Art & Perception

‘What one must paint is the image of resemblance—if thought is to become visible in the world. ‘        —Rene Magritte
 

Semiotics is the study of works of art signs and symbols, either individually or grouped in sign systems that can give us more insight from the work source and meaning. All painters work in a pictorial language by following a set of standards, basics and rules of picture-making. There is a big resemblance between pictorial image making and the creation of written language, the study of this nature of what consists and the individual components of pictorial and written language is known as Semiotics.

Semiotics can translate a picture from an image into words. Visual communication terms and theories come from linguistics, the study of language, and from semiotics, the science of signs. Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no natural meaning and become signs only when we provide them with meaning.

The semiotic theories are not definite but constantly being reviewed, extended and developed to become more precise and improve the significance of the information gathered when these theories are applied to works of art.

Visual Art consumers have become highly sophisticated readers of signs and signals, decoding subconsciously art work compositions. Everything surrounding us human beings today, including our own identities are all moulded and manipulated by signs, words, images and our visual language.

Communication can be a form of mind control; the one that has the power to speak higher and have the right speech can have a power over others in a certain way by making the individual point stand above all. The same happens with artworks with a conceptual meaning that stand and activate other people’s minds.

Different media carries different meanings despite the message content. Each form of media explores these meanings in the way the subject is represented and the context in which it appears. Visual language covers a whole range of different social mediums from low culture advertising, comic books and television to high culture like galleries and theatres. Visual signs look for the possibility of a language that already exists and is used already by a large amount of people connected or not with the arts and the media. The linguistic sign consists of content like sense and meaning of an expression like letters or sounds. Language is ruled by strong codes or rules and becomes complicated when we look at it in the form of visual artworks. It becomes a translation from linguistic to visual expression and the forms are as random as in linguistic signs.

Icons as a form of semiotics are all kinds of pictures representing an object like photos, drawings and paintings. Most pictures have a double meaning; visual and symbolic, conventional and arbitrary. Everyone knows, for example, that a picture of an old woman with a broom it is just a picture of an old woman but it can be perceived as a picture of a witch. Modern advertising is filled with this type of signage that holds double meanings.

Normally it is thought of as language in relation to pictures, very straight forward and clear where the visual language is an expression of emotional, deeper thoughts or even ambiguous ideas. It is then that visual expression needs the linguistic explanation to clear up the superfluous meaning. For example, in advertising, a linguistic message always comes attached to the advertisement in order to help establish the picture being shown.

So this form of anchorage of meaning opens us up to not only one, but several meanings without unsettling the main indented meaning; it forces the mind to interpret the media in a most complex and accurate way.

Pictorial Semiotics is often concerned with the study of pictures into a more constructive verbal description while maintaining confidence in the objectivity of the practice. A linguistic community that speaks the same language is a group of people making verbal agreements, speaking similarly as long the community lasts. Small changes are easily adopted and taken positively and are adjustable. The idea of representation by chance, where things do not follow rules but are used as signs is however very explored in the visual arts. This is where the principles of semiotics come in use; to map out and decode as a discipline.

The paintings of Rene Magritte for example in his series called ‘ The key of dreams (1930)’ show a collection of objects illustrated and labelled just like in a child’s learning picture book. They are all incorrectly described except for one of them. the As another example he paints a standard side view of a head of a horse against a black background with white writings and labels it ‘a door’, all of this with a primary aesthetic. These violations of representation are playing up with our early impingement teaching of associating names with the correct class objects that are part of our visual culture since childhood. Of course we grow up taking this for granted but Magritte with this illustration is showing us in a great way how resemblance, symbols and signs are often just representations of the real things.

Magritte in ‘The Betrayal of Images‘(1929) makes a painting of a simple pipe, a side view well illustrated with the phrase underneath saying’ This is not a pipe’. This text is neither true nor false and explores a new science of representation and signing. Is the painting a pipe or a depiction of a pipe? Yes, it is not the physical reality of a pipe, it is a representation of a pipe, a painting of it, a signifier for it but not the real thing. Would that still make it a pipe or should we call it something else?

Magritte had a special talent to make objects look mysterious and magical, and his objects are carefully chosen and depicted in a school textbook way. The ‘Pipe’ painting is a good example of how conventional imagery often betrays us all by making everyone realize that it is just a convention and not a real object. In my opinion I think Magritte was trying to make us all aware of the signs and symbols we often take for granted in our everyday lives.

