Chapter 4: Realism and Perspective

I enjoyed this chapter a lot more than the first two, I'll have to admit. Maybe it's because I'm an Art History major, but the subject and content of the chapter was much easier for me to wrap my mind around, and I found the text a lot more interesting. Although, on the other hand, the definition of realism is now more confusing than ever. Chapter 4 is broken up in the following sections: Visual Codes and Historical Meaning, Questions of Realism, The History of Perspective, Perspective and the Body, The Camera Obscura, and Perspective in Digital Media.

In the introduction, the author sets up the idea that "realism" is actually more broad the we, in western society expect, "...realism has been linked to a surprisingly varied set of conventions and approaches" (141). The following pages of the chapter explain this thesis. As we move to the first section of the chapter, this quote suck out to me, "It is possible to read the history of art as the history of the relationship between ways of seeing and the forms that representation of the real has taken in different periods" (143). The quote is a great transition to Visual Codes and Historical Meanings.

I am not an expert in art history (yet), but just through 19 years of life, I have to tools and cognitive ability to date something just by its appearance. This section explains that as "visual codes", and how these codes and conventions change overtime, "...we look at images of the past differently today than they were viewed during the time in which they were created" (143). Furthermore, "Particular visula styles can thus help us to generally date an image, evoking an earlier moment in history" (143). For example, I can tell something is from the mid 20th century, if pastels, chrome, starburst shapes, and poodle skirts/greaser fashion are being shown, just to name a few; this section really ties into our movie poster research and project.

Research: Movie Posters

Here are a few movie posters I feel best represent their time. I'm basing these assumptions on the colors, layouts, fonts and other basic design elements used in each poster. This research will assist me as I design my own movie poster that represents the modern world today.

Mail Art

For week three in Idea and Form, we were assigned to "make meaning out of images" and create 5 postcards that create a feeling; we could pair the images with text and different mediums to further instill out point of view, and then we were instructed to mail them out asking the recipient to "Add to and Return". This could be anything from adding more images, commenting on the postcard, modifying it, etc.

For my postcards, I chose inspiring little notes and quotes of simple truths that I hoped would inspire the 5 complete strangers I sent my little compositions to. I understand I'm taking a risk with sending them to strangers and not family and friends, but I think the idea of "random acts of kindness" is much more exciting than just mailing them to people in my life. Below are the backs and fronts to my postcards with the happy and somewhat truthful little quotes written below.


Postcard #1

"These are all the street signs for this area but

he keeps moving them around at night so the

only people who aren't lost all the time are the

children who never pay attention to signs

anyways."

Postcard#2

"King of Hearts idly playing a game of people."


Postcard #3

"Almost everyone has a family, and almost no

one's is functional."


Postcard #4

Postcard #5

"I remember when whales had wings, she said.

Whatever happened? I said. It got to be too

noisey with all the airplanes and other stuff, so

they flew into the ocean and never came back.

Somedays, she added, I think about going too."

Reflection and Summary of Chapter 2: Viewers Make Meaning

Chapter two is and in-depth look at how viewers make meaning. The sentence that I think best summarizes the whole 40 page chapter is this: “Meanings are produced through the complex negotiations that make up the social process and practice though which we produce and interpret images.” (49) A wordy sentence, I know, but it really highlights the different sections of the chapter which include: Producers’ Intended Meanings, Aesthetics and Taste, Collecting, Display, and Institutional Critique, Reading Images as Ideological Subjects, Ending and Decoding, Reception and Audience, Appropriation and Cultural Production, and Reappropriation and Counter-Bricolage. I have to admit, I’m a little intimidated by this book, and even the class at times (Perhaps I’ll blame it on being a freshman). These are all new ideas to me, so I’ll give it my best shot to summarize and reflect on chapter two: Viewers Make Meaning.

The first section talks about the producer. The producer isn’t always a singular entity who creates the image, but can also be a collective group that creates this certain “category or brand of work” as the author describes on page 52. The author then goes on to say that “there is no ultimate authorial meaning for readers to uncover the text…The text is also open to meanings and interpretations that exist alongside and even against the more obvious meanings” (52). I definitely would have to agree with this statement. As an artist, I don’t feel pressure to create a certain meaning for my viewers to find, in fact, that’s one of the last things I think about, art to me is more personal, sort of like a diary and I would rather have my viewers come up with their own meanings and try not to think what my motives were. That way the piece becomes more personal to them; the chapter goes into this in the following sections.

