True Vision?

In "Scopic Regimes of Modernity," Martin Jay tries to suggest that the visual culture of the modern era is "the product of a radical reversal in the heirarchy of visual subcultures in the modern scopic regime" (4) by comparing and contrasting "Caretesian perspectivalism," Northern Art, and Baroque Art.

Jay describes Cartesian perspectivalism as basically more mathematical, "in league with a scientific world that no longer hermeneutically read the world as a divine text" (9) because of its use of the singular eye that "was, moreover, understood to be static, unblincking, and fixated" (7), thereby losing "the moment of erotic projection in vision" and fostering the "de-narrativization or de-textualization" (8) of the art. Northern Art, in contrast to Cartesian perspectivalism, "suppresses narrative and textual reference in favor of description and visual surface." Baroque is described as "painterly, recessional, soft-focused, multiple, and open" (16) with a "fascination for opacity, unreadability, and the indecipherability of the reality it depicts." (17) He concludes that instead of trying to make one scopic regime fit, we should "acknowledge the plurality of scopic regimes now available to us." Cartesian perspectivalism, Northern Art, and Baroque are not any closer to "true vision" than any of the others and that we should "revel instead in the possibilities opened up by the scopic regimes we have already invented and the ones, now so hard to envision, that are doubtless to come." (20)

I think it's fascinating how humans are so intent on finding a "true vision" of nature. It seems that we're all trying to find a one-to-one copy of nature for ourselves. With "the emergence of the oil painting detached from its context and available for buying and selling," (9) it seems as though we try to find that "true vision" more and more. I agree with Martin Jay that we should just sit back, relax, and immerse ourselves in the many ways we have invented to depict nature and our surroundings.