Communication, Computing, and Technology
TU5000: Proseminar Autumn 1995
Art Experience: Description and assignment specifics
Introduction
Given the way images are used to persuade and to convey meaning, those anxious to enhance a technologically transmitted or stored message routinely incorporate images wherever imagery seems likely to be useful to a message's purpose. As the tools for manipulating and even creating images become ever easier to use and capable of enhancing the end product with more immediately attractive attributes like more colors, bigger size, finer resolution, and so forth, we can expect a further increase in the number of images produced and packaged as part of a wide range of communication. At the same time, perhaps because art has not been funded at a very high level nor been given much priority in education in the U.S. , most people, even those making the images, are relatively ignorant about images. They have not considered: (1) what images communicate and how, (2) what the long history of image development by humans suggests about what makes a good image, nor (3) how this development led to the current state of imagery. Since many of you will be influential in making and using the newer technically-supported images, a portion of the Proseminar is devoted to considering exactly these things.
Here in New York City, we have some of the finest art museums in the world, encompassing perhaps the richest range of human-created images on earth. One of the proseminar's objectives is therefore to use this wealth to begin reducing our relative ignorance of such images, thereby improving the images you all may be associated with producing. There are many possible ways to approach this, given the richness of resources surrounding us. This year we have chosen to do it through informed visits to two of the museums, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA). Because most people find understanding the images represented by so-called "modern" art the most difficult, the Proseminar reading material focuses on such art. It features the excellent How to look at modern art by Philip Yenawine, a former director of education at MOMA. Fortuitously, this particular book, in order to suggest how "modern" art is actually art, suggests what art in general is, merely explicating the ideas in the context of "modern" art. What one gleans from studying this text and the art it specifically references, therefore, prepares one very well for considering art in general. In addition to this reading, class members should also bring to bear on their art experience two other readings: (1) the short essay by Sir Kenneth Clark, What is a masterpiece?, and (2) from Howard Gardner's Frames of mind, Part I and the chapter, Spatial intelligence.
To capitalize on the readings, you should read them before visiting the museums. Caution: do not try to do two visits in one day - it's too much for the mind and body to absorb. After you have read Yenawine's book, then begin your visits, going to MOMA first, focusing your visit on reviewing the ideas you get from Yenawine and some of the works he mentions which you find on display (not all works of that, or any museum are ever on display at the same time). In particular, be sure to look carefully at some work by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, Kandinsky, Gorky, Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Johns, noting the movement away from anything like photographic representation.
The visit to MMA should focus on gaining a sense of the development of visual images over the last 5000 years, by viewing a selection of the thousands of artifacts that effectively convey this sense. Careful examination of the some works in the following galleries, is all most of you will manage in one visit: (1) the Ancient Near East, (2) the Islamic section, (3) European Paintings gallery, and (4) the Twentieth Century. All these galleries are on the second floor and contain together hundreds of works. As listed here, the four represent a chronological sequence, though some articles in the Islamic section overlap with the European paintings. Viewing the galleries in this order, if you note the dates when thing were created as you move through the gallery, will help you gain a sense of the development of visual images, across the centuries.
Go through each gallery overall, cursorily, to get an overview of the period and types of work included - what they are made from, how representative of "real" objects or nature are they, what purpose do they seem to have had, and so forth. And as you move, consider of course the ideas you have gotten from Yenawine's book. But there are far too many aritifacts for you to look at all of them closely. Aside from glancing as you move through and noting more carefully those that strike you as interesting, which of them should you view carefully?
Ancient Near East
There are many interesting things in this set of rooms, but among them you should definitely note these: the very oldest tiny artifacts, including the reclining female figure and the glass jar (6000 to 4000 b.c.), the early written tablets dealing (naturally) with administration and property (from 3000 b.c), the collections of cylindrical seals (from 2500 b.c. onwards), the Arsenical copper head (2250 b.c.), and the giant wall friezes and standing five-legged man-beast sentinels from Assurnasripal's palace complex (800 b.c.). Together, these works span a period of significant human change, unequaled in history before that. Aside from cave and rock paintings, most art we are familiar with grew up in the world after the rise of cities. This gallery contains a significant representation of that early art and reflects the fact that the cities arose in Mesopotamia first , around 3000 b.c.
