How Art Speaks- Finding Meaning

How We See: Objective and Subjective Means

Up until now we’ve been looking at artworks through the most immediate of visual effects: what we see in front of our eyes. Now we can begin to break down some barriers to find specific meaning in art, including those of different styles and cultures. To help in this journey we need to learn the difference between looking and seeing.

To look is to get an objective overview of our field of vision. Seeing speaks more to understanding. When we use the term “I see” we communicate that we understand what something means. There are some areas of learning, particularly psychology and biology, that help form the basis of understanding how we see. For example, the fact that humans perceive flat images as having a "reality" to them is very particular. In contrast, if you show a dog an image of another dog, they neither growl nor wag their tail, because they are unable to perceive flat images as containing any meaning. So you and I have actually developed the ability to "see" images.

In essence, there is more to seeing than meets the eye. We need to take into account a cultural Links to an external site. component in how we perceive images and that we do so in subjective ways. Seeing is partly a result of cultural biases. For example, when many of us from industrialized cultures see a parking lot, we can pick out each car immediately, while others from remote tribal cultures (who are not familiar with parking lots) cannot.
Gestalt Links to an external site.is the term we use to explain how the brain forms a whole image from many component parts. For instance, the understanding of gestalt is, in part, a way to explain how we have learned to recognize outlines as contours of a solid shape. In art for example, this concept allows us to draw "space" using only lines.

The sites below have some fun perceptual games from psychology and science about how we see, along with some further explanations of gestalt:

• Scientific Psychic Links to an external site.
• Visual Illusions Gallery Links to an external site.

The First Level of Meaning: Formal

The invention of the photograph has greatly changed our ideas about what looks ‘correct’. A good example of this idea can be seen looking at the two images below: the first is a digital photo of a foggy landscape and the second, a painting by the color field painter Mark Rothko Links to an external site.(click the hyperlink to view his work).

Chris Gildow, Foggy Landscape

When you compare the two, you see that formally they are similar; bands of color spread horizontally across the surface in layers. Yet Rothko’s painting is much more reductive than the photo. The space is flat, sitting right on the surface of the canvas, whereas in the photo you get a feeling of receding space as areas of color overlap each other. This similarity is not coincidental. As a young man Rothko lived for in Portland, Oregon, and hiked the Cascade Mountains. On hikes to higher elevations, he saw the landscape and atmosphere around him and was especially moved by the colors in the sky near the horizon just before sunrise and just after sunset. This phenomenon is called the Veil of Venus: bands of pink, violet and blue near the horizon directly opposite the setting or rising sun. Below is an example of this phenomenon.

Chris Gildow, Veil of Venus

Now you can imagine these memories reflected in Rothko’s series of abstract ‘color field’ paintings. It’s simplistic to say this was Rothko’s only influence. As an artist he explored painting styles emerging out of Surrealism, including automatic drawing and more complex mythomorphic techniques. But it’s hard to deny that to some extent his paintings are based on what he saw. Click here Links to an external site. to read more about Mark Rothko.

In another example of formal similarities, early photographs often used paintings as reference. We can see this in a comparison of a nineteenth century photo of the Acropolis Links to an external site. in Athens, Greece, and a painting Links to an external site. from the series The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole titled The Consummation. Both show commanding views of landscape dominated by classic Greek architecture. The photo mimics Cole’s painting in formal terms, emphasizing the grandeur of the architecture within a vast expanse of space.

Conversely, realist paintings from the 19th century were sometimes ridiculed for being too lifelike and not ‘ideal’ enough. Theodore Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa Links to an external site.; is an example. You can click to enlarge the image and read A Hint of Scandal to the right of it to why such a realistic, powerful painting could be caught up in controversy. Nowadays people often proclaim that a painting is good because it looks 'just like a photograph'.

The rise of modern art produced artistic styles that challenge viewers in finding meaning in the works they see. The use of abstraction and gesture as subject matter runs counter to traditional avenues for finding meaning. It is in this formal, gesture-laden approach, however, that much of the grace and delicacy, as well as power, anger or other emotions can be conveyed. In other words, it is the application of the elements that can give us clues to a work’s meaning. If we take the formal quality of application (what kind of lines or shapes are created, how the paint is applied, etc) and combine it with a specific subject (the act of painting itself), you can discover a new meaning from the combination of these visual effects.

When looked at from this perspective, the paintings of the Abstract Expressionists Links to an external site. become more meaningful. In particular, the art of Joan Mitchell Links to an external site. captures the exuberance and energy that the application of paint can achieve (see Formalist Criticism below).

