Monday, October 6, 2008

Mapping the Gestalt


Jasper Johns, heralded as the first pop artist, relied heavily on the viewer’s cultural knowledge to convey the full meaning of his artwork. Without utilizing the Gestalt top-down processing Johns’ painting Map would appear nothing but somewhat regularly shaped splotches of color. But by drawing on my outside knowledge I realize it’s actually a map of the United States. This is initially difficult to make out partly because the outlines are not sharply defined. The undefined shapes that make up the states are not clear enough for immediate recognition and their ambiguity encourages me to draw on my visual memory. Arnheim points out that this process “is a matter of the relative strength of the stimulus structure as compared with the structural strength of the pertinent [memory] traces”(39). Johns also does not provide any center of balance so the painting appears restless. As a result our eyes have no place to rest so we also feel agitated.

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