‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.’

‘But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.’

‘The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.’

‘The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.’

‘We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach.’

‘We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are’

‘An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made appearance and preserved.’

‘The photographer’s way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. The painter’s way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper.’

‘Our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.’

‘No other kind [images] of relic or text from the past can offer such a direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times.’

‘The more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist’s experience of the visible.’

‘Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by the whole series of learnt assumptions about art. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Genius, Civilizations, Form, Status, Taste, etc.’

‘The camera showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual (except in paintings). What you saw depends upon where you were when. What you saw was relative to your position in time and space. It was no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye as on the vanishing point of infinity.’

‘This is not to say that before the invention of the camera men believe that everyone could see everything. But perceptive organized the visual field as though that were indeed the ideal.’

‘The camera — and more particularly the movie camera — demonstrated that there was no centre.’

‘For the Cubist the visible was no longer what confronted the single eye, but the totality of possible views taken form points all round the object (or person) being depicted.’

‘The invention of the camera also changed the way in which men saw paintings painted long before the camera was invented Originally paintings were an integral part of the buildings for which they were designed.’

‘The uniqueness of every painting was once part of the uniqueness of the place where it resided. Sometimes the painting was transportable. But it could never be seen in tow places at the same time. When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings.’

‘Because of the camera, the painting now travels to the spectator rather than the spectator to the painting. In its travels, its meaning is diversified.’

‘But in either case the uniqueness of the original lies in it being the original of a reproduction. It is no longer what its image shows that strikes one as unique; its first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says, but in what it is.’

‘The meaning of the original work no longer lies in what it uniquely says but in what it uniquely is.’

‘In the age of pictorial reproduction the meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them; their meaning becomes transmittable: that is to say it becomes information ignored; information carries no special authority within itself. When a painting is put to use, its meaning is either modified or totally changed.’

‘When a painting is reproduced by a film camera it inevitably becomes material for the film-maker’s argument.’

‘The painting lend authority to the film-maker. This is because a film unfolds in time and a painting does not.’

‘In a painting all its elements are there to be seen simultaneously. The spectator may need time to examine each element of the painting but whenever he reaches a conclusion, the simultaneity of the whole painting is there to reverse or qualify his conclusion. The painting maintains its own authority.’

‘The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. Such authority as it retains, is distributed over the whole context in which it appears.’

‘Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is. Even a reproduction hung on a wall is not comparable in this respect for in the original the silence and stillness permeate the actual material, the paint, in which one follows the traces of the painter’s immediate gestures. This has the effect of closing the distance in time between the painting of the picture and one’s own act of looking at it.’

‘The visual arts have always existed within a certain preserve; originally this preserve was magical or sacred. But it was also physical: it was the place, the cave, the building, in which, or for which, the work was made. The experience of art, which at first was the experience of ritual, was set apart from the rest of life — precisely in order to be able to exercise power over it. Later the preserve of art became a social one. It entered the culture of the ruling class, whilst physically it was set apart and isolated in their palaces and house.’

‘What the modern means of reproduction have done is to destroy the authority of art and to remove it — or, rather, to remove its images which they reproduce — from any preserve. For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the same way as language surrounds us. They have entered the mainstream of life over which they no longer, in themselves, have power.’

‘The art of the past no longer exist as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose. This touches upon questions of copyright for reproduction, the ownership of art presses and publishers, the total policy of public art galleries and museums.’

‘One of the aims of this essay has been to show that what is really at stake is much lagers. A people or class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history. This is why — and this is the only reason why — the entire art of the past has now become a political issue.’