This bridge between formal quality and subject matter can be applied to meaning in works of art from many cultures. Gesture and pattern combine to enhance the meaning of more decorative works like the paintings from a Ceremonial House Ceiling Links to an external site. from the Sepik region of New Guinea. The ceremonial house was built as a place for spirits to dwell. The paintings themselves indicate abstracted images of faces making fierce gestures, suns and female genitalia, all in reference to the spirits surrounding the ceremony taking place inside.

The Second Level of Meaning: Subject 

Generally these categories of ideas (sometimes called subjects) can also be called a genre of art; that is, a fairly loose category of images that share the same content. Here is a brief list of the type of genre that you may see in a work:

• landscape
• still life
• portrait
• self-portrait
• allegory: representing a mythological scene or story
• historical: actual representation of a historic event
• daily life: sometimes also called genre painting
• nude: male nude and female nude are separate categories
• political: two forms: propaganda and criticism
• social: work created to support a specific social cause
• power: work created to connect to specific spiritual strength
• fantasy: work created to invent new visual worlds
• decoration: work created to embellish surroundings
• religious: two forms: religious representation or religious action
• abstraction: work whose elements and principles are manipulated to alter the subject in some way.

What you will discover when you think about some of these subjects is that you may already have a vision of how this subject should appear. For example: visualize a portrait or self-portrait. You can see the head, probably from the shoulders up, with little background, painted fairly accurately. Look at these portraits Links to an external site. and see that this is moderately true, though some works may surprise you. Artists often reinvent how a subject is portrayed. Some works of art can be part of a certain genre by using metaphor: one image that stands for another. A good example is this quilt Links to an external site. by Missouri Pettway from Gees Bend, Alabama. Made of strips of old work clothes, corduroy and cotton sacking material, it becomes a portrait of the artist’s husband. Missouri's daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: "It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, 'I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.'

Contemporary artists sometimes reinterpret artworks from the past. This can change the context of the work (the historical or cultural background in which the original work was created), but the content remains the same. Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley from 1936 uses the subject matter of a mother and her children to symbolize the hardships faced during the Great Depression. The woman’s face speaks of worry and desperation about how to provide for her children and herself. Comparatively, San Francisco photographer Jim Thirtyacre’s image Working Mother from 2009 reflects this same sentiment but through the context of the first major economic crisis of the twenty first century.

Dorthea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. Photograph. Farm Security Administration collection, U.S. Library of Congress

It is important to note that many cultures do not use particular genres – portraiture, for example, in their art. For some cultures the representation of an actual human face is dangerous and can call up spirits who will want to live in the image: so their masks Links to an external site., while still face-like, are extremely stylized. Traditional Islamic images are forbidden to depict figures and other material objects. In their place artists use the genre of decoration.

 

The Third Level of Meaning: Context 

The decorative arts have meaning too, primarily in the functionality of the art works themselves, but also in the style and decorations afforded them. A goblet Links to an external site. from the 16th century has an aesthetic meaning in its organic form, in its function as a means to hold and dispense liquid, and a particular historical meaning in the way it is embellished with diamond point engravings that depict the flow of the river Rhine (click ‘zoom’ at the bottom of the image to see the goblet in detail).

The goblet’s detailed map of the Rhine gives it specific context: the historical, religious or social issues surrounding a work of art. These issues not only influence the way the viewer finds meaning in particular works of art but also how the artists themselves create them.

For instance, the hammered gold mask with cinnabar and copper inlay from Peru’s Sican Links to an external site. culture below is simple and symmetrical in form and striking in its visage. For the Sican people the mask represented either the Sican deity from the spiritual world or the lord of Sican, a man who represented the deity in the natural world. Masks were stacked at the feet of the dead lord in his tomb. In this cultural context the masks had significance in the life, death and spiritual worlds of the Sican people.

 

Xuan Che, Gold Mask

To view James Rosenquist’s painting F-111 Links to an external site. is to be confronted with a huge image of a fighter jet overlaid with images from popular culture, all in bright colors and seemingly without connection. But when we see the work in the context of American experience in the 1960’s we realize the two-pronged visual comment Rosenquist is making about war and consumerism; what he termed “a lack of ethical responsibility”*. In the artist’s hands the two ideas literally overlap each other: the salon hair dryer and diver’s bubbles mimic the mushroom cloud rising behind the opened umbrella (which is another formal link to the nuclear bomb blast behind it). The painting is at such a large scale that viewers are dwarfed by its overpowering presence Links to an external site..

*James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero, Notes on a Life in Art, 2009, Alfred A. Knopf, page 154.

