Art & Visual Perception 2008

The Power of Art

2008-11-17T14:10:00.000-08:00

I found Arnheim's discussion of artists in this chapter very interesting, particularly the part where he discussed how an artist is able to express "the nature and meaning of an experience" while "the non-artist is left 'speechless' by the fruits of his sensitive wisdom" (169). He goes on to say that the non-artist "can express himself, more or less articulately, but not his experience." He then says, "During the moments in which a human being is an artist, he finds shape for the bodiless structure of what he has felt" (169). I find this very interesting, being an artist myself. I have always taken great joy in utilizing art to express things that I cannot say in words. It is like the Georgia O'Keeffe quote I used in my first post, "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way...things I had no words for." Sometimes I can put an idea to words, but it is better expressed in a painting. I think this is interesting when thinking of things like art therapy and analyzing children's art. The lovely thing about being a child is that no matter how "good" of an artist you are, you are encouraged to draw and your work is praised. I wish that it stayed that way throughout our entire lives, because I think that visual expression is a gift, and there should be no measure of "good" and "bad;" we should all feel free to use art to express ourselves.

Another quote I thought of during this reading was one by Pablo Picasso: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." This is especially interesting after this week's reading focusing on children's art. Did Picasso really paint like a child? Was that literally his goal, or were there just certain elements from children's art that he was attracted to? Clearly after this week's reading, what is going through a child's brain while drawing is very different than what is going through an adult's brain, so perhaps as an adult, it is nearly impossible to truly draw like a child. I just thought this was an interesting quote and one to ponder what exactly Picasso meant by that.

Purposes of Children's Art

2008-11-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

I was very interested in Arnheim’s discussion of some of many of the theories about children’s art, mainly the artificial distinction between the use of conceptual and perceptual processing in children’s drawing. Conceptual understanding would cause children to represent “the overall qualities of objects.” Perceptual understanding would rely on a child representing what they see. In reality, children usually leave out many details and this does not mean that they do not perceive them. Arnheim reminds us that visual perception does not encompass “the totality of individual appearance,” but in the “grasping of global structural features.” Our visual perception, and thus our art, reflects our gestalt perception. In addition, art emphasize different aspect of our visual processing system and is concerned with the purposes of the art for the artist.
In studying children’s art for conference work I have come upon all kinds of psychological measure attempting to qualify children's art in terms of cognitive or emotional development. Such standards absolutely do not take into account the range of conceptual, perceptual, and representational concepts that the child is attending to simultaneously. For example, tests that measure cognitive development are often concerned with the quantity of body parts depicted in children’s human figure drawing. A five-year-old student of mine decided to include ears in a family portrait last week. However, he told me he was not giving ears to his mother or sister because “you can’t see them so good.” I think this was a great examples of how a child may be using a range of perceptual and conceptual measures in the artistic process that could are easily misconstrued by the inattentive tester or teacher.
Arnheim writes “[t]he discipline of intelligent vision cannot be confined to the art studio; it can succeed only if the visual sense is not blunted and confused in other areas of the curriculum. To try to establish an island of visual literacy in an ocean of blindness is ultimately self-defeating. Visual thinking is indivisible (206).” I think that this is particularly relevant as we begin to explore the intersections of art and science in the Kemp readings. I think that visual arts can also be confined by making assumptions about the purposes of art and the intentions of the artist. The cognitive psychologist sees only cognitive development in the child’s art. The psychoanalyst sees only unconscious expression in the child’s art. The teacher sees only pre-literacy skills. This fracturing of intention does not take into account the full meaning of the art, and of art in general.

Perceptual Development and Education

2008-11-16T21:21:00.001-08:00

This weeks reading on connecting developmental theory with gestalt struck a chord with me because of some work I did last year with the kindergarten class at the ECC. The consideration of the student’s perceptual identity was particularly important for me because I would conduct art lessons with them once every two weeks or so. Whenever there was “art time” when I was in the classroom, I was put “in charge” of this as well.
All of the specific lessons I did were related to the subject matter governing the curriculum at the time. For example, during the month or so when the student’s were learning about the human body, we explored the art of making pictorial diagrams of different parts of the human body. Another good example is a lesson me and another teacher guided together, where we created origami airplanes, jet planes, and rockets to creatively understand the ideas of flying machines.
When I was reading this chapter I found the majority of what Arnheim was saying about the inclination toward simplicity to be true. However, in the first half of the reading I couldn’t help but be reminded of the countless times when the students would beg me to draw something for them, or draw an example for them. They were seemingly frustrated at their level of motor functioning, and wanted to draw reality as they saw it. This disconnect was elaborated on in his section on “obliqueness”; “Obliqueness is always perceived as a deviation, hence its strong dynamic character. It introduces into the visual medium the vital difference between static and dynamic shapes, still undifferentiated in the earlier phase.” (Arnheim pages 187-188) The process of mastering obliqueness seems to be cognitively understood first, and after a time of exploration (which includes some frustrating “failures”), realized physically in the child’s artwork.
The next definitive elaboration on the mental strife a child goes through during perceptual growth is in his section on “educational consequences”. Experientially, I understood the difficulty he speaks of on the part of the teacher. This difficulty generally being; knowing the balance between showing your student how to do something and allowing them figure it out on their own. “…to teach everything and to teach nothing.” (Arnheim page 204) This balance is definitely hard to achieve, but as I believe Arnheim to be saying, the stress should not be placed in your identity as a teacher, but in the reactions to your student’s identity. “…all teaching should be based on an awareness that the student’s visual conception is growing in accordance with principles of its own, and that the teacher’s interventions should be guided by what the individual process of growth calls for at any given time.” (Arnheim page 205) Arnheim then goes on to discuss the conflict between social urges and the demands of what is best for the development of the individual. I found this to be the hardest confliction to react to as a teacher. I suppose Arnheim’s advice for me would be summed up by this quote, “Such social motives must be distinguished from the cognitive motives that arise from the state of the student’s visual development. The former must not be gratified at the expense of the latter.” (Arnheim page 205) For me, the most interesting part of that last quotation is the word “gratified”. My maternal instincts with the student’s were to do just that. I found it intuitively sound to want to instantly boost a student’s level of confidence by showing them how to do something instead of allowing them to painstakingly figure it out for themselves. The idea that as a teacher one must separate themselves from this natural response a bit (but not entirely, as Arnheim does stress the idea of balance) for the betterment of their student’s comprehension is hard to swallow at first, but nonetheless a very efficient model.

Photomontage

2008-11-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

This photomontage by David Hockney was created by taking many snapshots of one subject and then arranging them in a patchwork to form one image. The resulting image has a similar effect of a peice of Cubist art, and within the cubist paradigm, challenges our notions of depth perception. I also think a correlation can be drawn with impressionist artwork, in that the reality of viewing a scene does not coincide with realist artwork. We do not perceive every detail of a scene in one moment. Our eyes move over the scene, and this requires an interim of at least a few seconds. If you are outside (as this photomontage depicts), environmental shifts in lighting and slight changes in atmospheric conditions have already skewed from one portion of the scene to another. I am not entirely sure how this relates to our discussion of stereopsis, but I am sure that Hockney is challenging our conceptions of depth perception.

2008-11-11T04:51:00.000-08:00

Van Gogh's Night Cafe also seems depthful to the viewer. His use of thick paint gives this painting a relief effect. Also the view into the room demonstrates asymmetry which is discussed in Arnheim as a method of portraying depth effect.

2008-11-11T04:41:00.000-08:00

I struggled with this assignment and finally decided on this Ben Nicholson, White Relief 1935. This is a painting that connected painting and assemblage, creating a relief effect. This painting does seem depthful as a result of its construction. The circle and square recede and the slim shadows this recession creates illustrate their depth. I thought this was an interesting choice because the lines between sculpture and painting are being blurred.

"A very long tunnel"

2008-11-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

The New Yorker cover caught my eye last week as we were talking about depth. The piece, "A Very Long Tunnel" by Brian Stauffer, uses a large range of luminance to portray depth. The symbolism of the piece is enhanced by the use of an exaggerated light source from the back. I also think that it is interesting that the blue part at the back seems to also have depth because of the gradient in light from dark blue, at the top, to light at the bottom. Is this effect similar to that used for atmospheric perspective? This effect seems to make the blue look more realistic while the red has a garish, dusty feeling. Again, the symbolism is enhanced.

Natvar Bhavsar

2008-11-10T19:29:00.001-08:00

While interning at a contemporary art gallery this summer I got to know the work of Indian artist, Natvar Bhavsar very well and was intrigued by his unique method of transferring paint to canvas. He sifts pure, dry color pigment onto each of his canvases without ever physically touching it with his own hands. He would repeat this process over and over again, forming layers of pigment. This created a textured and rhythmic surface which could not have been achieved through traditional brushed on paint. Although it is hard to see in this online image, when you stand in front of one of his works in real life the color jumps out at you and you can clearly see the depth of the paint and how many layers had to be created in order to make the final piece extraordinary. Bhavsar definitely plays with this idea of depth and therefore his paintings are far from flat and two-dimensional.

Depth in Alex Grey's Paintings

2008-11-10T16:58:00.000-08:00

While I was looking at pictures for my conference project, I decided to find a painting by the artist I am researching for this assignment. This one, Theologue, struck me as portraying the most depth. In this painting, Grey portrays two parallel planes with the use of grids. However, these grids recede into the painting, much like roads that go on for miles. These planes separate the human figure from the flames below and the mountains behind him, yet the lines flow within the transparent figure as well.

Picasso's "Guitar"

2008-11-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

In this collage work by Picasso called "Guitar," Picasso uses 3-D elements to play around with depth in an interesting way. Picasso is playing around with the idea of depth and the idea of the parts versus the whole. All of these different pieces on top of each other create a sense of depth among themselves because of the occlusion and the obvious differences in volume among them. Yet what Picasso is also trying to accomplish here is the idea of a unified whole that is all on one plane--one guitar. Our eyes go back and forth from seeing this image as different parts on different planes to one unified plane. I think this game of playing with depth is exactly what Picasso was trying to achieve.

Depth in Egon Schiele's summer landscape

2008-11-10T14:54:00.000-08:00

Unlike the typical perspective in which the viewer looks straight into the scene depicted, Schiele elevates the viewer to give an omniscient perspective. As such, not all the conventional depth cues are employed. Occlusion is the primary depth cue. The luminance of the buldings and the sky are consistent throughout the painting, while the foliage is darker. Schiele thus creates a hierarchy which draws the viewer's attention to both the architecture and the horizon. There is no consistent vanishing point and the horizon floats above the foreground. By toying with perspective and depth, Schiele grants the viewer a special and subjective viewpoint which captures a complete picture of the character of the landscape and the architecture within it.

The Chinese Horse.

2008-11-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

When we received the depth assignment, I didn't think at first that my conference topic could provide any relevant material. I'm studying the Lascaux Cave - the site of perhaps the most magnificent two-dimensional Paleolithic art ever found - and although the works there are incredible and sophisticated, I don't instantly associate them with depth. The Paleolithic artists who created the paintings did not intend to create realistic scenes complete with a foreground, background, and use of perspective. However, they did utilize several techniques in order to lend their pictures of animals a sense of realistic depth. Some of the depth effects created were unintentional; for example, many animal pictures were painted over with more animals, and the occlusion that results gives the viewer a sense of seeing many animals running in a herd across a plain. Other techniques were used very intentionally. Paleolithic artists utilized their canvas - that is, the irregular surface of the cave walls - in creating their figures. Naturally occurring indents and curves were given a place in the formation of a whole animal. For example, in the so-called "Chinese horse" below ...

