Modernism Question

How much has the conversation of collage from modernism, to post-modernism truly changed and how does this (focusing mostly on technique) challenge he separation of modernism to post-modernism?

Practices of Looking and Viewing - Chapter 5: Visual Technologies, Image Reproduction, and the Copy

Reproduce the appearance of objects, people, events

A copy of an original work

Marxist theory

The ways that cultural practices and their forms of expression reproduce the ideologies and interests of the ruling class

Technology and social constructions

Visual Technologies

Intro of the camera

Changes the way we see and how we use images

Technology does not determine social change

US military government using technology in 1971 internet would eventually be used around the world

Technologies interacting with people and social contexts resulting in changes in technologies

Visual technologies emerge out of particular social and epistemic context – possibility precedes their development

Origin of photography raises the question not who invented it, but “at what moment did photography become an occasional, isolated fantasy, to a social imperative?”

Photography emerged as a popular medium because of particular social demands of 19^th century

Modern ideas about technical progress, time, contain nature and landscape in reproducible form,

Motion and Sequence

1880’s visualize movement – cant be grasped by unaided eye

The horse and the hove experiment

Muybridge scientific studies of the movement of the human body

Development of cinema came from these studies

Projection machines – Zoetropes  - designed off of the camera obscura

Stereoscope – instrument from 19^th century offered 2 separate views from the same scene to give the illusion of depth and space

Kinescope – 1891 from Edison, stand in front of a peep hold and watch a private projection

The public space theater grew from this model

Cinema – temporality, movement and sound to photography to make a narrative for story telling

Griffth and Porter

Silent period

30’s and 40’s shots were eventually linked together through accuracy

Cinematic meaning derived not from the individual film but through the linking together of images – representing passage of time

20^th century – representation shift again with development of electronic media – television

builds on previous technologies

Image Reproduction

The copy isn’t new – Egyptians

The value of the original

Unique original object with meaning and value tied to the place it lived

Value is key for status of reproductions

Understood as a system of limited value

Print series – a limited number

William Ivins – social impact of the printing press and discovery of how to print pictures has a greater potential affect on modern life

Invention of photography with cult of originality

Daguerreotype – the negative and the positive of a photo

1800’s

The original material for reproduction in photography comes from the negative – holds great value.

Works with too strong of a reference to technology can be devalued

Roland Barthes – unique affinity with the real or “noeme”

Philosophy of sensory experience – root of being and knowledge

Conventional photo – the space the image is taken in

The light that hits the objects is what’s original

The photo is the empirical evidence of being

Photography was not originally a form of art

Cameron – photography with a painterly look

Cunningham, Adams, and Weston – photographs looked like paintings

Walter Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction

Benjamin – German critic in the 20^th century associated with Frankfurt school

1936 – cultural shift of reproducible forms of art

photography and film – no original work to speak of but rather as series of copies that stand in place of an original work

change from centuries of emphasis on uniqueness and authenticity

could be democratizing force engaged in fluid politics

value of ownership and the artifact based on the states of the work as a commodity

became a large part of art making practices

The aura- its value is from the uniqueness and role in ritual – the reproduction lacks its presence in time and space

The authenticity of the aura cannot be reproduced

Authenticity – quality that clings to the idea of classic type of category of people or icons

Second nature in culture to alter

Meaning of the original work is changed after it is reproduced

The value of work now lies in the aesthetic, cultural and social worth

Digital images have no original

Benjamin

Reproduction of a single image  has affect on mean and value

Mechanical reproducibility changes relationship to rituals, meaning use, and value

Politics of Reproducibility

1930s – reproducibility was used for propaganda for the Nazi Party

can circulate with political meaning

photo-collage to make political statement in new way

can heighten the message

Ex socialism in Cuba and the mass reproduction of Che

Symbolizes occurs through reuse of the same imagery

Raises issues of copy right and ownership

Challenges uniqueness

the addition of text to image

Copies, Ownership, and Copyright

Ownership rights

Legal management of intellectual property

Flow of copies shape ideas that constitute legit use

Copy right means “the right to copy” – the rights to distribute, produce, copy, display, perform, create and control

