Multi-Eyed Ways of Seeing; a new look at another way of approaching the study of Art History in the Digital Realm with case study

This thesis is based on the provocations of Joanna Drucker that presented the questions and problems in the study of digital art history’s lack of creativity, and the theory of Alexander Nagel who called for “a different history” taking into account the medievalisms existing in modern art that is considered the direct predecessors of digital art to describe and problematize the relationship of artwork to archive when an artwork is from a contemporary medium but its contents and style are much older. It stems from the waning of interest in the Medieval in many areas, including the study of art, which I will show is dangerous to Contemporary art as well using these considerations. The issue is, ideally it would be obvious why having an inclusive approach to the study of art history would strengthen the field, but it requires challenging the Vasarian hierarchical approach to the study of art history at large. The methodology shows a four-pronged approach by introducing the theories of Drucker and Nagel, then demonstrating the issue through the case study to make the point by presenting the evidence of the past and present through a network of Iconclass, labels applied to the case study in question. My case study uses the artwork Panoptes by Laurent Grasso, I will put the terms of the multi-eye symbol into hierarchical database of Iconclass, tested against definitions of Digital Art. I will take those words and model as related nodes, revealing the iconology of the multi-eyed symbol to reveal how these artworks are not only continuing this process of “a different history” in the digital, but also how they are excluded from contemporary art within hierarchical systems as a result. This is then followed by a more art historical approach by collocating the artwork to the Medieval expressions of Seraphim and Cherubim and tracing the mechanical history of the multi-ocular symbol as well. I continue to use this model by explaining the context of the artwork, addressing the question of the digital medium, and the archive within the digital using also the effect of Freud to describe important cultural bridges between art, mechanics, and art historic theory of twentieth century, and finishing I consider current digital art history databases. All this reveals a need in the world of contemporary digital art and digital art history to recognize the true fluidity of art movements. Considering the art historical theory behind Nagel, I propose a separation between history and movement within education, coining the term “the referential movement” to describe the art movement these images embody from the Middle Ages, which Nagel further describes as well. By retaining historical periods, but enforcing instead a delineation based on a network of relationships between artworks and eras. I demonstrate through the theorists behind Nagel, the study of iconology from Panofsky and the theories of Warburg that this concept of moving beyond only periodic definitions that assume a clear beginning and end of each artistic era has been considered problematic to the study of art history for a century now. Within the inherently intersectionality of contemporary art this result of a lack of network based systems within archives is proven therefore to be even more problematic for the future of archiving art. For the field of art history it is shown that true history and full memory exists as a relationship between ways of thinking and seeing as they rise and fall over their historical eras of context. The thesis provides a new model of approach based on the relationship of digital artistic aesthetics and those of the digitized archive to reveal how the field of art history could proceed to better include digital art and digital tools.