... the Paleolithic artist has utilized the small difference in the two surface planes of the cave wall in order to fashion the line of the horse's neck around the throat area. Although it's difficult to see in photographs, researchers who have seen the horse and others like it up close testify to the sense of depth that this technique lends to Paleolithic art.

actions and reactions

2008-11-09T12:52:00.000-08:00

Movement can be instigated by and product of forces in the world acting upon one another. I was aware how intricate all the bodily systems are and how easily one influences another, but the discussions of physical, optical and perceptual movement As with most parts of visual perception, the brain has a system of expectation and organization for movement as well. The laws of organization that our brain is accustomed to are broken intoa hierarchical system. The brains inherent belief that if something is in motion, it is less likely to change than if it is stagnant. The brains categorization of movement is further specified as Albert Michotte showed the brain trusts the consistency of directed motion over that of color consistency. I appreciated the incorporation of several types of arts. The discussion of dance made many of the explanations about movement more tangible. Arnheim brings up several times that human body experiences movement in several ways, all effecting one another. The dancer experiences force through motion the viewer experiences the force by watching the dancer move.I though that the image examples in Arnheim for this particular chapter were most helpful. Braque's "Man with a Guitar" evokes the feeling of motion using several techniques.The rigid shapes provide force against the more subdued, blurred back ground. within a painting. The overlapping lines show chaos but somehow provide direction. These same overlaps, along with the color tones and shading create concavities and convexities down the whole piece. He also brings up how important movement is in sculpture. I have seen several pieces of sculpture, especially installations where the space and the movement within it makes the piece.
When I first began this weeks readings I was thinking about how fast our culture moves and it's effect on our visual perception. On p. 384, mentions that our vision has evolved to fit our essential needs for survival. Has our visual attention span been shortened? In the days of MTV and high definition action movies our brains have to be altered from that of someone who lived pre technology. Our visual attention span is only seconds long, I find myself wondering when is our brain at full capacity with visual stimuli?

Dance playing with stroboscopic perception

2008-11-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfVXRn6dNJ0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB1ZnvCuXzg&feature=related

David Parson’s Caught (1982) demonstrates the use of a strobe light in dance. I think it provides a really interesting way to think about how our brain puts together single moments to create a whole. In this example, the singular moment of a dancer suspended in air has a very different effect than the overall “gestalt” of a dancer leaping over a span of seconds. The long clip shows the whole dance (the strobe light comes in after a few minutes), but the quality is poorer. Watch the excerpt to get a better sense of how the dancer’s movement quality is altered through stroboscopic perception.

Vision and kinesthesia

2008-11-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

Livingstone already examined artistic representation as 2-D depiction of a 3-D world. Now she looks at paintings as still depictions of a world full of motion. In a sense we are now urged to think about artistic representation in a 4-D world, with the addition of motion through time as a key aspect of human perception. Arnheim explores the concept that viewing of art always consists of time and motion. The viewer perceives any artistic work using his eye movement to perceive each part through time. However, Arnheim argues that order or eye movement in perceiving a work of art does not matter. Arnheim points to evidence from eye scans (Livingstone shows an example of this on page 78). Does anyone know if there is, in fact, canonical order of eye movements in viewing art? Or in viewing human faces? Arnheim goes on to apply the basic principles of Gestalt to art as 4-dimensional. Through time the brain must grasp the whole significance of artistic works and the whole work must be simultaneously present in the mind. He states that time creates succession, however, the artist (and the brain) must create the order or progression through time.
Livingstone writes about how we maintain stability despite the movement of our eyes and explains that the brain remaps to compensate for eye movement. In studying infant perception for another class, I’ve been intrigued by how perception is inextricable from action and movement. I realized how much we take for granted what our body must do to allow for visual attention. For infants, visual perception, attention and focus is linked with the ability to control body movement, to hold the head and torso upright. There is a huge amount of work done in order to coordinate the motion of the body, the eyes and the external world with visual perception.
Arnheim writes about the distinction between our kinesthetic reactions to inanimate vs. inanimate objects. He argues that endowing inanimate movement with life or consciousness is something that children and artists can access. He gives a great example of a thunderstorm that may be alive to a film director. I find this interesting considering studies of mirror neurons that question whether such neurons are activated by observation of human actions or actions of inanimate objects as well. Interestingly, some studies have showed that people with autism show mirror neuron activation in observations of objects more than in observations of actions of people. This calls to mind the importance of mirror neurons for basic social cognition. I believe that these studies really speak to Arnheim’s discussion of the differences between “expressive impulses and responses” in contrast to “the mechanical effect of physical action (402).” Arnheim seems to see the human body as unique in its motion because of the forces from within the organism. He argues that dance is created more from kinesthetic rather than visual understanding. Considering the evidence from the development of infant perception and the existence of mirror neurons, I believe that visual and kinesthetic senses are perhaps even more closely related than Arnheim states here. In addition, there may be something particular about human action and kinesthetic empathy that is crucial for humans as social beings.

Movement in Film and Literature

2008-11-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

Livingston’s discussion on advertising ploys helped me to understand the function of the Where and What system in terms of motion and how consumers can be more attracted to certain types of color schemes and fonts when they are looking to purchase something. The film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas jumped out at me as I was reading this chapter because it exhibited both Livingston’s point on advertising as well as Arnheim’s point about film editing and how we see motion in general. The jittery and agitated way in which the film is shot parallels its story-line about excessive drug use on the Vegas strip. The Vegas strip alone is notorious for its plethora of neon signs and flashing billboards. Marketers do this intentionally to grab attention and force the viewer to slow down. When letters of one color are placed against an equiluminant background, the words become difficult to read and therefore, one must slow down. Another technique is to create a noticeable contrast between letters and background because the Where system is very responsive to this.

In terms of the film editing that Arnheim writes about, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas switches from one scene to another using stroboscopic movement as well as choppy transitions. In doing so, the viewer is able to get inside of the minds of these drug addicts and feel like they experiencing the horrible “trip” as well. Finally, Arnheim discusses the three ways in which we perceive motion including—physical movement, optical movement and perceptual movement. He gives the example of a passenger on an airplane and how the cabin seems to be in complete stillness even though there is movement all around. This is how a human normally responds to their surroundings yet this film disrupts this natural tendency of ours to see motion as it exists in the real world.

Another aspect of the reading that interested me was about Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. It does not follow the standard sequence of a story, but instead begins with the most exciting part of the plot (the apex) that would typically be found at the middle or end, and uses that as a starting point for the rest of the play. It opens with the murder of the king, followed by Hamlet’s discovery of the crime and then other events that bring us to the end. Sometimes, challenging the status quo of movement in literature makes for a more thought-provoking story.

Let's Go to the Movies...in 3-D!

2008-11-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

This weeks reading, I felt, was quite similar to last weeks. Last week we read about how various perceptual tools allow us to view two dimensional objects as three dimensional. Luminance and shading play a large part in this process. This week the reading focused mainly on stereopsis and how we perceive depth.

Over the centuries, since art began really, artists have been attempting to represent three dimensional objects or scenes on a two dimensional surface. Regardless of how precise the artwork is our stereopsis enables us to determine that what we are viewing is actually a flat depiction of something with depth. Many artists have also tried to manipulate the human perceptual system into seeing the flat rendering with depth. Livingstone mentions that Leonardo da Vinci wanted paintings to be viewed with only one eye and from a longer distance so that our stereopsis would be effectively circumvented. Such viewing was fashionable only for a short period of time.

But Leonardo da Vinci's notion of tricking the viewer into seeing a three dimensional object reminded me of a modern visual fad very much on the rise. Livingstone briefly mentions the View-Masters that were/are popular for children. By presenting the eyes two identical images of a dinosaur spaced slightly apart we then see a three dimensional dinosaur. This notion has since been upgraded from just a still picture to moving images in the movies. Films in 3-D have become increasingly popular ranging from Imax documentaries to feature films. 3-D movies are produced by projecting two of the same images, slightly overlapping like in the View-Master. However, they images also have different polarization which is where the glasses come in. The lenses of the glasses filter in only one of the polarized images allowing each eye to see only one image. If you take off the glasses the overlapping and subsequent blur of the two images on the screen is painfully obvious. While we still view paintings as two dimensional objects I think Leonardo da Vinci would be fascinated by our modern trend of viewing moving images through a three dimensional lens.

Anne Theresa de Keersmaeker

2008-11-03T08:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0eQwwzgB90

Here is the link to a recording of the piece I mentioned in my post. It is not the best representation of the piece, but it might give you an idea of the movement and what I was attempting to describe.

Stereopsis and 3-D Bodies.

2008-11-03T08:01:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the lateness of my post. I wrote one and then had another idea so I decided to start over. Here goes. In the this weeks readings there was a lot of discussion of depth and how our eyes perceive dimensionality. There were many examples of different paintings and the different tools that were used to indicate depth. I am always interested in seeing how different choreographers use space and their dancer's bodies to indicate depth.

While I was doing the reading I was reminded of the dance piece that Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker choreographed to Steve Reich's Piano Phase. In this piece the choreographer has set up two three dimensional bodies in a very two dimensional space. They spin together going in and out of unison for most of the piece. Depth and dimension is added when they break through that two dimensional (flat) space. They turn to then move forward through the space in a similar movement pattern. To finish the piece they travel back to their flat space. It is an interesting choreographic tool. She created a very flat space for two non-flat bodies then brought them out of their frame.

De Keersmaeker also does something very interesting with the lights for this particular piece. She has designed the lights so the two dancers shadows are reflected on the back wall. However, the lights are placed in such a way that there are three shadows reflected on the wall. She creates the illusion that there is a third dancer somewhere in the space when really there are only two.

Depth illusions can be shown through repetitive patterns in flat works. I wonder if the depth affect would be the same if the dancers were not doing the same repetitive pattern of movement? During the performance of the piece I found myself trying different ways of watching the movement. I would close one eye and then the other to see if my perception of the depth and movement was any different. I did not experience much difference in my perception. I suppose that there are many ways to indicate depth in a space with three dimensional bodies moving in it. Flat linear movement done on a frontal plane is often read as two dimensional, while more rounded movement executed on lower levels through the space could indicate a three dimensional space.

The pictures I wrote about in my comment

2008-11-02T22:54:00.000-08:00

Just in case people wanted to see the pictures I was referring to, I found out you can't put photos in the comments, so I'm posting them here.

This is the Cynthia Carlson that I said had a sculptural use of the paint.

This one is the Tony Gibbons I referred to, with the geometric shapes and patterns.

Stereopsis and the "realism" in Impressionism.

