Lectures - Visual Communication

What Do We Do? “Ethnics & Responsibilities within the Viscom field?” –George Hart

‘The Salon Painting’ – Genre Painting.

Paintings in the genre are seen to be for a higher class not a working class as they are higher up the hierarchy. This is when people started to become socially aware of the class movements when certain paintings were aimed at different audiences of a different class. William Hogarth who was a political, propaganda illustrator created a piece called Beer Street (1751). He did many reproductions of this piece and printing materials were on offer more and were becoming more popular, and this piece was seen in newspapers and publications. The whole idea behind Beer Street was it was to show foreign influence which was effecting the British influence. But the idea behind the images was to show Britain and how it’s happy, jolly, flourishing and wealthy with the pawnbrokers, and that it didn’t need no foreign influence, as this was a vision/insight into the English culture. The whole point of this was to show the ethnics and how some English people did not want change with foreign influence and wanted it to stay the same. I like how this image is manipulated as it shows a clear indication of British culture, and how we see it and others see it.  

The other image which William Hogarth created was ‘Gin Lane’. This showed the effects of drinking gin, and how it was such a negative and changed people characteristics. It was known as a drug like heroin, and made everything evil and gave the British culture a negative look. It shown the audience how everything was falling apart, and how people were selling stuff so that they could buy more gin. I like how Hogarth has manipulated this by showing people in a negative way compared to the happy, jolly way in the Beer Street. These two images could show the audience how beer makes everyone jolly, but how gin can soon change all that and make everything negative and evil.

Visual Noise – The Search For Selective Silence – Phil Thomson THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SILENCE……..just quiet noise. All types of noises, sounds or actions you’ll receive 11,000 bits of sensory information into the brain at one time, and you shrink down the 11,000 to 11. Certain parts of the brain turns spoken words into meaningful concepts in our minds, and we only can hold a few bits of information in our working memory at one time. HEARING – no option. NOT THE SAME AS LISTENING. LOOKING NOT THE SAME AS SEEING. 

5 Steps to Hearing Sound: 1. Hearing what is said (form of escapism) 2. Listening to what is said 3.Interpreting what is said 4.Understanding what is said 5.Listening to what is said AGAIN

Postmodernism (1870 – 1970)

Postmodernism has no definition, this word cannot be defined in any way. As postmodernism is more a set of concepts and debates.

Modernism key features are – technological optimism, rationality, universal truth, absolute knowledge, definition and boundaries and colonial belief. Modernism believes that there is a singular truth, and with the truth we can overcome all conflicts. TRUTH IS FREEDOM. In the postmodernism era, there is no singular truth, there is only truth.

Rationality - 

Towards the end of the modernism era there was threats to America from the outside with horror movies helping the American’s deal with the threat. This was the express of the nation but lead onto confusion.

Rationality and confusion lead to David Lynch – Twin Peaks 1990. This tv show included a FBI agent investigating a murder of a homecoming queen set in a fictional Washington town. This relates to the threats to America and being a serial drama it links with the horror movies which helps deal with the threats.

Disillusion –

Las Vegas is one of the main places for disillusion as they remake famous landmarks and change them to hotels. New York, New York (1997) which they have a statue of liberty standing outside.

 Luxor hotel is Egyptian themed as the hotel is within a pyramid with a sphinx at the entrance relating to the iconic sights in Egypt

 and the Paris hotel (1999) which has a replica of the Eiffel tower outside it. 

Vegas has re-created all these famous landmarks so instead of travelling around the world they are all in one place. To me this is a lie, and that they have just copied the original landmarks to gain more visitors.

The Portrait “A portrait, what could be more simple and more complex. More obvious and more profound?” – Charles Bauderlaire (1859) What I understand from this quote is that a portrait doesn’t need to be detailed or an exact replica of the person but can be done in simple shape and forms. A portrait of someone can also be done in an abstracted form but still be a portrait even if the features of it are not obvious, the way that they have done the painting or drawing is in a portrait way. Portraits can also be heavily detailed and complex so much so that the image of the person has been change. This was common to do this when it was a highly respected person, like Queen Elizabeth the 1st. When she was in reign she had paintings done regularly she had a painting done after she had contracted small pox which left her face scarred. This meant that if the painter was doing a realistic painting they would have included the scarring on her face, but she demanded that they do her skin perfect and not a blemish at all. This would be manipulating the person’s looks to make them look better.

What is the function of a portrait?

