The eye as a motif in art

René Magritte named his work which he created in 1932 "L'Objet" with the subtitle "L'Oeil ". It is an oil painting on wood with the size of 25 x 25 cm, and it was painted by the eye of his wife.
But a long time before a surrealist presented us the eye which came off the scope of the face, separate, as object of condensed expressiveness and fascination, other artists have portrayed eyes. The thought to paint a single eye as a "portrait" goes back to the Great Britain of the later 18th century. The artist Richard Cosway appears to be the first who thought of it, and the first commission gave Mrs. Fitzherbert: to portray her right eye as a present for the crown prince. In return the prince had also portrayed his eye and he had the miniature fastened to a ring which the beautiful woman should wear on her finger.
The idea gained fast attention and popularity. Because the representation of the eye which is an expressive, but wordless eloquent part of the human face, was enjoyed easily as a silent, but meaningful gift at the time and in a country, where the personal statement of sentiments was less preformulated and supported by the conventions than in other countries. Therefore portraits of eyes turned above all to a gladly exchanged present among loving couples. They served as a friendly recollection frequently framed as medallions or manufactured into pieces of jewellery.
Once invented the custom to give one another an eye-portrait spread rapidly. In 1976 the artist Georg Engelheart, a rival from Cosway, painted an eye from Mrs. Mitchell, then in the following year also the second. Several families commissioned him to make eye-portraits from their relatives (1798, 1800, 1804 and later), therefore until this day one finds these graceful objects in private English property. In Engelheart's notebook the first commissions are noted down in 1783 and 1788: It's the time before the French revolution, when not only the English painting and for example the art of gardening, but in general the English way of living has taken the lead in Europe.
Besides the two mentioned artists one knows only a few more, Osias Humphrey and Anthony Stewart in the early 19th century, a little later William Ross is also named. The idea to portray eyes and to give it away like this as a friendly custom fell soon into oblivion, still after all a few examples are found till the end of the century. As a miniature and as a gem the single eye looks still towards the late spectator, as if it was the whole face. Even on an agate it was painted and it looks from it mysteriously, thus it is opened from a dream landscape, hardly recognizable and in the next moment quite clear.
But not only in minute smallness eyes were reproduced: The artist G. J. Watt portrayed in commission of Lady Holland the one of her both eyes in colour quite varying - that with which she saw the sharpest. The eye-portrait larger than life served held in a frame then as a fireside top to fit out the atmosphere of the room with an approximate effect - following the representation of the eye of god in church domes, as Lady Holland had seen them on a tour through Italy.
We return now to the portrait from Magritte created about one hundred years later. All of the before mentioned representations are portraits of the eye of a certain person usually intended as a portrait which represents the represented and which shall look at the spectator. As mentioned Magritte also painted the portrait by the eye of his wife.
But what may still appear as an equivalent to the old Eye Portraits at first sight, appears at closer analysis as a portrait probably with a similar motif, however it's subject no longer comparable. Only a little shift of the stress results in a characteristically change: no longer is the portrait here the subject. The subject became rather the eye itself.
From a round, flat disc as if floating rested in a square darkroom the eye looks as from a mirror or as from a circular hole in a dark wall. Supported between the frame surfaces which become distinct from the grounding at the left and the upper edge and the silhouette which intercepts the weight coming from them and which is emerging formed like a crescent of the moon, the eye stands out - carrying, light and grainy alive in its surface. The plastic effect which is caused by the light tinge is found only in the nearer vicinity of the eye.
This eye appears also under the brow and by the plait strand brought in on the left as if still supported from attributes, which direct it to its place in the face and which confirm it, so nothing but a surface becomes yet visible on the right - in the level of the expected arch to the nose, at which the look of the spectator slips off and steps back a little astonished, to take up again a hold which was settled before. But the subject of the eye appears no longer like the one recalled: Because it is relieved of the area of the face and because it is freed from the covering effect of the usual, it now meets the look more clearly and at the same time more unfamiliar. Just from this it becomes noticeable what the living distinguished from the painted eye and what has to be "translated" in form. Above all then, if one ventures, not to paint an "eye-portrait", which can be "seen" as a portrait by the spectator by the reduction as well as by certain individual peculiarities of the representation, that is it can be completed - thus one may also for example understand the individuality of a hand-, but if "the eye", isolated and big, looks at the spectator, the liveliness of the look is in danger to stiffen and to become an Apotropeion.
Magritte knew how to hit this fine line between stiffness and life, between relation and rejection, between looking at and to be looked at. The ray of light comes from the eye, so one thought in former times - the ray of light falls in the eye, so we believe to know. This portrait contains both: it is a painted look.
A closer description of the portrait may make clear, what the transfer of such a at the same time familiar and incomprehensible phenomenon - a look - in the form of a painting achieves: the experience with works of art gives back to the spectator, who gets involved with the contemplation a part of his own liveliness, concentrated and strengthened.

