The Painting Is Watching You

While reading the Rembrandt review by Adrian Searle (36-38) -- which ended, "Standing in this room I realised that you can't review Rembrandt.  Rembrandt reviews you." -- I was reminded of an experience I had in the very same museum (The National Gallery in London) about two years after this review was written in 1999.

One of the very first paintings I saw upon entering was one of Van Gogh's sunflowers (if I remember correctly).  Like all the other "good eye" critics around me, I stopped and contemplated it thoughtfully with my chin resting on my hand.  Then I moved on.  Several hours later, my friend and I finally made it through to the last room, a special temporary exhibit on how we look at art.  It had diagrams, for example, that traced the eye movement of a viewer looking at a painting: what drew the eye first? was there a pattern to how it jumped around the painting?

But the most interesting -- and creepy -- exhibit showed a copy of the Van Gogh painting I had been looking at earlier, but this time it was displayed next to a television monitor, on which people were looking intently at me -- or rather, at a painting of a sunflower!  That's right, the museum had mounted a tiny concealed camera in the frame of the painting, producing a "painting's-eye-view" of its audience.  I was absolutely transfixed by the concept of the painting looking back at us.  I stood there chuckling to myself over the guy picking his nose, the puzzled faces of the less "sophisticated" museum goers, and the scads of copy-cat High Art connoisseurs with their heads slightly tilted and their eyes glazing over.

I actually wrote a poem about this experience (from the perspective of the painting), but thankfully it's buried deep in some college file.