--- On Fri, 10/30/09, Chris Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Chris Miller <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Art and Optics > To: [email protected] > Date: Friday, October 30, 2009, 10:58 AM > Questions concerning perspective seem > to be one of the most popular "diverse, > linked texts" concerning representational painting, but > they have been so > over-worked by now, how could they possibly still enable us > to "gain insight - > think in a manner, or become conscious of relationships > previously > unconsidered" Well, I suggest you take a look at Velasquez, Maids' of Honor, the big painting of the Infanta and her attendants seen in a mirror, including V working on the painting and also including a reflection of the king and Queen, parent of the Infanta, on a far wall. Many scholars have attempted to map the perspective in that work and primarily its distortions and see it not only as a key to the composition but also as a symbolic structure of Royal "Divine Right" hierarchy and the artist's role in presenting it. Van Eyck's great painting of the Arnofilni Marriage also has very complex perspective. One of James Elkin's books examines it and he is an acknowledged expert on optics in art. Using perspective ways that twist the simple geometry of the method goes back in the west to Masaccio who used twin (separated on the same plane) vanishing points to avoid an otherwise single vanishing point perspective from being too obvious. Perspective itself is indeed merely a device, although far more subtle than Miller seems to think (perhaps his experience is limited to "how-to" books for amateurs). Since the beginning of its systematic formulation in the 1400's artists have been using it to express more, metaphorically, than simple measurement of pictorial space. > > They rest upon the assumption that there is some way the > eye really sees -- so > there's something wrong in "Supper at Emmaus" if things > don't get smaller as > they recede into the distance, and there is something right > about "Follies > Bergere" if there are multiple implicit vanishing points. How do you reach that foolish premise, that "there is some way the eye really sees"? I assume you mean there is some ONE way the eye really sees in every instance. Of course there is a way the eye "really sees" otherwise there would be no sight. Of course there are many ways the eye sees, all of them affected a co-mingling of light, the quality of the eye's biology, the cognitive function (including memory, associative cognition, both conscious and unconscious, interest (goal) and the like. > > I'm more inclined to ask "why is it important to see this > painting" -- > coinciding with "what did the artist most likely try > to present" --- and let > my viewing experience provide me answers (if it can find > any). So you want to know the artist's intention? But you test that by referring only to your own experience. That strikes me as ridiculous. If you want to know someone's intention you need to examine the evidence they provide to see if it supports or weakens the intention. What do YOU have to do with it, unless you want to match your fantasy intention with the artistS EVIDENT intention? It strikes me this this is precisely what you do. If your fantasy intention seems to match what you think is the artist's intention then you think you have understood the work -- and feel it properly. And if your fantasy intention doesn't seem to be ratified by the artist's intention, then so much the worse for the artwork that presumably symbolizes intentionality. > > And what I bring to that experience is my own > experience of looking, as well > as an on-going historical narrative. That's true of every moment of anyone's experience. If my pet cat could figure out English, he'd say the same thing. > > When I look at "Supper at Emmaus", I feel like I'm at > -- indeed, within -- a > momentous, profound event that is > both real and magic. (Most religious > painting doesn't do that for me, so I regard this painting > as exceptional - > and it currently diminishes everything else in gallery 112 > except for El > Greco's Assumption of the Virgin) WHY? What evidence can you offer that we can all see in the artworks? > > When I look at "Follies Bergere" (or, at least a jpg of it) > I feel a bit > tipsy and uncomfortable. There is something so > sad -- but also so riotous -- > about it. Something very important seemsto be happening -- > but it's not > particularly good. With her blank stare, a fine, > handsome, healthy young > woman seems lost -- contrasted with sharp, purposeful stare > of the man facing > her in the mirror. Something important? Blank stare? Etc? What specifically causes you to assume that Manet intended that response, and what specifically evokes that response? The vagueness may be due to perspectival contradictions that in reflecting, urge the viewer to feel groundless. The one truth of perspective is that it locates the viewer in a fixed relation to the presented scene. In Manet's work there is no fixed position for the viewer. The result is to sense a disembodiment in one's viewing. The implicit (hinted at) perspective in the work is ONE cause of that disembodiment. > And what about all those