arts analysis
ARTS 1A
Topic 10: Place
Methods of Interpretation
Previously we explored the following methods of interpretation:
Iconology Iconography Semiotics Formal Analysis Stylistic Analysis
Economic Determinism Marxism Postcolonial Theory Gender Analysis Women’s Studies
In this presentation we explore three additional methods of interpretation:
• Ecocriticism • World-systems Theory • Environmental Studies
First, click on the link below and watch the following short video, “Thomas Demand at Matthew Marks Gallery, film installation ‘Pacific Sun,’ May 5 through June 23, 2012”:
https://youtu.be/gJIcbjrT4Zs
Pair 1: Thomas Demand and Paula McCartney
Thomas Demand
I. For Pacific Sun, our introductory video, German sculptor and photographer Thomas Demand worked with a team of animators to produce a 2,400 frame stop-action film inspired by actual footage of a cruise ship tossed by waves during a storm off the coast of New Zealand.
Each model of a chair, cup, or other object that appears to move in this video was constructed from paper or cardboard by the artist and his team, filmed, then destroyed after the video was complete. As such, the objects produced by Thomas Demand and the animators were ephemeral, that is, lasting for a short time. The video, however, is intended to be permanent.
As viewers of Pacific Sun, we may understand that we are looking at models of objects found on a cruise ship. We may even understand that these models only appear to move but are in fact manipulated by animators. But the sense of an underlying force rocking the “ship” is strong. The ocean waves are not visible, but they are convincing.
Similarly, Thomas Demand used ephemeral materials to construct Clearing in 2003. Here it is not ocean water or even wind that provides an overwhelming sense of nature, but light.
Thomas Demand
Clearing
2003
Chromogenic color print
II. However, the light that pervades Clearing is not natural but artificial, just as the waves which rock the ship in Pacific Sun are artificial.
How are we interpret such works of contemporary art? Do we explore them formally or stylistically? Absolutely. Can we make meaning of the objects in them through iconographic study? Yes. Is it worthwhile to explore Pacific Sun and Clearing from the standpoint of economic determinism? Certainly, especially when we consider the labor that went into their production. Might gender analysis and the study of women’s experiences be important factors in the meaning of these works? Of course.
But given the prominent role of nature in these works, approaching them through the lens of ecocriticism may be most relevant. Students of ecocriticism ask, In what ways do the relationships of organisms to each other, and to their physical environment, shape the production and meaning of works of art?
Paula McCartney
I. Paula McCartney’s series “Bird Watching,” for which she photographed fake birds in a natural environment, has a good deal in common with the works by Thomas Demand explored in this presentation. Both artists use photography as their primary medium. Both are capable of fooling the eyes of their viewers, conveying a sense of reality with ephemeral or fake objects. More importantly, both artists alter aspects of nature, intervening and meddling with it, or recreating it.
In addition to ecocriticism, another key aspect of art historical interpretation that relates to the notion of place is the exploration of the role of human activity in the history of our environment. Scientists increasingly refer to the geological age during which human activity has shaped the environment and climate as the anthropocene. Demand, McCartney, and others who ask us to question their roles as artists in relation to nature sometimes appear to have concerns about the natural environment and about sustainability.
Consider McCartney’s Orange Thrush in this light. There is a bird called “orange-headed thrush” but it is not native to the part of the midwestern United States where McCartney made this photograph, nor could it survive in this environment.
Paula McCartney
Orange Thrush
2007
Chromogenic print
II. Does it matter that the bird in this photograph is not real? What motivated Paula McCartney to make such an intervention, the introduction of a fake bird, into the natural environment in which she lives?
To address this question, we might explore her artist’s book, Bird Watching. An artist’s book is a work of art that takes the shape of a book. Bird Watching features numerous photographs made by the artist, accompanied by fake field notes about the fake birds she photographed, as if she had spotted them in the wild.
As such, what does McCartney’s project tell us about ourselves and our relationship with the environment in the twenty-first century?
