Interesting....

I just thought that this was an interesting photo to look at, considering what we talked about last week and what we saw in this week's Arnheim reading....
Arnheim says: "If a face is turned sideways, the nose will be perceived as upright in relation to the face but as tilted relative to the entire picture. The artist must see to it not only that the desired effect prevails, but also that the strength of various local frames of reference is clearly proportioned; they must either compensate one another or be subordinated to one another hierarchically. Otherwise the viewer will be confronted with a confusing crossfire" (Arnheim, pg. 101).
-Alison

Twelve Parts

 

Form to no Form

The Buddhist believe that no art can be created without the experience of experience itself, for art is the closest way to represent the inner truth and practicing of these experiences. Yet, no one can simply begin without the practice of self realization of experiences the self has gone through.  I heard this idea from a close friend of mine, and it stayed with me because if three clear, sharp words: experience, self, and truth.

If I am to say that art should aspire in the realm of experience, self, and truth, then I have to question what these terms mean. Each interpretation will depend on the subjective belief of the person who questions these ideas; therefore, I encourage the thought to express itself within the person on his or her own account. Each individual is unique because of the experience he or she has flowed through, and his or her genetic make up that allow these experiences to evolve. As an individual grows, other aspects of life find their paws into the person’s experience. I refer this to one’s environment; the environment determines the influence of the experience on the self. 

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Last night I attended a concert that asked of me one thing, and that was to let go. Letting go is not an easy task to experience because it demands a lot from the inner self. It asks you to stop, point blank, and awaken your senses. The place that I went was a sort of wear house facility created in the 1870s for Aesthetic movements to have a place to exhibit various works of art. That is what the brochure sates. As we (I went with a friend) entered the building, someone asked me to show our tickets and said to progress forward into a large hall split in half by a projection screen. We were to sit on the floor, which was covered by a few old carpets, on these black sort of lounge chairs that rested on the floor, and were extremely comfortable, which I hoped since it would be a 5 hour concert. In front of me would be where the eight musicians would sit, and behind me was a stadium like seating, except nicer. I’ve been to other classical concerts before, but never so open as this one. Everyone huddled together, shoes off, chatting, waiting patiently for what was about to happen in this enormous building. And just like that the eight musicians entered and my entire self disappeared. For about 30 min, I think because I have no idea, I was in a trance. In front of me, close enough for me to stand up and walk a few steps was Philip Glass and Michael Reidman, and the rest of Philip Glass Ensemble. My trance was not due to being awe struck, but simply by letting go of my inner self to listen, and through listening became closer to something not understandable to me, but that I could feel through the inner self I had let go of  to connect to what I was experiencing. 

Passion, vulnerability, fear, happiness, joy. My emotions trying to find their way out, but unable to because they had nowhere to go. All was fine until this morning when I sat down, and asked myself what I would right as I flipped through chapter 3. Nothing came. All that I experienced only 10 or so hours before rushed backed, and I think – connection.

So I referred back to Arnheim on this thought. 

Before I came to the concert, I was reading Arnheim and he brought up a few times the significance of a concept in both the artist and the viewer. How the percept must be associated to the viewer’s conscious within their experience, and that with out this, an artwork will be meaningless. This is how I interpreted his idea. August Macke said, “Man expression has life in forms. Each form of art is an expression of his inner life.” (Fineberg 49) In this sense, man must connect to form because through a visual representation of form he can begin to understand the work shown to him. Yet, Kindinsky took a form that one would normally be accustomed to seeing or have some previous reference to, and break its narrative by exploiting its recognizable shape. The viewer has to confront not the form, but the idea of the form buried in the unconscious of the viewer. In his own word he states:

“Skillful use of a word (according to poetic feelings) – an internally necessary repetition of the same word twice, three times, many times – can lead not only to the growth of the inner sound, but also bring light still other, unrealized spiritual qualities of the word. Eventually, manifold repetition of a word (a favorite  childhood game, later forgotten) makes it lose its external sense of the name. in this way, even the sense of the word as an abstract indication of the object is forgotten, and only the pure sound of the word remains. We may also, perhaps unconsciously, hear this ‘pure’ sound at the same time as we perceive the real, or subsequently, the abstract object. In the latter case, however, this pure sound comes to the fore and exercises a direct influence upon the soul.” (Finebery 62)

I purposely did not listen to Music in Twelve Parts because I was curious to feel the sensation of what I was to experience without having experienced it before hand by listening the piece on a cd or internet. I was curious to see if I could transport myself without having to have a previous experience of the sensation due to familiarity. Here I would agree, to a point, with Arnheim that if I did have some previous association with the piece it would have been a more powerful connection because at times I found myself confused to what I was listening to. Yet, this was not a necessity that I needed to have. All I needed was myself. My own experience (which I could say is the association he is stating) and the trust to say “here, here is me, I, your audience, am willing to take the journey you ask of me.” I can tie this train of thought to Rothko, which happen to be the anniversary of his death (suicide) the night of the concert, and the similar connections that Glass and Rothko have. I am not saying that Rothko was a minimalist, but more that his most honest works had no form. He did have you, the viewer. He did have balance, and yes color, but that was his biggest trick on the viewer, to be able to capture you through color, not form, and the rest he had to weal you in just enough so you would let go and transport yourself. I am left questioning as to whether I need percept to do this, to run away into the world the artists wants me to feel? A world that might be closer to my own then realized by simply letting go of my on percept.

