To see by hands and to touch by eyes: Aesthetics of tactile and optical values in the presence and in the absence of sight impairment

Loretta Secchi

Anteros Tactile Museum of Ancient and Modern Painting Institute for the Blind Francesco Cavazza - Bologna – Italy

Abstract: Reading an image endowed with aesthetic value for both sighted and partially sighted people (congenital, belated blind people and partially sighted people) means facing the problem of the form endowed with aesthetic value by means of recognizing that it performs several functions: poetic-expressive, educational, narrative, informative, cultural-historical, psychological and speculative. Formalism and content analysis, from the late XIXth century onward, have both discussed over the value and importance of interdisciplinary and integrated comprehension of a work of art, over the cognitive role of the interpretative act as well as over a history of art conceived as a science, as a history of ideas, as a display of the creative thought as well as a history of the experiential and cognitive relationship between men and the world and with its transfigurated representation. On the basis of these principles it is possible to follow a process which depicts the individual and collective nature of the relationship existing between men and art and the usefulness of an experience having psycho-rehabilitative potentials which are able to strengthen the imaginative processes of man leading to the refinement of intuitive faculties and to oriented internalization of the aesthetic contents of art. The starting point of this process is education to constant improvement of visual, tactile and ideally synaesthesic senses, by taking into account all inevitable variations and corrections aimed at partially filling the visual deficit. In reviewing the interpretative methodologies applied to didactics directed to blind and partially sighted people at the Anteros Tactile Museum of Ancient and Modern Painting inside the F. Cavazza Institute for Blind one perceives the comparison between the cognitive-perceptive experience generated by the retinal vision and the haptic-perceptive experience generated by tactile vision. This is not meant to find a simplistic equivalence between optic and tactile perception but rather to identify some common ground between the organisation of optic and haptic visual processes. From this will originate the osservation on the usefulness of a progressive reading of the work of art and on the mediation offered by the reproduction of the work of art thus becoming a didactic tool, a mould and a technical relief for a systematic approach towards the tactile exploration of the plastic model and towards the overall comprehension of the image, in order to instill an aesthetic experience by integrating the sensorial and intellectual experiences.

Overview of didactic activities and experimental researches carried out at the Anteros museum.

At the Anteros Museum one can perform tactile explorations adjusted to the different needs of visually impaired people. The methodological application of integrated and progressive reading of the plastic model reproducing the painting, as mentioned in the previous speech, imposes different types of tactile exploration as well as targeted adaptations of reading paths (trajectories of the hand). Autonomy has to be guaranteed by reading simultanously the relief model and the description of the work of art which explains the position of hands and describes the content of the work itself. Each work of art being transposed into a relief model is described three times (this means three different levels of understanding of the work of art: basic level, average level, and advanced level). Educating tactile recognition is of a paramount importance: when it comes to aesthetic experience of the blind the approach is to choose both hands, a synchronous reading and an integrated tactile and oral technique. In this manner, blind people manage to have a mental vision by integrating several sensorial perceptions, by using the tool of synesthesia and knowledge of the concepts governing the visual act intended as a cognitive and interpretative act. The psycho-rehabilitative function of this experience can be clearly identified in a learning process: in other words in the repeated application of tactile reading and in the organized knowledge of several works of art representing art evolution with respect to style and mentality changes as witnessed by the history of art. It is certainly useful to have a deep knowledge of manuals but this does not prevent a single visitor to benefit from the knowledge of a single stylistic or iconographic case, or even of a small group of works of art. Thematic paths can be a solution and it becomes then essential not to make the visit too of a didactic and cognitive process, especially if the visitor’s interest is limited. At the Anteros Museum we are currently working on audio catalogue.

At the Anteros Museum we realize and offer the visitors different types of knowledge of artistic image and we work in team:

• a stage of cognitive reading of the image aimed at informing and allowing the recognition of the primary elements of the work of art itself.
• a stage of guided and tested interpretative reading aimed at strengthening the procedures of contours acquisition, form significance, organized and progressive reading of the setting elements intervening in memory stratification of the setting itself and its aesthtic and cultural elements.
• a stage of research aimed at constantly integrating and reviewing the learning process: collaborating with congenital and belated blind or partially sighted volunteers helps us to study the peculiarities of any given reaction to the work of art (subjective variables) and shared codes with respect to different tactile explorations, when it comes to compare them, by taking into account both age and background of all blind, partially sighted and sighted people (requirements) collaborating with us.

