Applied Sciences IDS 3336- Assignment #9

USING VISUAL INFORMATION What to Look For and How to Describe What You See

Probably the greatest stumbling block for most people confronting the prospect o f writing about art for the first time is what they take to be the specialized vocabulary o f the art connoisseur, a vocabulary with which they are not conversant. Actually, the vocabulary o f good art writing is rel­ atively simple and based on common sense. W hat is more esoteric and sometimes totally alien to the uninitiated is the jargon o f technical and pe­ riod styles that has developed as a sort of shorthand descriptive tool— a rhetoric that includes words like “ classical,” “ baroque,” “ romantic,” “ modern,” and “ postmodern.” If these words were not useful, they would not have the wide circulation that they do, but it is not necessary to feel comfortable with them in order to begin writing about art. They originate out of distinctions among the ways that subject matter, the more common elements of form, certain principles of composition, and questions of media are employed. Most o f you are quite familiar with the less special­ ized vocabulary of art writing— words like “ line,” “ color,” “ balance,” “ rhythm,” “ sculpture,” and “ video”— and this more usual (and useful) vo­ cabulary is far less threatening and more accessible than concepts such as “baroque.” But there are many ways in which you can use this less

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specialized vocabulary to your benefit as a writer. W hat does it matter, for instance, that an artist employs line in a certain way, or that the elements in a painting repeat themselves in a visual rhythm?

It is important to point out here, again, that all art worth the name is a question o f conscious choices. Given two points and the opportunity to draw a line between them, you can choose to draw a straight line, or a curved line, or a line that turns back on itself and meanders hither and yon until it finally ends. Your choice, which may or may not be deliberate and studied, reveals a good deal about your temperament and even about the way you approach the world in general. A work o f art is a compendium of such choices. Artists, who make such choices as a matter o f habit and pro­ fession, make them a good deal more deliberately than you and I. This is not to say that artists necessarily think out in advance the implications of every line they make, or every application o f color. Any artist will tell you that much of what they do is intuitive. However, every artist has the op­ portunity to revise and redo each work, each gesture— and indeed, very often artists take advantage o f that opportunity. It is probably safe to as­ sume that what you are seeing in a work o f art is an intentional effect, that the artist knows what he or she is doing.

A summary o f the kinds o f choices an artist can make follows. Any work o f art involves the artist in choosing among a number o f different possibilities: the subject m atter must be decided upon; the artist must choose which o f the various available media is best to portray or express that subject matter; in achieving the work, the artist will employ the form al elements, such as line and color, in the distinctive and particular ways that are part and parcel of the artist’s style or that express the artist’s intentions in a clear way; and, finally, the artist will decide how best to or­ ganize these elements into a whole by means o f what we call the principles o f design or composition. The following sections will give you some sense o f the things you need to consider when you are trying to de­ cide what a particular work of art might be about or why it m ight be sig­ nificant or interesting. This is by no means a complete survey o f the various media, principles o f design, or formal elements that artists have at their disposal. It is simply an outline o f why an awareness o f them might help you learn to ask the right types o f questions and then write a better essay. If you need more information about any given element or principle, you can consult any of the many authoritative art appreciation texts, where most o f this material is treated in greater detail.

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CONSIDERING THE S U B JE C T MATTER O F T H E W ORK

Subject matter is the sum of the identifiable objects, incidents, and mono­ graphic or narrative references that are recognizable in a work of art. In representational painting, these references are sometimes clear, but even in representational painting, they can be obscure. Iconography presents a special problem. Iconographic references are symbolic conventions that are widely recognizable in a given culture: for instance, the meaning of the cross or a crown of thorns is widely known in the Christian West. But recognition of iconographic references depends upon one’s familiarity with the culture at hand. A Buddhist might not understand such references at all. just as most Christians probably would not understand the icono­ graphic significance of the different positions of Buddha’s hands in sculp­ tures representing him. Even within a given cultural tradition, the iconographic significance o f various elements in works of art can be lost over time or even change. Thus, the iconographic significance o f various elements in many medieval paintings is fiercely debated by scholars, for example, a dog at the feet o f a lady in a Renaissance painting might rep­ resent fidelity but in a later. Baroque painting by, say, Rubens, the pres­ ence of a dog might represent our basest animal instincts.

Very often simply consulting the title will make a work’s range of reference more explicit. In abstract painting, however, the title may or may not help you understand the subject matter of the work. Full Fathom Five, the title o f the Jackson Pollock painting discussed in the next chapter (Figure 31), is very helpful indeed, but Untitled, the “title” of many of his later works, is far less so— except, o f course, insofar as it asks us to ques­ tion why he chose not to title his later works. It is possible to say of Pollock’s untitled paintings that since they announce no overt reference, their subject matter might be paint— or the act o f painting itself.

One o f the most important things for you to remember when dis­ cussing subject matter is that it is in no way comparable to the meaning of the work. One o f the classic examples o f this distinction between subject matter and meaning was developed by Joshua C. Taylor in his handbook, Learning to Look. Taylor points out that Pietro Perugino’s Crucifixion with Saints (Figure 11) and Carlo Crivelli’s The Crucifixion (Figure 12) have the same subject matter, but the meaning that subject matter assumes in each is dramatically different. For Taylor, the Perugino “ would seem to quell the possible anguish and effects o f suffering which might be associ­ ated with the scene and to establish a serenity and calm, a complete relax­ ation of the emotional and physical forces which might be expected to operate in connection with such a subject matter.” In contrast, in the Criv- elli there “ is no rest, no calm, or contemplation. Instead we take upon

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Figure 11 P ietro Perugino, The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Sa in t Jerome, and Saint M ary M agdalene (central panel), c. 1485. Oil on panel transferred from w ood to canvas, 39% in. X 22% in. National Gallery o f Art, W ashington, D.C. Andrew W. M ellon Collection.

ourselves the anguish and physical hurt which seem to motivate the ac­ tions o f the figures. And nowhere is there escape, no point on which our attention can fix itself to bring order to our excited emotions.” 1 There are many structural and formal reasons for this difference— and Taylor’s analysis occupies ten pages o f text— but it should be sufficiently clear that whatever meaning these works possess, it is independent o f subject m at­ ter. It is as if one artist sees in the scene the promise o f salvation hereafter, whereas the other sees the misery o f our life on earth in the here and now.

One o f the most common mistakes student writers make is to confuse subject m atter with meaning. A typical sentence describing one of these paintings might read: “ Perugino [or Crivelli, take your pick] has painted a crucifixion, with all that implies.” The assumption here is that the mean­ ing o f the crucifixion is clear, but such assumptions often stymie the

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Figure 12 Carlo Crivelli. The Crucifixión, c. 1480-1490. Tem pera on panel, 29 'A in. X 21% in. W irt D. W alker Fund. 1929.862. The Art Institute o f Chicago. Photograph © The Art Institute o f C hicago. All rights reserved.

development of ideas. The crucifixion may imply something very specif­ ic to the student writer, but Taylor’s point is that the crucifixion implies something entirely different to each painter, and that implication may or may not coincide with what the writer feels about the same subject matter.

One way to assess the meaning o f a given work, then, is to try to imagine other handlings o f the same material. It should follow that one of the best ways to write an essay about Perugino’s Crucifixion is to compare it with Crivelli’s. From the differences between the two we are able to rec­ ognize some of the important decisions that Perugino made and thereby learn a great deal about his intentions.