Experience, truth, self

Can you only be true to the self once it is willing to let go in order to have an experience? And if this is so, does form apply anymore if the artist wishes to take you beyond the very elements he or she uses as the medium to transport you?

Art is truth when the experience of the artist is true to him/ herself, and that happens through experience, and that experience happens through the practice of simply living, of being within the environment our culture surrounds us with. It is not an excuse to say that because one wishes the viewer to experience the raw emotion, whatever it is, can be nothing more that. This is the problem I have with a lot of art I see. I have to battle with deciding what of it is the truth versus the thought without the truth of the artist.  Or as Arnheim stated, “When the contact with a full range of human experience is lost, there results no art, but formalistic play with shapes or empty concepts.” (p. 148) He is right.

I try to find myself disagreeing with Arnheim but in doing so I start to understand more of what I think he is telling me. Arnheim makes it clear that there a two concepts that the visual artist has to take into account; that being what kind of projection will lead to what kind of percept, and what principles operate the mechanisms to do so. The striving idea or percept the artist is conveying has to be there and the medium the artist uses to develop it.  Without the relationship between these two concepts, connection becomes extremely difficult to discover.

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I feel more lost then before because I felt. I saw before me more then musicians playing but sounds of curiosity of being, of living. To connect in this world of ours, we have to learn how to be honest with ourselves if we are to be honest with another self being. What is it we are searching for? Connection is all around us but even then, to connect is foreign. I mean to truly connect. What does each letter of that word transform itself into? I think all of us would be able to agree on a definition and understanding of the word connect. Take it apart – c o n n e c t – each letter slightly loses it hold. Separate it even further – c     o    n        n    e      c      t   - and I see letters. I am still able to put the letters together and form the word, but it feels foreign. What I am trying to say is that words used, pictures drawn, music created have to go beyond the definition of the concept it prevails to us. Is has to be disembodied and re-put together, and it has to be repeated so many times that in that very instinct, a connected flashes pulses into an unconscious that is tender to the self, and the inner sound of the person is left bare. I think out of all this, this is what Arnheim might be trying to help us understanding when reading detailed chapters on each aspect of visual perception of art. To take each concept for what it is engrained in us, and trust the artist just enough to experience that connection.

If so, then art is the most powerful tool man has created for he cannot even understand his own creation

Blog post 2

Though created prior to the Renaissance and its extreme focus on perspective, Simone Martini’s Annunciation demonstrates some of the principles Arnheim discusses. This work was the first to come to mind when I read the passage in which Arnheim discusses different ways in which the artist may portray an onlooker within the painting, how he may capture the symmetry or frontality of the thing seen both in the eye of the viewer of the painting and in that of the depicted viewer. Arnheim uses the example of an evangelist writing in a book, suggesting that many Medieval artists strive to portray the man viewing the book and the book viewed full frontally with respect to the viewer; Martini, though a Medieval artist, goes quite another route in Annunciation. The bible in which the Virgin’s hand is placed is neither facing her nor the viewer, despite the fact that she herself is depicted in a relatively frontal manner with respect to the viewer. Perhaps the obliqueness of the lines forming the book serve to counteract the following effects which might make the Virgin’s thighs and torso appear smaller than the rest of her body: the (very slight) foreshortening effect of the tilt of her knees forwards from a seated position on her thighs; the overlapping effect of her hands, structures which place her abdomen in the background; and the flatness of the dark fabric of her robe, the only area of the work denied any shading or depth. Mary’s bible, in resting in such an unnaturally oblique form, follows the perspective of the overall image: the extremely oblique lines in marble on the floor suggest a vanishing point somewhere behind the Virgin’s robe. In having the book in a position relatively parallel to these lines in marble, it emphasizes the existence of this vanishing point even in the context of her robed body. In other words, although without the presence of the bible the area “behind” Mary’s robe may be perceived as small or flat because of its flatness of color and shading, the foreshortening of her thighs, and the lack of shading in the robe, the existence of this strangely positioned text points to a vanishing point behind her robe, an area approximately behind her womb. With the addition of the bible in this unusual position, Martini turns what lies beneath her flat black robe into an infinite and unknowable area: the point of convergence which the background does not allow us to see. 

After thinking about Arnheim’s analysis of La Source, in which he praises Ingres’s use of formal shapes in conveying a fluid image, I looked at the work of one of my favorite photographers, Julia Fullerton-Batten, who uses highly stylized, abstracted, unnatural configurations of the human body to convey essential and universal human truths (at least I think so). In this photo, taken of a real mother and daughter pair, Fullerton-Batten stages and lights the daughter in such a way that a clear vertical axis dissects her body: it begins at the part, continues to break her face into symmetrical halves (one light, one dark), moves downwards to her elbow, and ends with her top knee, which is then punctuated by the most luminant yellow lemon in the photograph. The girl’s body is not symmetrical across this axis, her left side she caving into the background behind her mother’s knees, leaving only her folded hands and streaks of hair on the right. This emptiness on her right side is exaggerated by the fact that her calves are not visible at all; her legs appear to be abruptly cut off at the knees. The effect of this imbalance and asymmetry is that the girl looks almost as if she is melting into her mother, leaning into the background space created by her mother’s presence in the foreground. The nearly nude girl becomes visually hidden or sheltered by her mother in more ways than this: the mother’s hand literally eclipses the daughter’s neck, and her maternal gaze creates a direct, straight line into her daughter’s arms, which in turn shield her body. Also notable is the fact that the girl’s left side, close to the mother, is shaded and protected from the light source which shines from the right. In this image, like Christ’s eyes from the Durer discussed at the end of Arnheim’s chapter, every line, every formal element supports the meaning and content of the entire image; in this case, each line, each curve, and each angle within the girl’s body suggests her reliance on her mother for shelter and protection. 

