I am sorry I did not post this before,last week was difficult.
Kate Sullivan
The first chapter covers technologies of early modern European painting.
He distinguishes between paint surfaces which primarily depict a virtual
world ,attempting to conceal the paint depicting the virtual world, and
paint surfaces which allow the paint used for depiction to be more obvious.
He observes that perspective's origin in the Renaissance is"a convenient
fiction" masking earlier stages.
He lists four modes of painting:decorative,graphical,optical,and
textural. The decorative mode emphasizes symbol and embellishment. "In the
graphic mode,things are painted as they are known or thought to be." It has a
smooth surface and depends on observation and analysis for what is being
depicted,resulting in a high degree of mimesis. Much of the analysis was
of a sort common at the time, and Berger cites Baxandall to back this up. "In
the optical mode,things are are painted as they are seen,or more pointedly,
painted in such a manner that the way they are seen modifies,obscures, or
conflicts with their objective structure and appearance." It requires more
effort from the viewer. Because of the effort required he feels there is more
of a feeling of time in this mode. "In the textural mode the qualities of
paint and th traces of the painter's hand are interposed between the eye and
the image. Textural painting represents the activity of painting and the
sensuous material qualities of paint as intrinsic parts of the image one can
see."
He points out very clearly that the great majority of paintings share in
one or more modes. The remaining pages describe the concept that
political regimes and societies,having an idea of themselves,prefer an
emphasis in
their physical images of themselves on one mode or another.
Chapter 2:Politics: the apparatus of commissioned portraiture. The
apparatus would include,the motivation for portraiture,the organization of
patronage
and the studio,te routines of negotiation,the practice of emulation-"study
of otherpainters,influence, borrowing,imitation and
allusion",preparation,production,and exhibition."I note in passing that
emulation occupies a spcial
place in the apparatus inasmuch as it is the channel through which the
aesthetic dynamics of artistic change flow into its social political basin."
He continues with the Renaissance concept of a portrait."The
apparent sitter in a Renaissance protrait was thus an external appearance
showing
an inward truth... The spirit they expressed however was not simply that of
their subject,it was also that of the artist.", a quote from David summers.
The inward truth was Neoplatonic in philosophy, which seems to have meant
that mimetic truth was necessary in order to depict the inward truth.
Portraying oneself in this way meant that regardless of how the money to pay
for the portrait had been earned, the portrait itself proved the ideal
qualities of the portrayed.
