Scribd Logo
Fazer o upload

Bem-vindo(a) ao Scribd!

  • 2nd Reading

    Enviado por

    Manuela CF Pinto
    9 visualizações8 páginas
    culture

    Direitos autorais

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Formatos disponíveis

    PDF ou leia online no Scribd

    Você considera este documento útil?

    Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

    Denunciar este documento
    culture

    Direitos autorais:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Baixe no formato PDF ou leia online no Scribd
    Sinalizar o conteúdo como inadequado
    9 visualizações8 páginas

    2nd Reading

    Enviado por

    Manuela CF Pinto
    culture

    Direitos autorais:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Baixe no formato PDF ou leia online no Scribd
    Sinalizar o conteúdo como inadequado
    de 8
    GENERAL INTRODUCTION | 5 the separate scenes. These condensed yet visually diffuse elements were drawn from the traditional forms of a relatively purposeless decorative sensibility, but they are used here in a way that expresses: 1 contemporary polltical orientation. As a length of fabric, the toile was clearly intended for private, personal use (typically on walls and beds and surrounding windows). yet at the same time it functioned ‘8 public, visible evidence ofits cwner's political affiliation, which might on one day be viewed as lauct able and on the next treasonable, as the volatile revolutionary decade proceeded. All three of these very different items—the anonymous painting on copper from St. Caecilia’s hos: pital in Leiden, the lottery poster glimpsed from the corner of van Nieulandt’s genre painting, and the pottcally calibrated tole de Jouy fabric —exempiity different aspects of what can be called “visual culture." Each work, in diverse ways and in varying degrees, fails to ft neatly into the traditional catego res of the “high” visual arts. AS a result, their marginal or hybrid status calls into question mary of the longstanding assumptions about the socalled fine arts and calls attention to those spaces of visual experience that more traditional approaches have tenced to overlook. The fact that these objects are ‘on the margins of traditional art production makes them well suited to studying the function of images and to probing the conceptual pracesses that informed them. These Investigative tactics offer sub- ‘stantial altemativos to previous objectives of study, such as the defining qualities of a masterpiece or the stlistic sequences of a particular period. As new approaches, et variance with but not entirely foreign to the more familiar methods of studying art, they create not only an expanded, inclusive visval field, but also illuminate past practices of looking and of visual thinking, or those conceptual processes that are structured to significant degree around visual concerms. In this wey, visual culture can be gauged In terms of the objects it examines, the methods of interpretation or investigation it undertakes, and the subjects or viewers who engage with the objects. VISUAL CULTURE: DEFINITIONS AND HISTORY OF THE FIELD Visual culture has existed as a field of study since the 1880s. Throughout the last decades of the ‘twentieth century, there have been numerous attempts to define its domain and methodology. The result is a fascinating plurality of approaches rather than a narrowly defined area of study to which all practitioners unanimously subscribe. Variations among these approaches concentrate around whether visual culture is defined by its objects, or its subjects, or whether the focus lies within the details of the method of approach itself. Many scholars of course attempt in their formulations to address all three of these different concentrations. Some proponents use the terms visual culture and visual studies interchangeably, while others take issue with this basic distinction in terms.” For example, W..T. Mitch ll, among others, prefers the phrase visual culture for its contextual emphasis and because “it is learned and cultivated, nat simply given by nature."* One major subject of debate concerns whether visual culture 's a unique aspect of our contemporary era and intimately related to the proliferation of Visual technologies, or whether it can also be said to have a significant nistorical dimension in relation to visual preferences and developments.® A further controversial issue relates to the inclusiveness of the visual cultural field, extending this range to embrace additional sensory modes on the one hand, ‘and the textual and verbal on the oth ‘There is, however, widespread agreement that visual culture Is interdisciplinary or cross-isciplinary, ‘and that its ability to question or strain existing disciplinary boundaries and traditional cultural | GENERAL INTRODUCTION hierarchies is one of its most laudable characteristics. A significant number of proponents also agree that the inclusion of objects and experiences previously considered marginal in the study of visual artis likewise a promising intellectual development, provided that this broader focus nevertheless primarily considers “Images for which distinguished cultural value has been or is being proposer. a ‘Tis position voices a concern thatthe visual significance of