The Fourth Level of Meaning: Iconography

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife, oil on panel, 1434. National Galery (London)

Each of the objects in this painting has a specific meaning beyond their imagery here. In fact, this painting is actually a painted marriage contract designed to solidify the agreement between these two families. It is especially important to remember that this is not a painting of an actual scene, but a constructed image to say specific things.

1. The single candle lit in the daylight (look at the chandelier) is a symbol of the bridal candle, a devotional candle that was to burn all night the first night of the marriage.
2. You notice that the bride is pregnant. She wasn't at the time of the painting but this is a symbolic act to represent that she will become fruitful.
3. The little dog at her feet is a symbol of fidelity, and is often seen with portraits of women paid for by their husbands.
4. The discarded shoes are often a symbol of the sanctity of marriage.
5. The chair back has a carving of St. Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth.
6. The orange on the windowsill and the rich clothing are symbols of future material wealth (in 1434 oranges were hand carried from India and very expensive).
7. The circular mirror at the back reflects both the artist and another man, and the artist's signature says "Jan van Eyck was present", both examples of witnesses for the betrothal pictured. (We don't think of this much anymore, but a promise to marry was a legal contract). The circular forms around the mirror are tiny paintings of the Stations of the Cross.
8. For a similar discussion of iconography in art, view and listen to the Smart History presentation about Robert Campin’s Renaissance-era painting the Merode Altarpiece. Links to an external site.

You can see how densely populated iconography in imagery can convey specific hidden meanings. The problem here is to know what all of this means if we want to understand the work. Understanding the context of the work will help. Another more contemporary painting with icons imbedded in it is Grant Wood’s American Gothic Links to an external site. from the 1930’s. The dower expressions on the figures’ faces signify the toughness of a Midwestern American farm couple. Indeed, one critic complained that the woman in the painting had a “face that could sour milk”. Notice how the trees and bushes in the painting’s background and the small cameo the woman wears mirror the soft roundness of her face: these traditional symbols of femininity carry throughout the work. In contrast, the man’s straight-backed stance is reflected in the pitchfork he holds, and again in the window frames on the house behind him. Even the stitching on his overalls mimics the form of the pitchfork. The arched window frame at the top center of the painting in particular is a symbol of the gothic architecture style Links to an external site. from 12th century Europe.

In addition, a popular genre in painting from 16th century northern Europe, especially the Netherlands, is known as vanitas Links to an external site. painting. These still life paintings are heavily dependant upon symbolic objects that project the joy and accomplishments life affords, yet at the same time remind us of our mortality. Edward Collier’s painting below is a good example of how crowded these could be.

Edward Collier, A Vanitas

The armor, weapons and medals show a focus on military accomplishments. The open book alludes to knowledge and in this case, the drawing of a canon mirrors the overall theme. The globe is a symbol of both travel and our common existence as earth-bound beings. Contemporary vanitas paintings could certainly include allusions to air and space travel. On the far right of the work, behind the book and in the shadows, lies a skull, again reminding us of the shortness of life and the inevitability of death.

We can use iconography to find meaning in artworks from popular culture too. The “Golden Arches” mean fast food, the silhouette of an apple (with a bite out of it) means a brand of computer, a single, sequined glove Links to an external site. stands for Michael Jackson, the ‘king of pop’ and the artist Andy Warhol’s soup can image forever links Campbell’s soup with Pop Art Links to an external site..

Critical Perspectives

From the first forms of art criticism in ancient Greece, the discussion of meaning in art has taken many directions. As we realized in above, the professional art critic is one of the gatekeepers who, through their writing, endorse or reject particular kinds of art, whether in style, artistic ability or message. In fact, a study of the different ways to look at art can tell us much about changing times and philosophies: the role of aesthetics, economics and other cultural issues have much to do with the origin of these philosophical positions. Of course, none of them are completely true but simply different types of discourse. People approach meaning from different perspectives. The artworks sit silent while all around them the voices change. We are at a time when there are several, sometimes greatly conflicting, ways of thinking about meaning in art. Here are six different perspectives art critics use as compasses to interpreting meaning:

 

Structural Criticism

We started this course with a discussion of what art is. That discussion was actually based on one of the ways to look at art: what is known as structuralism. Structuralism is based on the notion that our concept of reality is expressed through language and related systems of communication. On a larger scale, visualize culture as a structure whose foundation is language, speech and other forms of communication. When this approach is applied to the visual arts, the world of art becomes a collective human construction, where a single work needs to be judged within the framework supported by the whole structure of art. This structure is still based in language and knowledge and how we communicate ideas. I often use the example of the word "cowboy".

