Feeling through sight: zooming in, zooming out

Abstract

This article analyses Alois Riegl's (1858–1905) notion of an aesthetics of proximity (Nahsicht), to which he associates the dimension of the tactile and the haptic. Opposed to Nahsicht is what Riegl calls the ‘optical-fernsichtig’: an aesthetics of spatial distance that in his view responds more satisfactorily to the essence of architecture. While Riegl's optical dimension relates to linear perspective, evoking a particular model of spatial construction, the haptic, on the other hand, alludes to planarity and to the drawing of profiles and details, promising to engender alternative modes of vision and spatiality.I intend to challenge Riegl's proposed correspondence between the ‘optical-fernsichtig’ and the logic of architecture, connecting the later instead with his aesthetics of proximity: as already suggested by Walter Benjamin's own reading of Riegl in the text ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936). Drawing from that connection, I will argue that some procedures typically associated to the haptic might be productively employed to interrogate and reinvigorate current architectural practice.