2008-11-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

Last week a lot of people wrote about “realism” and what we accept or expect as “realistic” in a paintings. Usually when we look at the work of painters like Ingres or David we see them as “realistic” because the entire scene is painted in sharp focus and individual elements of the scene are rendered in varying techniques and colors that mimic their physical properties. The rendering of the dress in Ingres’ Princess Albert de Broglie, for example, clearly shows every pucker and ripple and highlight of the actual garment. And, in a different section of the scene the subject’s gold necklace, in equal focus, pops out “realistically” against a softly rendered chest, as a separate object with different properties. But, while the physical reality of all these elements is clearly represented, one could argue that when they’re all put together on one flat canvas the effect is rather unrealistic --- or representative of only part of the reality of perception.

In Chapter five, Livingstone refers to the David painting, The Rape of Sabine Women, and writes that, though, it’s painted with remarkable precision, it “would be impossible to register this many details in such a transient scene.” Every man and woman and sword might be rendered incredibly “realistically” but the painting as a whole is, in a sense, very unrealistic. Renoir’s Madame Henriot, on the other hand, which Livingstone refers to in the same chapter, is an impressionist piece but it more accurately represents an aspect of our vision that David ignores. The varying levels of resolution in this piece direct our eyes to a clear, high-contrast rendering of a woman’s face surrounded by a blurrier, more muted background. Renoir more realistically represents the way we would perceive an entire scene with our foveal and peripheral vision.

This “realism” in Impression has interested me ever since we read Livingstone’s chapter five and I was excited when it came up again in the Chapter on Stereopsis. For instance, the blurriness, and visible brush strokes in paintings like Monet’s and Renoir’s, could be considered their most “unrealistic” feature. But this ambiguity undermines stereoscopic depth perception, which relies on clear images. Ironically, when we look at a David we are able to tell that it is a flat painting through stereopsis because it is so clearly rendered, but when we look at a blurrier Monet we become dependent on the other depth cues, which are employed in the painting. Livingstone also writes about the depth cues in the actual application of paint in Impresionist and Post-Impressionist work. Thick coats of paint along the contour of an object, for example, create an “abrupt depth discontinuity” and allows us to perceive, through stereopsis, exaggerated depth. Lastly, Livingstone describes the wallpaper illusion and how repetitive patterns, or the repetitions of brushstrokes in impressionist paintings create the sense of “atmosphere” or “air” in between objects. Different strokes pop forward and backward in semi-regular patterns and create the illusion of depth and space and particles catching light in the air. She writes, “This effect goes beyond what can be achieved by the most accurate realism in generating a sense of depth” and I imagine it is a good representation of Sue Barry’s experience of feeling “in” the falling snow when she regained her Stereopsis.

As I learn about how we actually perceive art the world around us I feel like Impression is more “realistic” than realism. Or maybe it’s more fair to say that it picks up where realism falls short; they both deal with different elements of the reality of our vision.

light and illumination

2008-10-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

In the first section of Arnheim’s chapter on “Light” he discusses the experience of light. This idea has always fascinated me and I appreciated when Arnheim wrote that

the luminosity of a house, a tree, or a book on the table does not
appear to the eye as a gift from a distant source. At most, the light
of the day or of a lamp will seem to call forth the brightness of
things, as a match ignites a pile of wood. Things are less bright
than the sun and the sky, but not different in principle. They are
weaker luminaries. (Arnheim 304)

The very attempt at conveying light in a work of art seems more possible with an understanding such as this. Now that we know objects can be luminaries we can imagine them as a light source rather than only a reflective surface. The paradox is that light can never be conveyed in a work of art to the degree it is experienced by our eyesight. Livingstone illustrates this effectively with juxtaposing her actual experience of seeing colored blocks to the picture of the same blocks in her book. She writes, “No matter how good the photographic paper I use, I cannot achieve an adequate range of luminances for all the colors simultaneously!”

Reading in Arnheim further he points out that the “brightness” of an object is determined by its “setting” and he quotes Leon Battista Alberti, who said that “thus all things are known by comparison.” (306) In works of art there is not a source of light only a depiction of it, this reminds me of the color theory course I did last year. Based on Joseph Albers approach we did exercises on color intensity. I learned that a very dark color can appear bright based on where it is located. For example in Alber’s book he gives a good visual of this with a gradation study of white to dark grey placed on a light grey background can give the illusion of the background where the dark matter is placed is lighter than the background where the white matter is placed although we realize the background is all the same color. (Albers 80)

When Arnheim introduces illumination the explanations get murky for me. This is what I believe Arnheim is getting at when he wrote about illumination. Arnheim said “illumination is the perceivable imposition of a light gradient upon the object brightness and object colors in the setting.” (Arnheim 310) While the object retains its inherent color it none the less will appear to be composed of various colors when illuminated. The Fauvist and then the Impressionist utilized this technique. Arnheim quotes Cezanne’s letter to the artist Emile Bonnard, “Light does not exist for the painter”. This seems to be a startling statement since so many painters before and after Cezanne’s time devoted their lives to conveying light in their works.

The last part of Arnheim’s section on light when he discusses the symbolism of light epitomizes why some artist divest their creative time in conveying light. The idea that light is an active player on the canvas is a powerful one. This makes me think of works by Kandinsky. In his Several Circles many of the spheres seem light and floaty, another, a dominant black sphere appears galactic and spatial, like matter compressed. Some of the spheres appear to be “light sources” while the black sphere seems one which a viewer could dive into and be surrounded by a sea of black space. The black sphere also makes the blue sphere appear brighter and the halo around it makes it a floating orb. The viewer then becomes a little unsettled because how can one jump into the black sphere if it is placed on top of the floating blue orb. Arnheim would probably agree that this is the uncanny effect of light utilized by an artist who knew very well what his objectives were.

Light and Illusion

2008-10-26T21:14:00.001-07:00

In reading Livingstone’s book, I am constantly in awe of the images reproduced within the pages, but I was particularly struck by the Ingres painting on pages 126 and 127 entitled “Princesse Albert de Broglie, nee Josephine-Eleonor-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Bearn”. Livingstone says that Ingres has “taken luminance to a new level” and “It is difficult to tell that the black-and-white version is not a photograph of the woman herself, rather than a photograph of the painting.” (Livingstone page 125) In careful reading of these statements (and others throughout the chapter), I realized that Livingstone places a heavy emphasis on the comparison of equiluminant representations of the same picture. In this chapter [8] specifically, she seems inclined to trust the monochromatic version of the piece more, in terms of spatial information it is giving the viewer. This is interesting to me because as she has very well noted, this is not how things occur in reality. “But it is impossible to consciously see only the luminance version of a scene or painting; we cannot simply see with that part of the visual system…” (Livingstone page 110)
This discrepancy correlates to an idea Arnheim discusses briefly in his chapter on light (chapter six). “Even so, we have trained ourselves to rely on knowledge rather than our sense of sight to such an extent that it takes accounts by the naïve and the artists to make us realize what we see.” (Arnheim page 305) This disparity between what we perceptually believe to be true and what is actually going on to cause us to perceive stimuli in one way over another lends itself to the idea of illusion. Prior to these chapters on light I would become frustrated whenever an author would use the word illusion. I thought this to be an inappropriate description of art. It is with the theories on the way light works that “illusion” becomes more appropriate to me. As Arnheim explains to us, the child’s notion of light is something that becomes terminated by darkness. He then goes on to describe how physicists and other “knowledgeable people” view the way light works in the exact opposite way. This implies that in this specific topic, the explanation of how it really works contradicts the way we perceive it to work intuitively. And, as Livinstone clearly accentuates, this offers a difficult task to the artist attempting to use shading in order to create reality-based depth. Therefore, when an artist accomplishes this task well (as Ingres does in the portrait on page 126), I believe it now to be more appropriate to call this an illusion.

Luminance

2008-10-26T18:03:00.001-07:00

While reading Livingstone, Chapter 8, on luminance, I found it surprising to read that it is nearly impossible to accurately reproduce luminance in any kind of visual representation.
“No matter how good the photographic paper I use, I cannot achieve an adequate range of luminances for all the colors simultaneously! If the picture is made light enough to show the shadows on the black block, the yellow is so light that its shading doesn’t show, and the light colors appear too desaturated; if the picture is dark enough to show most of the colors accurately, the black is too dark to show shadows.”

She goes on to point out that in the picture in the book, you cannot see the luminance gradation on the yellow block. This really blew my mind because I normally think of photography as being able to capture visual images incredibly accurately. However, this is the one inevitable flaw of all visual representation. There are simply too many gradations of color due to luminance in the real world for them all to be accurately represented in an artist’s rendition.

It is also very interesting to see how different artists coped with this struggle. As Livingstone shows us with the multiple renditions of the Madonna’s red-and-blue cloak, the attempts to achieve accurate luminance are varied, yet none represent an accurate depiction, especially when placed next to the Christ Child, whose robes are significantly lighter in color and therefore show significantly more contrast between color and shadow.

However, according to John Shearman, Leonardo da Vinci was the first artist to achieve tonal unity. Da Vinci wrote, “Remember, painter, to dress your figures in lighter colors, darker colors will make lesser relief and be little apparent from a distance. And this is because the shadows of all things are dark, and if you make a garment dark, there will be little variety between the light and darks, while with light colors there will be greater variety.” He also did manage to vary the luminance of his colors without changing their saturation. Of course he did. He’s Leonardo da Vinci!

Light, Shadow, and Truth.

2008-10-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

Reading Art and Visual Perception has made me reconsider the definition of an optical illusion. In the light chapter, I discovered just how many of the everyday visual experiences we take to be "optical truth" are actually "optical illusions," in that our perception of the world around us conceals the reality of what we are seeing. Light does not seem to emanate solely from the sun, but from all the objects that sunlight touches. Shadows do not seem to be the absence of light, but to have a substance all to themselves. The sensation of brightness we experience in an object can change dramatically based on its relation to other objects, just as colors can seem to change according to their context according to the laws of simultaneous contrast. As Leon Battista Alberti stated, "[A]ll things are known by comparison."

In the realm of art, the limited and distorted way our senses perceive the world influences our depiction of it. The result is the production of art that "looks" realistic to us, but does not treat light and shadow in realistic ways. This idea - that in order to make a picture "realistic," an artist must make it less like reality - was baffling to me. So was the revelation in Livingstone's chapter 8 that "[t]he range of luminances (contrast) in a given scene is almost always enormously larger than the range of values an artist can achieve using pigments" (111). It seemed difficult to believe that art could be so limited, given the wide range of expressions that artists have been able to achieve over the centuries. A startlingly realistic-looking painting such as Ingres' Princess Albert de Broglie does not seem to be lacking anything in terms of brightness and contrast. And what about color photographs? Like most people, I have always assumed photography to be an extremely accurate method of recording a scene. A color photograph that has not been manipulated should portray its subjects exactly as they appeared. Yet the limitations of photography have always been clear; I simply hadn't thought about them that much. Even the best photographs of a beautiful day, for example, seem to fall short in recreating the blueness of the sky or the golden quality of the sunshine that I remember. There are great differences between reality and the photograph's representation of it. We ignore these, however, and simply assume that there is no more accurate way of capturing images. Arnheim seems dedicated to illuminating the advantages that other methods of depiction have over our traditional Western, perspectival, "realistic" modes of representation.