Since Fullerton-Batten has done extensive work on females in adolescence, it is not surprising that she choses again to capture this tense and fraught stage; however, this image perhaps is notable because it is one of her very few which suggest any sort of solace or protection from the confusion of adolescence. In contrast to the photos in her cleverly named series Awkward, this image allows some relief for this girl in the form of her mother. The almost absurd overlapping within the girl’s body creates a tension which is alleviated in the ease of the mother’s body: while the girl reaches her left arm across her body to her right side, the mother simply uses her right arm to reach to her right (as Arnheim suggests when discussing an ancient Egyptian image, there is more conflict and complexity in an arm which reaches across the body than one which does not). 

Form, Perception, and Unconsciousness

At first I was confused at how the chapter on form would be any different from the chapter on shape. Before now, I suppose I always understood the two words as having the same meaning. The way I made myself understand the difference was to think of a basic shape or object. If you turn it in another direction, it is still the same shape, but depending on your perspective of it, it has changed form.

This also makes me think about facial perception. I remember Oliver Sachs mentioning that sometimes patient’s would have a hard time recognizing family and friends because their facialexpression would change. To the patients, the person would look so different that it was hard for them to believe it was the same person. This fact makes me curious about how reliable our vision is—even those with perfect vision. And how this could affect our ability to correctly identify a criminal or the visual details of a crime? Seeing something or someone from a different angle could cause you to believe you are seeing something entirely different. I feel that we often “see”, not with our visual system, but with our brains (previous knowledge and assumptions through past experiences).

Arnheim describes foreshortening in three different ways—1) The image is not orthogonal (as the Egyptian art), 2) The image does not provide a characteristic view of the whole, 3) any image withparts that are changed in proportion or disappear partly or completely. I found the exampleof the “monstrous horse-man” interesting; however, not because I was confused by my knowledge that it was a horse, and my eyes thinking it was a penguin shaped creature. Before I read what Arnheim had to say about it, I was intrigued by the image because I had to study it before I could tell which direction the horse was facing. (I don’t know, maybe that’s just me?) I suppose after reading Arnheim’s description and studying it longer, I am able to better visualize how that image would appear strange or distorted to someone who was not used to seeing objects represented through different perspectives.

As I have never given much thought to form before, I am interested in applying what I am learning to the filmmaking process. Personally, I find the foreshortened and distorted images visually intriguing. I like not immediately knowing what I am looking at, and the process ofpiecing together details to form the image in my mind, which I am consciously or unconsciously basing it from. “The expression conveyed by any visual form is only as clear-cut as the perceptual features that carry it” (Arnheim, pg. 161). This quote has inspired me to experiment with the camera and to tell my story not solely with the images in my film, but with the way the images are shot. I realize that I rely heavily on the image itself and the voices of characters, and I would enjoy making a film that relies almost entirely on the viewer’s interpretation of the images being presented. I am virtually new to everything in the art world, and even filmmaking was something I accidentally stumbled upon last semester. When I made ashort film as my conference project for an oral history course, I put a lot of thought into the story I wanted to share, but not into the aesthetics of the film—because I really had no idea how to make a film. And so I was really surprised by the reaction it got, and my professors seemed tobe shocked that I had no previous experience. It turns out that I did all these things in my film by accident, but now I am wondering if perhaps it wasn’t accidental, but unconscious? And furthermore I wonder how often these unconscious elements appear in artwork? I think that it is great if one does something purposely, but I wouldn’t describe a piece of art as less meaningful or beautiful if it was created without a clear objective in mind. In fact, there is something more artistic about it if it is closely linked to discovery.

Some old and new examples of art and form (foreshortening, overlapping, depth, etc). As well as a bad example of foreshortening!

Distorted Perception

"The power of all visual representation," Arnheim writes, "derives primarily from the properties inherent in the medium and only secondarily from what these properties suggest by indirection.  Thus the truest and most effective solution is to represent squareness by a square." (Arnheim, 116).  Arnheim contends that even the most "lifelike" of images are not completely accurate visual representations. "The depth effect is diminished and therefore constancy of shape is quite incomplete (Arnheim, 115)," Arnheim writes. Thus, our eyes correct inaccuracies in even the most accurate of images.  Arnheim calls this process "translation." This quote interested me because of what it suggests about the human eye's ability to make visual sense of an artistically rendered distorted object.  When a form is distorted, our eye naturally works fit it into a coherent visual category.  In this way, we are able to make some sense of even the most abstract images. 

 A basic example of this is Figure 87, on page 114 of the Arnheim reading.  It depicts a tracing of a painting by Oskar Schlemmer, from a side vantage point.  The image is of three people sitting around a rectangular table, but because of the vantage point, the table appears more trapezoidal than rectangular.  Despite this, the viewer immediately understands that the trapezoidal shape is a table, and furthermore, that the table is rectangular.  In doing this, we are perceptually bypassing the more obvious category  (trapezoid)  and matching it to a category that is further removed from the actual shape of the image itself (rectangle).  The goal of this process is to convert a distorted image into a more coherent one, and to perceptually correct any visual ambiguities that might impact the degree of clarity with which we view the image.  