There can be many functions to a portrait including showing a celebration, or showing off wealth. The way that a painter shows off the wealth of the person is by using a specific blue pigment. This pigment is only used for the wealthiest as this shows that you can afford to have blue on a painting as this wouldn’t be used in any standard portrait. One artist who uses a lot of the blue pigment is Giovanni Bellini – Doge Leonardo Loredan (1459-1516). 

The colour is heavily used as the background which shows people how wealthy they are, as they are able to use a large amount on the painting. Another function of a portrait can be to promote a wedding. A painting done by Jan Van Eyck- The Arnolfini Marriage (1434)

 is of a couple standing in a room holding hands. This image makes the viewers have mixed emotions as the woman in the picture is holding her stomach as it is pronouncing that she is pregnant, but the image is actually saying that they are married, this is two different meanings for the painting and makes the viewers think and make up their own story about what they are looking at. The Constructed Portrait The constructed portrait is more of an abstract approach to a normal portrait. ‘Study of George Dyer’ – Francis Bacon (1971). In this painting he has used different shapes to create the figure which makes these abstract by using shapes which are not usually associated with the human body. I think this makes the paintings more interesting as the viewer is trying to make an image of what the person might look like. Patrick Tosani – Braille Portrait no.1 (1985) and Patrick Tosani – Braille Portrait (1985)

(All) Ready Made

Appropriation & Connectivity

The first lecture of the second series was based on appropriation and connectivity. This gave me an insight into how some artists use original artwork and change it to become there’s. This could be just altering the colours or text within a piece. I thought this would be known as copyright but in some cases it’s not if a certain percentage of the piece is not the same, it is not known as copyright. One quote that stood out to me in the lecture was “Nothing is Original”. This made me think that most artists work could not be original and they would have got the idea from another artist which was from the past. Another quote which stood out to me was “Good artists copy, Great artists steal” – Picasso. This shows that artists even noticed that pieces of work were being copied, and that original ideas had been passed on to a different artist.

On recent artwork for Paloma Faiths album cover for (A Perfect Contradiction) the way she has been photographed is in the same style of Raphael’s painting (The Deposition) 1507. Although Paloma Faith’s album cover is a photograph, it is still the same style as aspect of Raphael’s painting. WHO DID THE IDEA FIRST? This is something we all question as we will all assume it would be whoever did it first…

5th Lecture

Series 5: Protest

This is the fifth and final lecture and based on the subject protest. I personally think that this subject links closely to the two words my team have for the project being that ‘community’ is the main part in a protest and that it’s a community/group of people which have a strong about something being right or wrong, and also the other word ‘identity’ being that people show there identity, and passion for what they are protesting for. A clip which was shown to us during the lecture was of the film Rebel Without A Cause (image 2). I personally like this film and have seen it before and can see the clear link to protest, as it’s about teenagers rebelling. This film was done in 1955 and in 1950 is when the group ‘teenagers’ were created. Parents expected big things from the teenagers as more people were able to go to university and wanted them to do well. This film shows teenagers forgetting their identity. I think this links in with our project and area as our area is mainly students and all trying to find their identity and path to their future. I think the choice of actor James Dean was the ideal actor to play this part in the film as he was a upcoming teenage actor and represented teenagers well.

Historical Protest:

One of the most well known historical events which happened during the 1950’s was the segregation act. One of the most influential women of all time Rosa Parks (image 1), who refused to move seats on the bus for a white person and stood up to law, and took the consequences. This had huge impact on how people dealt with the segregation act and lead to a lot of protests and to Martin Luther King (image 3) giving the most influential and inspiring speech of all time about freedom and equal rights for black Americans. This speech lead to many different communities over America coming together as one to fight for equality. I feel this is significant for the word ‘community’ we have in our group and links well.

An artist who used research into protest for part of his practise is Jeremy Dellar. Dellar re-enacts the miners strike in 1980 and used the original people who were involved in the actual strike, which included the miners and police men. This shows people the impact and problems which are caused due to protests. (image 4)

4th Lecture Series 4: Production

In this lecture I learnt about the production industry and mass production. The production of newspapers started to change during the early 19th century where there was a dense type on the layouts of newspaper. The type which was used was the metal moveable type but this was not durable and meant there would only be limited font sizes. This method made it cheaper to print though. During the mid 19th century wooden letterpress was introduced. These were more bespoke and came in a range of different sizes and type of text.

