GE1113 Visual Literacy and Cultural Thinking

2012-2-20

Invention of Photography
As Renaissance Paintings achieved a sophisticated combination of artist methods and scientific measure, later painter need to create unique visions of their understanding of the world through different means. The emergence of photography became a stimulus for painters, although photography was first presented as an invention with commercial values rather than a new form of art. The first permanent photography was produced in 1826 by French inventor Nicphore Nipce (1765-1833). Louis Daguerre (1787-1851), a French artist and chemist, announced the daguarreotype in 1938.

Japanese Influence
Before the 19th century, European painting mainly followed the academic conventions (established during the Renaissance) that had constrained artists both in terms of subject matter and technique. The Japanese Ukiyo-e prints () that depicted the everyday world of the ordinary people appealed to the Impressionists and inspired them to explore their own lives. The techniques in Ukiyo-e prints such as flatter picture spaces, asymmetrical compositions, and the use of brighter colors that are emotionally expressive but less "realistic", are often cited as influences to Western paintings.

PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY:

ETERNITY IN A MOMENT

Impressionism as Art Movement

Under both the influence of Ukiyo-e and photography, came the first major modern art movement. Impressionism began as a loose association of Paris-based artists, who began exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s. The term is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise, which provoked critic Louis Leory to first use the term in a satiric review. Early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting and employed visible brushstrokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.

Expressionist Painting
Expressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany around 1908 as a reaction to naturalism and impressionist, seeking to express the meaning of being alive and emotional experience. Expressionist painting avoids the subtle shadings and colors that gave the sense of volume and depth and uses large shapes of bright, unrealistic colors with dark, cartoonlike outlines. Figures may be elongated; faces wear grotesque, anguished expressions; buildings may sag or lean, with the ground tilted up steeply in defiance of traditional perspective.

Expressionist Painting and Theatre

Lecture 06 by Dr. Louisa Wei

GE1113 Visual Literacy and Cultural Thinking

2012-2-20

Essence of Photography
In Roland Barthes Camera Lucida (1980), he tries to explain why certain photos move us and others do not. The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. Mad or tame Photography can be one or the other: tame if its realism remains relative, tempered by aesthetic or empirical habits; mad if this realism is absolute and, so to speak, original, obliging the loving and terrified consciousness to return to the very letter of Time.

Photographers Speak
In photography, if I am able to evoke not only a feeling of the reality of the surface physical world but also a feeling of the reality of existence that lies mysteriously and invisibly beneath its surface, I feel I have succeeded. At its best, photography is a symbol that not only serves to help illuminate some of the darkness of the unknown, but it also serves to lessen the fears that too often accompany the journeys from the known to the unknown. Wynn Bullock

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them. A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. Diane Arbus

Painting Cinematic Style: Magic of Light and Mood

For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe. Ruth Bernhard

Edward Hoper (1882-1967) was an pioneer in 20th-century American painting. He is very conscious of nature and manmade things, and his landscapes often shows a clarity with a poignant sense of solitude. Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.

Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. Robert Heinecken

Lecture 06 by Dr. Louisa Wei

GE1113 Visual Literacy and Cultural Thinking

2012-2-20

Gregory Crewdson's photographic series capture a particularly American state of normalcy--in dissolution. The viewer, at first seduced by what appears to be an idyllic scene, soon discovers subtle off-kilter elements more akin to Film Noir than an NBC comedy. In a work from his Twilight series, yellow school buses are parked outside white wooden houses, and students stand and lounge around in seeming passivity. Something is happening--what, we don't know. The vision is familiar yet unfamiliar, seemingly benign yet threatening. Crewdson goes to great lengths in dramatizing his disturbing suburban scenes, employing elaborate lighting, cranes, props, and extras, espousing a level of behind-the-scenes preparation more akin to the making of a Hollywood movie than the making of a still image. Stephan Berg and Martin Hetschel

Cinematic Photography: Gregory Crewdson (1962-)

Lecture 06 by Dr. Louisa Wei

GE1113 Visual Literacy and Cultural Thinking

2012-2-20

In the photographs themselves there's a definite contrast between the figures and the location - I like that kind of California backyard look; clapboard houses, staircases outdoors. I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas. I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something - a great success. I'm very proud of it. Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton (19202004): Photography and Control

Lecture 06 by Dr. Louisa Wei