A square may well be the most effective solution to representing squareness, but various vaguely square-like shapes can also effectively represent a square.  There is room in art for perceptual distortion, because the eye naturally corrects it.  With this understanding, I have difficulty agreeing with Arnheim that "Western art has suffered a serious loss...in relinquishing directness."  He seems to think that distortion should only be present in an image if it has a purpose. While I agree that distortion should not be sloppily unintentional, or the product of an artist's self-indulgence, I do think that that art can impact a viewer on a visceral level while depicting an completely unidentifiable image.  It seems that Arnheim believes that the purest version of an image can never be represented by abstraction, and I disagree with that.  I don't feel that art should necessarily be translatable, and that its impact does not need to be understood in order to be felt.  I think that, if we viewers can make a trapezoid into a rectangle, we can meaningfully experience an artwork while remaining completely unoriented in it.

The Real Horse

It seems natural to ask an artist, whose painting you are viewing with her: “What is this about?” The painting, let’s say, contains multiple “pools” of aqua and lava-like red, hovering on the same plane as a chair, whose legs as wavy as hair. You can’t let this be a self-contained painting: you have an immediate desire to know what this has to do with reality. “What are you saying here? What is this supposed to mean?”

Later on in the night, the artist tells you she has one more painting waiting at her home. “What is it of?” you ask. That is the assumption: the painting is a duplication of reality, or of something in reality. It’s a “pictorial representation,” as Arnheim puts it. Even if it is a subversion or interpretation of reality, as are Picasso’s drawings (Figures 91a and b), it is still of reality, connected & bound to it, not a painting of its own entity.

Why is so much of Arnheim’s discussion of Form about the representation of an object from real life? Probably & greatly it is a result of the artistic trend throughout history to make art that way. In the Egyptian humans, and the Greek horses, art has been a method of relating to reality, saying something about something real. Even in abstractions, like below in Picasso’s The Guitar Player, titles direct us to the bridge between art and reality. (And if, in these abstract paintings, the title doesn’t give us reality, our cognitive processes do. Arnheim says on page 139, “It makes all the difference whether in an ‘abstract’ painting we see an arrangement of mere shapes...or see instead the organized action of expressive visual forces.” I think the viewer, more often than not, sees an arrangement of shapes; Arnheim assumes a viewer’s choice between the two equally, but I believe there is a tendency to project or infer reality from even the abstracts.)

Why has the representation of reality been the artistic trend? (and where it has not been, why was it the unconscious goal of art viewers?)

Surely there have been painters who have created paintings--self-sufficient entities, detached from reality, images that have nothing to say or do with reality.

It probably isn’t possible. What painter takes brush to canvas without an incentive? a real incentive? A realistic object or objective is what causes the painting. Regarding Figure 102 of Arnheim, we would say that The Silk Beaters is, being a painting, detached from reality--but Hui Tsung was real, and was inspired by real silk-beating women, or the idea of real them, or the objective of making a real statement on real sisterhood. A revolution or viewer’s emotion can be the desired effect of the piece of art. Even in the sudden & unquestioned “surge” an artist might blessedly experience, and then immediately paint without a conscious objective in mind, a painter is real and thus the painting has something to do with reality, by very nature of its irreversible relationship to the painter. It was birthed by something real. Why then, do we talk about a painting as if it is a detached entity?

A tree is real, we would say. A tree is a part of reality. A tree grows; it is not a tree of something, or about anything. It simply is a tree, and none of its existence is devoted to “pictorial representation.”

But is the same tree real if its seeds were planted by a man?

We often perceive (correctly) that what’s in a painting is not limited to the two dimensional plane, but is a three dimensional scene. Our understanding of reality, and objects from reality, leads us to assume and believe the same dimensionality in a painting. Our experience with objects fills in the blanks of Figure 90, from Ballet Mecanique. We assume that outside the frame, this lipsticked woman continues; and that her face is dynamic and three-dimensional, holdable, kissable, and even that it contains a skull and blood. In Salvador Dali’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, in a painting of the non-realistic, even here we process the information in a way that assumes depth and gives shape to objects we’ve never seen in reality. We assume the teetering golden throne is not a cardboard cutout, but a deep and rounded vehicle holding a full woman. 

 
In even more abstract works, we may not see three dimensions. We may not discern anything from reality. But we try, and we would rather have it than not. In Pollock’s Number 14: Gray, we can see different layers of sperm-like swirls, planes on top of planes. We may even assume the dimensionality of the swirls, that they are round and substantial. I think “expressive visual force” is an artistic goal equally valuable than representing reality, but I believe the truth is that viewers look for reality first, and deeply. I know, at least, that I do, very instinctively and not to uphold any conscious “belief.”

 

Arnheim gives only small value to the role of Knowledge. He says on page 116, “Knowledge may tell us that [Figure 88] is a horse, but contrary perceptual evidence--and should always overrule in the arts--such knowledge, and tells us that this is a penguin shaped creature, a monstrous horse-man.”

At first I found this preposterous: I saw a horse, albeit from a potentially confusing perspective, but a horse from which I could discern the shape of a thing I knew from reality. I knew that at another perspective, I would see the same horse. But after looking at this Greek horse multiple times, I am more likely to see a “monstrous horse-man”-- a two-legged thing with a lumpy, human-sized torso. Maybe this viewing sequence occured because this monster is what I am now looking for, persuaded or directed that way by Arnheim. Maybe I saw a horse originally because I was in such disagreement with Arnheim’s idea that knowledge should be and is overruled, that I looked immediately for the realistic horse.