In your head: visualize a cowboy: then describe what you saw. What gender was your person? What race was this person? Now let’s apply those answers to historical fact. The fact is upwards of 60% of the historical cowboys in the United States were black slaves freed after the civil war. Did you see your cowboy as white?

Your idea of cowboy might have come from film, which is an extremely different form of reality. The structural idea manifests itself when we look for meaning in art based on any preconceived ideas about it we already have in our mind. These preconceptions (or limitations) are shaped by language, social interaction and other cultural experiences.

 

Deconstructive Criticism

Deconstructive criticism goes one step further, and posits that any work of art can have many meanings attached to it, none of which are limited by a particular language or experience outside the work itself. In other words, the critic must reveal (deconstruct) the structured world in order to knock out any underpinnings of stereotypes, preconceptions or myths that get in the way of true meaning. Taking the perspective of a deconstructive critic, we would view a portrait of Marilyn Monroe Links to an external site. by pop artist Andy Warhol as an imaginary construct of what is real. As a popular culture icon, Marilyn Monroe the movie star was ubiquitous: in film, magazines, television and photographs. But Marilyn Monroe the person committed suicide in 1962 at the height of her stardom. In truth, the bright lights and celebrity of her Hollywood persona eclipsed the real Marilyn, someone who was troubled, confused and alone. Warhol’s many portraits of her – each one made from the same publicity photograph –perpetuate the myth and cult of celebrity.

 

Formalist Criticism

Formalist criticism is what we engaged in when we looked at the elements and principles of art. Formalism doesn't really care about what goes on outside the actual space of the work, but finds meaning in its use of materials. One of the champions of the formalist approach was Clement Greenberg. His writing stresses “medium specificity”: the notion there is inherent meaning in the way materials are used to create the artwork. As is relates to painting and works on paper, the result is a focus on the two-dimensional surface. This is contrary to its traditional use as a platform for the illusion of depth. Formalism allows a more reasoned discussion of abstract and nonrepresentational art because we can approach them on their own terms, where the subject matter becomes the medium instead of something it represents. This is a good way to approach artworks from cultures we are not familiar with, though it has the tendency to make them purely decorative and devalue any deeper meaning. It also allows a kind of training in visual seeing, so it is still used in all studio arts and art appreciation courses.

Greenberg was a strong defender of the Abstract Expressionist style of painting that developed in the United States after World War II. He referred to it as “pure painting” because of its insistence on the act Links to an external site. of painting, eventually releasing Links to an external site. it from its ties to representation.

 

Ideological Criticism

Ideological criticism is most concerned with the relationship between art and structures of power. It infers that art is embedded in a social, economic and political structure that determines its final meaning. Born of the writings of Karl Marx Links to an external site., ideological criticism translates art and artifacts as symbols that reflect political ideals and reinforce one version of reality over another. A literal example of this perspective would view the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. as a testament to a political system that oppressed people because of race yet summoned the political will to set them free in the process of ending a Civil War.

Jeff Kubina, The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

In contrast, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Franzi in Front of a Carved Chair (below) from 1910 is also considered a symbol of artistic (hence, political) freedom. His Expressionist art – with its strong, sometimes arbitrary colors and rough approach to forms, was denounced by Nazi Germany as being “degenerate”. The Degenerate Art Show Links to an external site. of 1937 was a way for the German political establishment to label modern art as something evil and corrupt. Hitler’s regime was only interested in heroic, representational and idealistic images, something Kirchner was rebelling against. Kirchner and other Expressionist artists were marginalized and many of their works destroyed by the authorities.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franzi In Front of A Carved Chair, 1910, oil on canvas. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

 

Feminist Criticism

Feminist criticism began in the 1970's as a response to the neglect of women artists over time and in historical writings. This form of criticism is specific to viewing art as an example of gender bias in historical western European culture, and views all work as a manifestation of this bias. Feminist criticism created whole movements in the art world (specifically performance based art), and has changed over the last few years to include all underrepresented groups. Examples of feminist art include Judy Chicago’s large-scale installation The Dinner Party Links to an external site. and the work of Nancy Spero Links to an external site..

In reality, all of these critical perspectives hold some truth. Art is a multifaceted medium that contains influences from most all the characteristics of the culture it was created in, and some that transcend cultural environments. These perspectives, along with the different levels of meaning we explored in this module, help us to unravel some of the mysteries inherent in works of art, and bring us closer to seeing how art expresses feelings, ideas and experiences that we all share. In our search it is important to be aware of all the issues involved, take aspects of each critical position depending upon the work being viewed, the environment (and context) you’re seeing it in, and make up our own mind.

 

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