When it comes to the interpretation of human perception, Arnheim also works to dissolve our Western presumption that we know better than any other culture. Societies that believe their shadows to be a mystical representation of themselves and will go to great lengths to avoid "losing" their shadows in the light of midday are not "wrong," says Arnheim. He writes, "Human thinking, perceptual as well as intellectual, seeks the causes of happenings as close to the place of their effects as possible." The Western interpretation of a shadow as the absence of light is farther from our perceptual truth than that of these African societies. The impression that a shadow takes up space may be an optical illusion, but "optical illusion is optical truth." Intellectual knowledge often conflicts with this truth, but it doesn't make it any less "correct" - just as a so-called "primitive" or cubist depiction of an object that ignores Western laws of depth and perspective are not any less true to reality than the "realistic" means of portrayal invented during the Renaissance.

The idea of "optical illusion" vs. "optical truth" relates to my conference work. I've been studying very early art, including Egyptian art that seems - to the modern Westerner - flat and unrealistic. Yet the Egyptians formulated their very specific style of representation in order to achieve the sorts of images that would be most accessible to the human eye - that is, the most realistic. They would not have drawn a square pool as viewed from one specific point of view and using the laws of perspective. Such a method would result in a square pool that was not square. Egyptian artists drew square ponds as squares, human heads as seen from the side, and trees as seen straight on. Every choice about how to depict an object was based on the need to make them instantly recognizable - and it worked. Even to the Western eye that is accustomed to seeing depicted scenes in perspective, with one point of view, Egyptian art is easy to understand. The figures in the art may look flat and strange, but it is clear what they are.

The history of Western art has been the process of distorting reality in order to make images more realistic. This is an irony that is well represented in the paintings of Cezanne and Titian that Arnheim mentions, in which portions of buildings or a face are darkened in order to contrast better with a light background. These methods make these images look better to us, but are in fact "forced" and "against nature," according to Goethe (who also stated that the products of such methods are "higher than nature"). It is not strange, though, that art distorts reality in order to make it realistic, when we consider the fact that our own vision distorts reality in order to highlight what is important for us to see in evolutionary terms.

Knowing that the distortion of art mirrors the distortion of perception, we should be more open to the range of artistic expression present in cultures across the world. Their art may not be realistic, but neither is ours. The difference is in the fact that non-Western art is not so limited by the need for so-called realism that it must ignore optical and cultural truths. An African mask, for example, may not seem to represent how a face "looks." Rather, it represents what a face IS to the people who created it.

Let there be Light

2008-10-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

It's amazing to me how important light is to our visual perception system, even though we are often not consciously aware that we are looking at light (i.e. When we are in the shadows of a room). Light is one of the “first causes of perception” (Arnheim, pg. 303). Without light, we cannot see.

Our ability to distinguish the luminance or brightness of an object is related to the context of what's around it. For instance, the man in figure 224 (Arnheim, pg. 308) is seen as in shadows relative to the woman, rather than having darker skin than the woman. One of the reasons for this interpretation is that his cloak is also engulfed in shadows, showing that the whole body is situated in a place of low light in the picture. If his clothes were not shadowed, then it would be more arguable to interpret his darkened face as darker skin.

I am not an artist (other than two art classes taken in high school), so I'm incredibly impressed, knowing now, how hard it is to separate the luminance and the color in our perception, that so many artists manage to balance the two perfectly (especially Leonardo Da Vinci). Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' picture of Princess Albert de Broglie (Arnheim, pg.126-127) is impressive. The caption is right – it is difficult to tell that the black and white is not the photograph of a person; in fact, I think it is only the unnaturally white skin that gives it away. The dress is captured perfectly with the way that light reflects off the shimmery material.

Livingston outlines how our visual system is adapted to perceive more luminances even though the actual perceptual ability of the individual parts of our system are limited. The center/surround system allows us to easily distinguish the difference between sharp contrasts. Gradual changes are overlooked when distinct changes occur. In this way, we increase our ability to see luminance differences.

I am intrigued about the correlation that Livingston draws between luminance contrasts and depth perception in paintings. She says that the Cathedral paintings that look flatter are also the ones that have little luminance contrast in the analysis of the luminance profiles. This is due to the fact that the Where system is colorblind and sensitive only to luminance changes in seeing shapes from shading. “Thus, a low luminance contrast alone stimulates the Where system but not the What system” (Livingston, pg. 128).

The two paintings by Monet (Livingston, pg. 132-133) demonstrate what happens when the artwork stimulates primarily the Where system. The objects in the picture are not distinct, and it is only after studying the picture for some time that one can distinguish the objects at all. Despite the fuzzy quality of the objects, the depth relations of where the blurry objects are situated is clear. This is due to the low luminance contrast and lack of color contrast.

I found it particularly striking that Andre Derain understood that by utilizing the luminance differences to show depth, an artist was freed from using descriptive colors to work with expressive colors. This ability is due to the colorblind-ness of the Where system which sees depth.

Starry House

2008-10-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Initially, when I looked at this image, I saw a church with three star-pointed towers and rays of light emerging from each of the three. The roofs are all triangular shapes, and the symmetry around a central axis means that the whole image appears like one triangle on top of another. Furthermore, the light beams bursting from the stars run parallel to the angles, completing the triangular imagery.

The background, meanwhile, was composed primarily of vertical lines. The lines appear to go straight up and down behind the building, even though the lines (by themselves) are actually angled. Because of the depth indicated through the lighter shading of the forward parts, the background appears to be parallel lines (though again, they're not strictly parallel when examined closely).

Flipping the picture 180 degrees really demonstrates Arnheim's discussion of “top-heavy” versus “bottom-heavy.” The picture that did not look at all unnatural (in terms of visual weight) previously, is suddenly precariously balanced on a narrow point and looks as though it will topple over at any minute. Minor balance is added because of the additional stars on either side, but the design does not appear as natural as it does “right side up.”

On its side, the image loses almost all of its visual symmetry. When I rotated it 90 degrees counterclockwise, I instinctively rotated my head to view it. Just like a violin that loses its power when placed on its side, this picture also loses its.

Felice Varini

2008-10-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

"Playing with the Rules"

2008-10-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

"A painter paints the appearances of things, not their object correctness; in fact, he creates new appearances of things." The painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner said these words in 1927. I find them especially applicable to the readings that we did by Livingstone, Solso, and Arnheim. These readings discussed the role of the artist to recreate the world in their art, but also the opportunity they have to reinvent the world in their art.

One of the greatest mysteries to me is the artist's task of taking in a 3-D world using a 2-D retinal image, converting that information to 3-D using the brain, a

nd then transferring it back onto a 2-D surface, but with the attempts of making it look 3-D. The mental gymnastics required for such a task are truly mind boggling, and something I never before realized had to occur.

It seems that the same clues our brain gets from the 2-D image produced by the retina are the same clues that artists use to portray a 3-D world with a 2-D surface. These tools are perspective, shading, occlusion, haze, stereopsis, and relative motion. For example, in terms of perspective, the further away an object is from the viewer, the smaller the image that is cast on the retina. Thus our brain processes this information to say that as objects consistently get smaller, they consistently get further away. This is exactly what artists do with perspective. They use converging lines to map out the mathematical "shrinking" of objects the further away they become from the eye. So, when we look at a painting using perspective, we see the laws our brain has already registered as truth and convert it to the information given to us on this 2-D surface. Once again, as objects consistently get smaller, they consistently get further away.

What is interesting is when artists play with rules like perspective to create a new world, instead of an exact representation of the "real" one.

Arnheim discusses this in his chapter on space. He mentions Giorgio de Chirico, the artist that I happen to be studying in conference. Surrealists like de Chirico base their art off of re-creating what is portrayed as "real," that is, painting realistically a world that could not physically be realistic. De Chirico used perspective, but used it in "incorrect" ways. At first glance, his paintings seem to make sense, but one is left with a feeling that something is off. This is because de Chirico uses more than one vanishing point, but none of them in the "correct" way.

Traditional perspective uses one horizon line that all of the vanishing points go to. It is in this way that perspective is created; it seems as though everything is receding in the same direction, just as it appears when we look at the world in real life. De Chirico created vanishing points along different horizon lines, breaking the rules of ordinary perspective. Some of the horizon lines are within the ground of the painting, some are in the sky of the painting. This gives us an image of impossible space.

Renaissance perspective is meant to recreate the world accurately, setting the viewer at peace that what he is seeing is correct and familiar. De Chirico's perspective is meant to recreate the world inaccurately, making the viewer uneasy. His paintings have a sense of space, a real, defined sense of space, but it is also a sense of uneasy space, uncertain space, in fact, impossible space. I think de Chirico is a wonderful example of what Kirchner is saying when he says a painter "creates new appearances of things." I think it is the role of the artist not only to "copy" what we see, but challenge what we see, to present us with a new and interesting way to look at the world.

Cubism and Gestalt

2008-10-07T21:05:00.001-07:00

This is a painting by cubist artist Georges Braque, entitled Violin and Candlestick. When first looking at this piece, there is a definite tension between understanding it for how it realistically looks, and then extracting some sort of intellectualized understanding of what it's intended to portray. This is a common theme in Gestalt analysis: how do I organize the components of this image? how does that understanding change when logic and reason are injected into the equation?

This painting represents the study of Gestalt simplicity in that it forces the viewer to reconsider what it is actually portraying. At first glance it looks like a bunch of forms arranged in a relatively well balanced way through the usage of colors and different shapes. However, the viewer is given a set through the name of the piece. By calling this piece "violin and candlestick" the viewer must now "find" the violin and candlestick, and contextualize the background to appropriately suit a scene where one may see a violin and a candlestick. This stream of consciousness that the viewer must go through when analyzing this painting is a good example of an artist composing simple forms in such a way that a sophisticated understanding is necessary.

2008-10-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

Moholy-Nagy's Balance Study (1924) reconstructed in 1967 is an example of an exploration of Gestalt principles. You can see Moholy-Nagy's interest in balance and basic line through his use of the circular and rectangular shapes. Something that I also noticed was the negative space within the circles on the top and the bottom of the figure. That space must be considered in the balance as well. Each piece is contributing to the balance of the object as a whole.

The Bright Side

2008-10-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

This piece caught my attention because of its use of shape and color, and how they work together to create form. This artwork conveys weight-- the "Weimar," despite its weight, is balancing on top of this intricate structure. Interestingly enough, this structure seems to be quite unbalanced-- leaning to the right, in fact. I would assume that the Klee did this on purpose to indicate the instability of "Weimar."

The background is blue, and all spaces in between the structure that are blue indicate free space. Similarly, all shapes that touch a shape of the same color are connected; the red triangles form to make a red hourglass shape. I assume that all of the different colored pieces are separate.

When you convert the image to greyscale, the blue and yellow become hard to distinguish between. This makes the figure-ground distinction more difficult, which can make the structure appear different.