Mass Production and the New Object:

Paul Strand was a photographer in the 20th century who took photos of mass produced items such as the typewriter. He used the half tone printing process. These photographs could be showing how the mass production line is moving on, and how everything in the future will be mass produced. (image 4) Another artist who used ready-made items which are mass produced is Marcel Duchamp. He created sculptures from household items, and re-create them to something else. He used a urinal and made it into a fountain. Signing his work with R. Mutt 1917. This showed people that mass produced items could have different uses or could be a form of art. (image 4)

One artist who was a critic about mass production was Andy Warhol. One of his most popular pieces is of Marilyn Monroe (1967) which he screen printing multiple times to show the representation of mass production. This was one of his most popular prints as of the icon he used in it. This also shows the repetition of the use of the same image. (image 2)

Jeff Koons is a different type of artist, as he uses assistants and staff to help produce his work. This links in with our work as it involves a group/community to be able to produce the final piece. (image 1)

3rd Lecture Series 3: New Perspectives In this lecture I discovered artist within the ‘radical movements’ David Carson was a graphic designer and also one of the first artists to respond to the shift movement in time which included response to the internet and Photoshop. This was clearly shown in his piece (layout for Raygun Magazine 1990). This was the time which gave designers the opportunity to cut, paste and layer with the use of computer programmes. To David Carson image and type were the same thing and that type was given more emphasis so that the image and type were equally distributed throughout his pieces. (image 1)

2nd Lecture

Series 2 – Contextual Studies

The second series of contextual studies was focused on abstraction.

To define the word abstract is to separate or withdraw from something else, or can be the break down or deconstruction of an object. One artist we were shown as Julian Opie. Julian takes photos and reduces them down so that they become hardly visible. One of his most popular pieces he has produced is Blur’s self-titled album cover. On this album cover you can see how reduced down the image has become so much so that the eyes are black dots and the mouth is just a line. These images are not detailed, but there is still a clear indication on which image is who, being that it’s recognisable with the hair style or that they wear glasses.  This image stands out with the use of block and bold colours, which instantly make the audience, look at it. (image above)

Cubism played one of the main parts in the abstract movement and Pablo Picasso was one of the instigators in the cubist movement. Picasso produced his work by having a selection of different viewpoints. This made the images more distorted and abstracted as they were as he reduced his images to 2 dimensional rather than 3 and the figures were unorganised so they were difficult to make out and would go into the foreground.

Art & Craft Movement

Arts and craft movement was at the start of the 20th century and included some features of abstraction and they reference to nature as it was the time before realisation. This also refers back to being the handmade era. Being handmade made the artwork more bespoke and personal. 20th Century

During the 20th century people had new ways of looking and thinking as this was the time for political chaos. They refer this to ‘The Machine Age’ as this was the century for mass production and people were comparing themselves as machinery, and seeing themselves in artificial light rather than natural light. This meant that the bespoke and personal artwork of the arts and craft movement started to fade.

Series 1:

The first lecture was based around how Victorians and their entertainment. Victorian visual technologies started in 1800-1899 and this was the century in which leisure time was introduced.  The Victorians created optical toys which they would use for hours and have endless fun! The thaumatrope is a simple toy created with card and a picture or illustrated image either side of it with a piece of string attached either side. I took illustration into consideration and created my own thaumatrope. The thaumatrope can be seen to be illustrative as an image needs to be created on the front and back. Another optical toy created was the flip book. This consisted of the pages each having advanced images from the previous image. These simple but effective toys were partly animation, and partly illustration. The phenakistiscope, praxinoscope and choreutoscope were also part of the optical toys created, and they were introduced to the middle class as they had the time to do stuff. The camera Lucinda was the affordable equipment which allowed the middle classes’ to create art. This allowed normal people to create pieces of art work, and they didn’t need to be a professional artist.

The Victorian Spectacle

Louis-Jacques Mande Daguerre was a keen photographer in the 19th century, and was also a panorama painter. Daguerre’s first ever image was created by exposing the light all day so it was able to capture the image of the Boulevard du Temple (1838), which was a preserved image. The positive and negative image was Daguerre’s type and style of work and created two visions and views. The image is clear where the buildings are, but the place looks empty, even though it would have been busy. It’s because of the long exposure time it would have been hard to get the people when they are moving. But there is a man on the image which was having his shoes shined at the time, and he stayed still long enough for it to be captured. This was to be the first man which had ever been photographed. This can be linked in with illustration as the image has a sketchy look to it, that it looks as if it’s been painted.

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