Howells, R and Negreiros, J. (2012) Visual Culture, Polity Press
This book was a recommendation on one of the OCA photography forum threads.
I chose to read this book prior to starting the Context and Narrative module as a response to my EYV module assessment feedback. It was the comment ‘your images concentrate on shapes and lines with little meaning at times’ that I wanted to investigate. On EYV I struggled to know whether my tutor would like the images I submitted, which in the main he did. I also became aware, following assessment submission, that I needed to improve my critical analysis and use more art terminology.
I have acquired a number of books on photography and art history as part of EYV. In most cases I have quickly been overwhelmed by theory and concepts eg. Liz Wells, Photography: A critical Introduction; David Bate, Photography; Graham Clarke, The Photograph. These books were specifically on photography so I was widening my knowledge with ‘Visual Culture’.
The authors’ aim for this book is to explore how meaning is both made and transmitted in the visual world. They state that in a world of increasingly sophisticated images unless we are taught how to read them, we run the risk of being visually illiterate.
The book is split in to two parts: Theory – six chapters covering strategies for the analysis of visual texts; Media – five chapters analysing specific media forms. This post is not only a review of the book but a record of the concepts, theories and practitioners which will benefit me on the course.
The six strategies for analysing visual text are:
Iconology – the content/subject matter of an image
Form– the form of an image
Art History – usefulness and limits of an images place in art history
Ideology – use of societal attitudes
Semiotics – signs, signifiers and signifieds
Hermeneutics – interpretation of literal and intended meanings
Iconology
The chapter starts by letting us know that we can read an image by what we see – ‘what you see is what you get’. The attributes we can glean from such an image are:
Genre – what type of image – Landscape (townscape, cityscape, seascape), Portrait (single, group, nude), Still Life, Genre Painting (everyday life)
Central subject matter
Location or setting of the subject
Historical period represented
Season or time of year
Time of day
The particular Instant – eg. just after a horse jumps a fence
The authors use John Constable’s (1776 – 1837) The Haywain (1821) as a good example of ‘what you see is what you get’. However, it starts to get complicated with historical figures, theological scenes and paintings containing symbolism. These images require some additional knowledge to get a true understanding of the artists intention such as history, religion and fashion.
The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait (1434) by Jan van Eyck (1395 -1441) is communicating the purity and standing in society of a couple on the occasion of their wedding. The contentious aspect is the female figure appears to be pregnant – at least to the 21st century eye. The alternative explanations are that it was a fashion at the time for ladies to clutch and lift the fronts of their dresses. It could also be she is demonstrating her potential for childbearing. Art historians believe she was not pregnant which means you cannot always read an image based purely on what you see.
The paintings contains well placed symbols which must be regarded as significant as the artist has chosen to include them – the dog, the shoes, the mirror, the fruit, the single lit candle. These symbols all have meaning but you need to understand the era and the people in the scene to fully understand them.
Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), a German iconologist, published a system, using examples from the renaissance period, that allowed images to be studied at various levels. To identify the meaning he devised a 3 point system:
First level – ‘primary’ or ‘natural’ subdivided into ‘factual’ and ‘expressional’. This is simply what we can see.
Second Level – ‘secondary’ or ‘conventional’ level. The viewer has to know the convention in use ie. a casual meal out and ‘The Last Supper’. Cultural knowledge is brought in to play.
Third Level – ‘intrinsic’ meaning. Reveals the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class or religious persuasion. The Arnolfini painting tells us about attitudes towards marriage, religion and wealth in 15th century Flanders. This level includes unintentional attributes and cultural attributes.
Panofsky used an old fashion example of a gentleman tipping his hat at a passer by in the street. The first level is a street scene where a man tilts his hat to another person. The second level recognises that this action is a greeting and a sign of politeness used in a western culture. The third level reveals something of the man’s personality along with his national, social, educational and cultural background. The man may not have been intentionally communicating these things but they are there.
The Beatles Abbey Road album cover from 1969 (pp26-30) is used as an example where too much can be read in to an image as highlighted by the Paul McCartney is dead conspiracy theory.
Form
This chapter concentrates on how meaning can be communicated by form and the manner in which it is depicted. This is important when reading modern and abstract art. Painter and critic Roger Fry (1866-1934) went as far as saying content was secondary to form. In essence his opinion was what is the point in just accurately capturing the ‘thing’. Form on the other hand allows us to relate emotionally to a piece of art.
Examples of form in art are: Paul Cezanne’s (1839-1906) Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit (circa. 1900); Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956), Number 32 (1950) and Mark Rothko’s (1903-1970) untitled (1969). The Cezanne is the only one that is of recognizable objects but it is the black outlines and odd perspective that separate it from an accurate still life. Pollock’s work is patterns made my paint dripping on to a canvas. Rothko’s work is blocks of colour but no objects where the colours become darker and moodier as the artist gets older. The work of the latter two artists are regarded as being self portraits as they are a record of their actions (Pollock) and state of mind (Rothko). Even the Cezanne work says more about his personality than it does about a jug and some milk.
