CH3 . Picture definition

1. 段馨君 Iris Hsin-chun Tuan Associate Professor Department of Humanities and Social Sciences NCTU CH3. Picture definition

2. WHY DO PICTURES look real? How does the notion of the real change? The first section of this book examines three constitutive modes of representing reality in modern Western visual culture-the picture, the photograph and virtual reality. We shall consider how the key components of color and line come to constitute an image by resemblance or representation, looking at certain critical moments in the early modern period (1650 1850) when these definitions were challenged or changed.

3. Pictures are defined not by some magical affinity to the real, but by their ability to create what Roland Barthes called the “reality effect.” Pictures use certain modes of representation that convinces us that the picture is sufficiently life-like for us to suspend our disbelief. This idea in no way implies that reality does not exist or is an illusion. Roland Barthes

4. Visual culture does not change in simple accord with scientists thought on vision but is always a hybrid of what scientists would consider advanced and outdated ideas. The key to creating visual culture is intelligibility, not compatability with scientific thought. When perspective became a commonplace in European art, the workings of the eye were still a mystery. Perspectives

5. Perspective is a rational demonstration whereby experience confirms that all objects transmit their similitudes to the eye by a pyramid of lines. By a pyramid of lines, I understand those lines which start from the edges of the surface of bodies and, converging from a distance meet in a single point; and this point, in this case, I will show to be situated in the eye, which is the universal judge of all objects. (Lindberg 1976: 159)

6. Notice that Leonardo assumes that Alhazen’snotion of the visual pyramid was not a theory but the product of rational experiment, which corresponds to reality. In short, spectators learnt to accept this visual convention for what it was, an approximation that adequately met the needs of the viewing situation. Alhazen

7. As Hubert Damischhas argued, it “does not imitate vision, any more than painting imitates space. It was devised as a system of visual presentation and has meaning only insofar as it participates in the order of the visible, thus appealing to the eye” (Damisch1994: 45). It was also common for medieval Japanese artists to use ‘flat” conventions of pictorial space that are thought of as being modern in the West. The difference of Western perspective was not its ability to represent space but the fact that it was held to do so from one particular viewpoint.

8. Leon Battista Alberti’sOn Painting (143S) describes the line which runs directly from the eye to the object as the “prince” of rays (Kemp 1990: 22). The notion of resemblance was thus at the heart of Renaissance perspective theory, from Leonardo’s belief in similitudes to the equivalence of the ideal viewer and Absolute monarch in the perspective system. Leon Battista Alberti

9. Natural Magic In Porta’s view, “magic contains a powerful speculative faculty, which belongs to the eyes both in deceiving them with visions drawn from afar and in mirrors, whether round, concave or diversely fashioned; in which things consists the greatest part of magic.” Natural Magic

10. Niceron summed up the existing view of perspective as a form of magic: “True magic, or the perfection of sciences, consists in Perspective, which allows us more perfectly to know and discern the most beautiful works of nature and art, which has been esteemed in all periods, not only by the common people but even by the most powerful Monarchs on earth.”

11. For Kepler, the process of vision was still one that could only be described in terms of legal authority “The Cartesian theory was the first to assert clearly that light itself was nothing but a mechanical property of the luminous object and of the transmitting medium. This physical concept of light allowed Descartes to apply mathematics to all its characteristics.

12. Crucially, he displaced perception itself from the surface of the retina to the brain. The difference was that he was so skeptical of sensory information that he mused: “It is possible that I do not even have eyes with which to see anything” (Crary 1990: 43).

13. Perspective now took on a key role as the boundary between resemblance and representation. I shall argue by contrast that visual culture is always contested and that no one way of seeing is ever wholly accepted in a particular historical moment. Just as power always creates resistance, so did the Cartesian way of seeing generate alternatives.

14. Cartesianismwas accepted by scientists and philosophers, often working outside the network of royal patronage. At first, they tried to insist on using Michelangelo’s method of organizing space around a multiple pyramid, the form of “a flame, that which Aristotle and all other philosophers have said, is the most active element of all.”

15. Academic sense of seeing the King was best embodied in the Hall of Mirrors built for Louis XIV by the director of the Academy, Charles Le Brun (see Figure 1. 1). the Hall of Mirrors

16. The Academy thus evolved a compromise. Buildings and background space to be rendered in a perspectival fashion, conveying a sense of depth recession. This led to the creation of painted perspectival scenes to enhance the grandeur of a garden view, also known as a perspective (see Figure 1.2). From la Perspective Pratique

17. A popular alternative use of perspective was anamorphosis. This is a system in which the vanishing point is not constructed in “front” of the image hut in the same plane as thy picture surface to one side or the other. Anamorphosisreveals that perspective is simply a visual convention and one that, when pushed to extremes, generates unnatural results.

18. Similarly, Jesuit missionaries in China used the device to prove their contention that worldly appearances were illusory. However, in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a new system of social organization came into being that centered around the control of the generalized body through visibility from a single point. With this new system of discipline in place, it becomes possible to think of the perspectival viewpoint as becoming truly all-powerful.