Important: Our research study on cognitive processes is of paramount importance; without it it would be impossible to interact with educational didactics and consequently with the scheduling of didactic units specifically designed to meet the needs of remedial teachers.

At our museum we have not finished yet our basic path of relief models representing paintings from the classical era to modernity. Our original project is still under way. As far as didactic tool planning and consolidation is concernend (descriptions, synoptic tables, art movements, historical styles and categories of representation) we are still working on it. We are also preparing some audio catalogues (guides) wheras our Internet site already presents some documentation necessary to have a minimum understanding of the methodology used in translating paintings at our premises and gives differentiated explanations of some of the painting reproductions exposed at our Museum.

Special attention is given to the training of guides who must have an interdisciplinary knowledge of History of art and master the psycho-perceptive, psycho-cognitive, formalistic and iconographic-iconological fundamentals of art pedagogy.

The guide’s role is very important but it has to be descreet and his/her intervention has to be careful and limited. An essential role is played by the integration between sighted and blind people towards knowledge of the work of art and educational integration.

Consequently, it is necessary to understand the meaning and function of life-long education to senses as well as to a balanced development of perceptive and semantic components implicit in the understanding of the work of art. We supply all museum staff members, teachers and researchers with basic information on relief techniques for different age groups and severity of visual handicap.

Cognitive process controls are carried out by observing autonomous tactile readings performed by blind people who have autonomously rebuilt the setting by visualizing and describing it verbally, starting from a tactile reading and the simultanous description of subjects and/or modeling with clay the mental image formed.

The different tactile behaviours observed and filed lead to evaluate the different needs and requests of all visitors and require a constant improvement and correction of tactile exploration techniques as well as a constant review of all methods used in tactile translation of pictorial forms; in doing this we must consider tactile thresholds and partial equivalences between optic visual behaviours and tactile visual ones.

The training nature of a previously instinctive and later cognitive approach carries out several functions:

• the consolidation of cognitive and intuitive-imaginative processes endowed with psycho-rehabilitative value;
• the stratification and memory conservation of mental images and of their informative and poetic content.

At the Anteros Museum of the F. Cavazza Institute for the blind we offer both independent and guided tours. Guided tours, if requested, are based upon several levels of in-depth study on iconographic, stylistic, content-related, formal themes involved in the knowledge of the history of art.

At the Anteros Museum we, finally, offer training activities as well as didactic courses aimed at educational integration or life-long training agreed with teachers, experts and visitors themselves, subject to agreement and reservation.

The design and making of perspective low relief sculpture

Perspective low relief sculpture originated during the Florentine Renaissance. Its distinctive characteristic is the presence of the “undercut” technique, consisting in the removal of material from the underside of the figures so as to create an empty space behind the outlines and bring the figures into relief. The outlines, separated from the background, correspond to the aesthetical qualities of the drawing, of its contour lines and its body volumes. For this reason, the technical low relief assimilates the rules of representation from fifteenth-century perspective painting and translates them into tactile values. The picture planes encode the depth of field that is present in the plastically-transposed work of art, therefore the unit of measurement for each plane depends on the style of the painting, determined by its historical period.

The three-dimensional translation can be expressed in full-scale, smaller or larger scale compared to the original, but must however be appropriate to the demands of its tactile legibility: the starting point is a clay surface on which the outlines of the artistic subject must be drafted, then one proceeds to build volume by gradually defining the shapes.

The prototype is deliberately hand-crafted in order to allow greater sensitivity and interpretative refinement in evoking the image and, at the same time, in order to search for a correct interpretation of the stylistic, aesthetical and volumetric values of the examined work. It is also necessary to consider the legibility degree of the relief, all the while respecting the tolerable and common tactile lines recognized by the tactile perception and visual impairment community.

