But, refuting these statements, he goes on later to posit that “image-making, artistic or otherwise, does not simply derive from the optical projection of the object represented, but is an equivalent rendered with the properties of a particular medium, of what is observed in the object.” This chapter, when paired with the other two readings for this week, speaks interestingly in support of Arnheim’s sentiments.
The van Campen and Behrens articles both give historical context for the rise of Gestalt psychology running parallel to the rise of the Bauhaus and other early avante-garde movements such as de Stijl, whose artists asked their viewer to reconsider the way in which the viewed even the most basic shapes and lines. Indeed, as van Campen points out, artists and scientists were employing the same ocular phenomena with radically different intentions. My sociologist brain wants to know, Why gestalt at this point in time? This seems like a radical paradigm shift from the very “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” way of looking at the world and at art, as proposed in beginning of Arnheim’s chapter.
I was also fascinated by Arnheim’s discussion of the visual conception of objects. Not only do we see an object, but our total experience of that object is not just what we see from the angle at which we are looking at it. It comes from our knowledge of what it might look like from the side, bottom, up, down, etc. David Hockney, in his photographic collages, plays upon these basic principles by showing the viewer all sides at once. In this photocollage, entitled Chair, Hockney combines images of the chair from multiple different angles – maybe he is actually showing us something closer to the totalness of our chair-viewing experience.
Yes, I very much agree with Dylan and found Arnheim's reflections on form and how it (and art in general) reflects the real world. The "mechanical ideal" is represented by realistic movements in art (which some would say forms the very core of the 'deceitful illusion' that art comprises) shown in Durer's hare and many other fantastically realistic paintings or sculptures that may attempt to confuse the viewer because of their almost unbelievable attention to the details of the living object. However, these painting are nonetheless two-dimensional and therefore an inherently false representation of reality.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found even more interesting as Arnheim's chapter went on was how he characterizes living "with the art of our century," which he believes has bestowed an entirely different appreciation for how good art uses/abuses/transcends the subjects that are based in the real world and transforms them into an comprehensible and meaningful form. His example of Picasso's schoolgirl represents geometrical shapes that cannot but represent the subject they intend to, as they become alive with the subject's 'full, natural flavor." He says it "no longer depicts a schoolgirl; it is a schoolgirl." In this way the form of modern trends in art, characterized by more abstracted work, apply to our perceptions of the real world just as realistic paintings did. It sort of gave a different meaning to the deceitful illusion, which is that the "organized action of expressive visual forces" comes through in all good form, creating a fitting representation of the world through any art style.
I am also intrigued by the Chair collage. I like the way Dylan phrases it, "the totalness of our chair-viewing experience"--but I'm also caught by the fact that we're able to view this as a chair, even if we don't know the title, it's so obviously a chair (though we know it is, in many ways "incomplete" or "fragmented"). This reminds me of the studies done where people can read words even if the internal letters are scrambled--we this ability to "put together" the elements instantaneously to see, either, a real word, or in this case, a chair. This other way of "reading" really interests me.
ReplyDeleteI was particularly interested in Arnheim's formalism. I found "Form" a thought-provoking but somewhat inconsistent chapter.
ReplyDeleteArnheim spoke of medium specificity: "each medium prescribes the way in which the features of model are best rendered." In this statement he almost unwittingly subscribes to high-modernist notions of pure form.
The notion that only certain artistic mediums could represent specific things is something I find to be an outmoded way of interpretting art of the 20th century and especially in the 21st century a time period where it is clear that there is a permeability and continual dialog between forms the poem, prose, music, painting, photograph, and the moving image all meld into a call and response system. This is certainly the case at the time of the book's publication as it is today. Such words and phrases as "form appropriateness" and "deceitful illusion" smack of Greenberg. And I can't help, but think he was somehow colored by this very critic's championing of formalism in the 50's. Arnheim's book was published in 1957.
Though, I do think Arnheim was on the fence with formalism. And his ambivalence is what marks for a a very thought-provoking chapter. He talks about Flaubert's comedy. Flaubert, a Romantic, wrote comedy, but did it in a grand classical style. This in itself is blurring between styles grand style for a petty subject--perhaps even what us moderns would find to be appropriation in its first stages.