Regardless of what I see now, I think Arnheim plays down Knowledge too readily. Foreshortenings occur because what is on the painting is not (at least, sometimes is not) the birth of a new thing. It may be a foreshortened perspective of a thing from reality we knew beforehand, with which we compare and fill out the dimensionality of the painted image. Arnheim says on page 117, regarding the foreshortened Mexican man and Greek horse, “It is only our knowledge of what the model object looks like that makes us regard these orthogonal views as deviations from a differently shaped object. The eye does not see it.” But the eye can and often does see it; sometimes it happens after the brain “figures out” that this is a view of a real horse, albeit a bad view, and sometimes the eye sees the horse immediately. And yes, sometimes the horse is not seen, but rather an equine penguin. Looking back now, as I draw my eye up the horse’s legs, telling myself it’s a horse, I see it. This effort is different from the horse I originally & instinctively saw. Maybe Arnheim was right--in both cases, maybe my eye didn’t see a horse at all, at least not without the help of my brain.

But viewing a piece of art is not just done with the eye--the brain obviously is working in conjuction. “The eye does not see it” seems a statement ignorant of the entire cognitive process involved with art perception. Arnheim says that “contrary perceptual evidence overrules,” and thus we should see the horse-monster, taking the visuality of the image as the authority. The image’s percepts are the canon of the image’s story, by which we follow information. This is what’s on the Greek vase; this is what is. It may be easier for you to wrap your head around a horse from reality, but this isn’t reality, this is art; this is a vase.

The word in Arnheim’s statement, “should,” is the important word. Arnheim believes that justly--rightly, even morally--the viewer of the art must abide by the perceptual evidence, and disregard the temptation of Knowledge. Knowledge, he and I both believe, makes it easier to “see” an image, to understand what it is of and what is occurring. But that application of knowledge assigns information to the art that isn’t true, because it’s not what is in the art! It’s only the projection of reality onto the art, by the viewer. And while I agree with Arnheim on that that, what should happen is not necessarily what happens. Knowledge makes an image easier to understand. As long as artists continue to leave holes in paintings, the viewers will continue to fill them with reality.

What Is Art?

Is it possible to create art without meaning?

There have been many occasions where I’ve sat down and surrounded myself with a wide variety of tools to create art. I will have my watercolor pencils, my oil pastels, charcoal, graphite, pen and ink. But, all I see when I look down in front of me is a large, blank, white sheet of paper. For me, inspiration can be difficult to express. I feel the influence of my surroundings, but getting it on paper takes work. And what exactly is inspiration? It’s an idea pulled from something else. Is there always a message connected to inspiration? Is there a message in all art that is created? Certainly all art has meaning, right?

If one was to create a piece solely for the intention of making something beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, lacking any meaning, can we call it art? Perhaps creations that are produced for appearance alone can only be called decorations rather than art. Yet, Arnheim said that, “Every painting or sculpture carries meaning. Whether representational or ‘abstract’, it is ‘about something’; it is a statement about the nature of our experience.” We are all touched in some way by the images we see. Creating something just for beauty’s sake must involve some range of emotion. All emotions have meaning to them, so in a sense, the ‘piece without meaning’ actually has meaning.

Arnheim goes on to say, “Compositions by adults are rarely as simple as the conceptions of children; when they are, we tend to doubt the maturity of the maker. This is so because the human brain is the most complex mechanism in nature, and when a person fashions a statement that is to be worthy of him, he must make it rich enough to reflect the richness of his mind.” I agree that logically, of course the ideas presented in an adult’s artwork will be more complex than that of a child’s. But, that doesn’t mean that a piece of art that is presented simply or stylistically child-like should be looked down upon. It is important to see the value in the simplicity of a child’s work. Children see the world so simply and purely – while their artwork may lack the depth of an adult’s, there are certainly ideas present that, as adults, we may forget over time because our perception of our world has changed. Yet, most children may not have any intention in sending a message or presenting an idea. But, that’s the beauty of art – it can be ambiguous.

I’m not completely sure how I feel about Arnheim’s rules for balance and shape in art. I mean, I understand his ideas and I agree with most of what he says, but to me, art is a form of expression. Approaching art should not be a serious thing. It is there, naturally, for everyone. I think techniques are important to create an aesthetically pleasing art piece, but I also think it sort of takes away from the purity or freedom of art, itself. When I sit down to an empty sheet of paper with a strong desire to express my thoughts and emotions, I am not interested in following guidelines for how to make a balanced work. It is an intuitive process. (Actually, everything I’m saying is causing me to second guess myself because I do agree with a lot of Arnheim’s statements, I just didn’t like how I felt about them while I was reading. I need to think about it more. Or maybe create more art.)

Alison Adams

Long Blog Post

Art & Visual Perception

For class on February 23^rd

The Boundaries of Art

            After doing this weeks readings, I began to wonder “what are the real “boundaries” of art?” We hear so many opinions in art school and these readings by Arnheim that it seems like we are constantly being taught that there is a “correct” way to express ourselves whether its on a canvas or on a stage. There are certain ways that artists can choose to place light, shading, color, or shapes in order to manipulate where the main attention of the viewer is placed. After learning this, I wondered what should me more important- that a painter place a certain amount of light in one area of a painting in order to change the viewers perception or that he focus more on the original intent and message of the work?

          In his first chapter, Arnheim asks the question himself...“why should artists strive for balance?” He claims that two of the main reasons an artist would want to strive for balance would be that the artist can make his statement unambiguous and that man strives for equilibrium. But then where does that leave abstract expressionists? Are they just meant to be counted as the exception to the rule? I wondered...why would an artist want his statement to be unambiguous? As I went on with the reading, I began to understand that Arnheim believes the artist would want to be unambiguous in order to portray a certain message in the work. If an artist has a specific opinion or story to get across in the work, it may not always get portrayed through ambiguity. Through balance, an artist can hopefully be sure that their statement will get across to the audience of their work.