what Is being studied in the visual cok jure approach must not be taken for granted but is itself an Important component requiring analysis vend exemination, For many scholars this vigllant approach to visual aculy is balanced by claims that the circumstantial and contextual embeddedness of visual culture's objects are eavally critical com: ponents within the field of study. Support for this position Is found in otzims thatthe proper focus of vial culture concems the “social practices of looking,” or in a slightly more complex formulation, that it consists ofthe “visual construction ofthe social, not just the social construction of vision." ’k pronounced emphasis on the socal aspect of visualty resulted in part from the fact sat visual 1970s just as the social history of art gained cur- culture appeared as an academic approach in the 1 tency, endorsed by mary for its capacity to test or push the borders of a more traditional art histon. Inthis decade, the reevaluation of academic disciplines and their purview was catalyzed not only By So cial historical approaches, but also by cultural studies, anthropology, and the Frankfurt School, among thers. Feminist scholars in particular were active in demonstrating shortcomings and inaccuracies in the standard practices of artistorical and other area studies. One outcome of these developments ‘tae the so called new art history of the 1980s, in which familiar disciplinary strategies were extended beyond their traditional mits, broadened by the methods of these new approaches as well 25 By & of their own revisionist premises and assumptions. greater self consciousness conceming the nature ‘The addition of new visual technologies was also a natural outcome of a socially expanded field for the study of visual culture, and one of the first works to acknowledge the role of media in this Way ‘nas Caleb Gattegno’s 1969 Towards a Visual Culture: Educating through Television. By the 1990s, nur merous introductory readers specifically addressing the field of visual culture became avaliable, cach vith varying degrees of focus on new media in their more Inclusive approach to understanding visual fexperience. Prominent contributions among this group Include visual Culture (2984), edted by Nor. ‘nan Bryson, Michael Ann Holy, and Keith Moxey, a8 well as Chris Jenks's Visual Guture of 4998 and Nicholas Mirzooff’s 1998 edition of The Visual Culture Reader. n several essays also published ot this time, WT Mitchell presented the syllabus used in his visual culture course, whese goal he claimed ‘was “not to ‘cover’ the field of visual culture, but to introduce its central debates and dialectics — is various boundaries both internal and external."** “Then in the summer of 1996, the radica Journal October published a visual culture questionnalte: ‘his posed four questions its editorial staff considered crucial to an understanding ofthe new Hel dna these were made from a clearly antagonistic position." It was suggested that, on the one hands the interdscipinary premises of the field were problematic, the result of institutional and financial preseures, and, on the other hand, that it wes an undesirable development created by endorse nthropological methods at the expense of the historical. Visual culture as @ novel approach Wek sindermined by one question that suggested that its methods were Infact recycied from the work ‘such major arthistorical figures of the early twentieth century a5 Alois Rleg! and Aby Werburé- proper objects of study in visual culture were denigrated as well by suggesting that the NeW! vrsuld concentrate on virtual images rather than material objects. Theso points were followed EY tire ‘ode of existence” and that there are in the history of art “critical epochs in wh GENERAL INTRODUCTION | responses of the scholars canvassed. A very wide net was cast by the journal's editors, and this group included experts from the fields of art history, history, iterature, fm studies, anthropology, compara: tive literature, and cultural studies. While the results of the questionnaire were quite mixed, there is. now a consensus that it served the fiold of visual culture well, by giving adherents of the approach ‘an opportunity to consolidate and clarify their positions.” In the questionnaire’s wake, there has been a steady rate of publication for readers, anthologies, and specialist studies with a focus on a visual culture approach. This process of sharing ideas and practices among proponents of visual cul- ture, catalyzad by the October questionnaire, has continued through such groups as the visual culture caucus, which meets annually at the College Art Association national conference, and through several electronic forums.** CRITICAL INFLUENTIAL FIGURES Working in Hamburg in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Aby Warburg (1866-1929) pioneered an extraordinary expansive interdisciplinary approach to art and intellectual history that encompassed the classical, the nonclassical European, and many non European traditions. His ti brary now at the University of London, was organized around an integrative, conceptual framework rather than along familiar disciplinary guidelines, and this novel arrangement was emblematic of Warburg's insistence on “

    Você também pode gostar