19. As Foucault put it, in the panopticon “visibility is a trap” (Foucault 1977: 200). The panopticon became the ideal model of modern social organization for what Foucault called the “disciplinary society” centered around schools, military barracks, factories and prisons.

20. Color presents an interesting complementary case to that of perspective rather than a radical contrast. Nor was the use of color in visual representation rebellious in and of itself In the present moment, artists who make bold use of color, such as Matisse and Monet, remain the most popular with exhibition and gallery audiences and are usually presented as radical innovators. But these artists were usually presented as radical innovators. Discipline and color

21. De Piles emphasized the role of the spectator in creating the effects of a work of art, especially as regards the sublime. “In short, it seems to me that enthusiasm seizes us and we seize the sublime” (de Piles 1708: 117). David, Oath of the Horatii

22. Painters from the seventeenth century onwards have held that all colors can be created using three primary colors, namely blue, red and yellow. However, in his famous Opticks (1704), Isaac Newton showed that light was composed of seven prismatic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Opticks (1704)

23. The normalization of vision around the perception of color can be illustrated with the case of color blindness. It was in the first hail of the nineteenth century that ophthalmologists first discovered the existence of color blindness and then devised tests to diagnose the condition. Normalizing color: color blindness

24. Science was not content to rest here. After Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) had given wide currency to the notion of evolution, intellectuals began to play with the idea that color vision had evolved in humanity within historical time, rather than in the mists of prehistory.

25. He noted that “on the heads of the two small peasants, there were violet shadows on the yellow one and green shadows on the one that was more sanguine and red”. light over color

26. In his Theory of Colors, the Romantic poet Goethe explained that “savage nations, uneducated people, and children have a great predilection for vivid colors; that animals arc excited to rage by certain colors; that people of refinement avoid vivid colors in their dress and the objects that are about them, and seem inclined to banish them altogether from their presence” (Goethe 1970: 55). Light disciplines color.

27. In order to understand how this disciplining of color operated in specific cases, let us consider the apparently simple case of the color white. This one color alone will take us from Ancient Greece to the Spanish conquest of South America and the rise of fascism. White The Elgin Marbles: East Pediment of the Parthenon

28. Whiteness came to convey an intense physical beauty in itself. In Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1892), the aesthete and aristocrat Lord Henry Wotton compares Gray to a Classical sculpture. Hat 1892, American, Made of silk, straw, and feathers

29. the same color give rise to notions of racial supremacy and of homosexuality, “the love that dare not speak its name”? As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has argued, the rediscovery of ancient Greece created “for the nineteenth century a prestigious, historically underfurnishedimaginative space in which relations to and among human bodies might be newly a subject of utopian speculation.

30. Skeptics may wonder if these multiple interpretations of white were really seen by nineteenth-century audiences. It is of course impossible to know whether every spectator had these sentiments but they were certainly noticed at the time. Moby Dick Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors,1533,oil on canvas;courtesy of the National Gallery,London

31. The contradictions within these nineteenth-century attitudes to color could not always be resolved. They came to a head with the invention of photography. Even today, artistic photography is far more likely to be in black-and-white than color even though everyday photography is almost exclusively in color. Resemblance now belonged to the camera, not to perspective or color. Visual culture had entered the age of photography. Coda

32. This chapter focuses upon traditional art history. It will do so using the work of Ernst Gombrich as a typical example of this kind of approach, and conclude with an art-historical case study of Picasso’s celebrated painting Guernica. ART HISTORY INTRODUCTION Ernst Gombrich Picasso

33. We are now going to look at visual texts in a way that probably feels both familiar and comfortable. Chapters 1 and 2 saw us taking intellectual ‘guides’ in the guise of Panofsky and Fry. For this chapter, we will be in the company of Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich. As with his predecessors, however, it is his approach rather than his conclusions that we will be examining. The Story of Art He also had a sense of fun.

34. Gombrich begins The Story of Art by explaining exactly what he means to do in the book. It is a book for those ‘who look for bearings’ in a new field, a field that would be illustrated by ‘welcome landmarks’ of famous and familiar works of art.

35. Gombrich begins The Story of Ar: by explaining exactly what he means to do in the book. Landmarks The greatest Artistic merit Unfolds Gombrich’s story of art (and he is not alone here) begins with ‘prehistoric and primitive peoples’ who formed the ‘strange beginnings’ of art.

36. This was the art of the pyramids, tombs and temples of the Pharaohs, including the famous Tutankhamen. From the Egyptians, the tradition passed to the Greeks in the seventh century BC and continued to the first century AD. great awakening’ of architecture It was the formal adoption of Christianity by Rome in AD 311 that brings about the next chapter in Gombrich’s traditional story of art. The classical origin was lost. During this period of dormancy in Western art, Gombrichfeels that we ‘must at least cast a glimpse at what happened in other parts of the world’ during this period.

37. Gombrichfinds relatively little to be said of the art of that period, but he brightens visibly with the arrival of the Normans in England in 1066. Gombrichsees Western art as restless and in perpetual search of new ideas. This is why the Romancsque style was overtaken by the Gothic, which originated in northern France in the second half of the twelfth century. Giotto worked by painting on fresh plaster (‘fresco’) and found once again the secrets of natural representation.