The design phase is a team job, which combines notions of modelling, perceptive psychology, art history, educational art theory and tiflology. In the various phases of the making, the reproduction is tested by qualified visually impaired people. Once the three-dimensional clay prototype has been completed, and the tactile qualities of the surfaces have been polished, textured and perfected, a silicon rubber stamp of the prototype is obtained. From this, a new original low relief will be created in white resin or alabaster chalk.

Summary of the stages in the making of a technical low relief:

1. Preliminary study for the scale reproduction of the painting and for the translation of the aesthetic pictorial values into tactile values.
2. Preparation of the slide and transferral, onto the clay surface, of the contour lines, volumes and pictorial surfaces to be translated into plastic values.
3. Modelling of the volumes which are functional to the creation of depth relationships between the different picture planes present in the composition.
4. Defining the shapes and refining details, texturing surfaces of necessary, and testing the tactile legibility of the relief.
5. Making of the silicon rubber stamp, with which to obtain white resin or alabaster chalk copies.

Tactile reading of a perspective low relief through the educational application of Panofsky’s tripartite method

Tactile reading is a gradual and organized progression, guided in the beginning, then autonomous. Before putting into practice this kind of reading, it is necessary to know the entity and seriousness of the visual impairment of the person.

Image perception, cognition and signification: these are in summary the three stages of the artistic image analysis corresponding to the three interpretation levels of Panofsky’s tripartite method. These stages coincide with three correlated and inseparable levels of reading, all three of which are always carried out but each one practiced in a different proportion. After having read the hidden geometric structures and the inner composition schemes (pre-iconographic analysis), recognized the conventional contents of the image (iconographic analysis), and explored the sense of the art work (iconological analysis), the reader reaches the aesthetical experience, in relation to his/her personal cultural past and perceptive potential.

1. Tactile perception of the shapes and structures (including optic perception if using a visual residue) = Pre-iconographic reading
2. Cognition of the shape and recognition of their identity = Iconographic analysis
3. Signification and meaning extension of the representation = Iconological interpretation

Despite the need to communicate reading models, at the Tactile Museum "Anteros" the visually impaired are encouraged to learn perceptive solutions, exploring works of art using tactile reading techniques that, once acquired, can be independently reassessed and implemented through individual solutions, born from a personal tactile and cognitive economy. Here are some of the haptic exploration techniques, tested and considered among the most effective.

Methodological and theoretical premises towards a didactics of art directed to visually impaired people.

In order to fully understand a work of art both sighted and blind visitors have to activate cognitive processes originated by senses and bound to being emotionally and rationally processed by our brain. Consequently, reading a work of art means approaching it not only instinctively but also rationally. The problem linked to the understanding of the form and the informative, expressive, poetic and spiritual role of art, have originated, in the course of history, questions to which psychology of art, psychology of perception, aesthetics, critics and methodology of historic-artistic research, have tried to give possible answers. Disciplines such as art didactics and psychology have concentrated upon the possible ways of approaching a form endowed with aesthetic value and the theoretical nature of the connection with art. Such disciplines can choose to extract and summerize many of the interpretations offered by comparative and interdisciplinary study of artistic image.

These different approaches, of psycho-perceptive, formalist, stylistic, historical-content related, semiotic, iconographic-iconological nature ideally draw the many faces as well as the proteiform nature of an artistic expression, thus unveiling that stratification of meanings and interpretations residing in all visual arts. To the individual and collective function of making and visiting art one has to add the possibility for an individual to create a mental image of the work of art enjoyed as a series of several elements: a synthesis of sharable conventions and creative functions of the observer’s thought.

Basically the creative act which is needed to make art, comes up again, even though with different modes and tools, in the action performed by the sighted, partially sighted and by the blind within the cognitive and interpretative experience of art. Both the sighted and the blind, in order to pick up the understanding of a visual work of art, do need to perceive the form, interpret it and reify the idea they have of it, with respect to concrete reality which it embodies and which is carried out both cognitively and culturally by man.