Fry’s emotional elements of design were:
1. The rhythm of the line
2. Mass
3. Space
4. Light and Shade
5. Colour
These elements allow us to analyse ‘abstract’ art although not as precisely as Panofsky’s iconoly of ‘realist’ art.
Art History
This chapter examines art historian Sir Ernst Gombrich’s (1909-2001) approach where he states that there really is no such thing as art…there are only artists. His view is that artists have worked hard at producing their work and they deserve the right to ask us to understand what they wanted to do.
Gombrich’s is one of many versions of art history but they all follow a particular approach. But why is that? What is left out? Why is it male dominated? Is it just about monetary value? Note that a reattributed Rembrandt and subsequently lost its value. Physically the painting is the same so there must be value in the artists ‘mind’.
Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Guernica (1937) is a good example that shows art can be more than just financial or aesthetic value. This piece is a symbol of matters of life, of death and of cultural identity. The painting is of a Basque town obliterated by the Luftwaffe in 1937.
Gombrich’s approach to Art History has been subject to fierce attack for its western European oriented view. Is it artist led…history made by individuals… or sociological…art work and the artists are the product of their time. The sociological argument leads into the next chapter.
Ideology
John Berger (1926-2017) provided the world with a new way for people to look at art. His book and accompanying television series The Ways of Seeing (1972) was as controversial then as it is today. He believed that images gave us an insight in to the past and went as far to say that ‘images are more precise than literature’. He is critical of the way that art has been used to obscure the past by the privileged minority. His was an ideological approach as it was concerned with the distribution of power relations within society.
Berger observed that oil paintings were used by the elite to show off their possessions, their property and their land. Berger politically leans to the ‘left’ and his views are contentious and are countered vigorously from the other side particularly from Kennet Clarke and Peter Fuller, a one time friend of Berger.
The Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1728) painting Mr and Mrs Andrews (1750). Clarke describes it as ‘enchanting’ and painted with ‘love and mastery’. Berger however, wants us to see the proprietary attitude on the faces of these land owners and consider the fate of people caught on their land who were subject to public whipping and deportation. Berger uses other examples but the main criticism towards his view is that he conveniently chooses examples that fit his ‘way of seeing’.
Berger’s other main area of criticism is gender inequality where the subject of female bodies in art are created by men to be viewed by the owner, presumed to be men. ‘Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own’.
Sociologist John B. Thompson provided a 3-part analytical system for understanding mass media texts a) the social and historical conditions in which texts are produced; b) the way they are received by real people; c) our familiar, close analysis of the text under discussion.
Pierre Boourdieu, a French Sociologist, believes texts are produced with twin concepts: ‘habitus’ and ‘field’. The former can be described as ‘people assume and articulate the world vision of their particular social group’. It is their second nature based on childhood and upbringing and held for a lifetime. These dispositions are unconsciously absorbed and operated. The latter is the particular social conditions in which the individual operates. It is split into 3: the literary and artistic field; the field of political power; field of economy and class relations. Although his theories are useful to explain context but less so on the matter of content and meaning of visual texts.
Semiotics
Semiotics originated with Swiss linguistic analyst Ferdinand de Saussure. He showed that language was a system of signs or signals which enabled people to communicate with each other. The terms he used were: ‘signifier’-something that stands for something else; ‘signified’ – is the idea o the thing it stands for; ‘sign’ – is the union of the two. Where Saussure related semiotics to language, Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) used it for images and published his thoughts in the book Mythologies (1957).
He believed that anything could be treated as a text and decoded semiotically. One of his examples is a bunch of roses which he uses to signify passion. The roses are the signifier and the passion the signified. Each existed previously separately but when brought together the roses were ‘passionified’. He uses the term ‘myth’ to mean the sum of signs where things stand for something else.
Visual semiotics is all around us and is prevalent in the advertising world to sell products using symbols and imagery to make us feel we need this new product. Cars are sold using sexual connotations and how a visit to a fast food restaurant is an enjoyable family day out.
Hermeneutics
The final chapter in part 1 discusses culture and the interpretation of literal and intended meanings. Culture used to be regarded as the cultivation of the mind – culture and education went hand in hand. In the nineteenth century the increasing discipline of anthropology identified culture as being a way of life, a complex system of customs and beliefs.
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote an essay in which the subject was cock fighting in Bali. Although this activity was illegal the local community were using the event to raise money for local projects. Geertz observed that gambling was an important part of the activity. However, he felt that it was more the winning and how it made a person feel, their status in the community, than it was about the money. Geertz, an educated and talented writer, was criticised for being an outsider, placing his meaning on another culture.
To me the criticism is harsh as it is commendable to understand other cultures and share that knowledge with a wider audience. It does highlight that care needs to be taken for the author and the viewer to ensure an accurate account is produced. Although there will usually be at least two sides to a story.
Summary of Part 1
The authors have given us tools and systems to help understand images. None are right or wrong and there are keen debates in every one of these areas. There is overlap between all of them. Some may not be helpful at all for some types of image. As a viewer you need to understand which one to use at any given time.
Martyn Rainbird 