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.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
light and illumination
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.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Light and Illusion
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.
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
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!
“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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Starry House
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.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
"Playing with the Rules"
"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.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Cubism and Gestalt
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.
Monday, October 6, 2008
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
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.
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
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
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
Paul Klee. Fire in the Evening. 1929This 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)
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
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.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Cubism and Artistic Imagination
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
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
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.
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.
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