This is a classical association for artists to make out the difference between the signifiers and the signified. A sign is something that stands for something other than itself; we interpret things as signs naturally by relating them to familiar systems or conventions.

It is fitting, I think, to follow a post on vanity with a self portrait.

Self Portrait, February 2007, Charcoal on Paper, 9×12

This is no vanity picture, however.
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guest post by Lisa Hunter

Why does a museum curator choose one artist’s work over another’s? What themes or subject matter are dealers so sick of that they won’t even consider your slides?

From responses to my book The Intrepid Art Collector and discussion on my blog, I have learned that artists often don’t know the answers to these types of questions. Instead, there is widespread confusion about the inner workings of the art world. This is unfortunate because, if you are an artist, what you don’t know can hurt you.

Where should artists go to learn more about how the art world works? A contemporary art museum recently asked me to consult on how they can make their website more popular. It occurred to me that what would make a museum site interesting is if it were a place not simply to learn what art is in the museum, but why that art is the museum. To explain the “why,” I want to interview curators and ask them to explain how they picked a particular work of art for their museum (where they heard of it, what made it stand out from the others). I want to interview the artists whose work gets into the contemporary museums to find out how they “made it,” how they broke out of the pack of artists with the same goal.

Can you imagine visiting a museum website to find out how the art world really works?

Here are some other topics I could write about in depth for the museum’s site. Which of these would interest you the most?

• Should artists donate their art to museums, and if so, will the museum actually exhibit it?
• Are some artists better off outside of major art centers, where “locals” get more attention from museums?
• What are the options for artists whose work is out of fashion at the moment?
• Does being an assistant to a major artist lead to career opportunities, or does it tar you as a “fabricator”?
• How important is an artist’s personality? (I can already answer this one — it’s critical. One curator I know won’t even consider showing someone who’s “difficult” to work with). How can you avoid making enemies without being a phony?
• Why do curators seem to favor young artists? And how can a mid- career artist break out? Is it too late?
• What type of paid-gallery rip-offs do artists need to beware of?
• Which prizes and competitions actually mean something to major curators and dealers?

Please let me know what you think. At this early stage in thinking about the museum’s website, your feedback would be extremely valuable.

I’ve always had this interest in how I might be able to tell a story in my paintings, without having to layout every detail.

This painting is a “work in progress” and for me it’s about distance. The two figures have adopted the same stance and maybe for different reason. Because they appear to be in the same location/room, they are together. I will find out what they are about as I continue to paint. Figuring out the story is one of the most enjoyable parts of painting for me.

Sometimes when no one loves you, vanity is a wonderful thing. At times, it is even good to be self deluded. Seeing your own work as worthwhile, even great, when no one else does can be all you have. Vanity can get you through hard times. Vanity is useful. It is a survival tool.

Gustave Courbet, “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet,” 1854, Oil on canvas, 129 x 149 cm, Musee Fabre, Montpellier

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Reflections inspire much of my work, both in my photography and in my writing.  I’m much more intrigued by the subject’s reflection than I am by the subject itself.

Mirrors

My maternal grandmother Luba Abramanova (made Lilly on 1922 Ellis Island) maintained an uncomfortable truce with mirrors  and cameras, anything that would reflect her image.  Mirrors served an occasionally necessary function and were to be barely tolerated.  Shop windows and reflecting pools were easily avoided. Cameras were–in her estimation–nothing more than mirrors that rudely captured a permanent record of the reflection.  We’ve all heard stories about primitive tribes and their superstitious notion that cameras can steal the soul.  And then of course we have legends of vampires and their inability to even cast a reflection.  Jews have no depictions of humans in their art for fear of violating the Ten Commandment’s prohibition against “idolatry”.  Narcissus couldn’t free his own gaze from the reflection in the pool and now he lives in flower pots. Medusa, rendered powerless by her own reflection, was easily slain by Perseus. The mirror defeated the Gorgon.  Lilly was clearly on to something important.

Other than the customary bathroom cabinet mirror, the only other mirror in Lilly’s home was a huge Venetian smoked glass decorative mirror hanging over her living room couch at an angle rather than flat against the wall.  The mirror was unapproachable.  Tilting off the wall as it did, it seemed an odd position for such a big and ominous slab of glass and as a child I often wondered when it would come crashing down on the sofa and some foolish shortsighted victim. For that reason, I never sat on the sofa.  If all the chairs were taken at a family gathering, I would sit on the floor pretending to be an Indian.  Adults would buy that and think it cute.