           The basic law of visual perception according to Gestalt psychologists, as Arnheim states, is that “Any stimulus pattern tends to be seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as the given conditions permit.” Arnheim also says that “all true works of art are quite complex even when they look simple.” So basically, even when a canvas in painted one single color it may look simple but there is a lot of meaning and experience behind it. Yet we would still strive for simplicity in our viewing of it, according to Gestalt psychologists. If there were various artists all painting one color on a canvas, they would all bring their different backgrounds and experiences to the work and that it what matters.

          Arnheim goes on to say that “Every painting or sculpture carries meaning. Whether representational or “abstract” it is “about something”; it is a statement about the nature of our experience” (pg. 62). I took this to mean that all art is art that means something especially because of the person behind the work of art. It is more about what the artist put into the work than what we get out of it. A viewer of a work of art should always try to keep in mind that behind the work there was once just an artist with a message to convey.

        Arnheim discusses a lot the relation between the image seen and the statement it is intended to convey. “Balance remains the final goal of any wish to be fulfilled, any task to be accomplished, any problem to be solved. But the race is not only run for the moment of victory” (Arnheim, pg. 37). I think Arnheim is saying that although we do strive for balance that does not mean we always strive to completely accomplish it. An artist may begin a painting hoping to achieve a certain amount of balance in its presentation, and even if the end result may not turn out the way they planned, they are still left with a work that represents the experience they had trying to get a message across.

         This leads me to think even further towards...how much ambiguity is too much or too little in art? Arnheim says “The principle of parsimony is valid aesthetically in that the artist must not go beyond what is needed for his purpose...to say too much is as bad as to say too little, and to make one's point too complicatedly is as bad as to make it too simply” (Arnheim, pg. 59). Meaning....an artist should give the whole message behind the work away without stating explicitly what it is...that is my interpretation for now.

            “Compositions by adults are rarely as simple as the conceptions of children; when they are we tend to doubt the maturity of the maker. This is so because the human brain is the most complex mechanism in nature, and when a person fashions a statement that is to be worthy of him, he must make it rich enough to reflect the richness of his mind” (Arnheim, pg. 59). Well I guess it sounds like we are a bit arrogant as a human race but I do find it to be true that my mind is most stimulated when looking at a complex work of art but this does not mean that the same meaning can't be drawn from a much less complex work. Arnheim says that we doubt the maturity of the maker that would compose a work of art as simple as one that a child could make. How does an artist make a statement that is simple and rich at the same time? Is this painting below painted by an actual 5 year old or a highly regarded modern artist? Does the answer matter in the analysis of the work? You tell me...

         In his next chapter on shape, Arnheim says “Mistakes in the comprehension of an artistic structure are easily made when a viewer judges by relations within narrow limits rather than taking into account the overall structure. The same mistake may also lead to faulty phrasing in the performance of a musical passage, or to an actor's misinterpretation of a scene. The local situation suggests one conception, the total context prescribes another”(Arnheim, pg. 77). I find it interesting the way that Arnheim connects his analysis of art in various ways in saying that an actor can misinterpret a scene by not successfully accounting the overall structure.

        There are many different “boundaries” in art that an artist can choose to play with and push to the limit. I thought back to the discussion we had last class about Mamassian's opinion on ambiguity. He said that visual perception is ambiguous and visuals arts play with these ambiguities. He says that

artists strive to leave the right amount of ambiguities to let the observer contribute to his experience in a personal way. At the same time, all perception requires that you make assumptions. And as Arnheim says, when looking at a work of art there are “psychological forces” at work and artists are able to effectively use certain techniques to manipulate our visual and mental perceptions. So then how can we really ever contribute to a viewing experience of a work of art in a “personal way?”

         Arnheim says: “The artist, for example, need not worry about the fact that these forces are not contained in the pigments on the canvas. What he creates with physical materials are experiences. The perceived image, not the paint, is the work of art” (Arnheim, pg. 17). Therefore, an artist should not focus on the structure or manipulation of space in his painting but instead be sure that the image he creates will contain the work he put into creating it. An artist should not worry about whether the message they want to get across will be understood but instead focus on the attempt at executing the proper portrayal of that message.

@Sarah Curtis- I really appreciated your posting. I really liked the connection you made between the points Arnheim made about expression and Pina. I recently saw the Pina film in 3D and it was definitely an overwhelmingly incredible viewing experience. I'm glad you reminded me of this film and pointed out this connection. When I saw Pina I think that I was was trying to do exactly what Arnheim now tells us to do by not viewing a work of art within narrow limits and instead looking at the overall structure. Pina's work is already so visually pleasing and incredible that it almost wouldn't matter if there was no meaning behind it. Yet obviously there is very deep meaning beneath her moves and Arnheim only enhanced by ability to dissect the worth of them even further.

One last note...while I was doing these readings I thought a lot about a postcard I have on my wall that I got at the Picasso museum in Barcelona of “las meninas conjunto.” That was part of a study done for a much larger work that also hangs in the museum called “Las Meninas” which was a series of 58 paintings done by Picasso in 1957. These paintings were related to “Las Meninas” painted by Diego Velazquez in 1656. It is really interesting to look at that original work and see how Picasso took a work that was a clear-cut depiction of reality and turned it into something more ambiguous. It is also interesting to see the ways that Picasso played with color and form over the course of the various paintings that he did leading up to “Las Meninas.”