Or imagine a painting of a red barn in a green field. What does it matter that it is bathed in sunlight? What is the effect o f the startling color contrast between red and green, and how would the same scene feel

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handled monochromatically as a winter scene, in the snow, at dusk? Does it matter that the bam is silhouetted against the summer sky and that your point o f view is relatively low? Does it make a difference that its lines and angles are clearly delineated? Would it seem less appealing, more lonely and foreboding, if it melded into the landscape and shadows? In short, given just such a set o f questions and a broad enough selection o f bam paintings, a reasonably significant essay on American attitudes toward landscape could probably be written. Similarly, art historians will often il­ lustrate the difference between two stylistic periods or schools by compar­ ing works o f similar subject m atter but distinctive handling. Even particular phases within an individual artist’s career can be understood by means o f this device. What, for instance, are the obvious differences in handling between the two versions o f M ont Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cézanne that appear later in this chapter (Figures 24 and 25), the second of which was painted nearly twenty years after the first? D on’t you sup­ pose that this difference tells you something about Cézanne’s intentions?

Thus, while subject matter (or the lack o f it, in a nonobjective paint­ ing) is the most readily apparent aspect o f the work, it is also, by itself, one o f the least useful in discussing the w ork’s meaning. Rather than ask­ ing yourself what the subject matter o f a particular work is, ask yourself, “W hat does the artist think o f his or her subject matter?”

W hat artists think of their subject matter will be revealed in their handling o f the various formal elements, the way they employ the princi­ ples o f composition, and their choice o f medium.

DESCRIBING THE FORMAL ELEM ENTS YOU DISCOVER IN THE W ORK

Line A line is any relatively narrow, elongated mark. It is the primary

means we have for defining visual form, and it stands to reason that it is one o f the most important elements to be considered in preparing to write about a work o f art. The difference in its use in the Perugino and Crivelli Crucifixions probably accounts, more than anything else, for the differ­ ence in meaning that we detect in these works. In the Perugino, line is de­ termined largely in relation to the strong vertical and horizontal axes defined by the cross itself. Working off these axes are a series o f isosceles triangles, the most obvious o f which is defined by the relative positions of the heads o f the Virgin Mary and St. John at the two bottom comers, and Christ’s head at the apex. The apex and central axis of each o f the compo­ sition’s other triangles remain constant, but a wider, higher triangle can be

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seen stretching across Christ’s feet, each side defined by the trees left and right; another is defined by the outside legs of Mary and St. John, their toes pointing to the bottom corners o f the triangle, and another by the al­ most perfectly balanced sweep of their garments across their legs. A smaller, more precise set of triangles can be seen emanating from the di­ amond shape of the cross at Christ’s feet. Most subtle of all, this pattern is repeated in the folded fingers o f both the Virgin and St. John. The curvi­ linear features of this painting, from the disposition of St. John’s arms to the arched bridge in the background, seem to wrap around this triangular structure in the same manner that a circle fits neatly around an equilater­ al triangle.

In contrast, and although the cross divides the canvas more or less along the same geometric axes as in the Perugino, not a single line in the Crivelli seems to work in harmony with any other. If line seems to func­ tion in a more or less centripetal way in the Perugino, it is centrifugal in the Crivelli, as if erupting from the scene. Most tellingly, the painting’s lines all seem to fall away from the central axis. Both the Virgin’s and St. John’s head tilt back rather than in toward the path of their gaze. St. John’s hand points away from the scene. The effect is not unlike the curious sense of disorganization achieved by Courbet in his Burial at Omaris (Figure 10). Despite the strong horizontal order achieved in Courbet’s grouping, especially in relation to the landscape behind, and the verticality of the figures (a horizontal and vertical structure emphasized, as it often is in Western art, by the crucifix rising over the scene), Courbet fragments the composition by having each gaze— including the dog’s—turn in a differ­ ent direction. There is no focus to the scene. Implied lines of sight explode in every direction away from the supposed center o f attention, the burial itself. Similarly, in the Crivelli the nervous fractures of the cliff at the painting’s bottom serve to create a general sense of linear disorder that stands in stark contrast to the linear regularity and harmony o f the cross, let alone the balance of the Perugino. This disorder is emphasized espe­ cially by the curved crack that seems to emanate from the skull, together with the clutter o f linear detail in the painting— tufts of grass here and there, tree limbs reaching every which way.

To emphasize this difference, Taylor contrasts the treatment of St. John in both paintings. In the Crivelli, he notes,

the vertical structure-line o f the figure | i.e., the fact that he is standing up in a m ore o r less vertical w ayl has little m eaning w ith regard to the effect o f the w hole, because the diagonal lines o f his c loak are so strong that they destroy all possib le sense o f a vertical com pact m ass. A nd co n sid er the nature o f the lines them selves. Every curve is flattened and broken so that the line seem s to struggle to reach its destination . Furtherm ore, if w e iso late the line o f the

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cloak , w e see th a t fa r from su ggesting the b a lan ced arc o f a c irc le , it seem s ra th e r like the lash o f a w hip . A nd th is eccen tric line is rep ea ted th ro u g h o u t, in the ro b e o f the V irgin , in the ro ck s, and even in the body o f C hrist. H ow co n ­ trasting w ith th is is o u r schem e o f the St. Jo h n o f P erug ino . T h e lines o f the P erug ino seem to w ra p them selves to g e th e r in to a sm o o th -p laned vo lum e, w h ile th ose o f the C rivelli d isp e rse in to the air.2

Even more than in the figure o f St. John, the difference between the two paintings is manifest in the way that each recessional plane in the Pe­ rugino is clearly outlined, the landscape receding into the distance in a reasonable and logical way, while in the Crivelli the landscape seems hopelessly confused. Notice, in the Crivelli, how the drapery on Christ’s right leg sweeps in a continuous line into the-landscape beyond, how the tree, which must be some distance behind him, seems to catch the drapery in the wind, and how another tree behind St. John seems to merge into the cliff across the bay. In contrast, each plane in the Perugino is distinct. Line seems to serve a regulatory function. It is as if line preserves the integrity of the space it describes in the Perugino, whereas in the Crivelli it violates that integrity, disrupting our sense o f organization, order, and harmony.

S hape and S pace It should be obvious, from the previous discussion, that one o f the

primary functions o f line is to describe shape and space. One o f the first questions to ask yourself about a work o f art is how do its lines describe shape and space? In a consistent and orderly way? Or in an apparently dis­ ruptive, even random way?

Normally, shape and space are defined in consistent and accessible ways, although the lines operating to define these elements may not al­ ways be immediately obvious to you and may achieve very complicated effects. But if you learn to see these lines in the first place, and the shapes or spaces they describe, you can begin to come to grips with other, more complicated effects achieved by the artist. When you first look at Claude M onet’s Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris (Figure 13), for instance, you may not notice the diamond-shaped space that defines the center o f the composi­ tion. Its top is defined by the roof o f the train station, and its bottom is de­ lineated by two implicit or compositional lines that meet in the hazy locomotive in the center distance and that run along the tops o f the two closer locomotives on each side o f the center track. The area is very inter­ esting because it seems to describe both shape— a two-dimensional dia­ mond on a flat plane— and space— the airy volume of the train station itself. In fact, the bottom two lines are achieved by M onet’s reference to the traditional laws o f mechanical perspective, the geometric system of compositional lines perfected in the Renaissance for rendering the illusion

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Figure 13 Claude M onet. G ate Saint-Lazare, Paris: The A rrival o f a Train, 1877. Oil on canvas, 32M in. X 40 in. Courtesy o f The H arvard University Art M useum s. Bequest, Collection o f M aurice W ertheim. C lass o f 1906. 1951.53.

of three-dimensional space. Often imaged as a road (or set of railroad tracks!) disappearing into the distance, traditional perspective is based on the observation that parallel lines seem to converge toward a common point in the distance, referred to as the vanishing point. In the Monet, the tops (and bottoms) o f the trains converge on a hypothetical vanishing point that exists directly across from our point o f view, somewhere behind the distant central locomotive. The serpentine central railroad tracks would also converge on this point if they were straightened out.