Pair 1
Analysis Exercises: Pair 1
Analysis Exercise 1: What is the relationship between Thomas Demand’s work to nature? What is the relationship between Paula McCartney’s work to nature?
Analysis Exercise 2: What is the role of trees, whether real or constructed, to other elements of nature depicted in each of these photographs?
Analysis Exercise 3: Are these artists naturalists, abstractionists, or idealists? Compare their works to other works of art explored in our class as you make your determination.
Pair 2: Rena Effendi and O. Winston Link
Rena Effendi
I. The work of Azerbaijani photographer Rena Effendi invites investigation from the standpoint of world-systems theory, a method of analysis which considers ways in which transnational and inter- regional networks of human interaction shape the production and meaning of works of art. World-systems theory can be used to shed light on topics of importance to those who practice art historical analysis motivated by questions of place.
For A Fisherman in an Oil Village, Effendi stepped back from her subject to insure we cannot see his face clearly. Lack of access to the fisherman’s face enables us to understand that the artist would prefer viewers to see this man as one of many fishermen, laborers, or local residents who live in a polluted environment, the result of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline begun in 2006, stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean seas.
As such, the fisherman’s local environment is tied to transnational economic and political interests.
Rena Effendi
A Fisherman in an Oil Village From Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives Along the Pipeline
2010
Gelatin silver print
II. Rena Effendi included A Fisherman in an Oil Village in her book of photographs, Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives Along the Pipeline. Note that the horizon line in this photograph is higher on one side of the picture plane. Like the cinematography one observes in film noir, Rena Effendi tilted her medium-format camera to create a “canted angle,” slanting the horizon line. It is a visual indication that something terrible is happening in the world of the fisherman.
Effendi photographed the fisherman in action, moving through the composition. At the same time, he is atop a pyramid of rocks, which roots him in the center of the picture plane and makes him the emphasis, the primary focal point of attention. Oil platforms on the horizon are backlit by the sun, like the fisherman. They provide an important social context for this image, and serve as visual accents—secondary focal points—for our eyes.
O. Winston Link
I. Like Rena Effendi’s Fisherman in an Oil Village, O. Winston Link‘s photograph Wheeling a Y6b Locomotive after a Major Overhaul, Roanoke Shops depicts a scene which calls attention to human labor in relation to the larger environment. Here Link included American machinists and a night foreman tasked with rebuilding a Norfolk & Western steam engine. To prevent the central object—a large and intricately detailed engine—from completely dominating the picture plane, Link placed workers beside the engine to create a strong sense of scale. At the same time, he offered viewers a range of light value, from very dark to very light, which helps to balance the composition.
Link even created the illusion of movement, despite the fact that the engine has been dismantled. The photographer achieved this by means of a thoughtful use of leading line. Here the leading line is the diagonal thrust of the engine from center left to lower right, a result of Link’s decision to position his camera on the left side of the picture plane.
Like Rena Effendi, Link relied on the gelatin silver process to print this image, a means of photographic printing in which silver particles are suspended in gelatin in the surface of a support, such as paper. Both Rena Effendi and O. Winston Link had the opportunity to manipulate the photographic image as it was being printed in a darkroom.
O. Winston Link
Wheeling a Y6b Locomotive after a Major Overhaul, Roanoke Shops
1955
Gelatin silver print
d
II. O. Winston Link‘s Wheeling a Y6b Locomotive after a Major Overhaul, Roanoke Shops was influenced by the tradition of Regionalist imagery. Regionalism was an American art movement of the 1930s, informed primarily by the Great Depression. It extended to World War II, especially in the Midwest and the Deep South. Link was not a Regionalist, since he produced railroad-based imagery after the Second World War, but he shared many of the goals and concerns of Regionalist artists. Like the Regionalists, Link produced work that was designed to appeal to local, rather than global, viewers.
