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).