Thus, the bottom of the diamond shape is composed of two lines that define three-dimensional space, while its top is composed o f the two lines that define the two-dimensional edge of the roof. M onet seems to be will­ fully playing off the illusion of three-dimensional space against the actu­ ality o f the two-dimensional surface o f the canvas (paintings are, after all, two-dimensional planes), a sense of play that the curvilinear railroad tracks emphasize since they seem to be themselves a joke on the traditional

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representation o f the laws o f perspective. Why would M onet want to do this? Would it surprise you to discover that he was interested in drawing our attention not only to his choice o f subject matter, but to his handling o f it as well? Doesn’t it make sense that he might want you to consider the surface of the canvas as a composition o f effects to be enjoyed in their own right? His style of painting was as new in 1877 as the steam locomotive itself, and we move between them, the subject and its handling, in much the way that our eye moves between the two-dimensional design of the surface and the three-dimensional representation o f space.

W hile Monet does not quite say that the design o f the composition is more important than its subject matter, it is quite clear that, along with a number o f his contemporaries, he initiates a logic that will eventually argue just that. Franz Kline’s’s Mahoning (Figure 14), painted in 1956, almost eighty years after the Monet, has made that very step. Here the canvas is all surface; there is no illusion o f depth; there is only a criss­ crossed tangle o f broadly painted lines. This is a very difficult type of painting for most students to talk about because it seems to have no

Figure 14 Franz Kline, M ahoning , 1956. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 8 in. X 8 ft. 4 in. W hitney M useum of A m erican Art, New York. Purchased w ith funds from the Friends o f the W hitney M useum o f Am erican Art. Photo: Steven Slom an. C ollec­ tion o f the W hitney M useum o f Am erican Art, New York.

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subject matter. If you consider, however, that one o f its primary objectives might be to free the painted surface o f the necessity o f representing three- dimensional space, then you might discover that you have something to say after all. Like Jackson Pollock’s Full Fathom Five, discussed in the next chapter (Figure 31), the painting is about painting itself, the act of painting.

In the late 1940s, Kline had projected a number o f his representa­ tional drawings onto a wall. So magnified, they seemed to him to capture a sense o f dynamic tension that mirrored the force and energy o f the mod­ ern world. Mahoning is, in fact, the name of a township in Carbon Coun­ ty, Ohio, very near to where Kline grew up in Lehighton, an industrial city in the heart o f Pennsylvania’s coal country. As a child, Kline was sur­ rounded by factories, foundries, and, especially, the trestles and rails of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which carried anthracite coal down the valley and was the city’s largest employer. Mahoning does not represent the in­ dustrial landscape o f Kline’s youth, but it does suggest it. In the broad strokes of his brush on canvas, one senses the furious activity o f industri­ al America.

Light and Dark Kline did not think o f his painting as black lines on a white ground.

“ I paint the white as well as the black,” he said, “ and the white is just as important.” The tension between black and white— that is, between opposites, light and dark— is one o f the primary sources o f the sense of energy that K line’s canvases evoke. But Kline also understands that in addition to the traditional system s o f geometric perspective, one of the primary ways to evoke the illusion o f three dim ensions on a two- dim ensional plane in painting is by im itating the effects o f light as it falls on three-dim ensional surfaces. His painting, in effect, violates that expectation, and as a result, turns its back on the representation o f three- dim ensional space.

Gradual shifts from light to dark across the same surface generally indicate that you are looking at a rounded or contoured form. Georgia O ’Keeffe’s charcoal drawing of Alligator Pears in a Basket (Figure 15) is an almost classic example o f this modulation, ranging from the darkest blacks in its shadowed areas, through shadings of gray, to areas o f white where an intense light strikes directly off the foremost surface o f the pears or off the back o f the basket itself. This technique of creating the sense of a rounded surface by means of gradual shifts and gradations of light and dark was perfected in Renaissance Italy, where it came to be known as chiaroscuro. In Italian, chiaroscuro means light (chiaro) dark (oscuro)— and

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Figure 15 G eorgia O ’ Keeffe, A lliga tor Pears in a B asket, 1923. C harcoal on paper, 24% in. X 18% in. The National M useum o f W omen in the Arts, W ashington, D.C., Gift o f W allace and W ilhelm ina Holladay. © 2005 The G eorgia O ’ Keeffe Foundation/ A rtist R ights Society (ARS), New York.

notice how language here reflects technique, as the end o f the first word melds into the beginning of the second, creating a seamless transition between “light” and “dark.”

The relative level o f lightness or darkness o f an area or object is tra­ ditionally called its relative value. That is, a given area or object can be said to be darker or lighter in value. In O ’Keeffe’s Alligator Pears, the areas o f the pears closest to the source o f light are lighter in value than those farther away. These areas, which directly reflect the light source and which are indicated by white, are known as highlights. Highlights are often left “blank,” revealing the unmarked paper or canvas beneath. As the object moves through the shadings o f gray to dark black, different depths o f shadow are evoked. Darker even than any shading on the object itself is its cast shadow, seen here at the bottom left. Note that just above the

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cast shadow, at the bottom of the basket, is an area o f light gray. This is an area o f reflected light, cast indirectly from the table on which the bas­ ket rests, lightening the underside of the shadowed surface.

The revelation o f form and space through chiaroscuro and shifts in value is one o f the primary techniques o f printmaking, used to great effect in Kathe Kollwitz’s etching The Downtrodden (Figure 16). Perhaps more than any other printmaker in history, with the possible exception o f Rem­ brandt and Goya, Kollwitz was able to manipulate contrasts o f light and dark to create highly dramatic and emotional images. In this etching, the figures barely emerge from a shroud of darkness. Only the edge of the fa­ ther’s hand, which hides his face in the upper right corner o f the compo­ sition, and the angelic face o f the dead child in the lower left corner are fully lit. Between these poles o f light, poles o f innocence and despair, the

Figure 16 Kiithe Kollwitz, The Downtrodden, 1900. E tching and aquatint on paper, \2V* in. X 9Y, in. The National M useum o f W omen in the Arts, W ashington, D.C. G ift o f W allace and W ilhelm ina Holladay. © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS). New York/VG Bild-K unst, Bonn.

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mother reaches down, letting the child’s hair fall between her fingers. Just above, the father’s hand reaches out aimlessly. And the m other’s face, re­ alized in a powerful middle-tone gray, displays an extraordinary range of emotion, at once infinitely sad and ultimately tired. It is as if Kollwitz’s gray has become the very color o f bitterness and resignation.

Sometimes you will encounter works of art that employ little or no contrast between light and dark. The light seems uniform throughout. If the drama in Kollwitz’s etching is palpable, minimal contrasts of light and dark usually have the opposite effect. A work o f art that seems uniform in tone, such as Perugino’s Crucifixion, usually evokes feelings o f calm and harmony.

Color Though it is easier to think o f questions o f light in terms o f black and

white, the same rules apply to color as well. Think, for instance, o f the dif­ ference between pink and maroon: one is red saturated with white and the other is red saturated with black. W hen we refer to someone who wears a lot o f pastels, we mean someone who dresses in colors light in value. It is not hard to imagine a painting o f a red ball that moves in value from a white highlight to a black shadow through all the various tints and shades of red (the color that results from adding white to a pure hue is called a tint o f that hue, and the color that results from adding black to the hue is called a shade).

