Until now, we have looked at artworks through the most immediate visual effects: what we see in front of our eyes. Now, let's begin to break down some barriers to find specific meaning in art, including those of different styles and cultures. To help in this journey, we must learn the difference between looking and seeing.

To look is to get an objective overview of our field of vision. Seeing speaks more to understanding. When we use the term "I see," we communicate that we understand what something means. There are some areas of learning, particularly psychology and biology, that help form the basis of understanding how we see. For example, the fact that humans perceive flat images as having a reality is very particular. In contrast, if you show a dog an image of another dog, it does not growl or wag its tail because it cannot perceive flat images as containing any meaning. You and I have developed the ability to see images.

In essence, there is more to seeing than meets the eye. We must consider a cultural component in how we perceive images and do so in subjective ways. Seeing is partly a result of cultural biases. For example, when people from industrialized cultures see a parking lot, they can pick out each car immediately. People from remote tribal cultures (who are unfamiliar with parking lots) cannot.

Gestalt is the term psychologists use to explain how the brain forms a whole image from many component parts. For instance, our understanding of Gestalt, in part, explains how we have learned to recognize outlines as contours of a solid shape. In art, for example, this concept allows us to draw "space" using only lines.

Source: Christopher Gildow, http://opencourselibrary.org/art-100-art-appreciation/
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Last modified: Saturday, May 31, 2025, 3:34 AM