The Power of a Visual Frame
Lorraine O’Grady isn’t a postal worker or a data monger. She isn’t known for her skills as a pen pal, though I’m sure she would be a really cool one to have. She is a visual artist, and an accomplished one at that. Her pieces appear in the permanent collections of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She had a one-person exhibit at Art Basel in Miami Beach, the United States’ most important contemporary art fair. She was selected for the Paris Triennale, and was one of only fifty-five artists selected for inclusion in the 2010 Whitney Biennial.
But O’Grady’s career was dressed in these accolades only after she framed up northern Manhattan as a piece of art. During the African American Day Parade in September 1983, O’Grady positioned a giant, antique-style gold frame atop a float. On the platform supporting the frame, O’Grady painted the words ART IS…The streets of Harlem with their rusted signs of the Jazz Age, Nubian delis, blue-painted wooden police barricades, and once luminescent signs advertising hotel rooms for rent were outlined in gold as the float rumbled past. The black children, their parents, and their neighbors passed through the large frame for a moment. In the spirit of celebration and inclusivity, this gilded piece framed everything it passed and labeled it as art.
O’Grady didn’t know it at the time, but that gold frame changed the art world’s thinking on who could act as a muse. The piece, Art Is…, brought attention to issues of racial inequality in the contemporary art world. Poorer neighborhoods like Harlem didn’t qualify as art back then. What appeared in museums was not normal people in everyday clothing, sitting along the street on the weekend watching a parade through their neighborhood—a neighborhood that wasn’t white. In reflecting on her piece, O’Grady said later, “I guess I didn’t understand what the power of a frame and a camera were.”
But that frame is powerful. Just ask the anxious U.S. representatives to Congress on hand for the first workday in January. You might think that with the start of a new year, anxiety might come from the legislation that is set to expire with the turn of the calendar page or the countdown to Tax Day that has officially begun. Not so. The angst is over a seating chart.
At the start of each congressional session, U.S. senators vie for the best-placed desks in the Chamber. They mull over and strategize where to plant themselves during debates, angling for the exact spot they want. Each congressional desk is uniquely numbered and comes with its own historical record. Inside each desk’s drawer, you can find the names of senators who squatted there before, dating back as far as the early 1900s. Some names are in marker, some in pen. And others, like that of Republican senator Lamar Alexander, were etched into the wood with a paper clip.
Some senators choose their desks based on history. Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine wanted the desk formerly held by Margaret Chase Smith, the only woman in the Senate for most of her years in office.
Some choose based on snacks. Senators cannot eat in the Chamber. Regardless, desk 24 has been stocked with chocolates and candies that senators snag on their way out, ever since California’s one-term Republican senator George Murphy started the tradition fifty years ago.
But more commonly, senators choose for the view. Not the view they have when looking out, but whether they are in view of others. Orrin Hatch has served in the Senate longer than any other Republican in history and has inherited the right to sit wherever he pleases. He has chosen a spot directly behind the majority leader, an aisle seat in the middle of the action.
“I’m closer to the aisle, which I’ve always tried to be so that you can get recognition,” the Utah Republican said. “In a very serious situation, sometimes getting recognition is the difference between winning and losing.”
Like executives at a boardroom table, eager students in a classroom, or the artist Lorraine O’Grady, what Hatch knows is that what appears inside the frame matters. As if it were an old Broadway theater, the worst seats in the Chamber are the two outermost back corners. From the press area, a reporter must stand up and peer over the railing to see the most junior members, who usually end up there. But the best seats are off the center aisle in front. These seats are right in the line of vision of the presiding officer, who decides which senator gets the right to speak. Political real estate, just as with urban apartments or a first home in the suburbs, is all about location, location, location. Where senators sit positions them either within the line of sight of the most powerful entity in Congress or far from it. In the frame or out of it.
Similarly, inside the gilded edges of O’Grady’s piece of art, or surrounded by the confines of the doormat just inside an apartment, what appears inside the visual frame is a game changer. We all look at the world around us through a frame. We deem what appears inside a frame as important. What’s outside the frame, well, that’s not. Whoever the Majority Leader perceives as being inside the frame is acknowledged and gets the floor. What an artist places on canvas inside an oak frame is appraised monetarily and valued socially. Frames highlight some information and cut out the rest. They shape our perceptions of what matters, and quite literally move us.
The Biology of Blind Spots
We all experience a natural form of framing that leaves us blind to some of the things that surround us. This is hardwired in us. As you may recall from anatomy class, the insides of our eyes are lined with the retina—a super-thin sheet of cells that are sensitive to the light that enters our eyes from the outside world. There’s a small spot on our retina where it connects to the optic nerve—the conduit by which our eyes send messages to our brain. At that point of contact, we lack cells that can detect light. And without those cells, any information hitting the retina in that place is lost. This is a blind spot; we have one in each eye.
To find one of your blind spots, you can try the following exercise.
On the next page, you’ll see an X and a circle. Hold the page up so your nose is pointing at or even touching the page in between the two of them. Close your left eye. With your left eye closed, focus your right eye on the X, but take notice of the dot off on the right side. (It may be difficult to keep from peeking directly at the dot, but keep your right eye focused on the X.) Then, move the page closer to and farther away from you. At some point, that dot you noticed in your peripheral view will disappear. That’s because it’s lined up perfectly with your right blind spot.
Our blind spots are rarely a problem in our everyday life, because our minds go out of their way to hide them. Even when we’re not trying, and without us being aware of it, our eyes jitter around several times a second, framing up different parts of our surroundings. Then, our brains stitch together all of the slight variations in what our eyes have framed.