Artistic License

Earlier in the semester in my painting class we had a guest artist come in. As a Sarah Lawrence alumna, she showed us her portfolio from her undergraduate at S.L.C. and graduate years at Yale. In her course of study, her interests shifted from perspective landscapes, to photographic adaptation, to a more present theme of femme-fatale characters based on herself and her friends. It is in this series of “fem-bots” that her paintings seem pertinent to the readings. She showed us pictures of the process of her large-scale oil paintings. Upon first glance, these images show nothing out of the ordinary; she grids the image that she has constructed onto the canvas and proceeds to paint layer by layer to completion. However, as you see the painting develop, you see that somewhere along the way the flesh toned humanoids are green! When she explained why she painted a green under layer, the artist claimed that it gave the figure more depth.

After these first few readings in the course I think that I might have an explanation why the green gives such depth to the flesh. It has been mentioned along the way that the balance of three primaries is often included in esteemed paintings. So, it seems that the compliments of green and red would neutralize one another and the natural blue-ish tone of skin (thanks to our circulatory system) would come forward. Granted the ratio of green to red is unbalanced enough so as not to create corpse-like, gray tones, but it seems that there must be some relationship between including all of the trichromatic wavelengths that the eye detects included in such a important part of the artist’s work.

Aside from my color theory, the Mamassian article made several things come to mind. First, people approach art with a willing suspension of disbelief (common to many art media, but obviously I am focusing on visual art.) It is art, an image to be viewed from reality and therefore is, at least in some ways, separate from reality. Art follows its own rules, as Mamassian acknowledged, and I thought it interesting that he sought to find connections between the conventions of art and the applications of prior knowledge to everyday perception. Both work to make sense of inconsistencies but they do so in different ways. The phrase “artistic license” comes to mind. In his section on illumination and color, Mamassian discussed shadows as they have been used throughout history in art. From non-existent to the manipulation of the dark spaces it creates to maintain ambiguity in a piece, shadows can be used in visual arts in physically impossible ways to serve the purpose of the piece.

Second, the people are able to ignore “deformations of [a] scene” and comprehend the visual image. La Gournerie’s paradox reminds be of the phenomenon that people are able to read words that are jumbled so long as the first and last letters are correct.

A quote from Solso, “Art shows us what every human from Adam to the newest baby has locked up in his eternal view of the world,” (p. 97) reminds me of Carl Jung’s archetypes, the idea that there is some set of images or concepts that resonates with each human being based on the belief in a collective unconscious. The path of each human being is to ultimately express all of the archetypes, which can be imagined in a mandala as a balance of opposites. Imagine the typical idea of a midlife crisis, Hung would justify a splurge on a little, red convertible might be the archetypal expression of a frugal responsible individual as a spontaneous, carefree spirit. Art allows us to transcend language barriers and communicate in a biologically shared way, through visual perception.

Something Winnie mentioned in her post as well reminded me of the archetypes – Meyerhold theatre. Being able to outwardly express commonly recognizable emotions.

It can be said that art and science are both relied on for truth. Science is held to a different standard, and exactness is necessary for science to be held true. On the other hand, art can exaggerate or down play… anything for the purpose of the piece and can be praised (or scrutinized) for its exacting portrayal. Jung believed that it was the job of the artist to portray those aspects of life, which were being ignored by society. Artists have toyed with the eye and what they show to it for centuries. It seems to me that artists have showed the world what the scientist would want to explain years later.