René Magritte (1898-1967), "L'Objet" (L'Oeil). Oil paint on wood 25 x 25 cm. From the collection Mme Georgette Magritte, Brussels, copyright Mme Magritte.

A big eye, which doesn't stiffen, keeps in utmost condensation the special feature of the character who sees it all. The phrase "figura cuncta videntis" was coined by Nikolaus Cusanus (1401-1464) and it comes from his work "De visione Dei sive de icona liber" (First print 1483). There are often painting which follow the spectator with the eyes in the baroque period.
Also like this "the eye" which takes in the look and looks back and which at the same time rejects and shuts itself off. It expresses relation, it establishes it; it determines the atmosphere, which can condense and charge: love and hate, trust and suspicion - all human emotions and passions speak concentrated from the eyes like from the whole face, as well from the posture of the body. All human emotions and passions are given back to the spectator. He finds them again in himself.
An eye looks out of the painting, like one never sees a human eye. What is habitually looked at, but never stared at because the possibility of avoiding always remains, even if an only quiet, hardly noticeable movement of the look, meets here, reduced in its actual, as an exciting centre. What is suddenly faced there is the eye - not as part of the face, not as symbol of seeing and looking at, but itself as face, as being. A moist shining round solid, isolated, rested in something which is unfamiliar to it. Vulnerable and at the same time also full of power, in a ring of eyelashes little rays enclosed, it attracts attention from the spectator and it still let's him find no hold. It compels to look at it and it appears itself to look past its face to face or to look right through it. Open it promises insight and at the same time it always conceals its profundity invisibly and mysteriously in itself.
But that the spectator is not able to meet the look of the eye, such as a living eye only seldom meets fully the own look, has its reason in the artistically form of the work.
The mentioned eye-portraits are mostly oval framed. The soft, unobtrusive character of such a form, which comes from the division of the centre in two focal points, appears adequate to an object out of the realm of the organic. But Magritte selected the circle, the monocentric form, and with it the hard, determinant form as the inside frame and the angular figure, which is assigned to it, the square, as the outside frame. From the circle ac constantly pushed in the one centre besides exposed the momentum of diagonal striving of the square, the isolation of the eye becomes visible like that of a prisoner. But at the same time its charisma improves. Caught however it also became itself catching with a crystallized strong look. But because the centre of the circle as the square figure doesn't coincide with the centre of the eye, but well it directs the view, the eye in the picture disappears again and again from the intervention of being looked at into the indefinite. And so the hidden dynamic of the constant balancing between the pupil and the centre of the circle, which is at the same time the point of intersection of the diagonal, doesn't let the spectator find hold - but also the look doesn't grow stiffen.
As if turned away from the invisible staying double-centre of the concentration the spectator notices finally the visible appearing face to face, both of the light reflected dots in the eye where one cannot spot the depth, the far off appears at once more distinct, but it is in the picture nothing but two points of the greatest emptiness. Here one may feel dismissed from the dealing with the picture. Something vague, almost endless, appears to push the look aside. But then it is the vague of the own looking at, which is also mirrored in this eye, with which the spectator meets and which rejects him on himself at last time.


Summary in French

Résumé. Le motif de l´oeil n'est pas une découverte moderne, il remonte à l´antiquité grecque. Mais ce n´est que vers la fin du XVIIIe siècle qu´un peintre anglais, Richard Cosway, eut l´idée de faire le "portrait" de l´oeil. Au XIXe siècle, très peu de peintres ont été inspirès par ce thème. Avec le peintre surréaliste belge, René Magritte (1898-1967), la peinture de l´oeil s´engage dans de nouvelles voies. Cette oeuvre "L´Oeil" date de 1932. Certes, comme ses prédécesseurs, le modèle lui a été fourni par une personne réelle, sa femme, mais Magritte le dépasse en détachant libérant l´oeil du visage: il lui donne une vie propre qui reflète les passions humaines. L´oeil devient un être étrange, mystérieux qui reste insaissisable aux regards de l´observateur. Magritte l´encadre intérieurement dans un cercle, et extérieurement dans un carré. Leur point central ne correspond pas au centre même de la pupille, par cela une certaine mobilité est conférée au regard, comme chez un être vivant, qui nous contemple.


Source: "Rheinische Splitter und Augenblicke" (published by Prof. Marlene Putscher, Research Department of the Institute for History of Medicine of the University of Cologne, Cologne 1976)