Series 4: Face and Horizon

This lecture will discuss how two primordial images, the “face” and the “horizon,” make up the two poles of human perception and imagination.

Marking the farthest of what we can see, the horizon represents openness, infinity, and possibility, the place where our visual field is cut off and where action begins. On the other hand, faces are defined, concrete, and individual. It symbolizes the union of identity and existence, the landing point of our gaze. The lecture will show how these two concepts relate to portrait and landscape painting throughout art history, coexisting in artworks and guiding the viewer’s gaze from medieval religious images to secular portraits and landscape painting as they developed.