Eyes in Art

Maybe friends and family, a partner or a spouse, someone you know well, even a pet. Otherwise it can feel invasive. Or just plain rude.

But figures in art? We can stare until our heart’s content. They are not living beings, even if the models may have been. They are now subjects rendered by the artist and captured in time. And even though we know this, it’s hard not to stare, not to peer into their eyes as if hoping to see something move, maybe a glimmer of emotion or the shadow of a thought. It doesn’t matter if it’s a photograph, a painting, or a sculpture—we will stare, hoping to see life, even if just a reflection of our own gaze. In this regard, these eyes might serve as windows into our own souls.

Here are four artworks featuring eyes—or an eye—that our staff members can’t stop looking into.

the eyes of the beholder

Look at the duo depicted in Julie Moos’s Friends and Enemies: Buck and Jonathan. Are these two friends, or are they enemies?

Of course, this can only be answered by the pair themselves, yet I am always sure that I have uncovered the truth, certain that the answer to the question is actually distinctly obvious. Then I look again the next day and see that no, my previous analysis was misguided. I misjudged the tightening of a lip and the tilt of a shoulder, and in fact this time my interpretation is unimpeachable. And so the cycle continues. When I look into the eyes of Buck (or is it Jonathan?), a glint of levity surfaces, though it can quickly sink behind a visage of perturbation. When I look past the dark hair of Jonathan (or is it Buck?), the eyes carry as much tension as tranquility. Moos’s work is endlessly giving and withholding in this way.

—Ian Gordon, coordinator, Philanthropy

the eyes of a Child

It is a familiar and expected element of most Virgin and Child paintings: Mary turns her head towards the Christ child in her lap, or at least in the infant’s general direction, her eyes demurely downcast.

Here, in Virgin and Child with Angels by Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Mary’s gaze is totally direct. Her eyes hit the Christ child squarely on the temple—but he does not return it. His gaze is locked with that of the viewer.

It is ambiguous as to whether the Christ child is squirming away from Mary or returning to her protective embrace, and the way his eyes grab the viewer invites us to become emotionally involved in this question.

The subject matter subtly evokes the tension between safety and independence in any parent-child relationship. Every child will eventually leave a parent’s protective embrace, not just this particular child leaving this particular mother. Coupled with the childlike detail of Christ sucking on his thumb (no stern baby presiding over a book of scripture here), this Virgin and Child foregrounds the human connection between mother and son.

—Katherine Greenleaf, audio visual freelance technician, Audio Visual Solutions

eternity’s gaze

In ancient Egyptian funerary art, preserving the facial features so that the deceased could hear, speak, breathe, and see in the afterlife was of paramount importance. Particular emphasis was placed on the eyes, which may reflect the deceased’s need to see deities like the sun god Re after death, as revealed in texts such as the Book of Going Forth by Day (now known as the Book of the Dead).

The individualized face on this canopic jar—the museum owns a set of four, made around 1400 BCE to store the embalmed organs of a man named Amenhotep—has bright eyes elegantly rimmed in black eyepaint. Recent research at the Art Institute has proven that specific attention was devoted to painting the whites of the eyes. Here, the white pigment was mixed with small amounts of Egyptian blue that are almost undetectable to the naked eye, but which appear as “glowing white” when a technique known as visible-induced luminescence imaging is used.

The motivation for the use of Egyptian blue remains unclear. Could it be an aesthetic choice made by the artist, the addition of a small amount of blue to an off-white pigment making it appear optically brighter? Or could the reason be symbolic, meant to enhance sight after death?

The practice of incorporating blue pigment into the mixture for painting the whites of the eyes has been documented to date in works of art from ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, and its significance is still being explored. Currently, the lids of Amenhotep’s canopic jars at the Art Institute are among the earliest documented examples of this practice.

—Ashley Arico, associate curator of ancient Egyptian art, Arts of Africa, and Giovanni Verri, conservation scientist, Conservation and Science

the eye’s mind

You may give this eyeball a skeptical glimpse, a critical look, a cheap wink, but even the most adoring gaze into this orb will not reward the viewer with the same glance back. 

Claude Cahun made this object to be photographed. It’s the artist’s only remaining sculpture that has survived in its original form. It is an object that shouldn’t exist: an eye that’s hard to look at. A blue iris turned vertical. A landscape turned portrait. A common slit of vision turned into a wound. Is this eye still a window into the soul? Or simply a one-way portal that only sees into your soul? Blinkless, sideways, sliced, cut by a cloud, this eye eternally stares outward.

The thorny lashes are a hedge sprouting around the bloodshot whiteness, enclosing the cerulean iris. The tangled tuft atop is an almost-nest, more like a nestling’s plumage or a dried out tussock in autumn. Is this hair the eye’s brow? Or is it from an armpit or a mons pubis? What’s the story of this eye? Whose eye is this? Is it a lover’s eye, a friend’s, an enemy’s? Is it the eye of Eros, kinked to the side? Is it Claude’s eye, neutered and ecstatic?

Or is this an eye being born, peering into the world for the very first time?

—Ryan M. Pfeiffer, technician, Collections and Loans

Topics

• Collection
• Perspectives
• Staff Picks
• Modern Art
• Contemporary Art
• Arts of Asia
• Arts of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Worlds
• Arts of Africa
• European Painting and Sculpture
• Medieval and Renaissance
• European Design, pre-1900
• Ancient Art