One of the machinists pictured in Link’s photograph, Otey Lewis Kingrey, pictured second from the left, had experienced worldwide travel due to his participation in World War II as a Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy. As such, the photograph may be linked to international political concerns.
However, the main subject of Link’s photograph is not the machinists but the engine itself, an icon of twentieth-century American technology. An interpretation of this work which takes into account Link’s interest in Regionalism would likely call attention to the contribution of steam locomotives to the economy of the American South and to the lives of American workers after the Second World War.
Pair 2
Analysis Exercises: Pair 2
Analysis Exercise 1: Do the subjects of these photographs lend themselves to black-and-white photography? Why or why not?
Analysis Exercise 2: In what ways are both works of art linked to environmental concerns?
Analysis Exercise 3: How does interpretation of a work of art from the standpoint of World-Systems Theory require an understanding of local culture? How does interpretation of a work of art from the standpoint of World-Systems Theory require an understanding of global interests?
Pair 3: Alexandre Hogue and George Catlin
Alexandre Hogue
I. Alexandre Hogue was an American painter based in Texas and Oklahoma who produced Regionalist imagery. His Erosion No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare evokes the figure of a nude woman in the landscape, here a personification of Mother Earth, to communicate the violation of land by aggressive industrial farmers.
Hogue saw the Dust Bowl firsthand, the combination of overfarming and aeolian processes, or natural windstorms which shape the earth’s surface, resulting in severe erosion of American farmland in the 1930s.
Alexander Hogue
Erosion 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare
1936
Oil on canvas
II. In Erosion No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare, Hogue presents a sky capable of rain but a landscape too damaged to absorb it. A farmer’s plough sits abandoned in the foreground. In the background stands a farmstead in a state of disrepair.
But Hogue was less interested in the farmers than the land they had damaged. He devoted most of the picture plane to what he saw as the virtual rape of land, indicating his interest in environmentalism, that is, a viewpoint motivated by concern about damage to, and the degradation of, the natural environment.
An art historian who uses an environmental perspective to interpret imagery utilizes a method of interpretation informed by Environmental Studies.
George Catlin
I. Unlike Alexandre Hogue, American artist George Catlin traveled far from home to make art. Born in Pennsylvania, he traveled into the mid-western and western regions of North America in the 1830s, a full century before Hogue produced imagery of an over-farmed environment.
Catlin traveled with the American military to observe and paint representations of indigenous Americans (native Americans, American Indians) decades before European Americans settled in the central and western states. He experienced an environment radically different the environment Hogue experienced.
Catlin produced imagery of people and the environment in North America at a time when many Americans of European descent desired to see the United States develop into an empire. While traveling, Catlin wrote the following about native Americans:
“Their rights invaded, their morals corrupted, their lands wrested from them, their customs changed, and therefore lost to the world; and they at last sunk into the earth, and the ploughshare turning the sod over their graves, and I have flown to their rescue—not of their lives or of their race (for they are ‘doomed’ and must perish), but to the rescue of their looks and their modes . . .”
Catlin wrote about American Indians in a way that suggests he had adopted the language and beliefs of colonizers. The language and beliefs of colonizers is referred to as colonial discourse.
George Catlin
Prairie Meadows Burning
1832
Oil on canvas
II. In Prairie Meadows Burning, Catlin depicted native Americans galloping on horses through a landscape filled with smoke. What Catlin observed was in fact a sustainable practice of land management : controlled burning for the purpose of thinning grasses to keep the ecosystem of the prairie healthy.
If viewed without the benefit of an understanding of traditional prairie management, nineteenth-century American city dwellers would likely associate this image with long-held stereotypes of indigenous Americans as dangerous, and the American prairie as unused or unmanaged land. The word stereotype refers to a widely held but often false, over- simplified, or harmful idea about a group of people or a place.
Catlin encouraged viewers to rely on their stereotypes of indigenous Americans by painting them red: the same color as he painted their horses and the fire on the horizon.
