12th April 2010
Quote
The special qualities of oil painting lent themselves to a special system of conventions for representing the visual. The sum total of these conventions is the way of seeing invented by oil painting. It is usually said that the oil painting in its frame is like an imaginary window open on to the world. This is roughly the tradition’s own image of itself- even allowing for all the stylistic changes (Mannerist, Baroque, Neo-Classic, Realist, etc) which took place during four centuries. We are arguing that if one studies the culture of the European oil painting as a whole, and if one leaves aside its own claims for itself, its model is not so much a framed window open on to the world as a safe let into the wall, a safe in which the visible has been deposited.
— Ways of Seeing