Grants legale protection to the expression of an idea – not the idea itself

Ownership of the painting belongs to the creator itself unless its done for hire

The ownership its transferred when its sold, but the right to reproduce is not

The rights to the expression of the idea as well extras still remain with the artist

In photo it can be negotiated but are not normally transferred with a painting

Presence of forgeries grew

Otto Wacker – was able to mimic everything accept for the true style of Van Gogh’s work

The life of a copy is not necessarily extending the life of a work

The possibility of stealing or changing a persons identity based on the recreation of a work

Copy right laws regulate but do not rule out reproduction entirely

Does not include the ability to exploit the persona of people or group depicted by an image

What constitutes transformation versus appropriation of another images production

Changing the value of a work

92 Case of rogers v Koons – koons took an image photo by another artist and recontextualized it for his own work, a kitsch sculpture

a parody – reflection of a broader style

A trademark – a symbol, word, or phrase used to identify  a manufactures product

Ex. Nike “swoosh” logo

Reproduction and the Digital Image

Digital camera has no negative – no original only the immediate date that gets put into code and viewed quickly on the camera

The use of Photoshop and creation of photo shoot to have the ability to artificially construct realism

“What changed the digital photograph is not the ability to manipulate the image but, the wide availability and accessibility of these techniques to the middle class consumer, making not just image production but also image reproduction and alteration an everyday action of consumer experience”

Everything moving towards digital space for storage so imagery won’t be lost – but can be used by multiple sources due to wide internet access

The image could be created entirely on the computer without any photograph at all

What constitutes a visual record of something, and what counts as from

Digital images create a new kind of value – “input value”

Painting changed in response based off of the digital use of the camera and incorporates what is seen from the cameral into work

Ex. chuck close and his grid paintings based off of the camera and pixilation

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

- quote from beginning about the physical component of art no longer being treated as it used to be

1

·      basic conditions of reproduction exploit the middle class

·      Without the different levels of society there would be no point in distinguishing the classes

·      The mechanical reproduction of art is a new form of reproduction; imitation of something

·      Lithography creation: mass reproduction becomes easier through the process of wood cuts

·      The eye perceives more swiftly than it can draw; pictorial reproduction is accelerated

·      1900’s for mass production has now made way for its own ways of recreation.

2

·      reproductions lack the aura, presence and time and space

·      The idea of authenticity is born and the possibility as forgery of a work of art; for it to be replicated and lose its original touch

·      The reproduction of the work of art destroys the idea of tradition and the use of art for tradition

3

·      “The manner in which human perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.” Meaning history has play into how people will know how to look at a work of art and respond to it and the reproduction

·      Reality of something is no longer unique because it can be reproduced

4

·      The uniqueness of a work of art is still embedded in tradition of a work of art

·      Categorizing art based on its social functions, not necessarily the use for rituals

·      Mechanical reproduction removed the purpose of ritual use for art

5

·      Two planes grow: The cult following or use of an image and then how it is exhibited

o   The cult makes it a private viewing

o   The exhibition gives new coconscious functions

6

·      Rival value of photography for the use of reproduction and for personal gain or value ex a picture of family

7

·      Painting vs Photography

o   Photography is a “sterile” copy when painting still has a barrier of separation to the creation process

8

·      Film and the separation of the actor and the stage

·      The audience can now critique the work without developing personal relationships

9

·      The actor is now in front of a camera and not people, so the aura of the man is removed. The personal connection with viewer and actor is gone because of the mechanical camera

10

·      People who now able to reproduce the film, they lose connection

·      People are now experts of what they see; they can critique and become part of the film process

11

·      Film prevents one solid view or vantage point to be realized when watching. There are many more elements that go into making a film that were not present in the past

·      The film maker is now extremely close to the world and brings forth a new reality that a painter can’t achieve because of the use of the medium

12

·      The painting can be viewed by one person or a small group of people and thought about on an internal level

·      Film creates a larger scale connection between viewers and enjoyment, creating a larger space for critique

13

·      The use of film brings forth more scientific detail than that of the painter; making people look closer into the use for their lives