“Las Meninas” by Pablo Picasso, 1957, oil on canvas

“Las Meninas Conjunto” by Pablo Picasso

Balance, imagination and Pina Bausch

 

As I read Arnheim’s discussion of Balance my mind fled to the question of imagination. All of the conceptions Arnheim wrestles with (tension, psychological forces, the question or problem whether those forces are an illusion, and the effect of intrinsic interest and knowledge) can be the material of the creative imagination. How is the dynamic experience of perception related to the creative work of the imagination? Writing this now, I wonder if this is simply putting Arnheim’s motivating question in different terms. In a sense, it must be since art is the work of the creative imagination. But I really do wonder how fair that judgment is. If what is imagined may be “free” from what is observed and experienced what is its relationship to questions of perception that are so profoundly concerned with what is observed and experienced.

Of course imagination lives in dialectic tension with experience, but its essentially unpredictable and unknowable character reminds us of the peculiarities and particularities of the individual. An awareness of individual difference (or cultural and social difference for that matter) inevitably challenges any psychological or artistic claims to the universal. Perhaps, paradoxically, it seems that the dynamic, dialectic Gestalt approach which strives to understand and appreciate the whole actually reminds us that we can’t know the “whole story,” reminds us that we can’t achieve balance. Try as we might to enjoy the balance of “whole understanding” or “complete perception,” there will always be a fundamental imbalance between what is created and perceived, what is meant and what is felt, what is observed and what is understood—and that’s exactly why we need to try nonetheless. As Arnheim writes, “Seeing is the perception of action” (16). Seeing itself is also ceaseless action. By continually striving (and inevitably failing) to perceive “the whole,” by approaching art and experience with an awareness of the infinity of tensions and connections within any individual imagination it seems possible to find our way from to the (possibly) universal through the particular.

The choreographer Pina Bausch took a holistic, experiential approach to dance that defied category. Her work is dance and theater, modern and classical, abstract and realistic. When she died at the age of 68 the Sadler Wells dance theater in London collected tributes from fellow artists. The actor Alan Rickman said, "Pina Bausch pins you to your seat. It's like she's connected to your bloodstream or something. She knows about fears, fantasies and dream-life. It's like meeting your own imagination." Bausch in her work and Rickman in his words reveal the feat of perceiving art. Somehow perceiving the creation of another illuminates and even strengthens our own imagination.

Working within the medium of dance/performance, balance played a technically important role in the choreography of Bausch’s pieces while the dynamic tension, the intentional imbalance, between imagination and reality, the familiar world and the dreaming world engaged her audience, her dancers, her self. As she famously said, “I’m not interested in how people move but in what moves them.”  Her pieces wrestle with the mystery of motivation again and again. Though it does not fit comfortably into any category, it is modern. It is avant-garde. It displays the impulses of modern dance Arnheim described when he wrote, “The stylistic preference for overcoming the downward pull is in keeping with the artist’s desire to liberate himself from an imitation of reality…Modern dance has run into an interesting inner conflict by stressing the weight of the human body, which classical ballet tried to deny, and at the same time following the general trend in moving from realistic pantomime to abstraction” (31). Bausch work thrives on this conflict, looking deep into weighty, observable, experienced, familiar, gravity-bound reality and pushing through it to offer a liberating experience of imagination.

The visual artist Antony Gormley (whose work confronts the issue of balance head on) said of Bausch (in the same Sadler Wells collection of tributes):

Pina Bausch has enriched the language of dance and theatre and made it into a kind of rite of passage, taking it back to its early roots in ritual as well as forward to a form of collective psychotherapy. I am inspired, challenged and indebted to Pina, not least for her acute sculptural sense of body in space.

The notion of art that reaches new heights by embracing its foundations might be a form “collective psychotherapy” is exciting. Rather than understanding behavior by citing a “death instinct” or “pleasure principle” or “Oedipus complex” how much more creative and frankly generous to strive for a whole, to acknowledge an infinitely complex web of experience and imagination. I sincerely appreciated the alternate view of the human offered Arnheim offered in response of Freud’s conception of the “death instinct”:

A human being in good physical and mental health finds himself fulfilled not in inactivity, but in doing, moving, changing, growing, forging ahead, producing, creating, exploring. There is no justification for the strange notion that life consists of attempts to put an end to itself as rapidly as possible. Indeed, the chief characteristic of the live organism may well be that it represents an anomaly of nature in waging an uphill fight against the universal law of entropy by constantly drawing new energy from its environment. (37)

I think Pina Bausch would agree. Just like Arnheim she does not deny the importance of balance by presenting work that resonates deeply with this conception of human experience, but finds the creative potential of balance in the tensions it creates and illuminates. The weight of her movement balances beautifully with the weight of its meaning. So it is a tremendous, joyful, heartbreaking pleasure to imagine what that meaning might be.

