The Blink of an Eye

Glasses as a cultural and stylistic object.

From the green emerald through which Emperor Nero watched gladiator fights, to Benjamin Franklin’s homemade glasses for reading as well as distance vision, or Marilyn Monroe’s cat glasses, which heralded a fashionable change. From the nobleman Titurel in the story of the Holy Grail to Emma Bovary and Harry Potter – this book tells of historical figures and figures from painting and literature, all of whom wore glasses.
The printing press, mechanisation, automation and digitisation were harbingers of profound and lasting changes that have transformed social, cultural and economic conditions in such a way that we commonly refer to them as revolutions. But there are also quieter revolutions: for example, when an apparently banal object fundamentally changes people’s living and working conditions. One such object is a pair of spectacles. It could be said that modernity begins with a paradigm shift in medical philosophy, transforming visual impairment from a disease treated with pomades and tinctures into an impairment that can be corrected by means of technical instruments.