2008-10-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

This is Paul Klee's "Head of Man, Going Senile," and I think it is a great example of Gestalt ideas. As Behrens said, "a whole is not simply the sum of its parts, but a synergistic 'whole effect,' or gestalt." Looking at this painting, we see clear parts. We see clear shapes, some of them recognizable geometric shapes, like the two red circles and the different colored squares. But this painting is not simply a combination of circles and squares. The shapes interact with each other, as does the color, and creates an image, a "whole effect," a "gestalt." Many of the things Arnheim has discussed are illustrated in this painting, and play a part in creating the "gestalt." It is the differences in color that create the shapes because the different colors next to each other have created contours. While the painting is not exactly symmetrical, I would say it has a sense of balance because there is an equal weight distribution on both sides. The head tilts to our right, but, as you can see, the "body" of the man is smaller on the right than the left in order to compensate, thus balancing the picture out. Also, what plays a huge part in "reading" this picture is our past visual experience. As Arnheim says, "Every visual experience is embedded in a context of space and time" (48). Just as we can recognize figure 19 in the chapter on shape as a face, we recognize this image as a face, because of our familiarity with the human face. Also, the title of the painting plays a part in the process, just as our interpretation of the Picasso painting put up is influenced once we learn it is a man playing an accordian. Figure 21 in the chapter on shape can be seen as diagonal lines with two white triangles in the upper left and lower right corners, but once we are told it is a giraffe passing through a window, our view of the image changes. In the same way, the title to this painting influences the way we see it.

Mapping the Gestalt

2008-10-06T15:01:00.001-07:00

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.

Gestalt and The Stage

2008-10-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

The stage was another medium for which to express Gestalt ideas. From 1921 to 1929 the Bauhaus theater became “a meeting point of the metaphysical.” Actors wore colorful, geometric body masks and used movement and sound to convey their intentions. Although it was looked down upon by many of their members, it took Gestalt ideas to a new level. Here is an image by Schawinsky that depicts what the theater may have been like.

Gestalt, Abstraction, Figure & Ground

2008-10-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

Paul Klee. Fire in the Evening. 1929

This Painting by Paul Klee encompasses many of the key features of Gestalt that we have discussed thus far: a dynamic interaction of colors and contours, a unified and balanced composition, and an interchanging dimensional relationship between figure and ground. While the title and the colors are reminiscent of a sunset, the painting is very much abstract. The abstraction nevertheless captures the essence of the referent without needing to portray it explicitly. As a formal engagement with color, form, depth and composition the painting is extremely interesting as well. The careful juxtapositions of color in bands of varying width creates an ambiguous sense of depth. Here we see that the borders/contrast between the colors and the contours give the perception of figure and ground. This practice is a clear application of Arnheim's discussion of our changing perception of colors based on their surroundings. The composition also strongly reflects the ideas in the diagrams and descriptions of Gestalt principles taught in Klee's classroom: " Klee showed his students how to experiment with overlapping figures. If two different line drawings are laid over each other they are perceived as two transparent figures until, in a specific figuration, they are perceived as one whole or one Gestalt." (Van Campen 133)

Also this quote is nice for describing the Gestalt and our perception of it. "So smoothly are they blended into a whole of great overall simplicity, so organically is the compositional pattern derived from the subject and the pictorial medium, that we seem to see simple nature at the same time that we marvel at the intelligence of the interpretation it conveys." (Arnheim, 156)

Kandinsky and Itten

2008-10-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

This image, Blue by Wassily Kandinsky 1927, is a good example of what Arnheim meant when he wrote, "like Mondrian and Kandinsky, he can work with completely nonmimetic shapes, which reflect human experience by pure visual expression and spatial relations." (Arnheim 145) My brain worked with the large blue sphere in a couple of ways. The first was as a planet in an outer space realm of galactic blue. The tiny red sphere could be a planet further away in this galaxy. Another way to look at this painting is the blue sphere is a small marble on a large ink splot and the red dot is an image of a lazer point being shined on the ink. Either way I view the painting, my mind seems to use the Gestault to come up with these ideas. In both instances the blue background, either viewed as space or ink splot, is what Arnheim would call "a Gestault" (68).

This work, Kunst der Farbe, by Johannes Itten evokes Arnheim's explanation of simplicity, leveling and the whole. (66, 67) It is possible that Itten had this in mind when he painted his many Kunsts der Farbes. The simplicity of the square shapes gives power to the two colors used in this work. Itten was a color theorist at the Bauhaus and wrote The Art of Color. I also think about Arnheim's explanation on "levels of abstraction". While I am not sure I fully understand what he meant when he wrote, "when by some circumstance the mind is freed from its usual allegiance to the complexities of nature, it will organize shapes in accordance with the tendencies that govern its own functioning. We have much evidence that the principal tendency at work here is that toward simplest structure, i.e., toward the most regular, symmetrical, geometrical shape attainable under the circumstances." (145) I get the feeling that Itten's work speaks to this idea.

Cubism and Artistic Imagination

2008-10-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

With the onset of the Cubist movement, the viewer was forced to look beyond the disjointed viewpoints and peculiar rendering of the flat planes in order to see the image that lied beneath. Prior to this radical movement artists were much more undemanding of the spectator because they provided them with a straight-forward view of their subject matter. Cubism required people to train their minds to perceive everyday objects amid a haze of shapes and varying perspectives. Take Picasso’s “The Accordionist” done in 1912, for example. At first glance it appears to be a jumble of cacophonous forms with no accordion player in sight. It is only after one stares at it long enough that the outline of the man starts to become visible. In my modern art lecture the professor told us about a quote that Picasso’s art collector, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler said of the Cubist movement. He said that the viewer has to do work in order to comprehend a cubist piece or else they will not see anything past the surface. During my group conference for the same class, the subject of primitivism was also a major point of discussion and I think it ties into Arnheim’s chapter on Form very nicely. We defined “primitive” as not detailed, simple, natural, unrefined, abstract and primary. Artists like Gougouin and Picasso had a fascination with primitive cultures and the artwork they produced and even had collections of their own that included masks, etc. This inspired them to take a similar approach and incorporate these aspects into their own work. I personally find it ironic, however, that Cubism was influenced by something so basic and rudimentary because to me, when I look at a cubist work my eyes feel strained from the complexity of form.
I was also intrigued by Arnheim’s discussion on artistic imagination. He described it as “finding new form for old content” or a “fresh conception of an old subject.” The part that resonated with me the most was when he wrote, “There is more imagination in the way Titian paints a human hand than in hundreds of surrealist nightmares depicted in a dull, conventional manner.” (142) This is something I have never considered before because my obvious instinct would be to convince myself that one of Dali’s fanciful, dreamlike paintings was much more imaginative than any single body part portrayed in a new way. Do you think there is truth to what Arnheim said or do you think that one is simply a more overt form of imagination while the other is a more abstract way of looking at it? The topic of surrealism brings me to my final point. Figure 111 done by the schizophrenic, Friedrich Schroder, a man who spent most of his adult life in mental hospitals and prisons, has some very surrealist qualities to it. Because of his mental illness the way in which he expressed himself artistically was different from that of an emotionally healthy person. His lines were rigid and symmetrical, depth was virtually eliminated and shapes were “devoid of their organic complexity and imperfection.” This occurs when someone who’s mind is “empty or concentrated on some other train of thought” still has their sense of visual organization that is telling their eyes and hands what to do. I guess the aesthetic similarities between schizophrenic art and surrealism makes me wonder how much imagination actually went in to Dali’s work for instance. If it physically looks so much like work done by a man who’s mind is said to be “empty” then how can it really be that imaginative? My uncle on my mother's side is schizophrenic and my grandfather on my father's side opened Gateway's mental hospital in Los Angeles, so I am curious to look into this topic futher and share what I find with everybody in class.

Impossibles

2008-10-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

Arnheim writes about the cultural history of perspective and foreshortening in two dimensional representations of three-dimensional space. He writes about such representation as a paradox, whereby there are “appropriate and inappropriate ways of reading pictorial representations of space, and that the proper way is determined in each case by the style of a given period or developmental stage (134).” This painting, Impossibles, by Josef Albers plays with the viewer’s tendency to read depth, even when such a reading would be physically impossible. The viewer, based on a cultural familiarity with perspective, interprets this painting as two three-dimensonal cylinders even though the cylinders show contradictory and impossible points of view. It took me a long time to visualize this painting in two-dimensions without imposing depth; the left cylinder emphasizing circles and the right emphasizing ovals. Note the way that Albers uses larger shapes in the top half of the painting in order to balance the bottom-heavy effect.

Science/Art, Sensory, Kinesthetics, Culture

2008-10-05T11:12:00.001-07:00

Arnheim writes that the mind “organizes shapes in accordance with the tendencies that govern its functioning. We have much evidence that the principal tendency at work here is that toward simplest structure (145).” Arnheim’s writing makes more sense to me as our class work fleshes out the connection between Gestalt principles and the underlying biological and physiological properties of vision. Wertheimer’s demonstration of the Phi phenomenon was really an “A-ha!” moment for me. That just shows how a visual experience can profoundly illustrate an abstract principle, perhaps in a way that language cannot.
Elizabeth has been stressing the point that science and art illustrate different ways to systematically examine human processes. Von Campen elaborates by writing about the common history of abstract art and experimental science. The science of art theory places what I interpreted as an essentialist conception of the artist’s pure perception of aesthetics. Yet, it seems to me that artists and scientists merely do deliberately what all humans do instinctively. Both scientists and artists use practical applications to systematically organize the world. Oliver Sacks case study of Mr. I certainly shows that an artist may have a different or enhanced perception of the world. Yet that experience is based on memory, experience, associations, and expectations, not innate perception. I find this a far more convincing theory than simply that artists possess “pure visibility.”
The concept of tension in art, posed by Arnheim last week, came up again in this week’s readings. Von Campen quotes Kandinsky stating, “composition is nothing other than the logically precise organization of those living forces encapsulated within elements in the guise of tensions.” Arnheim really contextualized tension and energy fields as having aesthetic, dramatic and psychological meaning. He seems to encompass both Kandinsky and Lipp’s theories.
I was a bit confused about how Lipps and Kandinsky’s theories differ on perception. Our current understanding of neural processing involves multiple, interactive pathways. How does this understanding of visual processing complicate the idea of the two-step process consisting of sensory registration and mental construction of forms? Does the two-step perception theory concept coincide at all with the “what” and “where” processing systems? It seems to me that sensory and mental processing do seem to coincide, on a very simplified level, with the distinct primitive and cortical pathways of visual information.
Arnheim makes a distinction between kinesthetic and visual awareness, again building on the idea of the body’s centrality in visual perception. Some of the work I read last semester in The Feeling Brain class emphasized the importance of listening to signals from with the body for cognitive and emotional tasks. Arnheim’s discussionof kinesthetics, in the context of visal processing, is interesting considering the large amount of work being done on the prevalence of sensory disorders among children. The work done in this area evidences the range of humans experience through their bodies and the effect of sensory processing for learning, cognition, etc. In essence, we are all over and understimulated to a certain extent. We have a range of varying proprioceptive and vestibular difficulties. Sensory awareness I just being more widely recognized as a huge part of self, learning and perception.
Behrens raises an interesting point about the Gestalt neglect of cultural or linguistic meaning. He writes that visual perception was isolated and trivialized. However, I thought that Arnheim’s discussion gives a lot of credence to how graphic arts traditions influence perception. Certainly his interest is in the universals of visual perception, but this theory encompasses cultural and individual differences. The illusionistic doctrine shows that the conventions of perspective are one cultural model, among many, that represents the three-dimensional world in two-dimensions. I wonder if others read Arnheim in a similar way or if I am imposing my post-structural theories onto his work. He also proposes that artists and cultural conventions of art represent the world in vastly different ways because they have different goals. I see this more and more as I examine children’s art from the Gestalt perspective. In self-portraiture each child adopts different conventions depending on what concepts, emotions or characteristics they want to emphasize. As Arnheim writes, different art “expresses a way of living, of being a person” and must also fulfill “the purpose of the drawing.” Those purposes are certainly culturally and linguistically determined.