If we are to understand the form, we have to perceive its morphology first: contours, outline, volumes, surfaces, by taking into account the observation point of the subject involved. The substance of the form is the symbolic content of the form itself, wheras the communicative-informative content is a conventional one. The surrounding and recognizable content is a feature of art as well as the symbolic and intimate content that we can perceive in it. In art we can recognize the primary subjects endowed with conventional contents and culturally sharable to finally understand the deepest archetypal contents. In the same way, the understanding of an artistic image, intended as an expressive-poetic form, requires us to consider the concept of idea which allows ideal and real to meet in the way it takes physically place.

The present historical-artistic methodology, supported by pedagogic-cognitivist choices adopted in the didactics of arts, recognizes the essence of differentiated methods which are nonetheless linked one another as a useful contribution to the theoretic and technical nature of critical tools, in termes of knowledge and distinction. Formalist approach, whose nature is linked to pure visibility, joins a panofskian-related aesthetic and content reading which is divided into three different levels of reading and in-depth study of the image: the preiconographic level, the iconographic level and the iconological level.

As theoretician of pure visibility Hildebrand argues in his famous essay Das Problem der Form that "All our experiences originate from touch: even though it is actually a simultanous touch performed by hands and eyes. By touching, we draw some movements corresponding to the shape of objects and the representation of some given movements (in other words a whole of specific movements) is tantamount to a plastic representation." The tactile reading of a pictorial image, translated into a perspective bas-relief and consequently a plastic composition, requires the blind observer to redraw by means of appropriate tactile exploration techniques (following the same behaviour of the sighted, who performs the same operation, even though in a synthetic manner, by means of optic-retinal vision) first of all the outline of the subjects recognized thanks to the contours (profile) constituting the shapes (silhouette) and later on those lines of force representing, in the intersection and creation of tactile reading paths, the relationship between forms (subjects, elements) and space. In perceiving the tridimensionality expressed by the bas-relief, which is derived from progressive prospective plans, one perceives concavities and convexities aimed at making understand volumetries and tactile qualities of surfaces.

Tactile qualities should not lead to saturation by accumulating information (an excess of texture) the result being a tactile overexcitement which would, in turn, lead to an incoherent and cahotic overlapping of perception and images corresponding to the emotions provoked by the tactile experience. This explanation specifically concerns the problem of transposing not only a painting into a relief model but also the substance intended as a coding of different tactile qualities made of different materials.

Every relief model, even if it is very detailed with respect to the original pictorial form, currently requires (as for our experience and methodology used for designing technical reliefs at the Anteros Museum of Bologna, F. Cavazza Institute for the blind) a synthesis which omits, because of the nature of the tools used, density variations of substances and suggests these elements by using the word in a filling-evocative manner (for instance rough, smooth, textured and siliconed surfaces) and replacing with a certain degree of approximation the role of chromatism along with that of physicalness of the pictorial form.

It is all too clear that colours cannot be suggested to a congenital blind and that in belated blind people they are retrieved by means of visual memory awakening, recovery and possibly conservation. In the case of a partially sighted visitor, his tactile perception of the relief model is combined with visual perception of the reproduction thus facilitating a complementarity between these two sensory experiences. Some hardly decomposable settings, which cannot be fully reproduced, must be considered, then, as a synthetic hierarchy of forms, surfaces, schemes, recognizable outlined shapes, in the same way as progressive reading of a work of art does for sequential exploration (decoding the touch surfaces and consequently the “appearence” of elements) and for disclosing nuances of meaning thus reinforcing the visual image moving from spontanous perception to cognitively and emotionnaly guided and processed perception (internalization of meanings).

Such methodological criteria underpin not only optic and tactile vision but also aesthetic-intellectual understanding of the work of art by sighted, partially sighted and blind people. Following the same reasoning, with different perceptive behaviours though, sighted and visually impaired people are given a didacticts specifically designed to fit to the real conditions of sensory, cognitive and cultural access. Visitors suffering from a visual handicap are proposed a relief model reading which has been adjusted and designed to fit to individual reading times, clearly emphasized, to synesthesic integrations and specific personalizations of all descriptive methods and mental reconstruction of the work of art involved.

Hands can then follow privileged eye trajectories (lines of force, essential schemes) by rebuilding them thanks to the haptic experience in order to achieve the same hermeneutic objectives as those of image understanding in sighted people.

