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.