Islamic Art
Merely get an overview, note the importance of Arabic writing on many of the artifacts, and the prevalence of geometric and plant representation as decoration rather than human or animal forms. Writing on images continues to come and go right up to the present time, often, as in some of these delicate cases, as an integral part of the image. Note as you move how widely spread Islam became and how it interacted with a number of of earlier cultures, right from its inception, incorporating their ideas of images and their techniques for image creation, modified to suit the various world views of different groups of Muslims.
European Paintings gallery (not the Nineteenth century European paintings and sculpture)
Note especially the works by Petrus Christus, Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, and Rogier van der Weyden, and their workshops and assistants (largely in two rooms of this gallery). These north European painters carried on and pushed further the work of earlier artists in southern Europe, producing a new a flowering of portrait painting and advancing the ideas of perspective in painting, helping to foster strong representation (e.g., photographic-like realism) in art. There are also several masterpieces by Christus and Memling downstairs, in a single room of the Robert Lehman wing, should you care to see them. Here in these portraits and other works, too, we see a strong movement away from the ruler and church subject matter which had dominated European art for centuries, to subjects that prosperous patrons outside the church would underwrite.
Nineteenth century European paintings and sculpture
You will pass this gallery on the way to Twentieth Century. It contains many masterpieces, so you may want to check your understanding of Kenneth Clark's book but looking at several. However, it might be best to severely restrict any detour here, to just a few works by painters in this gallery who prepared for the Twentieth Century. Perhaps the most important in some ways would be van Gogh and Cezanne. So if you still have energy and interest, before proceeding to the Twentieth Century, look a the display works of these two artists. If you do, note the way van Gogh seemed to focus on color and how is rapid execution of works left many traces of the painter's brush and working style. With Cezanne, note the movement away from straight perspective and accurate single view outlines of his scenery and characters to a featuring of slabs or planes of different colors in his landscapes and buildings and a convenient distortion of perspective in tables and still-life arrangements to give unusual views of people and objects that move toward several perspectives (above and from the sides, even while mainly oriented to a straight ahead viewpoint).
Twentieth Century Gallery
Do the entire section of Twentieth Century works on the second floor, noting especially the works by painters you also saw at MOMA. In particular, notice the works by painters mentioned above in the note on MOMA, and end your visit before the giant painting by Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, remembering Yenawine's excellent discussion of why Pollock's work like this is art and not something that one's kindergartners could do. But more than that, sit down on the bench before this painting and think about all the work you have looked at, the work that represents human visual creation for the last 5000 years or so. How did we get here from the tiny figures made so long ago, the figures you saw among the earliest in ancient near east? And what is the relation of this long journey of image development to the images we are seeing, and sometimes helping to create, today, on television, in multimedia, and through telecommunications?
The Art Assignment
Your essay must refer specifically to art you studied, must refer to the references assigned, in a reasonable fashion, and should be between 3 and 5 pages. It should reflect your reactions to the development of visual images over the centuries represented. It should also reflect upon how you see the art images you have studied impacting upon image making and using in video, software, and multi-media products. This may involve your discussing how earlier images seem to have influenced today's technology-supported images and today's image makers, or how today's image makers might profit from better knowledge of journey of image development you have just completed. You should conclude by thoughtfully reflecting on what all this suggests about the need for people to become more imagate, just as the importance of writing raised the need for people to become literate. If you are so moved and have time, you may wish to view some of the new multimedia packages that present art, such as Microsoft's piece on the London National Gallery, or the new piece on the Barnes Collection.
References:
Clark, Kenneth What is a masterpiece? Thames and Hudson: New York 1981.
Gardner, Howard Frames of mind. Part I and the chapter: Spatial Intelligence especially.
Yenawine, Philip How to look at modern art New York: Harry Abrams 1991