Both sighted and blind people have then to sharpen those processes underpinning form construction and cognition in order to achieve an organized reconstruction (not a mechanistic one) of the composition. In order to restore the composition some partial procedures of field analysis (obtained thanks to a step to step exploration) along with global methods of synthesis are needed.

Hildebrand defines touch and vision as the two opposite ends of visual activity and considers them as being antithetic. He insists on the fact that these are two types of pure visual activity (this is where it becomes essential for our purpose) which are nonetheless inseparable and present in any perceptive experience of the image. Visual activity consists in an optic-synthetic vision as well as in a tactile-analytical one.

These two moments coexist within the visual experience and in their succession they fully determine the act of vision.

Seeing the whole means then restoring the composition architecture, its internal, hidden or sometimes bearing structure.

Hildebrand difines tactile the vision which follows the representation of plastic forms by means of lines witnessing, even if encoded, the ordinary and “ideal” (because they are to be preferred) movements of the eye (pupil) in order to understand the composition as a whole.

Bearing these principles in mind, it is worth underlining how a proper education to image for both blind or partially sighted people can allow the mental and progressive construction of techniques aimed at perceiving space and time witnessed by the displacement of bodies inside the composition, along with the space-time nature of the scene, which is often suggested by the progression imposed by the narration in describing and letting all dynamics of relationship and interaction between subjects revive.

Between the time of the painting (if the scene is depicted in a specific period) and the time of the reading, both optic and tactile, there is the common denominator of sequentiality and organized stratification of the concepts and information received by means of tactile perception of the form along with the verbal description of its content. The reading help-guide for pictorial composition translated into relief models requires a high degree of attention as for reciprocity between perception and cognition and between the information received and the personal data processing.

For congenital blind people, reading a work of art (in form of a painting transposed in relief model) is an experience which stimulate the understanding of the form structure in painting and which is here intended as a composition made of direction schemes, relationships and single features of forms, thus neglecting colour and atmosphere. Colour, even if with a certain degree of approximation, is considered in optic and tactile reading by a partially sighted observer in choosing a relief presenting appropriate chromatic features.

The organized orientation of the basic structure: shapes crossed by vertical, horizontal, diagonal, snake-shaped line forces, broken or full lines, implies a privileged perception of the outline and contours of a given shape (closed/open shape, stylized/naturalistic shape, etc). In a perspective bas-relief, conceived as a technical relief model breaking with the Renaissance tradition of the undercut (particularly useful to highlight contours), the unit of measure of depth present in tradition and in the tridimensional interpretation of the work of art is a guide-code of the progression of perspective plans and ultimately of the mental reconstruction of the perspective space notion. But for a congenital blind acquiring the concept of perspective requires a better understanding of the concept of deformation or alteration of the shape in the optic perception. Allowing a blind person to approach iconic painting means not only giving him/her the possibility to approach visual art, which (if figurative or mimic) depicts reality by distorting it, but also to introduce him/her to the principle of optic aberration and explain that, what retinal vision perceives is an optic illusion which is decoded by our brain in order to understand the real features of the object observed along with the conventional notion justifying illusionism and/or optic aberration.

This is the reason why such an analytical and realistic sensory tool as touch, used to especially perceive full relief shapes without considering the point of view, is asked to create haptic movements and memories of tangible outlines and contours of the composition aimed at setting up a graph and at overlapping, by grafting, of more detailed information related to single aesthetic and morphologic formal qualities of all subjects reproduced in the composition from a single or several perspectives (perspective analysis as a symbolic shape, artifice or natural perspective). Consequently, if we are to understand a path of progressive reading of an image endowed with aesthetic value, it becomes of a paramount importance to offer an exemple of optic and haptic reading (exemple of Venus’ birth).

