visual hermeneutics: rockwell's "triple self portrait"
TRANSCRIPT
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!