Reflection on mirrors - end of neg 1

In my first assumptions I was unaware of the great impact and significance mirrors had not only in changing science but changing the way we viewed the world and ourselves. In my everyday domestic reflective use of mirrors I had taken for granted the historical connotations and heighten psychological charge that that this metaphorically rich material holds. The Renaissance period owns a lot to the development and revival of cultural achievements including the Venetian glass mirror. The mirror aided in investigation and development of four major areas: 1. into optics. 2. Science, mirrors are the only material powerful enough to use in telescopes enabling us to see into space, changing how we view the world. 3.  Art, as the mirror destabilizes the eye, artists from the Renaissance period such as Leonardo De Vinci painted from mirrors enabling them to understand the mathematics behind painting. 4. Changed Human conception of ourselves. Conceiving of ones self separate human being, different from each other, thus the effect on western society and culture came individualism, self being separate from one another. Eastern cultures when seeing ones reflection in a mirror did not see self, but had thought to see through the image into an inner spirit or soul. I believe that mirrors changed our perception and relationship with the world and ourselves forever. They juggled light and destabilizing vision which helped the arts develop, which is evident in the great portraits of the Renaissance. Mirrors made us look at reality in a new way, in the West this changed mans vision of himself, which gave us individualism. Mirrors are also seen as the third eye, they are able to shift and change focus and vision, mirrors can be used as a great tool of thought.

The Renaissance period claims the mirror brought the, ‘discovery of self’ which where the central feature of the Renaissance bringing a new concept of the individual, unique to the West and to the period from about the fourteenth century. Leonardo De Vinci known for his mirrored writing mentions mirrors several times in his Notebooks in which he had claimed was “The Master of Painters”, “You should take a mirror for your guide….. that is to say a flat mirror …because on its surface the objects appear in many respects as in a painting,”

It may be that mirrors increase the intensity of human sight in other ways as well. Seeing is a dynamic process. If we stare directly at an object for a long time, we cease to see it. Only if we change our angle of vision, sweeping the eye across the object, do we continue to see it. Mirrors help us to see clearly for, whether held in the hand or altered by the movement of the person who gazes into them, they increase the amount of movement which is projected onto the eye. I feel that the mirror played at major part in the discovery of laws of perception. Without a mirror, the great autobiographical portraits, culminating in the series by Rembrandt, could not have been painted.

Mirrors are indeed extraordinary and it is not too fanciful to believe that the development of the mirror in only one civilization not only altered its art, which can be shown, but also gradually altered the whole perception of what human beings are. One certainly has an elective affinity, individualism and high quality mirrors has grown together. Mirrors on their own, would not have effected the huge transformation which we call Renaissance individualism. Yet they may have been one of the necessary enabling causes, without which the abstraction of the individual from the group would not have taken the course it did. Armed now with this knowledge this gives me a deeper understanding of the historical, psychological and, metaphorical connotations associated with mirrors. Just as once the Renaissance artists had used mirrors to bring attention to the art of looking, this also is my intention in my art. I have decided to create a large piece of work in which I shall be using side wing car mirrors, to create my desired effect.
The mirrors present contradictions in the order of space, which is unstable thus redefining our perception of the gallery space, and the work.Our encounter with objects in space forces us to reflect on ourselves, which can never become, ‘other’, which can never become objects for our external examination. . It is the notion that the object recedes in its self-importance, which is my goal for my final piece. My simplitic work is a complex experience that includes the object, your body, the space, and the time of your experience. It’s all locked in together.