure often as art subjects in themselves for a variety of reasons.
They are, as any symbol, conveyers and containers of opposites, vital emotional opposites. They connect and distance at the same time. They open onto or open into worlds both enticing and off putting. The subtleties are various and intriguing because placing the viewer on one side of the window or another, looking into or looking out of, is more than simply a matter of position. At first impression, a window may be as good as a compass point showing us the direction of the artist's and our gaze. Taken with the light it accepts or reveals it can depict a clear eyed cardinal direction. A window in a work of art may place the viewer in a room looking out, or outside looking into a room, a shop, a diner. But mere position is only one aspect. Sometimes a wonderfully deceptive aspect. The light, the character of what surrounds the window, what we see within its frame and outside its frame, all enable the window to also counter our initial expectations_are we looking in just because we are standing outside? Are we neither? Are we both? Within the same work may be all of these possibilities_in the best work all of these possibilities enter into something like a dance of meaning and nuance.
A window intimates simultaneous duality and unity, immanence and distance, intimacy and discretion, the forbidden, furtive, or guilty gaze and the open, knowing display.