Birgit asked if anyone employed a strongly contrasting treatment between the illuminated and the shadowed side of an object as seen in Morandi’s late painting. I’ve been tripping over a painting, that I did a few years ago, that might fill the bill.
It’s a relic of a brief fascination that I had with graffiti cut into the bark of trees. In this case I followed the dictates of my camera in b/w mode. I projected the image onto plywood and created a relief effect in the darks. The camera saw no distinction in value on the lit side and I did the same. Birgit, does this simple example qualify?
Jay,
Fabulous! It vibrates with energy.
I rotated the picture vertically so that the dark edge is on the left. It is not as good. The dark edge must be on the right.
Could this have something to do with an effect that we discussed a while ago: the right and left side of a picture have different dominance, a feature used in advertising?
In the two pictures of ‘Morandi – late work’, both of the vessels also dissolve to the left.
Ah, Birgit, I missed this in the earlier discussion: “the right and left side of a picture have different dominance.” Now I have to go out and check it out in my own stuff.
Merci! So much to think about.
jay, certainly what you did here has to qualify as losing an edge. Is this the photograph or the relief in wood?
And further, what does it mean to have one edge severely delineated where the other disappears? I mean, what does it mean besides the fact that advertisers have found this a useful mode…. Is it a function of our eyes’ desire to “stop” imagery, which can’t be stopped when the lines are equally distinct (I’m back to monocular, fixed views versus binocular saccadic visions). Just pondering.
Jay,
This is indeed like the Morandi jug Birgit showed in detail. I’ve had an interest in carved trees as well, but haven’t seen anything so initial-laden as yours. I did come across some nice bear scratches, though.
I don’t seem to remember anything about right vs. left being discussed before, other than the general tendency to scan the way we read a page. I think most of Morandi’s still lifes were set up the same way in his little studio. In the case of Jay’s tree, I’ve reversed it left for right, which doesn’t change as many things as rotating it does:
It certainly seems to feel different. With Jay’s version, assuming reading left-to-right, you drift into the image and then come up against the harder boundary; it feels solid. When reversed, you first hit the dark edge and think you’re dealing with a massive object, but then it starts bleeding away… How does it work for others?
Steve,
An intuitive way of thinking about right/left differences
assuming reading left-to-right, you drift into the image and then come up against the harder boundary; it feels solid.
I briefly mused whether Chinese people would feel differently than Westerners but then I found that
Chinese characters, Japanese kana, and Korean hangul can be written horizontally or vertically
June:
Indeed it was the product of my old Olympus digital. The left edge of the tree simply disappeared. Somehow, the idea of a human mark, in the form of the graffiti, impressed upon a living being in the process of living and dying, caught my attention. I guess that tattoos would qualify as well, but they tend to be contrived and not so much the product of impulse as tree carvings are. Given that mind set, I was intrigued by the way that the foreshortened marks, going around the left side, seemed to drift off into a space – an evocation of memory dissolving in time.
Birgit:
The layout of newspapers and magazines is influenced by where readers first look and where they tend to give most attention. Below the fold is a less important part of a front page.
You’ll likely beat me to this, but I simply have to rummage around for Oriental work to see if I can discern an effect. Just looked at Japanese Decorative Style by Sherman Lee, which contains a number of paintings, to find that artists in that context appear to have consciously handled edges so as to create a neutral effect. Perhaps drawing, as it were, with brushstrokes tends to obviate the left/right issue.
Steve:
Flipping the tree makes the image more stimulating. Unfortunately, the graffiti now reads backwards. Makes me think of how the Beatles, to give them too much credit, fooled around with playing voices backward. Turns out that we tend to build up to a (plosive?) when enunciating, which then becomes a sudden sound followed by a tailing away in the reverse playback.
May be that your area doesn’t grow smooth-barked trees. I would have to take an adze to hack the oak in the back to make a mark.
June:
Somehow missed your question. It’s actually a painting, generated through dabbing about in the flat sections and rubbing paint onto the raised areas.