"The Bright Side."

2008-10-03T12:25:00.000-07:00

While browsing through the Bauhaus archive site, I was particularly attracted to this postcard circa 1923 by Paul Klee, called "The Bright Side." I found it fascinating because it contained what I observed as elements with different levels of abstraction, which related to what we have learned about Gestalt principles in accordingly various ways.

At first glance it - like many of the Bauhaus works we have seen - appears to be a configuration of different colored shapes and lines. Triangles, squares, and circles in yellow, red, and white stand out against a light blue background. Under closer inspection, aspects of the image begin to arrange themselves into discernible figures. We may achieve recognition in respect to the top third of the picture first, because it appears to be the least abstracted aspect. Here, Klee departs from the limitations he imposes upon himself in the rest of the picture to only use triangles, squares, and circles in favor of more complex forms.

What emerges from our perception of this rectangular-like shape appears to be a building or temple, with the double blue rectangles in its center representing the doors, the yellow lozenge shape at its top representing the roof, and the the words "WEIMAR" at its top and "BAUHAUS" below indicating its identity as a structure related to the Bauhaus School in Weimar, and perhaps even the Bauhaus School itself.

That this portion of Klee's postcard is less abstracted guides our attempt to decode the rest of the picture. As I studied them, various interlocked shapes below the building began to fuse into something like a stacked tower on top of which it rested. An interpretation that dispenses with the traditionally Western desire to see objects depicted with perspectival realism could find, in place of the tower, a long pathway leading up to the building's front door, with the variously colored shapes standing in for different colored stones that one might find in an old-fashioned street.

The high level of abstraction in this part of Klee's picture allows us to manipulate it quite freely, seeing it alternately as a pathway and a tower, while still being able to mentally reduce it to its most basic, abstract elements. It takes more work to reduce the building, which Arnheim would identify as possessing the essential structural skeleton that allows our minds to quickly process and understand it, despite the fact that it does not realistically resemble any building that we know of.

A more complete abstraction of this aspect of the image may be obtained by turning the whole thing upside down. Seen in this way, the structural skeleton of the building becomes invisible and the words surrounding it illegible; thus we can't see it as anything but a purely abstract collection of shapes.

"Why Should Artists Strive For Balance?"

2008-09-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

I was most interested in Arnheim's discussion of balance and the human mind. As human's we strive for balance. Human's want to place the subject in time and space. We seek organization. Arnheim comments that in order for an artist's statement within a work to be "unambiguous," the artist must strive to balance and stabilize the various visual forces that are present in the work. An artist must present something balanced in order for in to be perceived properly? Balance is desired in all aspects of life; physical balance and mental balance. "Balance remains the final goal of any wish to be fulfilled, any task to be accomplished, any problem to be solved."(Arnheim, 37) Stress or tension is placed on the system when things are not at balance. This is an interesting way to think about the idea of balance in art. In relation to Freud's "pleasure principal," when one is presented with something unpleasant or the thought/memory of something unpleasant one will do whatever necessary to alleviate that discomfort or tension. Similarly, when looking a piece of art human's will do all that they can to organize the visual information that they are receiving. Both the artist; in making the work and the viewer of the work are participating in attempt to reduce tension, organize, and find equilibrium. Is the universe's desired state a stabilized one? Why would humans strive as they do to equalize things if that were the case? Arnheim says, we are "waging an uphill battle against the universal law of entropy." Why do we strive as we do? Why is balance so important to us? I once read somewhere that the most symmetrical faces are considered to be the most beautiful, but I suppose that that could lead to a whole other discussion on aesthetics and perception of beauty.

Something in the reading that also stuck out for me was the discussion about the visual experience and it's relationship to the physiological. Each visual stimuli has its own "physiological counterpart." In order to have the full visual experience there must be an interaction between all the parts of the visual system. There are different forces at work as well. How does the viewer perceive these forces; pushes and pulls? They are inherent in the visual patterns of the object being perceived.

I enjoyed the discussion of "Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair." Perception is highly affected by use of light, color and the subject's focus. Each aspect of the painting could be unbalanced individually, but all together they give the painting a balanced structure.

The Steps of Visual Perception

2008-09-28T17:50:00.001-07:00

The notion that there are steps to perception, an action that feels like a seamless process, intrigued me. In Arnheim’s first two chapters on balance and shape he is continually returning to this idea that perception is indeed separated into parts. As a Gestalt psychologist, however, he also believes that the whole of perception is different than just the sum of these visual and intellectual steps.

One of the most interesting divisions Arnheim makes is the difference between a perceptual operation and intellectual operation. He asserts that many things are not a “product of intellectual abstraction but a direct and more elementary experience” (pg 35). In other words we see a triangle and are able to distinguish the “triangularity” of it before we can intellectualize that it is a triangle. Or as Arnheim puts it “the young child sees ‘doggishness’ before he is able to distinguish one dog from another” (pg 35).

After the initial perceptual operation we begin the subjective intellectual operation. In chapter two Arnheim discusses the impact of memory on this part of perception. When we perceive something it is compared against our vast past visual knowledge. An example of this is when we see someone who we don’t know or have just met for the first time but they strike us as looking like someone we know. We are trying to fit their facial patterns into a familiar schema. Also, in ambiguous situations of balance or shape this intellectual processing must come into play.

But we need both to form a comprehensive whole. While these various stages of perception are occurring forces, both psychological and physiological, are acting on the brain. I thought this was particularly interesting. I’ve never thought of there being actual physical forces at work in the brain mainly because I don’t feel them at work when I perceive something.

After reading these first two chapters I understand why Arnheim approaches them first in his book and I feel that perhaps reading these before delving into color would have helped solidify my understanding of perception.

2008-09-28T14:54:00.001-07:00

As an artist and designer I’ve explored the properties of Balance and Shape that Arnheim explains in these chapters almost subconsciously. Like any artist, I’ve intuitively known, to a certain extent, what was “right” or “wrong” in the composition of my work. But I had never thought about it in terms of psychology and visual perception. It was always a matter of creating an image that was visually accessible---not necessarily a harmonious or appealing image but one that the viewer could take in naturally. Until this reading, I never knew of any psychological explanations behind an artist’s or viewer’s desire for clear, visually palatable works of art.

I immediately related to Arnheim's explanations of our visual sense of balance, weight and symmetry. He's laid out visual challenges in their simplest form that artistS and designers are constantly running into. How does one place the black disk in the correct part of the square so that it is centered or off-centered enough to make sense to the viewer? Where do you place the doors and windows in the wall of a house so that your statement as the designer is clear? I'm not advocating for strictly formulaic, symmetrical art and design. But aesthetic choices, whatever they may be, must be made clear to the viewer for the piece as a whole to be accessible and effective. As Arnheim put it, this lack of clarity "makes the visual statement unclear and interferes with the observer's perceptual judgement"( page 14).

We run into the same esthetic challenge on page 22 in figure 7b. In this image, "The proportions are based on differences so small that they leave the eye uncertain whether it is contemplating inequality, symmetry or asymmetry, square or rectangle." This uncertainty, unless it is part of the designer's statement, is a prohibitive distraction that viewers have a hard time moving beyond.

I think some of the other visual functions explained in these chapters feed into this notion of visual accessibility as well. On page 67 Arnheim describes our tendencies to “level” and/or “sharpen” what we see. He compares classicism to expressionism and briefly describes how the former appeals to our capacity to level and the latter to our capacity to sharpen or heighten the tension. The two styles are radically different but the aesthetic choices and their visual and psychological effect are clear.

I don’t mean to suggest that certain types of art or certain styles are “right” or “wrong.”I also don’t think that artists and designers should shy away from subtly and nuances. But I think one of Arnheim’s points is that a work of art, no matter the content, or style or subject or medium, will sink in better on a strictly visual level, if it displays clear esthetic choices. Our brain does not want to see ambiguously balanced, or ambiguously ordered or ambiguously complex images and I think artists intuitively don’t want to make such images.

The Part and the Whole

2008-09-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

I found one of the most interesting elements of this weeks reading in Arnheim’s discussion of balance and the interactions of part and whole. Arnheim says: “Whatever happens at any one place is determined by the interaction between the parts and the whole”. As we discussed last week, the juxtaposition of certain colours will alter how we perceive them. This is however, is not limited to the perceptive neurological responses that we discussed when focusing on color, or even to Arnheim’s examples involving the balance of shapes. As Arnheim points out: every visual experience is embedded in a context of space and time- not only by neighbouring objects in space, but events that precede it in time as well as the wishes and fears of the observer. I found this extremely interesting alongside the more physiological readings of the past weeks. It seems very important to look at both of these angles in order to get a full understanding of how complex our perceptive system is. It is amazing how the brain can, in a flash, integrate the high and low level perception into an understanding of one’s surroundings.
Visual agnosia, or the inability to grasp a pattern as a whole, was an interesting example of how the brain can be missing certain parts of this delicate equation, with an unimaginable result. I have consistently found these discussion of the various deficiencies with their multiple sources and results very intriguing.
I find Arnheim’s explanations extremely thought provoking, but somewhat lacking in the description of the more subjective processes. Granted, it is much more difficult to taxonomically define more subjective processes. My discomfort however, probably arises from my lack of experience in the field of psychology and my background in politics, aesthetics and economics. In these fields I have developed an understanding of the world that perceives an individual’s subjective reality as the effects of man-made structures and institutions. These structures arise out of historical processes and are maintained by certain assumptions that are embedded culturally and transmitted through dominant paradigms. Thus I have a bit of trouble simply viewing perception in such an objective and categorical frame work.

Equiluminance.

2008-09-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

The brilliant gold stars in Van Gogh's Starry Night fade into the background when the painting is seen in black and white. The yellow of the stars' center is equiluminant to the white/beige glow they create in the colored picture. The range of different blues used in the sky and the various white, blue, and gray colors used in the swirling parts of the sky are equiluminant, too, and become one shade of gray when the color is taken away. The hills, which have layers of blue and gray in the original picture, take on a consistent gray color as well in the black and white version of Starry Night.

Van Gogh painted the outlines of forms in his painting with black, so the objects can be seen clearly in both versions of the picture. However, the various beautiful colors that give the objects their rich texture fade into each other in black and white, as if Van Gogh had filled in all of the outlines with single colors.

Interplay of the Subjective and the Objective

2008-09-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

For this week’s reading I arbitrarily decided to read the section out of Livingstone’s Biology of Seeing before I read the section out of Solso’s Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain. This random decision proved to work out well for me, because the information I received from Livingstone’s book was left somewhat jumbled in my understanding. Although Solso covers many of the same topics in the chapter “Art and Vision” (Chapter 3) as Livingstone covers in the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th chapters of her book, the method of organization of this information Solso uses seemed to be easier understood by me. Particularly, I appreciated Solso’s constant reiteration of the fundamental concepts amongst somewhat science-thick sections.