Reading methods designed for congenital blind people represent a real construction, first of all of informative geometries and later on of formal qualities endowed with aesthetic value; this applies not only to bas-relief but to any tactile perception of plastic works of art. Nevertheless, the overall reading offered by the relief model (plastic transposition of a bidimensional composition which is already tridimensional by means of illusion) to a blind observer, allows him/her to understand the composition as a whole more than its sections or constituent parts. Any tactile reading is sectorial by definition: it follows a series of induction steps to approach notions wheras later on this becomes an intuitive deduction. Congenital blind people, whose educated sensory capacity has led to cognitive intuition consolidation, are used to analyse sectors and filling cognitive gaps, on the basis of a partial and often fragmentary knowledge of the representation itself. If visually impaired people are to forge a mental image of the position of all subjects represented in the space with their individual features and postures, they have to conceptually take some specific points of view as it is normally done by sighted people with respect to the subject studied. If the subject studied is a human body, it would be particularly useful for the blind visitor to assume the same positions of the pictorial or sculptural subject, but it would not solve the problem linked to the contextualization of the subject plunged into a space observed by an ideal external observer. This perspective window, by adopting a centric and artificial point of view, aims at representing, surely with a high degree of abstraction, the visual effect of the observer who is stationary and chooses the frontal point of view from which he discovers the surrounding space. There is no doubt about the importance for the blind to imitate the position of the pictorial subject analysed: this leads to recognition by means of contrastive tools and to a schematization and synthesis of a formal structure with which one could be identified. This recognition alone does not simplify the complex precesses of mental representation of the body position compared to the other elements in the composition which interact one another, but is nonetheless useful to mature the abstractive process linked to understanding the series of elements which were initially isolated and later on put together by means of stratification and correlation. Visual thought hosted by the artificial image produced by art, correspond on the one hand to the representation of recognizable real and familiar points of reference and on the other to a mental representation of a series of subjects and contents processed by our brain by means of imagination and mentally regenerated. When the artistic image overwhelms the fantastic dimension and when one representation entails immediately recognizable subjects or encoded and conventional ones, we are dealing with images carrying information and interpretations of reality which are consequently seen as transfigurations, with more or less clear links with commm codes of understanding. The result being a vast spectrum of shapes and modes of artistic representation and expression based on formal, stylistic, sign, volumetric, chromatic, thematic, iconographic-iconological (explain panofskian tripartite method) typologies. In which way art can be understood by man without mediation and reading instructions can only be explained by a natural and almost instinctive relatioship between the two, thus leading to a spontanous reception and instinctive search for understanding. Aesthetic experience results from the different sensory tools used by men to interpret the data gathered both on the rational and emotional levels.

Between logic intelligence expressed by means of rational cognition of the form and sensitive intelligence expressed by means of emotional understanding of the form there is an intersection along with a functional complementarity. The interpretative act which involves the vast majority of sensory and mental activity of man is symbolically reintroduced in front of a work of art and reflects the behaviour of an individual with respect to culture, reality, research and sense.

In the artistic image structural, aesthetic and stylistic qualities of a composition can lead the visitor to different reactions, thus placing at least from a theoretic point of view cognitive behaviour of both sighted and blind people on the same level. Sensory perception modes varying from synesthesia, vision, touch and hearing represent a sine qua non in order to achieve potential and real perceptive-interpretative possibilities which would allow the integration of artistic image education for both sighted and blind people by taking into account also all the different but complementary didactic tools and all their possible interactions. The aim is then to capture the similarities between optic perceptive processes leading to progressive and organized vision of the composition (thus considering the analytical, synthetic and syncretic features of vision) and tactile perceptive processes, which come near a global reading synthesis of the image studied thanks to elements such as exploration, reading time, sequntiality and decomposition always by means of correlation and stratification.

Those who have been taught to touch with eyes the pictorial composition reading will not consider it anymore as a perfunctory experience but a well-balanced synthetic and analytical one. Cognition will not be considered as fragmentary decomposition but integration of parts, the emotional experience will not be considered as reveries but consolidation of psycho-rehabilitative and cognitive-interpretative functions of imagination coupled with the understanding of all phenomena perceived and visualized, and the image understanding the activation of a process applicable to the many faculties and competences involved in the interpretative process of man. The link with history of art and the pedagogic-interpretative methodology aims at expanding the imaginative and reconstructive possibilities starting from the knowledge of a proteiform and versatile reality similar to human nature and to the intuitive and rational expression of cognitive bahaviours.