Yet color functions in works o f art in terms more complicated than just those o f light and dark. In fact, in the same way that black and white can be considered opposites, each color has its opposite number as well. These opposites are called complementary colors. Complements are pairs o f colors that, when mixed together in almost equal proportion, create neutral grays, but that, when standing side by side, as pure hues, seem to intensify and even contradict one another.

The traditional color wheel (see the back cover) makes these oppo­ sitions clear. Each primary color— red, yellow, and blue— has, as its com ­ plement, a secondary color— green, violet, and orange, respectively. Thus, the standard complementary pairs are red/green, yellow/violet, and blue/orange (and, obviously, the intermediate hues have complementary opposites as well— the complement o f red-orange is blue-green, for in­ stance). Furthermore, just as gray moderates between black and white— as white becomes gray with the addition o f black and vice versa— each color gradually moderates into the hue of its neighbor with the addition of its neighbor. Thus, the more yellow one adds to green, for instance, the more yellow-green the color becomes. Neighboring colors on the color

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wheel are called analogous colors. Unlike complementary pairs, which create a sense of contradiction or opposition to one another, analogous pairs usually seem to rest harmoniously beside each other. The analogous blue-green-violet relationships are commonly referred to as cool, and red- orange-yellow combinations are said to be warm , or even hot.

Color theory is a vastly complicated field— one that is hardly settled, even among physicists— and the scheme described above is a vast over­ simplification o f the ways in which colors interact. (If you wish to explore color interactions more fully, try to locate Josef A lbers’s Interaction o f Color, originally written in 1963, but reissued in 1993 in an interactive CD-ROM edition by the Yale University Press. Here you can have hands- on experience manipulating and experiencing the properties o f color in a simple, easily accessible format.) Nevertheless, in writing about art, it is important to understand the basic complementary and analogous group­ ings because a great many works depend upon them to some degree in order to achieve their effects.

Much o f the power of Vincent van Gogh’s work depends upon his use of complementary color schemes. In a letter to his brother Theo, he described his famous painting The N ight Café (Figure 17) in the follow­ ing terms:

In m y p ic tu re o f the “N ig h t C afé” I have tried to express the idea that th e café is a p lace w here one can ru in o n ese lf, run m ad , o r co m m it a c rim e. I have tried to ex p ress the terrib le p assions o f hu m an ity by m eans o f red and green . T he ro o m is b lo o d -red and dark yellow , w ith a g reen b illiard tab le in the m iddle; there a re fo u r lem on-yellow lam p s w ith a g low o f oran g e and green. E very w h ere th ere is a c lash and co n trast o f the m ost a lien reds and g reen s in the figures o f little sleep ing h o o lig an s in the em p ty d reary room , in v io le t and b lu e . . . . T h e w h ite coat o f the patron , on v ig il in a corner, tu rns lem on-yellow , o r pa le lum in o u s green. So I have tried to express , as it w ere, the pow ers o f dark n ess in a low w ine­ shop, and all th is in an a tm o sp h ere like a d ev il’s fu rnace o f pa le su lp h u r .. . . It is co lo r not loca lly true from th e po in t o f v iew o f the s te reoscop ic realist, but co lo r to suggest the em otion o f an a rd en t tem p eram en t.4

The color scheme, especially the contrast between the complements red and green, is meant to suggest the tension of the scene, the sense that beneath the surface an almost violent energy or fury is about to erupt. Things do not go together here, either literally or pictorially.

In a painting such as Pablo Picasso’s Woman with Book (reproduced on the back cover), virtually the full range o f complementary contrasts is employed. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the painting seems to be unified in its overall effect. Except for the presence o f a profile that does not seem to be her own in the mirror behind the seated woman— an image that suggests

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Figure 17 V incent van Gogh, The N igh t Café , 1888. Oil on canvas, 2 8 'A in. X 36 'A in. Yale University A rt Gallery, Bequest o f Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903. 1961.18.34. Photograph by Jospeh Szaszfai.

an intruder or an unseen observer, perhaps the painter himself— nothing of the tension and turmoil o f van Gogh’s painting seems to inform our vi­ sion. Rather, we observe a woman in meditation, gazing vacantly up from her book, daydreaming. Picasso’s painting, as opposed to van Gogh’s , is not a nightmare, but a reverie.

This is surely the result, in part, o f Picasso’s subject matter: His model is M arie-Thérése Walter, who was also his mistress. But it is also a result o f the fact that he is trying to make contrasting elements work to­ gether in harmony. Just as he has rendered the face o f M arie-Thérése si­ multaneously in both profile and three-quarters view, just as he made her seem at once fully clothed and half-naked, Picasso’s sometimes stridently discordant colors here manage to coexist. It is apparent from the blackness outside the window to the left that it is night, and the darkness outside contrasts strongly to the brightness inside. Notice how the shadowed side o f M arie-Thérése’s face is rendered in green and violet and how these two colors dominate the darker, cooler side of the painting. On the other side o f the painting, the warm red glow of the chair, its orange back topped by the yellow frame around the mirror, seems almost to generate heat. It is as

44 U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t io n

if Picasso has realized here something o f which van Gogh only dreamed. In the same letter to his brother Theo in which he described the color ef­ fects o f The Night Cafe, he claimed that he was always in hope of express­ ing “ the love o f two lovers by a m arriage o f two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations o f kindred tones.” 5

Neither Picasso nor van Gogh is interested in representing the pre­ cise color o f the scene. The Impressionists had freed painting of the ne­ cessity o f representing local color (that is, the color we “know” a thing to be in the sense that we “know” trees are green) and chose to represent the optical color of what they saw (in the sense that a hill covered with “green” trees will appear to be blue in the distance). Picasso and van Gogh have gone even further. “Colors, like features,” Picasso would later write, “ follow the changes o f the emotions.”6 As opposed to van G ogh’s, how­ ever, Picasso’s emotions here run toward the loving and affectionate. One o f the most widely known books o f Picasso’s day was an occult classic, first published in 1901, called Thought-Fonns, written by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. It contains a “ Key to the M eaning of Colors” out­ lining which emotions are connected to which colors, and not surprising­ ly, mint green, the color o f M arie-Thérése’s hair, is the color of “sympathy,” and violet, the other color that dominates her face, suggests “love for humanity.” More precisely, violet is “ a mixture of affection and devotion . . . and the more delicate shades o f | it] invariably show the ca- pacity o f absorbing and responding to a high and beautiful ideal.” Picas­ so might not have read the book, but its classifications were so popular that he almost could not have escaped them, and, evidently, they are at work here.

It should be clear, however, even from this brief discussion, that dif­ ferent artists use color in different ways. Yellow may be “sulphurous,” as it was to van Gogh, but to someone else it may suggest the “highest intel­ lect”— the meaning, in fact, given it by Besant and Leadbeater. Combina­ tions o f complementary colors may create tension in a painting, or they may be harmonized. Analogous color schemes often create a unified ef­ fect, but just as often that sense of unity can transform itself into a feeling of monotony. Meaningful discussions of an artist’s use o f color must often rely on a context greater than the individual work— as I have relied on the artist’s own words, in the case of van Gogh, and upon intellectual history, in the case o f Picasso.

As a writer, you must always be aware o f the fact that the associa­ tions you have with a particular color are not universal. Tf you hear “red,” you may think “roses” and “love,” while the next person thinks “blood”

U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t i o n 45

and “anger,” while the next person thinks “communism.” If van G ogh’s lines seem violent and disruptive, for instance, this impression would sup­ port your notion that he is employing complementary colors in order to create a sense of disunity and chaos. Ask yourself, how does the artist em ­ ploy color and what does it mean? But then ask yourself, do other things about the composition support this reading?

