Developing Visual Literacy

1. Developing Visual Literacy Chapter 2 – Sayre 7th edition

2. Visual Literacy • the ability to use “a descriptive vocabulary, a set of terms, phrases, concepts, and approaches that will allow you to think [speak or write] critically about visual images”

3. Let’s start at the beginning… • Subject matter – what the image literally depicts • Content – what the image means

4. Form and Content • form – what we see…the total effect of the combined visual qualities within a work…including materials, color, shape, line “overall structure of a work of art”

5. Form

6. Form

7. Content

8. We can go even deeper with content- iconography

9. What are these? Geographic Icons The Alamo and The Statue of Liberty

10. What are these? Computer Icons Microsoft Windows and Word, AOL IM

11. ICONOGRAPHY • Iconography = the symbolic meaning of signs and subjects… • Iconography/Symbolism carries the deepest levels of meaning. • Each culture and period has its own system of meaning for images.

12. We’ll use this one as our prime example. Fig 39/2-21

13. Gender Iconography

14. window vs. bed broom green dress and pose

15. Cindy Sherman1970’s Fig 719/21-32

16. Social Rank Iconography

17. clothing

18. canopy bed oranges from Spain

19. Oba Benin Kingdom 19th century Coral beaded necklace and crown Mudfish feet – Olokun Fig 378/13-17

20. Religious Iconography

21. shoes, dog, prayer beads, lit candle

22. Budda 13th century Japan Fig 38/2-20

23. We’ve already seen quite a bit of art in the course. We were already looking at the next concept and didn’t even know it!

24. How a work of art relates to the “real” world… “describes how closely, or not, the image resembles visual reality itself” 1 – representational art (a.k.a. objective or figurative art) 2 – abstract art 3 – nonrepresentational art (a.k.a. nonobjective or nonfigurative art)

25. representational art • Depicts the appearance of things as they appear in the natural world • Re-presents things from the natural world in a way that appears realistic • “portrays natural objects in recognizable form”

26. Fig 5/1-6

27. Fig 30/2-8

28. abstract art • abstract art – art that depicts things from the natural world in simplified, distorted, or exaggerated ways • “does not try to duplicate the world exactly but instead reduces the world to its essential qualities”

30. Fig 113/5-29

31. nonrepresentational art • Nonrepresentational art – presents visual forms with no specific references (i.e. things in the natural world) outside themselves • “does not refer to the natural or objective world at all” • “the content of nonobjective art is its form” but “all forms…suggest meaning”

32. Fig 33/2-15

33. Fig 701/21-16

34. Categorization Exercise • Determine whether the work of art is considered… 1 – representational art 2 – abstract art 3 – nonrepresentational art

35. Image # 1

36. Image # 2

37. Image # 3

38. Image # 4