The Face as a Quasi-Thing

What is this atmosphere which radiates a very special kind of picture, such as the portrait ? A phenomenology and aesthetics of lived embodiment (Leiblichkeit), better still an “ atmospherology ,” assumes also that there is a special bodily communication between the perceiver and each thing or Gestalt he perceives. How then are we to interpret the relationship between a portrait and its observer just on the ground of the complex interbodily dynamics that this relationship activates ? This would prove once again that the atmosphere found in the image and which the image radiates is an ecstasy of the « thing» – in this case of the eyes or glances found in one specific portrait – and not a projection of the perceiver's subjective state of mind.