Other quotes from this section that I enjoyed are: “Most if not all images have a meaning that is preferred by their producers…We usually have no way to know for certain what a producer, designer, or artist intended his or her image or structure to mean” (53-54) I also like the idea that the producer isn’t omniscient to the meanings of the image because the view brings in experience that the producer didn’t expect.

Lastly in this section, I thought is was really interesting how, “The visual clutter of the context alone of say, a place like Time Square, may affect how viewers interpret these images, as may juxtapositions with other images” (54). It never occurred to me that the location can change the meaning of an image so much – but it makes sense: I never see a flyer on a telephone pole; I see a telephone pole littered with layers and layers of brightly covered paper screaming at me. I’m sure graphic designers really need to take that into account when designing their images.

I found the following section, “Aesthetics and Taste” very straightforward and agreeable. The main point of this section is “The criteria used to interpret and give value to images depend on cultural codes, or shared concepts…All viewer interpretations involve two fundamental concepts of value – aesthetics and taste” (56). This quote and entire section relates back to the first chapter’s discussion about value.

Following the introduction of the section, it talks about aesthetics, “Aesthetics has traditionally been associated with philosophy and the arts, and aesthetic objects have stood apart from utilitarian objects” (56). Before reading the rest of the chapter, I realized at how this is changing so much in our modern society; being a huge fan of interior design, I’d have to disagree that art is separate from utilitarian objects now-a-days. Look at Scandinavian design – they have perfectly merged art and function. Moving on…Taste was the next subject up for discussion in this section. “Taste is not simply a matter of individual interpretation. Rather, taste is informed by experiences relating to one’s class, cultural background, education, and other aspects of identity” (57). I really never thought of taste as that definition, but it really makes sense, although the idea of “good taste” is constantly changing today. This chapter really opened my eyes to social standards and how we have, and do view images – past and present.

Juvenal, Satire I

"If you want to be Somebody, these days, have the nerve to commit and act that rates jailing or exile"

This is the quote I used for our text/image hunt. I found it in the first book I picked up at our library, titled Great Treasury of Western Thought. I chose this quote primarily because tons of images went flying through my head as I read it. I then chose three unique images to to display the quote in three different lights. The images are shown below:



This first image is of a seagull breaking a seagull law. This is a simple act of civil disobedience, and that's exactly why I chose this image. For my in-class project, I placed the quote on the top of the image in a simple black font to sort mimic an inspiring poster or fl yer you'd see around your school or city.

The second image is that of Charles Manson's mug shot. I placed the text, in a font that looks similar to typewriter text, on the identification tag he's wearing. I think that even if you can't identify him, the image still correlates with the quote in being a literal interpretation - this man did something so outrageous, he is going to jail. Additionally, Charles Manson is a pop culture icon and he achieved his status by cult followers and murder - something definitely jail worthy.

The last image is the cover of the latest issue of Playboy. Since the assignment called for one image not from the Internet, I made it a mission to find this magazine; after running all around town, I finally found it in a dirty little food mart. I digress...Well I placed the quote over to the right on one of the side headlines in the same fonts and colors that the rest of the cover uses, so the quote is really bold but at the same time blends with the rest of the magazine. I got the idea to use the Playboy by thinking about all these up and coming young stars who let down their morals to pose nude in this magazine, and of course, they become celebrities over night.

Reflection and Summary of Chapter 1: Images, Power, and Politics

Chapter one covers a broad and dense amount of information regarding images and their power. The 40 page chapter is broken down into categories on Representation, Myth of Photographic Truth, Images and Ideology, How We Negotiate the Meaning of Images, Value of Images, and Image Icons. (I predict this to be a long blog post!) It really surprised me that such a simple subject as pictures can reveal something so complex; I found myself rereading and really trying to absorb and digest the text.

A reoccurring theme in the chapter, that is first established in the introduction is power; “Looking is a social practice…To be made to look, [or] to try to get someone else to look at you…entails a play of power” (9). I also found it interesting of the fact that we use looking to communicate, and even when we choose to look away or close our eyes, those activities still have meaning. The power of a image can really influence the viewer.