14

·      Dadaism is created; the destruction of aura by taking a mush of different materials to create work that looks like a reproduction

·      Through their use of collage and compiling, the Dadaists recreate what film can do; give lots of little bits of information at once

The use of technology is how the futurists refer to as war; people are not successfully incorporating the use of technology into their work and it is used as something supplemental and not vital. It changes the way that people interact with technology and how it is viewed

Cut and Paste by Charlie White

 ·      Collage never completely left contemporary art practices; an aesthetic language that has been used in the past three decades

·      It was created a post-war response that not only allows for the creator and viewer to respond to visual information but can make groups of other information accessible

·      The Dada’s also embraced collage (after cubism) to use it as photomontage, and would have a visual flexibility that allowed for play as well as commentary. They used it as a political statement, but because of the nature of collage it was still ambiguous

·      After the 60’s the technological boom occurred into the 90’s and the turn into the 00’s: the internet was born that opened up many different visual facets that allowed for play and the combining and removal and recreation of visual imagery

·      With the internet, photomontage and visual representation through collage has reached a new high where the focus can be switched and turn the viewer into a consumer of popular culture. The article uses the example of the teenager and how they use collage for “…individual desire.. through appropriation of popular images…”

·      Artist responded to this by appropriating both contemporary use of image as well as the older forms of collage to create their own personal balance between the two. They could challenge it through a 2-D visual layering process such as painting, where no objects are even added just illustrated, or just a piling of images like on used in Photoshop. Collage has developed into a language beyond the compilation of image; it has a multiplicity of meanings that allow the art form to grow with each time period

Clement Greenberg - Collage

·      Collage was a major turning point in the evolution of Cubism and the whole evolution of modernist art in century because of Braque and Picasso and their work between 1907 and 1914, both claim each collage was the first one to be created.

·      Most important – that the men decided and even thought of cutting and pasting as an option

·      Renewed contact with “reality” in growing abstractness in analytical cubism. The adding of the materials made the experience more “real” even though those materials still are representations

·      They were managing to obtain sculptural results through non-sculptural means with the mixture of collage and Analytical cubism

·      Flatness was invading the cubist picture, dissecting everything visible, the artists seemed to be losing control of the work and representation. Began to act more as something that is visually pleasing and not creating description

·      This is now representing even more illusion with trope-l’oeil – to deceive and undeceive; meaning the image would cause the viewer to have to look harder while the artist is giving the viewer as much information as possible for the image to make sense

·      The use of text overlay on the image helped make the interaction of space more defined; the text resting on top of the image causes the subject to be forced forward and backward at once - “more present and more ambiguous at the same time

·      September 1912 Braque pasted wood grain on the canvas instead of painting it, causing the push pull of the foreground and depth of the background to be pushed forward. The flatness of the space becomes asserted but the same time, the imagery creates depth

·      From there synthetic Cubism began, in 1913 or early 1914 and it set up for a different type of work that still challenged the visual space, but the purpose had changed to more representational and less abstraction

Sigmund Freud - The Uncanny - Translated by David Mclintock

• The opening of the article refers often to he (Sigmund Freud) who rarely pays attention to aesthetics, but, has to because of the concept of the "uncanny" or the realm of the frightening
• Most of the time, in aesthetics, the focus is on the positive and the beautiful and not the negative and frightening
• "The 'uncanny' is the species of frightening that can go back to once what was well known or familiar"
• intellectual uncertainty
• "Starting from the homely and the domestic, there is a further development towards the notion of something removed from the eyes of strangers, hidden, secret"
• the idea of an animate object is alive, or whether a lifeless object might not be animate
• through the tool or use of story telling
• castration complex
• the double or Doppelganger
• mirrors, images, spirits
• causes the feeling of alienation
• These concepts are coming from the writings of a man known as Hoffman
• helplessness and the unfamiliar feeling of not knowing where you are
• having lost ones way in the woods
• the element of recurrence - brings up the number 62
• superstitious fear of the evil eye
• 'something that should have remained hidden and has come into the open'
• Any aspect of death
• What is created in fiction with fairytales