O ther E lem ents There are a number of other formal elements that might be important

for you to consider. What, for instance, is the texture o f the work? If it is uniformly smooth, does this smoothness contribute to a sense o f harmo­ ny? Consider van Gogh’s N ight Café again. Doesn’t the thickness o f the brushstroke, its very assertive and gestural presence, express his emotion­ al involvement in the scene at the café?

Another formal element, one not quickly associated with art, is time. Time becomes a factor in sculpture when we find ourselves walking around or through it. Sculpture changes as the light changes, in the play o f light and shadow across the surfaces o f the work. This must have been the effect o f the great free-standing sculptures that once adorned the ped­ iment o f the Parthenon in Athens. One o f the surviving fragments o f the east pediment, which originally depicted the birth of Athena, is the so- called Three Goddesses (Figure 18). Slightly larger than lifesize, the sculpture stood on a three-foot-deep platform over fifty feet above the ground. As the sun moved from directly in front of it to its apex at noon,

Figure 18 Phidias and workshop, Three Goddesses, from the east pedim ent o f the Parthenon, c. 435 B.C. M arble, height o f center figure 5 ft. The British M useum , London.

46 U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t io n

the detailed folds of the draperies, falling across the highly defined bod­ ies o f the goddesses, would have made the sculptures almost seem to move and come to life. The sculptor— or at least the sculptor overseeing the work, since he was in charge o f the entire sculptural program at the Parthenon— was the famous Phidias (c. 490-430 B .C .). He was reknowned for his ability to recreate the human form in a convincing way. Sculpture, to him, was a dynamic, rather than static, medium. It was active rather than passive. It seemed to be alive.

Even abstract contemporary sculpture can achieve something of the same effect. The garden Isamu Noguchi designed for the museum dedicat­ ed to his work in Long Island City, Queens, is a dynamic space (Figure 19). In Japanese gardens, each o f the stone sculptures is believed to be con­ nected to the others, as if each were rising out of the great mass of the earth’s core. We enter a garden, we recognize that we are “floating” on the world beneath. As we move through it, the garden changes. As Noguchi him self describes it: “ Its viewing is poly directional. Its awareness is in depth. With participation o f mobile man all points are centered. Without a fixed point o f perspective all views are equal, continuous motion with continuous change.” 8 Noguchi also feels that the stones in a garden

Figure 19 Isam u Noguchi, Sculpture G arden. Isam u Noguchi Garden M useum . L ong Island City, Queens, New York, 1987. Published with the perm ission o f The Isamu Noguchi Foundation. Inc. © 2005. The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden M useum . New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Shigeo Anzai.

U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t io n 47

embody a sense o f time comparable to human time: “ Their weathering seems to coincide . . . with our own sense o f historical time. . . . There is a time passage to stone not unlike our own. A mellowing takes place.” 9 Thus in the garden we experience time in its vast geological sense (through the stones’ connection to the earth mass below), in terms o f the span of human life, and in “real” time, as we walk through the garden in the present moment itself.

Time entered the domain o f a rt in radically new terms with the in­ vention o f photography in the nineteenth century. Photography seems to convey the essence of a particular time and place, and this aura of authen­ ticity, together with its sense of instantaneous vision, of the moment itself captured forever, constitutes a large part o f its appeal. Today, it is appar­ ent that the dialogue between the present moment of our seeing the pho­ tograph— our actual experience o f it in “real” time— versus the way in which the photograph seems to embody, or make present, something long lost or far away, has revolutionized our sense o f time and space.

But it is important to recognize that the photograph is composed of the same elements as the other arts. The photographer Henri-Cartier Bres­ son described the photographic process in the following terms:

W e m ust p lace ourse lves and o u r cam era in the rig h t re la tionsh ip w ith the sub ject, and it is in fitting the la tte r in to the fram e o f the v iew finder that the p ro b lem s o f com position begin . T h is recogn ition , in real life, o f a rh y th m o f surfaces, lines, and values is fo r m e the essence o f p h o to g ra p h y .. . . W e co m ­ pose a lm ost a t the m om ent o f re leas in g the s h u t te r . . . . L ater you can am use y o u rse lf b y tracing o u t on the ph o to the g eom etrical pa tte rn , o r spatia l re la ­ tionsh ips, realiz ing that, by re leasing the shu tte r at that p recise instan t, you had instinc tive ly se lected an exact geom etrical harm ony, and that w ithou t th is the pho tograph w ould have been life le s s .10

Cartier-Bresson called this the “decisive moment.” Thus, the leaping man in his 1932 photograph Gare St. Lazare (Figure 20) is suspended above his own reflection, which creates a sense o f balance in the photo­ graph. But his leap is also reflected on the circus poster on the wall behind him, just as the semicircular arched back o f the poster figure is echoed in the semicircular form in the foreground water. In fact, the reflection in the water eerily mirrors the poster on the wall.

Two other art media— video and film— rely even more on time. One of the traditional distinctions among the arts has been that the plastic arts— painting, drawing, and sculpture— are spatial media, while the other arts— dance, music, literature— are primarily temporal and linear in nature. Video and film are both.

Most o f us think of video in relation to commercial television. How­ ever, many video artists purposefully manipulate the medium in order to

48 U s in g V is u a l In f o r m a t io n

Figure 20 Henri Cartier-Bresson. Gore St. Lazare. Paris, 1932. M agnum Photos Inc. © 2002 Henri Cartier-Bresson.

distinguish what they do from the television we habitually consume. The most common difference, again, is the medium’s relation to time. Stan­ dard television time is based upon the length of the commercial— 10, 30, 60. and, less commonly, 120 seconds in duration. As David Antin has pointed out in a detailed analysis o f the medium, there is really no differ­ ence between commercial time and the structure o f time in television pro­ grams generally. A news “story,” for instance, generally fits into this same time scheme, and a baseball game is a succession o f pitches, hits, and catches that fit the same pace.11 Video artists often ignore this pace com­ pletely, so to a viewer expecting “television,” their work usually seems boring. Very commonly, the camera is held in one position, for as long as an hour. In this way, other aspects of the medium that are generally ig­ nored, such as the peculiar way that video represents and distorts deep space, are foregrounded.

Video artists also commonly create installations in which the viewer encounters the medium as part o f a larger, sculptural space. Bill Viola’s Room for St. John o f the Cross (Figure 21), for instance, contrasts the stillness o f a single image of a mountain shown on a small monitor in a cubicle at the center of the room (a space comparable to the “meditative”

U s in g V is u a l I n f o r m a t i o n 49

Figure 21 Bill Viola, R oom fo r St. John o f the Cross, 1983. Video and sound installation. © Bill Viola. C ollection: M useum o f Contem porary Art, Los A ngeles. Photo by Kira Perov/Sauidds and Nunns.

space o f St. John) and a video projection o f large snow-covered moun­ tains, shot with a hand-held camera in wild, breathless flights o f move­ ment. The world “outside,” in other words, contrasts with the world “within.”

Perhaps one o f the best ways to think of film, which can reproduce space in ways far m ore sophisticated than can video, is as an assemblage of various spatial and temporal points o f view. The fade-in and fade-out, flashback and flashforward, closeup and longshot, and even the m ulti­ image screen, all combine to produce film’s many, sometimes startling vi­ sual effects. This multiplicity o f visual techniques combines with the more purely temporal means o f narrative, dialogue, and musical score to create one o f the most complex of the arts.