Occasionally someone would comment on the Venetian mirror’s limited decorative role.  Why not hang a painting instead?  Between the odd angle, the couch that kept you at a distance from the mirror and the muted lighting in the living room, you really couldn’t see your own reflection in any practical sense.  It wasn’t until I was 16 that I realized that the mirror was deliberately angled in that manner so that Lilly could see the dress she was wearing, but not her own face.  She had hung the mirror according to her own height so that her reflection was effectively cut off at the head. more… »

I ran into Art & Perception quite by accident – when I was doing one of those interminable searches that we are accustomed to doing on the internet for all things ‘art’, I remember skimming through some of the contents and I slowly found myself thinking that this was a bit different from other artist-group-hangouts that I had seen. Most would either fall into a category where a bunch of art students would get together to discuss class projects or the others were those that really did not stimulate thinking or original flow of ideas. I knew that I had found a group with tendencies to originality in Art and Perception and decided to keep up with the posts and little by little started commenting on the posts. I was very surprised and happy when Karl wrote to me the other day and asked if I would like to become a contributor to this site and asked me to write a guest post. I mulled for a coupe of days on how best I present myself and thought that the best way to get this going was to talk a bit about myself and a bit about questions that have been plaguing me with respect to art. This way it will serve both as an introduction and as a post that will serve to fuel further discussion (which is the objective of this group – right?)

First and foremost, I am not really one of those ‘trained’ artists. I have a background in Mechanical Engineering and have been working for the last fourteen years (a good 4 years at the Indian Space Agency and most recently about 8 years on Wall Street). I spent about two years in between getting a Masters in Mechanics. Even though I did not get a chance to express myself as much as I do now, I had a lurking genie in me that always wanted to experiment. I experimented with poetry, writing, drawing, cooking and even marathon running. I found out that I was fairly good at some and used to suck at some of the others. I even remember resigning from my job with the Indian Space Agency and devoting myself to the ‘arts’ but could not really manage the monthly bread effectively. In fact at one point I even decided that I will throw it all away, join med school, become a doctor and go away and work for doctors without borders.

Sensible advice prevailed (from my family – primarily my wife)… The one avocation that stayed consistently with me through the years was my love for painting. This was pure joy as in the kind that you experience when you are with your son or daughter and do things sincerely even if you do not expect anything in return because your heart tells you to just do it. It seems right from the point of view of virtue, truth and beauty.So much for the high road and myself, but I think that it is precisely these qualities that seem to be divorced from the current art establishment. Discussion setups like Art and Perception seem like a good mature place to exchange a round of ‘straight from the heart’ delivery that seem to be missing from today’s politically correct world.

That said, the issues that seem to be nagging me are as follows:

1. Why are art schools in the United States so devoted to churning out people (read artists and I have a vision of the video from Wall (Pink Floyd) that has children rolling off the meat grinder) that are focused towards how best they present their work at major galleries and how best to please and amuse collectors and curators when schools should really be looking to foster the creativity of the individual involved? Why are we trying to get sensibilities that are more at home in an MBA program into art schools?
2. It looks like money (read hedge fund managers) is the new art critic. Are all of us collectively turning stupid in the sense that we sometimes (blindly) follow/collect worthless styles/pieces of art because that is where the money is headed? Why do we display a pack rat mentality when it comes to appraising the value of art and an artist by extension?
3. Why is banal art on the rise? Why do we see instances where artists (and some fairly famous ones) give opaque descriptions that seem to be craftily tuned towards appeasing the ears and the sensitivities of the art establishment and try and explain that the significance behind a couple of squiggles on canvas is life in all its forms when it really looks a muddy footed poodle accidentally walked across it?
4. Do you think that a movement can grow from the grassroots in the United States that restores art to what it really should be – ‘art for arts sake’ or is this too lofty a goal to think about especially in this industrially advanced age where today’s fads in one part of the world may already be obsolete yesterday in another part?

Here was a forum where I could ask questions like this and people would take some of these issues seriously or give it the attention that it merits – but nevertheless answer from their hearts.I also think that this might be a suitable forum where I can get to show some of my artworks to an audience that I seem to like and respect. So here goes. I am including four paintings that I have done over the last year in this post and I will continue to post as and when I feel the issues burn and well inside of me or when I turn out newer works. None of these paintings are for sale and I do it primarily because it brings me peace. My wife and my two year old son also enjoys some of my paintings though not necessarily my opinions…