Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre makes the shift from self to other.
Greg Artus writes in issue 145 of Philosophy Now: “Sartre’s famous illustration of the Look is his example of the jealous lover. Suppose I am a lover who, for whatever reason, is consumed with jealousy about my lover’s activities, and so I’m spying on her through a keyhole. I am completely immersed in what I’m doing. My attention is focussed entirely outside of myself on the task in hand, and I’m not thinking about me but about the object of my attention. I am entirely unreflective; I’m just doing. In this mode, I am what Sartre calls a body-for-itself – a physically embodied doer, immersed totally in its active engagement with the concrete world of activity, focussed only on the purposes to hand.
But then I notice that someone – some Other – is watching me as I spy on my lover. This Look of the Other snaps me out of my immersion and forces to me to see myself from the outside, so to speak. Under this withering Look of the Other, I am brought face to face with the fact of what I’m doing and how it must look to Others. Now I am no longer focussed outwardly on my task, but am focussed inwardly, on myself, viewing myself and my actions as another might view me. I am no longer focussed on my lover, but reflecting upon what I am doing and how it looks. Thus I become what Sartre calls a body-for-Others; an engaged body that is an object of scrutiny and evaluation by another body-for-itself-an Other who is engrossed in watching me as I watch my lover.”
The guy was hard to follow
This is about that situation when someone is telling you something important, but your mind starts going off in different directions—focusing on the way the person’s mouth moves for example—while the information they’re imparting seems to just pile up around them.
I thought this would be an interesting situation to try and illustrate, and also a good excuse to get some Klimt-style patterning in there.
Bonnetje me?
‘Bonnetje me?’ sort of means ‘do you want a receipt?’ in Dutch. This picture celebrates that frozen supermarket moment (probably in a branch of Dirk van den Broek judging by the livery). I’m also slightly fascinated/horrified by people who do that funny thing of closing their eyes briefly when they talk. It’s an unconscious thing, and the people that do it don’t believe you when you tell them they do it.
This was painted directly into Photoshop using the various digital brush tools. Click it to look closer.