Definition: The practice of gaining sexual pleasure from watching others. Enjoyment of seeing pain or distress from others.
My paintings form no sense of sexual pleasure for the audience, however, the sense of observing someone in an invasive manner is a prominent aspect within my project 'Morbid Fascination'. As morbid fascination is fuelled by looking at or watching gruesome images and videos the audience is essentially prying into the narrative. Similarily to viewing confidential material from a detectives office.
Sigmund Freud used the term scopophilia to describe the aesthetic pleasure gained from looking at something or someone. He considered this curiosity a partial-instinct innate to the childhood process of forming a personality, and that such pleasure-instinct may be sublimated. This could suggest an atavistic approach to the painting in which a person's primal curiosity fuels their morbid fascination.
What does the audience gain from observing a crime scene?
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