Photography, film, and video have come to play an important role in contemporary art as means to document live, temporary, or remote works. As much as Richard Serra would prefer for us to have experienced Tilted Arc in person, we know it today primarily through its photodocumenta­ tion. The artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, purposefully create large-scale works that are in place for, at most, a few weeks. On June 24, 1995, for instance, the Christos completed wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin (Figure 22). Originally completed in 1894 to house the German parliament, the building has great significance to the German people. Soon after Hitler had become chancellor in 1933, it had been burned, an act symbolic of Hitler’s desire to end parliamentary rule. Destroyed again in 1945 during the Battle o f Berlin, it was rebuilt during the Cold War as a symbol of West Germ any’s dedication to democracy, but it was unclear what function it should actually serve. With the reunification o f Germany

50 U s in g V is u a l I n f o r m a t io n

Figure 22 C hristo and Jeanne-C laude. W rapped Reichstag , Berlin, 1971-95. © C hristo 1995. Photo by W olfgang Volz.

1990, the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, moved , an act symbolic of renewed German unity. The Christos had wanted to rap the Reichstag since 1971, but were continually denied. Finally, in 994, the Bundestag voted 292 to 223, with 9 abstentions, to let the Chris­ s proceed. The wrapping required 1,076,000 square feet o f woven

olypropylene fabric with an aluminum surface and 51,181 feet o f blue ope. Thousands of people, both in person and on the Internet, watched as 0 climbers and 110 workers created a wall o f folds and draperies remi­ iscent of Greek sculpture (see Figure 18). When the building was un­ rapped two weeks later, on July 7, it became clear that the Christos had

ucceeded in giving the people o f Germany a “gift,” a celebratory renew­ l o f the Reichstag.

The C hristos’ works are always short-lived, “living on” only in the emory o f those who saw them and in the array o f drawings, models,

hotographs, and films that survive the actual work. As a result, many o f eir works— Running Fence, an 18-foot-high, 24 ¡¿-mile-long, white

abric fence that ran through two northern California counties in 1976; urrounded Islands, in which eleven islands in Biscayne Bay, Florida, ere wrapped with pink fabric in 1983; and the 1991 Umbrellas, Japan— . S. A., in which 1,760 almost 20-foot-tall yellow umbrellas were opened

in in w 1 to p r 9 n w s a

m p th f S w U

U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t i o n 51

in the Tejon Pass in southern California at the same time that 1,340 blue umbrellas were opened in Ibaraki prefecture, north o f Tokyo, Japan— have achieved an almost mythological status. The creation o f this m ythol­ ogy is a fundamental part o f the Christos’ work. Their monumental endeavors acquire something o f the aura o f the ruined monuments o f an­ cient civilizations.

Finally, o f all the new media, the com puter and digital technologies associated with it have offered the artist a unique new set o f possibilities, opening the image to the possibility o f manipulation by both artist and au­ dience. Photography, once thought o f as a medium o f evidentiary “truth,” a record o f the visual world, has become, in the digital age, a medium in which new visual worlds can be created. Take, for instance, the work o f German photographer Andreas Gursky. Many o f his large photographs are completely unmanipulated, “straight” renderings o f the contemporary world, but many others, such as the enormous Untitled V (Figure 23), may well capture the “truth” o f contemporary experience but are themselves complete fabrications. To create Untitled V, Gursky built a short double shelf, which he then photographed six times, restocking it with new shoes in each instance— there are 204 sets o f Nike running shoes in the work— and then repositioning his camera to create the proper angle. Finally, he pieced each of the six shots together to make the final image, a sort o f tes­ timony to commodity culture, NikeTown gone monumental. If this panoram a o f com m erce is technically “inauthentic,” it seems, neverthe­ less, an “authentic” icon o f contemporary life.

Figure 23 A ndreas Gursky, Untitled V , 1997. C -Print, 73 in. X 17414 in. Courtesy o f the M athew M arks Gallery, N ew York. © 2005 Andreas Gursky/A rtists R ights Society (ARS), N ew York/VG B ild-K unst, Bonn.

52 U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t io n

RECOGNIZING THE PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

One thing that would suggest that the traditional distinction between spa­ tial and temporal media might not be altogether valid is the sense o f visu­ al rhythm and repetition we often experience before works of art. Certain formal elements— lines, shapes, colors— recur, in either exact or analogous terms, and this repetition creates a sense o f visual rhythm that is analogous to musical or poetic rhythm. In all the arts, rhythm and repetition serve to organize, or order, the work into distinct and recognizable patterns.

Rhythm and Repetition Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sciinte-Victoire (Figure 24) is composed of a

number of repeated shapes and lines that serve to unify the composition. Notice that the slope of the mountain itself is repeated down the right edge o f the top o f the central tree, again with uncanny accuracy in the branch that extends from the right side o f the tree halfway down its trunk, and

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Figure 24 Paul Cezanne. M ont Sciinte-Victoire, 1885-87. Oil on canvas, 25k in. X 32 'A in. The M etropolitan M useum o f Art. Bequest o f Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929. The H. O. Havem eyer Collection (29.100.64).

U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t io n 53

again, immediately below that, in the large curve o f the river. The shape o f the river on the left o f the tree seems to echo, in reverse, the hill that comes into the composition from the right. A rhythm of arches extends the length o f the railroad viaduct, and throughout the painting, small, square, and rectangular areas— buildings, roofs, chimneys, fields— echo and re­ peat each other’s shapes. In a later version o f this same m otif (Figure 25), the precise elements o f the landscape have virtually disappeared, yet here the small quadrilateral shapes— which now seem to have been created by single brushstrokes, moving in a sort o f pulse through the composition— ascend toward the top o f the mountain in a rhythm and movement of growing clarity and definition finally achieved by Cézanne at the paint­ ing’s (and the mountain’s ) summit.

Balance If you compare Cézanne’s 1885-1887 version o f M ont Sainte-Victoire

(Figure 24) to Perugino’s Crucifixion (Figure 11), you will notice that one thing these very different paintings have in common is that they can be

Figure 25 Paul Cézanne, M ont Sainte-Victoire, 1904-06. Oil on canvas, 27% in. X 36% in. Philadelphia M useum o f Art, George W. Elkins Collection. E 1936—1—1 .

54 U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t io n

divided into more or less equal quarters across the axes formed, in the Cézanne, by the central vertical tree and the arched railroad viaduct and, in the Perugino, along the vertical axis of the cross and the horizon line. This geometric division, which echoes and reinforces the shape o f the frame in each painting, creates a sense o f symmetry and equilibrium in both compo­ sitions. The sense of disequilibrium apparent in Crivelli’s Crucifixion (Figure 12) derives in large part from the fact that, despite its overall sym­ metry and balance on a vertical axis, created by both the cross and the over­ riding arch, there is no clear horizontal symmetry, and the structure of the right side o f the composition seems radically different from the structure of the left. It is as if Crivelli has purposefully defied our expectation o f balance.

There are many other ways to achieve a sense o f balance in a com­ position. Radial balance is created when all the elements of the com posi­ tion seem to emerge from a real or actual focal point. Many works o f art utilize an asymmetrical balance in which a perceived center o f gravity seems to balance elements around it. It is like balancing a teeter-totter with a very heavy child on one side and a light child on the other: the heavy child moves toward the center o f the teeter-totter, while the lighter child sits on the very end. Furthermore, relatively dark shapes seem “heavier” to the eye than lighter ones.

Sometimes artists purposefully choose to violate the principle of bal­ ance. Franz K line’s M ahoning (Figure 14) is a case in point. He once com ­ mented on the way that black and white exert tension upon one another in his paintings: “ I thought about it in a certain sense o f the awkwardness of ‘not-balance,’ the tentative reality o f lack o f balance.” 12 His contempo­ rary, the abstract painter M ilton Resnick, described the feeling in similar terms. In his painting, he said, “I’m falling. I keep from falling. I ’m falling. I keep from falling.” 1'1 For both, the lack o f balance helped to cre­ ate a sense o f action and energy in the painting.