Pair 3
Analysis Exercise: Pair 3
Analysis Exercise 1: If Catlin relied on a stereotype of indigenous Americans as dangerous in Prairie Meadows Burning, what stereotype(s) about women did Hogue rely upon to produce Erosion No. 2: Mother Earth Laid Bare?
Analysis Exercise 2: Unlike Hogue, Catlin depicted figures engaged in a strong sense of movement. What elements of art or principles of design did Catlin use to convey movement in Prairie Meadows Burning?
Analysis Exercise 3: How are Hogue’s and Catlin’s uses of color different? How are they similar?
John Eckstein
I. Like Thomas Demand’s Pacific Sun, German artist John Eckstein counted on viewers’ experience of the vastness and power of the ocean to understand the difficulty of the military operation depicted in South-east View of the Diamond Rock. In this work, the crew of H.M.S. Centaur lifts cannon to elevated sites on a tiny but strategically important island near Martinique.
This work reveals tensions between the colonial powers of Great Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars, when these nations competed for control of the Caribbean Islands. Martinique was controlled by French troops when British sailors occupied Diamond Rock.
Pair 4: John Eckstein and Lubaina Himid
John Eckstein
South East View of the Diamond Rock, with the Cannon being hauled up from the Centaur by the Cable From Picturesque Views of the Diamond Rock
1805
Aquaint
II. To mass produce this image, Eckstein used a new technology, aquatint printmaking, in which the plate is heated, after which resin is melted onto areas that resist being bitten when submerged in an acid bath. Aquatint printmaking was designed to resemble watercolor drawing, since the finished image can convey an array of light and dark values. Aquatints were generally printed in brown ink, after which they were enhanced by hand with watercolors.
Upon arming and occupying the island, the Royal Navy declared Diamond Rock a stone frigate, that is, a ship made of land. In other words, the British navy conceived of this small island as a ship, and sailors lived and worked on it as they would a ship at sea.
In Clearing, Thomas Demand substituted a human-made construction for nature. With the declaration of Diamond Rock as a stone frigate, the Royal Navy substituted nature for a human construction. Upon engaging in a new method of interpretation such as ecocriticism, we need to look back at the moments in history when perceptions of the environment shifted or slipped into alternative modes of use and understanding. The idea of a stone frigate, where nature is reconstituted as a ship at war, is one such moment.
Lubaina Himid
I. Born on the island of Zanzibar off the east coast of Africa, artist Lubaina Himid has worked in Great Britain for the entirety of her career. Like Titus Kaphar, Himid is interested in righting the wrongs of colonialism. Her painting Between the Two My Heart is Balanced depicts two African women in a boat. Between them rests an enormous stack of books meant to represent knowledge about Africa produced by colonizers: maps, gazettes, books, charts . . . perhaps even folios of aquatint imagery. The women remove the publications one by one from the pile, tear them to pieces, and fling them into the sea from which the colonizers emerged hundreds of years earlier.
In 2017, Lubaina Himid was awarded the Turner Prize: an award organized in the United Kingdom by the Tate Museum, given to an artist who aspires to change the course of art history.
Lubaina Himid
Between the Two My Heart is Balanced
1991
Acrylic on canvas
II. The act of African women destroying the knowledge of colonizers may be characterized as anticolonial, that is, in opposition to colonialism. Why does Lubaina Himid position these women on a boat, in the open sea, to engage in this anticolonial act?
Address our final group analysis with this question in mind.
Pair 4
Analysis Exercise: Pair 4
Analysis Exercise 1: John Eckstein’s approach to style is quite natural in comparison to Lubaina Himid’s approach to style, which is more abstract. Do you think one approach to style is more suitable than another when representing aspects of the natural environment?
Analysis Exercise 2: Aside from the obvious references to human figures in the painting by Lubaina Himid, what other information does each artist offer viewers to indicate the presence of humans in these environments?
Analysis Exercise 3: How did John Eckstein provide viewers with a specific sense of place? How does Lubaina Himid provide viewers with a specific sense of place?