Practice of Looking: Chapter 4 - Realism and Perspective

Taking for grandit “realistic” images

Conventions of realism

Realism linked to variety of approaches

Signifier and signified

Arbitrary and contextually specific

Linear realism – connect with realism

Realist images depicts something as it would be seen by the eye

Extremely labored in the renaissance

Reproducibility – the aim and ability

Ability to hold in thoughts and memories

Conventions of representation – how people believe they see things

Visual Codes

Visual codes –assumptions about dates from content, style, medium, and formal qualities

Ex. sepia toning and 19^th century photography

Neoclassical style – aspects of classical fine art

Appeals to the artist’s subjective taste – politics

Questions of realism

Realism – a set of conventions or a style of art or representation that is understood at a given historical moment to accurately represent nature or convey and interpret accurate or universal meanings about people, objects, and events in the world.

Different ideas about realism coexist

Historical, geographical, or national context

Political expression – can challenge realism

Exposing means of production rather than hide technique

Can promote nationalism (soviets) – the constructivists reacted with the avant guard

Poetic realism – opposition of narrative film making – dramatized real and social conditions

Political allegory

Arts function was to reflect truths about society and nature back to subject in the world

Foucault – episteme – way that an inquiry to truth is organized in a given era

Accepted dominant mode of acquiring and organizing knowledge in a given period in history

What viewers are accustomed to

Objects shown in space through perspective

History of Perspective

Perspective – “to see clearly”; a set of systems or mechanisms used to produce representations of objects in space as if seen by an observer through a window or frame. Size and detail corresponds to the relative distance of the viewer

Development of painting techniques – looking through a window or screen

The enlightenment – importance of science – power of human reason will overcome superstition.

The picture as a mirror or window

The distance of the image will be judged by a real structure

Mathematical rules derived from nature

Linear perspective

Frame within a frame

Codes and conventions

Perspective, according to Panofsky, became paradigmatic, specialized form of the modern world, associated with rationalist thought

Cartesian grid

Empiricism – knowledge based on experience and experiment

Away from realisms of science and into natural

Descartes – the body and the machine, and the displacement of sensory performance

Viewers position is hypothetical

Rendered the image objective

Berger , 72, “proposed to the spectator that he was the unique center of the world”

Perspective and the Body

Ancient Egypt – the size of the figure shows the dominance of the figure

Mantegna- dramatic foreshortening

The used of a grid to help proportions of creating an image

Separates man from nude

Realism – making a composite of views and parts from other observed forms

Realism – combining parts and views and merging them

Ancient Greeks – rejected techniques to reproduce, believed it was trickery

Camera Obscure

Camera – simple device that is based on the phenomenon that light rays bouncing off of a well lit object or scene, when passed into a dark chamber

Different relation to the images

Long history – Vermeer – distorted highlights

Drawing instrument

Challenges to Perspective

Impressionism – visible brush strokes and impressionistic depictions of light to capture form

Empirical sense of being amidst nature – subjectively recording changes

Complexity of human visions and natural interactions

Emphasized the sensory interactions

Cubists – the human eye never rests, always in motion, paints different perspectives at once

Complicated vision

Sculpture and masks

Abstraction of African body art

Longevity of traditional linear perspective suggest as cultural desire for vision to be stable and unchanging and for the meaning of images of images to be fixed. The act of looking has been highly changeable and contextually meaningful

Fascination with distortion

Action painting – representation of emotional experience

Surrealists – automatism

Concept, process, and performance – “new realism”

Physical materiality of the body and the paint

Receiving in social context

Perspective in Digital Media

Videogames and the embodied experience of the user

Navigation of elements

Engagement with media

Help us to imagine

Emphasis on embodied movement

Isometric perspective – equal in measure. Objects are not represented as becoming smaller as they recede in space, linear perspective. Oftener used when one frame is embedded in another. Places the viewer in different relation to space than traditional perspective

The sims

Composing screen space, point of view shots

Virtual images – “not real” – something that exists in our imaginations only

Digital technologies

Break convention of what is seen

Ideal or composite elements

The real and mundane world

Parallel

Physical space