“…our understanding of it is based on a stream of neural activity initiated by light reflected from a surface combined with our existing knowledge. We are AWARE of the content because physical changes take place in our brain and eye.” (Solso, page 76)

“In these routing paths, there is massive interconnection with other regions; in general, the cerebral action takes information from a painting and analyzes it into components while at the same time engaging higher-order processing areas of the brain that makes us aware of the significance of the piece.” (Solso, page 132)

These two quotes eloquently summarize key concepts that are detailed in their respective sections. The first quote, from early on chapter 3, delineates the concept of “seeing” as a mode of perception biologically based and experientially based. These two bases are interrelated (as noted throughout the section). This notion gracefully leads into the notion of objectivity vs. subjectivity in perception. Although Solso does not focus directly on this topic, I found it to be one of the common themes throughout the section. I inferred from this reading that Solso’s stance on the struggle between the objective and subjective is analogous to the concept that “seeing is a mode of perception biologically based and experientially based”. Objectivity and subjectivity in perception are two premises that are interrelated and interdependent on one another.

The second quote I referred to is from the conclusion of chapter 4. This quote synopsizes the pathway of visual information throughout the brain. These pathways are explained in greater scientific detail throughout the chapter, but the idea of “engaging higher-order processing areas” (which is a concept also detailed in the Livingstone reading) didn’t fully make sense until I read this sentence. It seems that (like in the aforementioned quotation) the idea of “interconnection” plays a heavy role in the explanation of perception. This is interesting to me, because if I were to draw something that is interconnected, it may look something like a neuron, or roots on a tree. My artistic interpretation would mimic my neuronal structure, which (as described in our readings) plays an important part in the way I would create / interact with art. This example in and of itself depicts a relationship that is interrelated.

Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World"

2008-09-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

"Christina's World," painted by Andrew Wyeth in 1948 depicts a young girl named Christina who was paralyzed from the waist down due to muscular complications . By converting it into grayscale, the painting lost some of its poignancy. The muted, hushed colors that Wyeth used in the original work complimented the forlorn subject matter and added to the overall impact.

http://www.stefangeens.com/christinas_worldwebsmall.jpg

http://www.wid.info/test/christinas_worldwebsmall.jpg?50025113

2008-09-22T19:57:00.000-07:00

I was playing around with luminance settings on paint shop and formed the image on the left with equiluminant colors. The image on the right is what Mr. I would see.

MONET, Rouen Cathedral: Harmony in Blue and Gold (1894)

2008-09-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

Claude Monet's "Rouen Cathedral" painting shows his use of integrating colors and by using a fixed color palate, he could create different scales of dark and light in each color. At the time, people regarded his paintings as formless (which can some what be depicted in the gray scale) however with the stublety of shades, Monet created forms and shapes.

2008-09-22T18:40:00.000-07:00

This is Claude Monet's Customs House at Varengeville (which is at the brooklyn museum, right around the corner from my house). Here the many subtleties of color are lost as the pigments are taken away. Both in the sky and the sea, the colors run together and become a largely flat grey.

J.M.W. Turner's "Slave Ship" as Equiluminant

2008-09-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

In Turner's painting the Slave Ship we see a violent seascape with a vessel in the background and the bodies of the dead and dying that have been thrown overboard in the foreground. The fiery sky accents the tumult of the scene but when reduced to gray scale the image becomes almost unintelligible. As in Monet's Impression: Sunrise the sun in the Slave Ship almost disappears from the sky as does the figure of the ship and the bodies in the water.

Equiluminesant Colors in Van Gogh and Mondrian

2008-09-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

There is use of equiluminesant color in each of these paintings. In the Mondrian compositions the blue and red squares appear to be the same under grey scale and in Van Gogh's "Night Cafe," the greens and purples appear to be the same.

equiluminant colors in art image

2008-09-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

The painting is by Mark Rothko called "White Center." As you can see, the orange and pink appear the same in a black and white grayscale.

2008-09-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

untitled by Bridget Riley

When viewed on the gray scale the red, blue and violet shapes appear as one.

Equiliminant Paintings

2008-09-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

So I was trying to find a picture that was equiluminant, and I started by reading the website http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/monet2.html which says that Monet's "Poppies, Near Argenteuil" has equiluminescence. So I started a google image search for a picture that I could post.

In doing that, I discovered that although the painting is SUPPOSED to be equiliminant, many of the online reproductions are not, as evidenced by this grayscale version that the poppies are still clearly distinguishable in. The color version of it even looks different than another color version that IS equiliminant.

Color of non-equiliminant version:

Equiluminant picture:

Equiluminant picture in grayscale:

Finally, here's another poppy picture that is equiluminant:

Its color version:

Perception vs. Reality

2008-09-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

How appropriate that I was assigned to elaborate on the readings this week! I feel this way because the Robert Solso chapters elaborated on the neural mechanics of our vision. As my introduction to the class was, “My name is Kristen Gull, and I don’t think I use the left side of my brain,” I thought it was rather appropriate for me to correct myself.

As Solso shows us in Figure 3.11, both sides of our brains are actively involved in processing vision. Some optic nerve fibers cross over into the other hemisphere of the brain, where some others do not. Previously, I had no real clear conception of the wiring of my brain in relation to vision, and I was referring to the fact that I do not do much math or science here at Sarah Lawrence. However, as this class goes to show you, when I do, it’s interesting, art-related science, like this!

Although our vision is made possible by an extremely complex system, we humans tend to look through our eyes without really “seeing” all the time. How many times do you recognize your own ability to perceive colors or depth? I hardly notice my range of visual abilities, except when they are spent towards determining the location and identity of a friend walking by me-- only then do I tend to doubt my ability to recognize faces.

Despite my terrible farsightedness, I do seem to take my vision for granted. I think we all must to a certain extent. In fact, we rely on our vision so much that it is arguably the most important sense that we have. Humans often take this information as inarguable truth. For some, seeing is believing. Why not? We have an amazingly intricate system that helped our ancestors survive for millions of years.

However, sometimes we tend to forget that illusions exist. Not that colors are illusions, but I tend to think that colors are external qualities of an object instead of my perception. As in this Georgia O’ Keefe painting, the colors can be seen by some as consisting mostly of reds, purples, greens, and yellows. When put in grayscale, this painting can be a little confusing. This could appear as a painting of something totally other than a flower, especially if they were colorblind. The reds and the purples are of the same intensity, and if someone was red-green colorblind, I would imagine they would have trouble seeing the purple as well, especially with the green trim around it.

I have so much more appreciation for my vision, despite it’s blurriness without the help of contacts or glasses. It is strange to think that the eyes I see through are the result of the eyes of my ancestors. I certainly am grateful that they developed these wonderful perception abilities. It is strange to think how different my life would be if I saw it through a different lens.

Processing Color

2008-09-21T16:20:00.001-07:00

Livingston's colorful optical illusion demonstrations have been incredibly fascinating to me. For certain kinds of illusions, once a person knows the secret behind the trick, the illusion loses its power to fool the perceptions and the “magic” is lost. But with the illusions in Livingston's book, I find that no matter how much I know about the way my brain and my eyes are processing the information to create the illusion, I am unable to NOT see the illusion. For instance, the black and white grid on page 57 continues to shimmer with moving black dots and the red and green spiral on page 67 appears to bounce and pulsate whenever I try to look it over. I actually find both of these illusions quite difficult to look at for long periods of time without becoming somewhat dizzy. Even in reading the adjacent pages, particularly with the equiluminant red and green design, I found it difficult to focus on the words on the page, and instead found myself distracted by the dancing designs in my peripheral vision. I did notice, however, that in dimmer light, the image seems less inclined to dizzy me, and I wondered if it had to do with the overall luminosity of the page.

From our readings, I have become more conscious of color constancy in different lightings. I went to visit my mom this weekend, and the light in her bathroom had been changed from a soft, tungsten bulb to a harsher compact fluorescent bulb. In comparing the new light to the soft light in the hallway (still an older tungsten bulb), I realized that I would use the terms “cool, blue light” to describe the fluorescent bulb, while the terms “softer, redder light” would fit better for the tungsten bulb. I wonder what the spectral signatures of the two bulbs would appear like. It took me a while to adjust to the new light bulb in the bathroom. The colors still look the same, despite the drastically different kind of light. The contrast, though, between the hallway light and the bathroom light is impressive and distracting. I don't think I've previously given the lighting in a room enough credit for the tone and mood it sets.

I was very interested in the discussion of the Mona Lisa painting. One of the reasons why I think the smile is more apparent in the peripheral vision than in the central, more detail-oriented vision is that most of her smile's appearance is due to the facial shadows on her cheeks. These shadows are quite visible in peripheral vision, and they create the sensation of a smile. When looking straight on the mouth, the shadows fade back on her face, revealing her actual mouth formation. In examining the image components on page 73, it becomes clear that the shadows are not perceived at all in the central vision, lending support to my theory. I wonder how well we would be able to interpret the expressions on faces viewed only as blurry shadows.

Livingston says “that high-level cognitive processes, such as language, can override low-level processes, like interpreting emotional states” (73). Further proof of this comes from an experiment one of my psychology classes tried two years ago. We did the Stroop Task, which basically involves attempting to read the color of the word instead of reading the actual words. Part of why this is difficult is that our brains (once literate) are so trained to look for and read the letters/words, that it takes effort to overcome the (now) instinct to read the word rather than the color of it.

Monet's Rue Montorgeuil in Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878 (Livingston, p. 75), illustrates a moving picture. Because of the blurry, undefined edges, the painting appears in life-like motion. Poussin's painting, The Rape of the Sabine Women (Livingston, p. 76), which reproduces a scene in exacting detail, on the other hand, appears still and more like a snap-shot than a moving piece of art. This difference reminds me of a technique I learned for photography. In order to take a picture of an object in motion and make the picture look like it's in motion, either the object or the background must be blurry. Usually, people prefer the background to be blurry, since the object is the point of focus for the photograph. If instead, the photographer uses a faster shutter speed and keeps the camera stationary, the image appears stationary, and the feel of motion is lost. It is only through this blurry quality that a still image can give the appearance of motion and action.

In Livingston's explanations of the “where” and “what” systems of visual processing, she relies heavily on evolutionary biological explanations for the development of these systems. Solso also directs our attention to the evolutionary process that resulted in the development of our current eyes (and that they were not intended to look upon art, but for survival needs) (Solso, p. 84-86). I am curious though, how we know that only the primates have developed the “what” system. What sorts of tests can be/have been employed with animals?

On Seeing Color and Value

2008-09-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

The chapters in both The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain and Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing brought me back to experiences I had in my color theory painting course. Looking back through these experiences I am now able to grasp the biology of the “seeing” eye and the “seeing” mind. In the first still life painting I did for that course I differentiated the objects by color. I believe I viewed this still life primarily through color constancy. When I painted a maroon cloth in the still life I used value to differentiate one part of the cloth from the other. I used this technique throughout the painting which consisted of several different hues with various values. During critique my professor tore my painting apart. The fact that I was seeing the still life through color constancy was my primary problem. After attempting the still life once more I noticed I could train my eyes to see beyond the color constancy of any specific object. Rather than one color with different values I now saw that in fact the maroon cloth consisted of deep cobalt in one shadowy corner, a dark forest green in another and a bright orange pink where a strip of sun shine fell on it. At times the cloth did have value distinctions but in many places on my canvas entirely different colors were used to represent it.