people in the > background - in variant degrees of > attractive to repulsive? (one of whom is hanging from the > ceiling) Those folks are watching the stage at the Folies bergere. The legs belong to the "girl on a swing", a popular mainstay performance at the Folies Bergere. And those > glaring lights and swirling crowds that make me a bit > nauseous, even if there are some beautiful people > around. It all makes me > feel completely ambivalent about the place. > (and reminds me why I don't like to visit bars) So again, it's all about YOU. I suggest that a work of art is indeed you, but a you reformed, reassembled, you as if you were the painting, its figures, even its artist. But you need to allow that metamorphosis to happen and not insist that it's the other way around, where you cause the work to be transformed into something you predetermine. > > The phrase "demi-monde" seems appropriate -- > something like the Japanese > "floating world" that was its contemporary. The > Bijin-ga genre that > presented it could be just as sympathetic with the > women but was never > ambivalent about the entire situation. In the > Japanese Buddhist world, > everyone is born to her own destiny. > > That's the kind of text that I assemble, and If > found, it also seems more > interestinf and likely intended than displays of some > kind of technical > innovation or virtuosity. > > I can understand why an historian or artist might be > more interested in > technical issues -- but I do question why an art > theorist, like Thierry de > Duve would investigate "How Manet's "A Bar at the > Folies-Bergere" Is > Constructed" (the title of the 1998 article in > Critical Inquiry which > mentioned some of William's ideas) > > As well as I wonder why De Duve would be > considered qualified to speak on > this subject. Isn't method of construction > something that only the artist -- > or a student of the artist -- can authoritatively > discuss? (beyond just the > identification of tools, materials, and historical > references) > > It's as if ideas about the construction of a painting were > more important than > whatever effects they have -- and I would propose that the > effects -- at > least, the most important ones,are too complex to be > accounted for by such > ideas - which often -- as with the "implicit vanishing > points" mentioned by > William - are rather subjective. (did anyone else really > see > "Another vanishing point .. the left corner of Suzon's > mouth... the apex of a > pyramid that aligns with some bottles on the left and > with the receding plane > of the right side of the compote (bowl of fruit)." > > I can't even see that point as some kind of vanishing point > even after William > pointed it out. Well, you should examine the diagrams I made. They're in that issue of Critical Inquiry. > > So much is involved in making something feel > profound, sad, riotous etc. As > well as in making something feel real --as a scene > more like the Follies > Bergere than a whale, a camel, or any other as-if. > > All the relationships of color and line are involved, as > well as the postures > and the expressions of the figures which can only be > described by the painting > itself. > > If the search for implicit vanishing points > deserves three pages of text -- > the entire inquiry concerning construction would require > many volumes. You continue to miss the point of my perspectival analysis of the Manet painting. It's almost like saying to a physician, "Why bother with the heart when there are so many other organs that sustain life?" I can hardly wait until Miller has the chance to look at my new diagrams of Monet's painting On the Banks of The River (Art Institute of Chicago) in a forthcoming book by Mary Matthews Gedo, University of Chicago press, 2010. Here I "restore" the figure of Monet's son, a small child, to the painting, together with other elements of the scene and thus propose what the painting looked like when Monet first finished it. It's known that Monet repainted the work decades later, effectively erasing his son, and modifying the composition. To make these diagrams, I worked with the Gedo, the curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chief Conservator there and others. Again, all of this was vetted by expert Monet scholars. I'm sure Miller will dismiss it all as nonsense because it won't fit his preconception of work as an expression of Miller's intentions. So again, ten PhD scholars, curators, conservators with all their state of the art technology (wall sized x-rays that reveal layer by layer of paint), actual records of the events surrounding the initial making of the painting, and its later re-making, and my simple "reconstruction" will mean nothing to Miller who, after all, uses his own experience to measure truth. And I don't even claim that what I did is truth. It's a proposition that stimulates greater understanding of Monet, his art, and art history, all in harmony with Gedo's psychological approach to art. wc > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Diet Help > Cheap Diet Help Tips. Click here. > http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=ECBjBngS1reGrpi9OW13rQAAJz6c > l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYQAAAAAA=