Proportion Proportion is the relationship o f each part o f the composition to the

whole and to each other part. An excellent example o f its use can be seen in the 1904-1906 version o f M ont Sainte-Victoire (Figure 25). You will notice that the composition is divided neatly at the foot of the mountain. This line, with the mountain and clouds above it and the countryside of Aix-en-Provence in southern France below it, very closely corresponds to what the ancient Greeks referred to as “ the golden section.” This propor­ tion— which is found, incidentally, in living organisms— can be defined mathematically as follows: The smaller section (in the Cézanne, the area above the line running across the bottom of the mountain) is to the larger

U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t i o n 55

section (the countryside below) as the larger section is to the whole paint­ ing. In numbers, each ratio is 1 to 1.618. Not only did the Greeks use this “ideal” or “ perfect” proportion as the basis for constructing their greatest buildings, but they conceived o f the human body in the same terms. The perfect body, they reasoned, consists o f a torso and head roughly equiva­ lent to the vertical height o f the top o f the Cézanne composition, the body from the waist down equivalent to the lower part o f the composition. Such proportional ideals, it is worth suggesting, dominate our visual thinking to this day— from our sense o f when a landscape painting “feels” right to our sense o f the ideal human form.

Scale Scale is an issue with which we have dealt already in relation to the

“museum without walls.” It is sometimes very difficult, for instance, to get an accurate feeling for a work o f art’s size from a photograph o f it. To get a sense o f this principle, you need only think again o f the actual size of Courbet’s Burial at Ornans (Figure 10) and the viewer’s inability to take it all in at once, compared with the sense o f containm ent one feels before it in reproduction. Similarly, only from a series o f photographs or from the film can you get a sense o f the many elements o f N oguchi’s Sculpture Garden (Figure 19). Part o f the extraordinarily comic effect o f Roy Licht­ enstein’s monumental sculpture Brushstroke (Figure 35) derives from the fact that it is so large, not only in relation to a normal brushstroke but in relation to the Hirshhorn Museum, which rises behind it.

Other, more subtle effects can be achieved by manipulating scale. In Cézanne’s 1885-1887 M ont Sainte-Victoire (Figure 24), for instance, there appears to be a large bush or tree at the end o f the railroad viaduct ju st to the left o f the central tree. If it were really a tree, however, it would be 300 or 400 feet tall. It is, in fact, part o f the pine in the foreground. In a very subtle move here, Cézanne purposefully draws the most distant planes o f the canvas up to the closest by confusing our reading o f what is near and what is far away. As a result, our attention is drawn to the sur­ face o f the composition, to its organization as a design, as much as to its representation o f a three-dimensional world.

Scale is relative. That is, we define the scale o f an object in terms of its relation to other objects around it. Thus, the two video images in Bill Viola’s Room fo r St. John o f the Cross (Figure 21) are very different in scale— one large, one small— and this difference in scale contributes to the work’s disorienting sense o f space. In another example, the artist Nikolai Buglaj has transformed a classical example o f an optical illusion created by a shift in the context in which objects are perceived into a

56 U s in g V is u a l I n f o r m a t i o n

Figure 26 N ikolai Buglaj, R acial O ptical Illusion, 1997. Pencil and ink on paper, 30 X 40 in. Courtesy the artist.

commentary on race relations in the United States (Figure 26). The three figures in this piece are all the same size (if you don’t believe it, measure them for yourself), but because the figure outside the room is, in effect, contextless, he looks small. The figure entering the room appears to be larger, and the figure inside the room appears largest o f all. The surround­ ing walls alter the relative scale in which each figure is perceived. The wall o f the room is decorated with an American flag, and it represents, for Buglaj, the “system” from which African Americans are excluded, thus making them appear smaller than they are. Conversely, from the outside looking in, the white man appears larger than he really is.

Unity and Variety One o f the primary sources o f interest and power in many works of

art is the way their various elements are combined to create a sense o f one­ ness or unity. Picasso’s Woman with Book, for instance, on the back cover, is almost wildly diverse in its color, but its pattern o f repetitive shapes uni­ fies it. Round forms— from necklace, to armchair, to M arie-Thérése’s breasts— draw the various colors together, as do the teardrop shapes that make up both sleeves o f M arie-Thérése’s dress as well as the bodice o f her dress. In fact, the pattern o f interlaced curves that circulate around and across the m odel’s body unifies the entire composition.

U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t i o n 57

CONSIDERING QUESTION S O F MEDIUM

Each o f the different media— painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, architecture, photography, video, film, fiber, ceramics, metal, and glass, among others— has its distinctive qualities, and within each there are var­ ious subcategories— in painting, for instance, there is oil, acrylic, water- color, tempera, gouache, and so on— that can elicit far different effects in themselves. One o f the most important differences between the Perugino and Crivelli Crucifixions (Figures 11 and 12), which we have so far not discussed, lies in the artists’ choice o f medium. The first is an oil paint­ ing, while the second is painted in tempera. As we have already noted, oil paint is translucent— light penetrates it and is reflected back— and thus Perugino’s medium contributes to the painting’s sense o f hopefulness, its seeming promise o f salvation. Tempera, on the other hand, is opaque, and, unless varnished, its flat, matte finish seems dull compared to the glowing surface o f an oil painting, qualities perfectly in keeping with the prevail­ ing sense o f misery in Crivelli’s work.

Sometimes a given medium is particularly suitable for conveying a given set of ideas. Black-and-white film, for instance, lends itself particu­ larly effectively to the portrayal o f tension and opposition. Shirin Neshat, an Iranian artist who came to the United States in 1979 to study art, was struck, eleven years later, when she finally returned to her homeland, by the profound change that had occurred. Color had disappeared and every­ thing was black and white— the men dressed in white shirts, the women in traditional black chadors, head-to-toe coverings that reveal only face and hands. The chador, especially from the Western perspective that N e­ shat brought with her upon her return to Iran, represents the oppression of women in Islamic society, but within the context o f Islam, many women believe that they are truly equal to men, and they claim that the chador, by concealing a wom an’s sexuality, prevents her from becoming a sexual ob­ ject. This tension is the subject o f N eshat’s 1999 video installation Rapture (Figures 27a and b). Com posed o f two videos projected simulta­ neously on opposite walls, on one side o f the room a group o f men are seen in a fortified castle, where they engage in ritual activities. On the other side, women approach the castle, observe the men, then turn their back on the m ales’ activities, walk to the sea, where six o f them climb into a boat setting themselves adrift. On the opposite wall, the men, who have gathered on the ramparts, wave goodbye, as if the gulf that separates men from women in Islamic culture is, at least partially, unbridgeable.

Video, in other words, brings the tensions implicit in the still image to life. As a medium, it animates the photograph. Something o f the same

58 U s in g V is u a l I n f o r m a t io n

r. .**?:

Figure 27a and b Shirin Neshat. apture , 1997. Two video produc­

tion stills. © Sherin Neshat 1999. Courtesy Barbara G ladstone Gallery, New York.

