Language of Art
Methodologies in Art
Definition: How one approaches art intellectually.
Function:
Colors or frames what you're looking at.
Helps inform the meaning of what you're looking at.
Metaphor: Like wearing sunglasses, methodology colors your view of the artwork.
Examples:
Psychoanalytic: Uses Freudian theories to understand meaning.
Feminist: Derives meaning based on feminist discourses and the role of women in society.
Postcolonial: For non-Western art; seeks understanding in light of postcolonial theory.
Formalist: Meaning is wrapped up in how the artist used color, line, value, shade, space, etc.
Visual Culture
A way of approaching art, a type of methodology.
Presupposes we live in a primarily visual world.
Emerged from the invention of television, predominance of advertising.
Visual Studies vs. Visual Culture
Visual Studies: Passive, studies visual elements of art.
Art history, learning how to look.
Understanding the world is composed and finding the components of those compositions with formal elements.
Visual Culture: More active; the object is an active object doing something to you.
Comes with presuppositions, ideas, and ideologies.
Example: Feminist viewpoint - a painting isn't just a painting, it's telling you/informing you what a woman's role in society is.
Subject Matter vs. Content
These two elements are distinct but interrelated.
Subject Matter
The things that you see; what you're looking at.
Content
Its contextualized meaning, associated with meaning, but includes the subject matter.
What does it mean?
Expressive content.
Examples
Two paintings of the crucifixion with the same subject matter (Jesus, Mary, John, cross, landscape) but different content (one is a victory, the other is a tragedy).
Memento mori: a Latin term that essentially says, remember death.
Naturalism
How we actually see things in the world.
Related to illusionism.
A relative term, with various degrees.
Examples of Varying Degrees of Naturalism Using Woman with a Mirror
Silver panel photograph (1930s): High degree of naturalism.
Mirrors have a general idea of verisimilitude.
Norman Rockwell painting: Highly naturalistic, but one step removed from the photograph.
Captures a young girl on the verge of womanhood.
Pablo Picasso (Cubist painting): Low sense of naturalism.
Reflection in the mirror is distinct from how Picasso portrayed her in real life.
The Act of Vision
Quintessential element of visual art is looking and seeing.
Mirrors are used to bring the importance of looking to the forefront.
Mirrors and paintings are no guarantee that what you see is the truth.
The human apprehending the image brings subjectivities to bear.
Two people can look at the same object and have different reactions.
Other Important Terms
Idealized
Depicting objects to conform to a standard/ideal of beauty or acceptability.
Derives from Plato's notion of a perfect realm of pure ideas.
Perfected version of something.
Example
Warrior from Riachi- depicts the human body in idealized form.
Commensurability of the parts- each part of the body is in proportion to the other and equally proportioned.
Stylized
Exaggerating forms or changing something in the natural world for artistic effect.
Different artists can depict the same object but each will have their own style.
Examples
Medieval manuscript (insipid page) - l and I stylized to heighten the dramatic effect; to heighten the sense of words and meaning.
Tughra of Sultan Suleyman (Islamic art) - his initials are stylized by the artists.
Illumination- To illustrate something.
Artists use expensive materials, like gold to illuminate knowledge and the value of those materials corresponded to the value of the message of the book.
Romanticized
Depicting things in a nostalgic, emotional, or fanciful manner.
To romanticize something is to depict it or characterize it in a larger narrative.
Example
The Fighting Temeraire by Turner, showing the end of the era of wooden ships and the dawn of industrialization with iron steamboats and fire.
It's the end of an era.