What I believe I trained myself to do in that course was to use trichromacy and opponency to a higher degree than constancy. While painting I squinted, used peripheral vision, one eyed vision, and staring to combat the urge to use only constancy when viewing the still life. On page 46 Livingstone writes "Some aspects of visual perception-such as object recognition, face recognition, and of course, color perception-depend heavily on color, and other aspects of vision-such as motion perception, depth perception, figure/ground segregation, and perceiving positional information-are colorblind." Rather than using value to determine depth perception. which is what I instinctively wanted to do, I used my new found in-depth seeing to portray depth with the color that represented that part of that object. In the case of the maroon cloth, bright orange pink accurately represented the spot where the sun shone on it. With a lesser trained eye I saw only a value differentiation not a color difference. On page 51 the Where and What systems further support what I believe I experienced in my art class. The Where system was the part of my seeing that picked out value and wanted to represent the maroon cloth through value only. The What system is the part of my seeing which I honed in order to “see” the cobalt and bright orange pink in the maroon cloth. The amazing thing is that the subsequent painting I painted which used many different hues and value where necessary had a greater perception of depth than the first one which primarily utilized value.

This leads me to what I learned next in my color theory painting course. Color can evoke intense emotion even when a minuscule amount is used of a certain color in an overall impressionistic painting. Livingstone points out that “low spatial precision may lend vitality to a painting because the visual system completes the picture differently with each glance” and Solso makes a similar inference when discussing Monet’s Impression: Sunrise when he writes “Monet has captured the impression of this setting and presented a psychological view of motion and color.” I learned that a tiny strip of lemon yellow on the edge of an impressionistic cloud scape suddenly captures the essence of the sky at that moment in time, daybreak. I also learned that shadows, while representing a type of value, were often represented on the canvas by a specific hue. In other words shadows were not always gray but rather had a distinct color depending on illumination.

Lastly, in my art course we experienced another phenomenon, light source. Some of the art students painted primarily in the evening and some painted primarily during the day. The studio during day time got most of its light from the sun; however we always put on the overhead light source. The studio at night used only the overhead light source. Our paintings of the same still life had dramatic differences. Livingstone touches on this on pages 95 – 98. Often a bright pink bowl in a daylight painting looked grayish greenish pink in a nighttime painting. One question I have is if artists can train their visual cells to see items as they appear in a given light source? Our paintings seemed to suggest that this was the case. Sometimes an art student had to work during the day and during the night and this caused the painter to spend long amounts of time remixing colors on their pallet because the still life simply did not retain the same colors in the different lighting situations.

A New Set of Eyes

2008-09-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Last year I took Narrative Neuropsychology, also taught by Elizabeth. Through writings by Oliver Sacks and others, we examined processes of the human brain that - when they work well - exist outside of our conscious perception and thought, but which as a result of injury or illness may be suddenly thrust into our awareness in all their baffling complexity. No one ever thinks about exactly how and why we forget some things and remember others, recognize people, or identify objects until a malfunction occurs, making us painfully aware of how the process has gone wrong - and accordingly giving us insight into how it must have worked in the first place.

In this class we've explored this theme with a specific focus on the realm of visual perception. Vision is, like the many neurological functions we examined in Narrative Neuropsychology, is common to all of us, and therefore we can't help but learn much about ourselves through the readings. Vision is arguably even more basic than memory or object recognition, so what we learn can give us insight into our most fundamental experiences and earliest memories.

In chapter four of Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, for example, Margaret Livingstone explains the characteristics of our visual system that allow children from a very young age to identify consistent colors, regardless of the variability of the wavelengths being reflected off of an object. A child's ability to identify a colored block as green may represent to us one of the most basic of human neurological capabilities, but that is only because the process behind color identification and discounting the illuminant are hidden from us. Livingstone's chapters allow us to conceive of how intricate and incredible our most "basic" abilities really are.

Robert Solso, in chapters three and four of The Psychology of Art, augments the understanding of the biological processes behind color with an evolutionary analysis of human visual capability. Just as we are often completely blind to the functions of the brain that allow us to perceive and understand visual information, we lack a connection to the long evolutionary history that would explain what allowed those brain functions to develop.

A lack of an understanding of history compounds the problems created by our innate inability to separate out all of the brain's intricate processes. We may, for example, learn about the "where" and the "what" systems, but our understanding of them is not complete without the revelation of the "what" system as a possible primate "add-on." I was fascinated by this idea, and the visual it inspired in me: that of all of human evolution as an ancient rock that, when split in half, might reveal all the different colored layers laid on top of each other that spell out the story of its entire existence. Obviously we can't just crack ourselves open to reveal the map of our evolution like the layers of a rock or a tree's rings, but we can open our minds to the concept that we are not simply a "new" species that evolved from something else, changing its structure completely - but that we contain our own history, buried below the more obvious new layers and continuing to exist in the form of the so-called reptilian brain or the "old" where system.

Livingstone touches upon that aspect of evolutionary theory in The Biology of Seeing, but Solso provides a more detailed and surprisingly accessible explanation. That accessibility, however, undermines Solso's argument in my opinion. His condensation of all of human visual adaptation into a chapter and a few bullet points conceals the true character of evolutionary theory, which is - as I understand it - much more complex and unknowable than Solso would have us believe.

I did, however, find Solso's mention of body temperature as a factor in the development of the human brain to be fascinating - something I hadn't heard of before. Although his account of human evolution may be oversimplified in my opinion, there weren't any details in it that were necessarily "wrong." It may in fact be helpful to keep in mind Solso's simple explanation of human evolution - "The brain evolved complex cognitive mechanisms to survive in a changing environment" - while we move on to increasingly complex aspects of the visual system. Additionally, the introduction of the concept of parallel processing - and particularly the "massive" parallel processing that goes on in the human brain - is critical to our understanding of our visual system as one that is simultaneously fast, complex, and blissfully beyond our conscious perception.

Through Solso's and Livingstone's chapters, I came to understand my fascination with the visual system as the result of natural human ignorance. As a result of our own neurological composition and a couple million years' separation from our beginnings, we lack access to both our present and our past - the everyday chemical and electrical operation of our own brains and the evolutionary history that would start to explain why it happens that way. Art & Visual Perception is fascinating because it begins to illuminate that which is both extremely close - in our own bodies - and extremely distant as a result of the knowledge we lack about our own selves. All psychology classes may offer such illumination, but this one stands apart from the rest in that it seeks to address those neurological processes that are most fundamental to our experience. We expect to find human emotion and memory to be complex, while the stunning complexity of "basic" functions is taken for granted. The truth that we learn does not give us a new set of eyes, per se, but allows us to use the same set to see the same things in a completely different way.

Readings on Light and Color --response by Danielle Breslin-Romano

2008-09-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite quotes is by Georgia O'Keefe: "I found that I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn't say any other way...things I had no words for." I find this quote especially interesting and applicable to the readings. O'Keefe states that there is something color can say that cannot be expressed in words, yet the three authors we read are attempting to use words to describe color.

Livingstone gives us a more scientific explanation, starting with an explanation of light. I found the history of different opinions of what exactly light was and how we perceived it to be very interesting. Livingstone then goes into color, and the scientific explanation of how we see it, as well as different things like interference and diffraction. She describes how the eye works, all about rods and cones. Yet despite all of this scientific explanation, it still seems that there is a mystery about color that cannot be "explained," only experienced.

Arnheim gives us a wide-spread discussion of many facets of color. He discusses color theory, but not the kind familiar to me (an artist's color theory). The generative primaries and generative complementaries are such that I have never heard of before. He also discusses, as Livingstone does, the inconsistency of color and how colors can "change" depending on their surroundings. He writes, "In no reliable sense can we speak of color 'as it really is;' it is always determined by its context" (345). I agree with this statement very much. I think color is something that is always changing. As an artist, you experiment with color. The color that you see in the jar of paint usually does not appear exactly the same when you put it on the canvas because the colors around it affect it. Also, certain colors will jump forward and others will go back. I greatly enjoyed the experiment in the Livingstone book of the blue dots on the orange background, (although I thought the background to be more of a yellow-green than orange--yet another example of how difficult it is to talk about color because it is different for everyone).

Arnheim even says, "No one will be sure that his neighbor sees a particular color exactly the same way he himself does" (330). That idea is especially intriguing to me as a painter who likes very much to use color. I spend a lot of time mixing colors and experimenting with how different colors interact on the canvas. When I complete a piece, I expect others to see the colors in my painting the same way I see the colors in my painting. However, I cannot be sure that this is so; in fact, no one may see the painting the same way I see it. This is interesting when thinking about the masters' paintings. Even though we may not all see them in the same way, there is still a universal agreement that certain works of art are especially striking. So what is it that makes them so? Is it the colors, which are so fickle--they change in different lighting, fade in the sun and over time, and are incosistent--or is it the shapes?

Arnheim seems to place a lot of weight on shapes over colors. He talks about an experiment with children in which the children were asked which the red square was more like, a blue square or a red circle? He states, "As culture begins to train the children in practical skills, which rely on shape much more heavily than on color, they turn increasingly to shape as the decisive means of identification" (335). I do not know if I agree with that statement. Yes, I do think that society places a lot of emphasis on shape, but I think there is just as much emphasis on color. Think about when you are asked to describe a person. You do not only say words like, "tall" and "skinny," but you say, "blonde," "blue eyes," "pale skin." Yet another example in when asked to identify a house. Most people choose a color, like the "blue shutters," to distinguish their home among the others. Think even of the name, "The Purple Door," used to identify the office of Operations and Facilities here at SLC. Perhaps I am biased because color is such an important part of my life, but I would dare to say that society places an equal emphasis on color as on shape.

The section of the Arnheim reading that I found most interesting was the section on "Reactions to Color," because I thought that started to address the mysterious power of color. He says, "We have not even a hypothesis to offer about the kind of physiological process that might account for the influence of color" (368). He discusses some experiments that showed physical responses to color. I know from personal experience the affect that color can have on your body physically. Last year I took the year off because I was sick with a constant debilitating migraine. During that period, there were certain colors that I could not bear to look at or wear. Seeing or wearing those colors (the biggest offenders were orange, red, and yellow) would make my headache spike even more.

Out of all the readings, the one that I thought communicated the magic of color the most was Oliver Sack's "The Case of the Colorblind Painter." Describing was a world without color must be like helped communicate how important and how wonderful color really is. I can't imagine living in a world of gray scales, like Mr. I. As he stated, color is a constant of this world, and if there is enough light, we see color. That is part of how we identify something. I think this makes an argument for the importance of color along with shape. Although Mr. I did not have trouble seeing shapes, he did have trouble identifying objects in the beginning because of their lack of color. Now, even the gray scale tint of one object would change depending on the light. He lived in "a world whose lights and darks fluctuated with the wavelengths of illumination, in striking contrast to the relative stability, the constancy, of the color world he had previously known" (Sacks 21). Here is an example of not only how brilliant color is and how much we would miss it, but how important it is in our daily functioning and how it is something that we take for granted.

I enjoyed all of the readings' different approaches on explaining/discussing color, but agree with Georgia O'Keefe that you can say things with color that cannot be said in words.