MT Study Guide: Images and Concepts PDF

Study Guide Mid term Representation Representation: the use of language, marks, and images to interpret the world around us Systems of representation do not reflect reality so much as mediate, organize, and construct it. We “see” the material world through representations. Systems o...

Study Guide Mid term Representation Representation: the use of language, marks, and images to interpret the world around us Systems of representation do not reflect reality so much as mediate, organize, and construct it. We “see” the material world through representations. Systems of representation are structured by rules and conventions specific to a given culture. These rules and conventions are flexible and changing. REALISM? Challenges to Perspective Human vision more complex than world organized around system of lines eyes in constant motion when we look sight is composite of different views and glances Many modern artists working after invention of photography defied perspective Impressionism: painting style that depicts same scene many times to evoke changes in light over time  Claude Monet IMPRESSION: SUNRISE 1872. Oil on canvas, 19" × 24-3/8" (48 × 63 cm). Musée Marmottan, Paris. Bridgeman Images. Copyright © 2018, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All R ights R eserved  IMPRESSIONISM Impressionist artists reacted against the constraints of Academic style and subject matter. They advocated painting outdoors and chose to render subjects found in nature. They studied the dramatic effects of atmosphere and light on people and objects. Using a varied palette of colors, they captured the actual colors—or local colors—of objects under different lighting conditions. Impressionist painters juxtaposed: complementary colors to reproduce the optical vibrations of looking at objects in full sunlight. primary colors to produce, in the eye of the spectator, secondary colors. More Challenges to Perspective Many modern artists questioned organization around Cartesian subject as fixed center of pictorial world conceptual art: artistic practice in which concept is more important than visual product Fluxus artists such as Yoko Ono introduced elements of chance by including the uncertainty of audience behavior in time- based performance work that included her own body The artist stares up and to her right while a man in a white shirt leans from her left with a pair of scissors, cutting away one of the last remaining pieces of her shirt, already deeply slashed and revealing her white lace bra beneath. Yoko Ono CUT PIECE. LINK 1965. Film still of performance at the Carnegie Recital Hall, New York on March 21, 1965. Film by Albert and David Maysles. © Yoko Ono Copyright © 2018, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All R ights R eserved The Myth of Photographic Truth Punctum: affective dimensions of a photograph that “prick” us emotionally Studium: qualities of a photograph that confer the reality of conditions of its “take” What are the punctum and studium of this image? Semiotics and Signs Complex images decoded almost instantly, with little thought to process clues may point to intended, unintended, and even merely suggested meanings clues may be formal elements of an image or cultural and sociohistorical contexts Semiotics: a theory of signs concerned with the ways words, images, and objects are vehicles for meaning Roland Barthes Marlboro Man Marlboro (signifier) + masculinity (signified) = Marlboro as masculinity (sign)  Interpellation: ways images cause us to recognize ourselves as subjects of an address within system of power “ideology interpellates individuals as subjects” (Allthusser) collective address feels personal being hailed may involve rejecting ideology What does this picture want from its viewers? Value, Collecting, and Institutional Critique Images and objects do not have inherent value. awarded monetary, social, and political value in particular social contexts Value of art object authenticity and uniqueness reproducibility and role in popular culture previous ownership (little to do with artist) Museums, institutions, and individual collectors responsible for valuing of art works communicate value through display shape looking practices  Artists began to do work called institutional critique INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE After Fountain, Duchamp became the celebrity of Dada, a movement that poked fun at the conventions of high art and museum display conventions. Dada inspired many movements that aimed to critique art market and its valuing of art collecting: political art, guerrilla art, performance art, happenings, situationists, fluxus, street art etc. that could not be commodified in the form of valued objects Institutional Critique Fred Wilson, slave shackles displayed next to fine silver in Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson, 1992–1993 Semiotics and Signs Charles Sanders Peirce’s three sign categories Iconic : resemble their objects in some way Symbolic: bear no clear relationship to their objects Indexical: coexisted with their objects in the same place at some time or they have a recognized relationship with the object Appropriation and Reappropriation Appropriation: taking something for oneself without consent Cultural appropriation: “borrowing” and changing meaning of cultural products, slogans, images, or fashion form of oppositional production and reading Reappropriation: hegemonic forces integrating tactics of marginalized cultures into mainstream incorporation occurs through commodification and dismissal or othering (Hebdige) death of the producer Viewing Strategies - Appropriation Claude Levi-Strauss Bricolage: adaptive use of commodities in unintended ways, dislocating them from expected context Signifying practices --subcultural bricolage gives commodities new meanings and aesthetic values that make political statements  Jamie Reid, cover for the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” single, 1977 Fans of British punk band the Sex Pistols wearing dog collars and T-shirts customized with a safety pin tty Images) motif, London, 1977(Keystone Features/Getty  MODERNITY Refers to historical, cultural, political and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment (18th century); the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism, to the idea of controlling nature through technology, science and rationalism. Colonialism: the process of a nation extending its power over another nation, people or territory. Power and the Surveillance Gaze Modernity characterized by rise of social institutions that manage populations through visual classification to discipline and control people and nature Surveillance: the act of keeping watch over a person or place, one tactic used to control others In the workplace, surveillance relies on the worker performing as though the gaze is always present. Surveillance practices have historically targeted “othered” bodies and subjects. The modern state maintains and regulates citizens to function properly. Power and the Surveillance Gaze Panopticism Panopticon: used by Michele Foucault to describe modern social subjects’ regulation of their own behavior, borrowing from 19th- century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s design for a prison in which all prisoners are visible from a guard tower with blacked-out windows Image Icons Icon: an image that refers to something (or someone) outside of its individual components and that has great symbolic meaning for many conveys iconic meaning across many different contexts (often through simplicity) circulates through visual networks reworks aspects of original into new images believed to hold universal meaning Image Icons How does Lange’s photograph (within the photograph) diverge from the iconic images on which it is based? What does this news image tell us about the dangers of “flattening” of meanings into simple, universal icons? What relational field of looks are invoked in this image?