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effect is achieved in the relation between, say, the drawings o f a M ichelan­ gelo for the ceiling o f the Sistine Chapel at the Vat­ ican in Rome and the fin­ ished fresco, or between Christo’s preparatory col­ lage drawings for his projects such as The Gates (Figures 28 and 29) and the fully realized piece, which was installed in New York’s Central Park in the winter o f 2005. Although the collages represent one o f the principal ways that Christo and Jeanne-Claude raise the funds necessary to create their work— they accept neither private nor foundation support— they also document the evolution o f Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ideas. They are, additionally, as Christo has said, “works o f art on their own,” even if the experience o f the actual installation is a vastly different expe­ rience. To see a piece like the Wrapped Reichstag (Figure 22) or The Gates in person is, in Christo’s words, “ a little bit like if you are a sports­ man, if you climb the Himalaya. In a way it is the unrepeatable experi­ ence. It cannot be substituted with anything, not the film, or the photographs, nor books, nor records can substitute that art experience.” 14

BEGINNING YOUR ESSAY BY DESCRIBING THE W ORK

One of the best ways to begin an essay on a work of art is to describe it as accurately as possible. Description serves two purposes. On the one hand, it orients your readers by drawing their attention to what you believe are the most salient features o f the work. But perhaps more important,

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U s i n g V is u a l I n f o r m a t i o n 59

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Figure 28 (above) C hristo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates, P roject fo r C entral Park, N ew York City, 2004. Collage: Pencil, fabric, charcoal, pastel, w ax crayon, enam el paint, m ap and fabric sam ple; in tw o parts: 3 0 'A in. X 12 in. and 3014 in. X 2634 in. Photo by W olfgang Volz, © C hristo 2004.

Figure 29 (right) C hristo and Jeanne-C laude, The Gates, Project fo r C entral Park, N ew York City, 1979-2005. Photo by W olfgang Volz, © C hristo 2005.

description forces you to scrutinize the work yourself. In the process of describing the work well, considering not just its subject matter and medi­ um but its formal elements and principles o f composition, you will almost always gain a better understanding o f the artist’s intentions and more fully grasp the meaning o f the work.

The following description o f a photograph by Walker Evans (Figure 30) was written by a student, Richard Watson, as part of a final exam essay in a course on the history o f photography. Before reading on,

60 U s in g V is u a l I n f o r m a t io n

Figure 30 W alker Evans, Washroom and D ining Area o f F loyd Burroughs’s Home, H ale County. Alabama, 1936. 35m m photograph. Courtesy o f the Library o f Congress, W ashington, D.C.

you might find it useful to jot clown a few of your own notes describing the photograph so that you can compare your own descriptive abilities to Richard’s. Remember. I think Richard’s description is exemplary, and if your description does not quite measure up to his, that is probably as it should be. Richard’s descriptive abilities were nowhere nearly this developed when he first began writing about art, some three years and seven art history classes before he wrote the essay from which this description is exceipted.

E v a n s ’ s c r e a t i o n i s a symphony o f s h a p e s , t e x t u r e s , l i n e s , and p l a n e s . The round was h b a s i n s i t t i n g on t h e r e c t a n g u l a r s h e l f , i n f r o n t o f a l ­ t e r n a t i n g t h i c k and t h i n h o r i z o n t a l wal l b o a r d s , t h e v e r t i c a l d o o r f r a me , t h e s q u a r e k i t c h e n t a b l e wi t h

U s in g V is u a l I n f o r m a t io n 61

i t s mult i face ted curved and shaped kerosene lamp, the beefy square kitchen hutch with i t s rectangular upper cupboard, and the e legant p i tcher with i t s graceful curves, a l l contribute to the geometric harmony o f t h i s qu ie t s e t t i n g . The t ex tures o f the rough wooden doorframe, the back door s e t against the smooth f loorboard, the s o f t t a b l e c l o t h , and the pol ished g l a s s lamp and p itcher o f f e r an array o f t a c t i l e s ensa t ion . Most notable i s the towel hang­ ing in the center o f the photograph, which together with the heavy v e r t i c a l doorframe cuts the composi­ t io n in h a l f and provides the focal point o f the composit ion.

By combining simple geometric shapes, Evans has created a powerful ly dramatic composition. The e l e ­ ments o f l i g h t and darkness (enhanced by h i s choice o f medium, black-and-white photography) generate a tens ion o f oppos i t ion and harmony among the shapes and produce a unique sense o f balance: the white towel aga ins t the dark doorframe, the black tab le l eg and i t s shadow cut t ing across the b r ig h t ly sun­ l i t f l o o r , and the sun-drenched p i tcher framed by the black back w a l l , a l l generate a play o f l i g h t and dark. The e f f e c t i s enhanced by the th ick bands o f grayish wood in the front wa l l , chopped in to equal parts by the th in black l i n e s o f shadow that separate them. The v e r t i c a l frame o f the door, the t a b le l e g s , and the upper part o f the kitchen hutch r i s e in j u x ta p o s i t io n to the horizontal plane o f the front wa l l , the door’s header, crea t ing a s e ­ r i e s o f short , r ig i d l y uniform l i n e s . The diagonal run o f the wide f loorboards , broken by t h in , dark j o i n t s i s echoed by the broad kitchen t a b le , the l in e d t a b l e c l o t h , and the sun-bathed work space o f the kitchen hutch.

This description formed the basis o f Richard’s essay. Although he went on to place the photograph in a larger context— it was one of many Evans created for the Farm Security Administration during the Great De­ pression and it was reproduced without commentary in the opening pages of Let Us Now Praise Famous M en , a work he published with writer James Agee in 1941— Richard argued that the formal eloquence o f the photograph mirrored Evans’s and Agee’s overall purpose. Both writer and photographer wanted to reveal the inherent dignity o f Alabama’s impov­ erished sharecroppers. The order and harmony o f the scene elevate the banal and humble to the level o f art.

62 U s in g V is u a l I n f o r m a t i o n

ASKING YOURSELF A B O U TT H E W ORK O F ART: A SUMMARY

The following set o f questions derives from the previous discussion and is meant as a quick reminder o f the kinds o f things you might ask yourself about a work o f art. It is by no means complete, and you almost surely will discover that most works o f art raise still other questions. Nor will every question be o f particular importance in your coming to terms with each work you see. Still, this summary list does provide you with a model of the kind o f analytical process that will help you understand what you see. (These questions are reproduced inside the front cover so that you can readily access them.)

One last word o f warning: Don’t take these questions as an outline of your eventual paper. Good essays are never written by answering a se­ ries o f predetermined questions. Consider them, rather, as a guide de­ signed to help you take the notes and organize the thoughts that will eventually lead to writing a good essay.

Q U ESTIO N S TO A SK B E FO R E WRITING ABOUT A W ORK O F ART

What is the subject m atter o f the work?

• What is its title? • Does the title help you interpret what you see? • Can you imagine different treatments o f the same subject m atter that

would change the way you read the work?

W hat formal elements are important to the work and how do they relate to its subject matter?

• How is line employed in the work? • Does it seem to regulate or order the composition? • Does it seem to fragment the work? • Is it consistent with traditional laws o f perspective or does it violate

them? • What is the relation of shape to space in the work? • How do light and dark function in the work? Is there a great deal of

tonal contrast, or is it held to a minimum? • What is the predominant color scheme of the work? Are com ple­

mentary or analogous colors employed? • What other elements seem important? Is your attention drawn to the

work’s texture? Does time seem an important factor in your experi­ ence of the work?

U s in g V i s u a l I n f o r m a t i o n 63

How are these elements organized?

• Is there significant use of visual rhythm and repetition of elements? • Is the composition balanced? Symmetrically? Asymmetrically? • Do the w ork’s various elements seem proportional, and how does the

question of scale affect your perception? • Does the composition seem unified or not?

How has the artist’s choice of medium played a role in the presenta­ tion of the various elements and their organization or design?

• Are effects achieved that are realizable only in this particular medium?

• If more than one medium is involved, what is their relation?

W hat does all this mean?

• W hat are the artist’s intentions? How do these intentions manifest themselves in the composition? Are there other feelings or attitudes that the composition seems to evoke, and what specific elements or design choices account for those feelings?