After the introduction, we read about representation, which is referred to as “the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us” (12). Furthermore, we construct the meaning of things through the process of representing them. I liked how they gave the example of still life paintings. Many people look at still lifes as just a reflection of objects, but in reality, they may be loaded with symbolism and can even provoke a certain lifestyle without using the human figures.

The idea of photographic truth, or more specifically, a photograph is a sliver of real life, or a copy of the real world, is very false. The photographer is the artist and has always been able to manipulate what is in the frame, and now-a-days, with new digital editing, photography is more and more subjective. What also caught my interest was how “photographs always indicate a kind of mortality, evoking death in the moments in which they seem to stop time” (18). Whenever I look at family photos, even if they were just taken a year ago, I always get this bittersweet feeling; a mixture of aging, sweet memories, and death. This feeling I always get when looking at photographs actually has a term: punctum.

The next section, “Images and Ideology” discusses how images are produced within dynamics of social power and ideology. What is ideology? “Ideologies are systems of beliefs that exist within all cultures” (23). Commonly, people think of propaganda as the only form of ideology. However, this is false, ideologies are not always thought of a negative, and are defined as broad, shared sets of values and beliefs. The chapter then continues to talk about how we negotiate the meanings of images. The first sentence to this section caught my eye, “…we often use these tools of looking automatically, without giving them much thought. Images are produced according to social and aesthetic conventions” (26). Its really amazing how much our brain filters through the thousands of images we see daily, and how we decode this images my interpretations and clues of various kinds. The concept of semiotics are used to interpret these images.

The value of images was a section I found quite interesting, “Some of the information we bring to reading images has to do with what we perceive their value to be in a culture at large” (34). This makes great sense as an image doesn’t hold a real value (that is unless its make from actual gold of something of the sort), but is awarded different kinds of value (social, political, monetary, etc.) Look at any famous piece of artwork – Van Gogh couldn’t sell squat when he was alive, but now people are paying millions for his work. Finally, the last section of the book is about image icons, and how many images simply hold the value of icons. As stated in the chapter, and icon is an image that refers to something outside of its individual components; great symbolic meaning for many people; represents universal concepts. But icons do not represent universal values; icons “meanings are always historically and contextually produced” (40). What I found interesting this that icons are specific to certain cultures and certain moments in time; when I here the word icon, I think of an everlasting symbol – but clearly I am wrong. The chapter ends with an examination of the complexity of contemporary visual culture spanning from 16th century art, to the performances of pop sensation Madonna, to the new craze of You Tube. Great, very in-depth chapter.

Bike Locks, Rain Drops, and Coffee Shops: SW Jackson Street

12 noon. Jackson Street; nestled between 6th and Broadway. Lowest level of Broadway Building, outside Starbucks coffee, facing south:

It is the first of April and the weather is dreary. Unlike most of downtown Portland, Jackson Street is a two way road. Tucked between the I-5 and 405, Jackson acts as a vein for those wishing to travel out of the city. Still, traffic is very light; the majority is small commuter sedans and compact SUVs occupied by business men on lunch break, hoping to catch prime parking on an often neglected corridor. The asphalt is uneven and in poor condition, suggesting multiple renovations over a long period of time.

Most of the action on Jackson Street is due to the meandering of college students. Three bicycles resting against a chipped black steel bike rail enforce this assumption. A young college age male, with one pant leg rolled up, approaches his black Cannondale road bike with red messenger satchel, removes the U-lock, and rides towards 6th avenue. Across the street, on farthest left, a large tope colored apartment building stands gloomily, it looks new, but the white trim is beginning to crack and splinter with age. Adjacent to that, a student housing complex stands quite stoically, it is two tone redbrick and tan, its looks institutional and is symmetrical. Beyond the redbrick dormitory, two similar buildings stand tall and narrow. One proclaims “PS Styles” inscribed on a large wooden sign, with traditional barber pole ribbon wrapped around the columns, assumedly, this is a hair stylist. The 2nd of the similar dwellings is most likely a fraternity house, as characterized by the three, four foot tall Greek characters affixed to the outside. It appears to be in decent condition, yet shows little sign of activity.

Two large streetlights watch over the thoroughfare, as a large purple “local and organic delivery” truck maneuvers into a parking space blocking my view of the street.