Pair 5: Simryn Gill and Jim Mone
Simryn Gill
I. Malaysian artist Simryn Gill has sought out diverse places to make art. For “The Forest,” a series of sixteen photographs, she located places that had once been cultivated by gardeners but were later abandoned. Merging text with nature itself, Gill layered strips or small pieces of printed pages torn from books into elements of nature, including bark, leaves, and moss. Fully intending for these physical interventions in the landscape to disintegrate and become part of nature over time, she was essentially “returning” the pages on which books have been printed since the nineteenth century—wood pulp—to their place of origin: the forest.
Simryn Gill
Forest #4
1996-1998
Gelatin silver print
d
(detail)
from left to right: Forest #4, Forest #5, and Forest #2
II. But why return books to their home? Gill’s project calls attention to an ecological relationship between the forest and humans. An ecocritical interpretation of this work might consider the following question: What is the relationship between the forest and humans, and how does culture play a role in determining that relationship? The term culture refers to the intellectual manifestations of a society, from language and art to music and religion.
While Gill’s project acknowledges books as general examples of culture, her project also insists that we understand that books may be defined as material culture, that is, individual objects which may be studied for their creation, usage, and consumption in a society.
Jim Mone
I. Jim Mone recently retired after fifty years of producing imagery designed for public consumption. An accomplished photojournalist, his work has probably been seen by the eyes of more of our contemporaries than any other artist we have studied this quarter.
Click on the link below to meet our final artist this quarter:
https://youtu.be/IJN8KN1Zz8Q
On May 25, 2020, seven months before Jim Mone retired, George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis, the city in which Mone is based. As a staff photographer for the Associated Press, Mone produced several digital photographs of the urban environment of Minneapolis in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. A digital photograph is made with a digital camera and stored electronically rather than printed. Mone’s digital photographs continue to be circulated widely within news reports online.
Jim Mone
An unsigned portrait of George Floyd offered at a memorial in Minneapolis on May 27, 2020
May 27, 2020
Digital photograph
d
(detail)
II. Look carefully at An unsigned portrait of George Floyd offered at a memorial in Minneapolis on May 27, 2020. Survey everything you can identify in this still life composition: a portrait of George Floyd on cardboard, candles (two of which bear flames), bouquets of flowers, a sign, and a sprig of lilacs, all of which form part of a spontaneous memorial. In a 2015 essay, art historian Erika Doss discussed spontaneous memorials as a way for members of a society to insist that a person be mourned and remembered.
How does Mone’s photograph reflect a sense of the place where this spontaneous memorial was located?
We do not see the larger landscape, but we can determine this photograph was made outdoors, as we see the effects of sunshine and shadow upon the objects.
Other than knowing this photograph was made outdoors, can we identify anything specific about the location of this spontaneous memorial?
In Mone’s photograph, lilacs lay on the ground. They touch the portrait of George Floyd at its lower right, a corner often reserved for an artist’s signature. Lilac bushes are not native to Minnesota but have been well established by immigrants in the landscape gardens of people who live in Minneapolis.
As someone who spent her childhood in Minnesota, I can testify that lilacs usually cease blooming by mid May. In 2020, however—perhaps as one of nature’s signals that something in the climate is changing—the lilacs were in full force at the end of the month. Those growing along 38th and Chicago streets, or carried by mourners from other gardens nearby, helped transform a crime scene into a place desperate to affirm the value of a human life.
George Perry Floyd Square, Minneapolis, one year later.
Pair 5
Analysis Exercises: Pair 5
Exercise 1: What is the relationship of these photographs by Simryn Gill and Jim Mone to gardens?
Exercise 2: Why do you think Simryn Gill chose to construct ”The Forest” series in black-and-white? Why do you think Jim Mone produced An unsigned portrait of George Floyd offered at a memorial in Minneapolis on May 27, 2020 in color?
Exercise 3: What is the role of text in each of these photographs? How does text help make each of these works of art visually powerful?