visual hermeneutics: rockwell's "triple self portrait"

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Reading Image as Argument

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Reading Image as Argument

Works of art speak to us in two ways:

1. Literal level: Their formal organization (lines,

shapes, colors, etc.), and

2. Figurative level: The signs, symbols and

metaphors that can be associated with them.

Art is most meaningful if it evokes emotive

reactions in the viewer. This occurs when we

venture beyond a work's basic elements and

how they are organized.

Images, photographs, paintings, billboards, advertisements, and films are all essentially arguments composed of visual-words: metaphors.

Interestingly enough, things (like words) have inherent properties we tend to associate with cultural values or interpretations. Metaphors reflect this connotative level of implicit meaning.

Which shape is Bouba?

Which shape is Kiki?

How did you come to that decision? What qualities of the objects factored in?

Writers, artists, & directors use our senses (concrete details, experiences) and instincts (value judgments: fear and attraction, pleasure and pain) to construct visual arguments out of familiar objects/images. The ubiquity of these things and their connotative meaning is why it is so easy for people to identify them as good/bad.

How many heroes are small? Weak? Disfigured? Old? Ugly? Unlikable?

Complex ideas and emotions are abstract—hard to pin down or explain. They are, thus, represented by archetypal symbols or characters instead, as the only way to convey those qualities to someone else is by creating the same kind of feeling in them. This is also why definitions and descriptions are so boring.

Art turns archetypes into visual texts in the same way that writers turn ideas into images.

How might an artist portray moral decay: goodness and badness within the individual?

What is decency? Virtue? Character?

Answers to questions like these are highly subjective and culturally bound, as is typical of all figurative levels of meaning (distinct from literal). However, there are certain universal conventions of representation in art.

Authors, like artists, tap into these shared taste preferences to examine ideas about themselves, the world, and themselves in the world.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Level 1—Literal Summary: the most obvious surface reading

Level 2—Metaphorical Figurative: symbolic connotations that

the literal things are meant to represent

Level 3—Allegorical Holistic: Moral of the story, the main idea

which is produced by combining all the parts (levels 1 + 2) into a narrative (plot)

Level 4—Anagogical Global: universal or archetypal principles

that apply broadly across all humannatures and civilizations

Literal definitions are the denotative meanings of objects or words—what is visible, obvious. D for definition → denotation

Figurative meaning is the connotative value of a word or symbol. These are emotional, cultural, social, or situational interpretations constructed through a various contexts (situations)—not fixed or permanent like a definition—what is submerged. C for cultural or contextual → connotation

To understand a visual text, you need to understand both and the difference between them. The literal level serves as a foundation for the metaphorical.

Before you can engage an image, you have to know what you are working with.

Start with a general theory about the main idea. ○ This is called a working thesis or a

hypo•thesis because it is not a finished claim, but just below (hypo-) one

Then define the major elements comprising the image to determine what its building blocks are.○ To do an analysis requires breaking down the whole to find the parts. Before you can

really discover what the moral of the Gestalt is, you have to figure out what its made of and how it works—how the parts functionally form the whole.

Once a general interpretation of the whole and a detailed account of parts have been exposed, metaphorical qualities that exist between those two extremes become accessible. You have to get the ideas out and define, describe—model or map them out—to see their relationships.

You cannot form a sound assessment of the main idea until you have broken the text down completely, examined it, and then put it back together. You need to be familiar with it to evaluate it. This deconstruction gets you to the next step.

Even after identifying three levels of textual meaning, there is more. You’ve only just begun to read the image, to get to know it intimately. Once you now the text though, you want to try and use it like a detective to find the author and situation.

What is the artist trying to communicate?

How does the artist attempt to convey his message?

Is the artist attempting to conform or break with tradition?

What are the artist’s motives?

What are the major elements of the image: Subject or focus

Foreground (framing)

Background

Conflict: obvious, hidden, fallacious

Color & Luminescence

Target Audience

Explicit Text: font, color, placement

Advertisements: More Explicit

Art: Very Implicit

All communication reflects its

particular time and place,

representing a people’s cultural and

social values, the limits of academic,

intellectual, and technological

developments, the environment, and

the language.

Without knowing the historical

situation that a text arose out limits

your ability to evaluate the success or

failure of an author or artist to

communicate his intended message

to the targeted audience.

We are all influenced by our

surroundings and past experiences,

knowing what major events might

have motivated the author may also

clue you in on who he’s speaking to.

Never, never, never is our goal in an analysis to judge a text or its message according to our own tastes or beliefs (opinion, doxa).

We are not analyzing how well it affirms or fails to validate what we want or assume to be true; that skews our observations.

Opinions cannot be argued, so they have no relevance in the context of academic analysis. Only objective, provable, illustrative evidence should be addressed: what is there.

Our goal is to speak exclusively about the HOW because its provable—discoverable within the text itself.

how the author constructs his argument:○ what tricks and techniques he uses and why,

○ what the author left out and why

○ what those parts of the whole suggest,

how the author combines the parts to make the whole

how successful the image/text is at getting its point across, and

how the text matters in a larger, cultural context.

Without thinking too much about it in

specific terms, I was showing the

America I knew and observed to

others who might not have noticed.

—Norman Rockwell

Reflect upon this image painted by the

great Americana (a style) painter

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978).

Here, the artist paints himself painting

himself watching himself painting. The

image on the canvas we can see

looks a bit more debonair. In the

corner, there are self portraits of

Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso,

and Van Gogh, all great masters. The

artist has stuff strewn about, what look

like smoke coming out of the waste

bin, and surrounds himself with

American and Greco-roman symbols.

What does this tell us about the artist,

how he sees himself, and how he

wants to be seen?

"Triple Self-Portrait“ (Feb. 30, 1960)Read about Rockwell here: Click Me!