seeing or sight - To perceive with the eye, to visually apprehend. Or, to visualize; to create a mental image of. Also, to detect by any means similar to the use of the eye, as in the use of photography.

Physically, sight requires that light is cast upon the pupil of one or both of the eyes, pass through the lens, through the aqueous and vitreous humors, onto the retina. From the photoreceptors there — millions of light sensitive nerve endings called rods and cones — nerve impulses must then be transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain. In the brain, these nerve messages are analyzed for their arrangement / pattern, and its meaning. (See elements of art and principles of design.)

"Seeing" and "sight" are often used to emphasize the quality which differentiates seeing from mere looking, comprehending or understanding a sight's meaning rather than merely apprehending its pattern of light.

Other synonyms: view, gaze, behold, note, notice, espy, descry, observe, contemplate, examine, survey, and discern.

• "First I saw the mountains in the painting; then I saw the painting in the mountains."
  Chinese Proverb.
  
  
• "The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them."
  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German author.
  
  
• "Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within."
  Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), German Romantic painter. Quoted by Carius, Friedrich der Landschaftmaler, 1841.
  
  
• "Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful."
  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American writer.
  
  
• "The question is not what you look at, but what you see."
  Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American writer.
  
  
• "You do not see with the lens of the eye. You see through that, and by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye."
  John Ruskin (1819-1900), English art critic.
  
  
• "We must . . . give the image of what we actually see."
  Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), French Post-Impressionist painter.
  
  
• "The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution."
  Paul Cézanne.
  
  
• "Yet in spite of the total disregard of the dictionary of manners, he shows a politeness toward us which no other man here would have shown . . . Cézanne is one of the most liberal artists I have ever seen. He prefaces every remark with Pour moi it is so and so, but he grants that everyone may be as honest and as true to nature from their convictions; he doesn't believe that everyone should see alike."
  Mary Cassatt (1845-1926), American Impressionist painter. In a letter to Mrs. Stillman, 1894.
  
  
• "I shut my eyes in order to see."
  Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), French Post-Impressionist artist.
  
  
• "The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen."
  Paul Valéry (1871-1945), French poet, essayist.
  
  
• "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."
  Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss artist, teacher at the Bauhaus.
  
  
• "Nobody sees a flower, really — it is so small — we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."
  Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), modernist American painter.
  
  
• "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), French writer and aviator.
  
  
• "I make a head to see how to see, to know how to see, not to make a work of art."
  Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Swiss sculptor and painter. Peter Selz, Alberto Giacometti, 1965.
  
  
• "Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see — to see correctly — and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye."
  Kimon Nicolaides (1892-1938) American painter, muralist, gallery owner, and teacher. His book, The Natural Way to Draw, was published in 1941, three years after his death.
  
  
• "What you see is what you see."
  Frank Stella (1936-), American painter, in an interview, 1966.
  
  
• "Light in the absence of eyes illuminates nothing. Visible forms are not inherant in the world, but are granted by the act of seeing. Events contain no meaning in themselves only the meaning that the mind imposes on them."
  Dialogue written for Trevor Goodchild, a character in Æon Flux, a series of animated films created by Peter Chung, Colossal Pictures, and MTV, 2001. Quoted here thanks to Greg Bien.
  
  
• A joke:
  A painter in the prime of her career started losing her eyesight. Fearful that she might lose her life as a painter, she went to see the best eye surgeon in the world. After several weeks of delicate surgery and therapy, her eyesight was restored.
  The painter was so grateful that she decided to show her gratitude by repainting the walls of her doctor's office. Part of her work included painting an image of a gigantic eye on one wall. When she had completed her work, she held an opening to unveil her latest work of art: the doctor's office.
  During the opening, a reporter remarked on the eye on the wall, and asking the doctor, "What was your first reaction upon seeing your newly painted office, especially that large eye on the wall?" To this, the eye doctor responded, "I said to myself, 'Thank heavens, I'm not a gynecologist.'"

Works that are especially about seeing:

Greek, Attic, Black-Figure Eye Cup with Ships, Archaic, c. 530 BCE, terra cotta, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emery U, Atlanta, GA. This cup appears to act as a mask when the cup is raised to drink — the eyes staring out, the handles resembling ears, and the foot of the vase appearing as a mouth. The eyes serve an apotropaic function, driving away evil. See anthropomorphism, black-figure, ex voto, Greek art, talisman, vessel, and votive.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972), Eye, 1946, mezzotint, 7th and final stage.

Mark Tansey (American, 1949-), The Innocent Eye Test, 1981, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Mark Tansey is known particularly for his monochromatic paintings which are often humorous mock-historical scenes that refer to art historical subjects. This picture depicts a group of men who are showing an actual cow a painting of cows by Paulus Potter (Dutch, 1625-1654), The Young Bull, 1647. See pastoral.

Two cross-sections of the human eye:

Protect your eyes, and those of everyone else your activities might affect. Wear protective eye covering whenever the eyes are exposed to hazards.

• International Artists Images of Eyes is a gallery devoted solely to original paintings and images of eyes by international artists.

Also see afterimage, art, artist, binocular vision, blind spot, colorblind, cross-section, gestalt, iris, mirror, night blindness or nyctalopia, ophthalmology, Op Art, optics, optical illusion, optical mixing, perception, peripheral vision, refraction, science and art, senses, stereoscopic vision, subliminal message or subliminal advertising, ultraviolet, visuality, visual qualities, voyeurism, and wide-angle.

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