It’s lots of fun to YouTube Pina Bausch. Wim Wender’s 3D documentary Pina is wonderful and out now. In the movie, Bausch discusses the emotional effect of the direction of her gaze. Her company has come to BAM and I keep hoping they’ll come back. Here’s a link to the movie website (with good information and a great trailer) and also a link to a BAM trailer of a performance of Vollmond (Full Moon) I saw: 

Movie website: http://www.pina-film.de/en/about-3D.html

BAM trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGhulhiBliI

 (Interesting that the huge rock on stage is on the right)

Links to Antony Gormley’s work featuring bodies in space:

http://www.antonygormley.com/sculpture/chronology

http://www.antonygormley.com/sculpture/item-view/id/241 - p0

 

Two-dimensional Movement

     

       While I was reading the section in Mamassian's article about composition, a painting that kept coming to mind was Caravaggio's Depostion. Caravaggio, in typical Baroque style, places a lot of emphasis on the diagonal within his composition, and in this way, his works tend to have a clear line of action. Livingstone mentioned, also, that "high detail and movement" within a painting dictate where the viewer's eye travels while examining it. The diagonal of Caravaggio's composition draws the viewer's eye along that line and around it, following it as it intersects the action. In this particular piece, the diagonal we are drawn to begins with the hand in the upper right corner, down that arms, then down the other man's arm (with the red sleeve) , then along Christ's body, and the line ends at the end of the white sheet in the lower left corner. This line is emphasized by the intersection that created, where Christ and his followers' heads and hands are on one side of the line, and the visible feet are on the other. This painting is also relevant to Mamassian's argument about illumination. The light source is not visible in this painting, yet it is particularly striking in this case because the lighting is so dramatic. The way the scene is lit makes these people appear to be on a stage. This association is accentuated by the empty, black background. The intensity of the lighting directly in front of darkness is a kind of inconsistency that Mamassian mentions, which draws us to focus on what is important, and this is Carvaggio shaping a scene in a way that is impossible in the "physical world". 

      I wish Mamassian had elaborated more on movement within art. To me, it seemed like he briefly glossed over the subject and conventions used by artists to create "movement" within a piece. To me, this is a subject that has always fascinated me: how can one create movement in a static medium? This is part of the reason I love filmmaking; it is a two-dimensional way to represent a three-dimensional experience, and I love the challenge presented in the complex idea of capturing movement. I also love painting, however, and I rarely am confronted with this issue, so I am not personally used to applying these conventions Mamassian discusses. However, the way I understand movement in terms of two-dimensional art is a little more cinematic than just incorporating contrapposto within the painting; I relate more to Livingston's idea of movement, in which our visual system completes an effectively incomplete frame when we are observing something. Since one is only ever looking a single detail of a subject, that is the detail which is in focus, and we fill in the rest using prior knowledge, etc. Renoir's paintings, to me, most accurately represent the way I understand movement and capturing a single moment in time.

      In chapter 5 of the Livingstone text, I was really interested to read the section on acuity and peripheral vision; this subject is actually pretty relevant at the moment: one of my best friends has recently suffered permanent eye damage. In the process of creating an art piece, he burned his retinas and now he sees a permanent gray circle that remains constantly in the center of his gaze. All disparaging thoughts aside, this event is extremely fascinating to me. It is so interesting to watch him in the process of effectively relearning how to see; he now has to learn how to read using just his peripheral vision, for example. Another thing I am fascinated by is the kind of art he is making recently. His focus has shifted and his art is, of course, extremely affected by this change. Reading about ambiguity, now, has given me more appropriate language to describe the art I've been watching my friend produce, although the ambiguity in his art is a little more literal.

the Phantasms of Colours

"by what modes or actions Light produceth in our minds the Phantasms of Colours is not so easie"

Like Issac Newton, I've found that understanding color and our perceptions of it to be quite daunting. So much so that I was afraid I was colorblind or had some sort of malfunctioning rods or cones at the beginning of this class! I have been involved in art all my life but have struggled in understanding the world of color. The readings, though, have shed much light on the subject and I hope my rational mind will be able to catch up with my visual perceptions. I was struck by the fact that though many cultures define the range of colors to be continuous in the color wheel, there is actually physically no "continuity between the longest-wavelength red light that we can see and the shortest-wavelength blue" (Livingstone 85). I was also fascinated by Livingstone's discussion of how color creates edges by means of surround antagonism (92). The visual system can give different responses to different wavelengths of light is interesting to note insofar as it enables the visual system to have another way to distinguish objects in addition to shape and luminance (95). This is interesting in the different sources of light we encounter -- daylight, tungsten and fluorescent. We don't normally notice the differences in these lights but if our color-selective cells did not have a surround organization, out perception of an object's color would vary dramatically. Its interesting that the ability to see a color is dependant on the surrounding ones. Though our visual system is adept to not recognize the color of the illuminant, the lighting conditions can dramatically alter a color's value.

I was also intrigued by Livingstone's discussion of peripheral vision is fascinating in how the mind will assume shapes and objects that are only hinted at, such as seen in many impressionist paintings. This phenomenon, illusory conjunction, has really stuck with me as I go through the visual world. I wonder how this effects our perceptions both positively and negatively throughout our daily lives. This brings me to Mamassian's article, which discussed the ambiguity of visual art:

"Visual perception is ambiguous and visual arts play with these ambiguities. Ambiguities in visual perception are resolved thanks to prior constraints that are often derived from the knowledge of statistics of natural scenes. Ambiguities in visual arts are resolved thanks to conventions that found their inspirations from perceptual priors or, more interestingly, from other sources such as stylistic or arbitrary choices" (2152).

The ambiguity in art is something I am very intrigued by and attracted to. Most of my favorite works are very ambiguous in nature. I grew up with a love of the Impressionists and am currently obsessed with the blurry nature of oil paintings and photographs such as those of Gerhard Richter. The ability of artistic mediums to portray movement and utilize the visual system's amazing abilities to import information from suggested colors and shapes is fascinating. I will conclude with a few of Richter's works and would like to explore further the use of ambiguity in our psychological perceptions.