38. The history of great artists really came into its own with the Renaissance, a period that saw the ‘rebirth’ of classical Greek and Roman approaches to art in early fifteenth-century Europe. SandroBotticdili’sThe Birth of Venus of circa 1480 . the architect Brundllcschi Jan van Eyck van Eyck the Old Men's Almshouse,1664

39. The later fifteenth ccntury continued as a period of ‘tradition and innovation’ in both Italy and the North. Leonardo Michelangelo Renaissance Titian combined to make this period - known to art historians as the High Renaissance — an ‘efflorescence of genius. Ellen Harvey,The Nudist Museum, 2010

40. The Baroque style continued (especially in architecture) in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and developed in France into an ornate style known as Rococo. It is during this period, however, that Gonibrich notes a ‘break with tradition’, with outstanding’ effects. Englishman William Blake Here we can place, for example, Constable’s The Haywain, which we examined in chapter 1, together with the romantic seascapes and blizzards of Turner. Constable-The Haywain

41. This, Gombrichtells us, happened most dramatically in Paris, which now became the art capital of the world. Manetgained followers, including Monet, who championed painting from life in the outdoors, and believed that overall feel was more important than intricate detail in a work of art. the PostImnressionists Cézanne set out to combine order with nature, and was nor afraid to distort nature in order to get the desired result. Francois Boucher,L'Odalisque Brune,1745

42. Seurat experimented with ‘pointillism’, and van Gogh set to work in a ‘frenzy of creation’. Cézanne led to Cubism, van Gogh to Expressionism and Gauguin to Primitivism. The period which follows this ‘deadlock’ is one that Gombrich describes as ‘experimental’ and makes up the first half of the twentieth century. Gombrichbelieves, however, that Cubism, which originated in Paris, ‘ted to much more radical departures from the Western tradition of painting’ than even Kandinsky’s colour music.

43. Ultimately artists wanted to abandon works that looked like something else or were merely decorative, and to create instead new things ‘which had no existence before’. Giotto (the ‘genius’ whose ‘greatness’ enabled him to change ‘the whole conception of painting’) Leonardo (the ‘genius’ whose ‘powerful mind will always remain an object of wonder and admiration to ordinary mortals’ Rembrandt (‘one of the greatest painters who ever lived’) van Gogh (the tortured and suicidal artist whose letters ‘are among the most moving and exciting in all literature’ and whose paintings ‘give joy and consolation to every human being’).

44. The Beatles, rather than vice versa. How often do we unthinkingly refer to a painting as ‘a Rubens’ or ‘a Hockney’, as though its authorship were automatically its most important quality? Artists only started to sign their work in thc fifteenth century, about the same time that the identities of artists as individuals (as opposed to anonymous craftsmen) began to matter to the people who bought and commissioned their work. Gustave Coubet, The Origin of the World,1866

45. We have all heard of the ‘Old Masters’. Why do we not speak of the ‘Old Mistresses’? Traditional histories of art are therefore merely reflecting realiry. This will probably not take long. Now start making a list of all the famous men. These are complex and controversial issues. We need to understand, for example, that Gombrich was writing (for the most part) more than fifty years ago, and that gender roles, politics and attitudes have changed considerably since then.

46. Should we select a work for inclusion because it is outstanding (and therefore hardly typical) or typical (and therefore unlikely to be outstanding)? The next 350 years is, consequently, tricky in terms of narrative. It is only then that the traditional history of art is able to reach its second climax with Manet and the Impressionists, who brought about that ‘revolution’ that Gombrich described as ‘almost comparable with the revolution in the representation of forms brought about by the Greeks’.

47. We Cannot help but be Creatures of our own culture. This is how can speak of Zeitgeist or ‘the spirit of the age’, because no matter how much we intend it or otherwise, any culture text that we individually produce unwittingly articulates the world-vision of our social group as much as it does ourselves. We remember, for example, how Rembrandt’s Man Wearing a Gilt Helmet 'fell apart'

48. Pablo Picasso was born in 1881. While still a teenager, he mastered ‘realism’ in painting, and the rest of his life was spent going beyond the merely realistic. It is during this period that he produced his famous Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), a painting which caused such a storm that it was not exhibited publicly until 1937. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)

49. Guernica Cavalier with pipe The creation of Guernica took place within a particularly grim episode in Spanish history In September 1981, crowds applauded as the painting was finally delivered to the Prado in Madrid. The painting is flow housed in the more modern Reina Sofia Art Centre, but its celebrity — and indeed controversy — is by no means complete. Guernica has spent much of Its recent life behind bullet-proof glass, protected by armed guards. Many inbelievethat the painting belongs with them and not in Madrid.

50. This is a Painting then, the possession of which is of immense cultural and political value. In the case of Guernica it reminds us that art can be something not of just financial or even aesthetic value, but also a symbol of matters of life, of death and of cultural identity. Seymour Slive, for example, is an expert on Dutch painting of the seventeenth century, while Panofsky provided a standard work on Albrecht Durer.