20,000 Year Non-Linear History of The Image - Lecture Notes.

(To be read alongside the powerpoint)

•   Lascaux caves, France, first known drawings to western scholars.
• ·     Richard Long, Red Earth Circle, magiciens de la terre, accused of cultural appropriation
  ·         Connection to modern and ancient art
  ·         Rothko – Religious/emotional experience. People crying when they view his work because they are expected to. The context that the paintings are viewed in, they are viewed as images of suicide, transcending the literal flat plane of colour.
  ·         Papal altar and frescoes interior of the basilica of Francis Assisi, the art and the décor used to make people feel lesser than the Gods, displayed a potent image of power
  ·         Mona Lisa - Bogus religiosity - famous because of culture.
  ·          Marcel duchamp attack on convention (graffiti mona lisa)
  ·         Graffiti, taking art and creativity out of an elitist setting.
  ·         Banksy is being placed back into galleries – re appropriation
  ·         Puts artists on a pedestal to say that their method transcends painting and is a reflection of the deep primal urge to create art and is spiritual/a record of the psyche.
  ·         “exemplar of the free mind of the western world” – Jackson Pollock
  ·         Stalin banned avant garde work as it was not understandable to the average man, incomprehensible.
  ·         Socialist realism, propaganda?  
  ·         Images that are re-contextualised are also neutralised
  ·         Shepard Fairey re-contextualised his own image
  ·         Gillray did more than anyone to bring napoleon down
  ·         Der fuehrers face – Donald duck in Natzi land – Disney 1943 mein kampf
  ·         L’atelier populaire 1968
  ·         Sois juene at tais toi ‘be young and shut up’
  ·         Images have the power to change and rewrite history and consolidate a based view.
  ·         Constable 1821 depicted an image of tranquillity in a time of rioting and unrest
  ·         Art commissioned to display wealth and power
  ·         Advertising shows a perfect world in which we can attain via consumption making us feel incomplete without said product.
  ·         Gang rape as a form of advertising – dolce and gabbanna
  ·         Exploiting a misogynistic sexuality
  ·         United colours of Benetton Oliviero Toscani
  ·         Exploiting the death of one for personal gain or trying to reach out to humanity?
  ·         Mortem photography – Victorian post – cheated death.

Visual Literacy Lecture Notes

Visual literacy lecture notes

• The ability to construct meaning from visual images and type, interpreting images of the present past and a range of cultures producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience and the ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image.

• Based on the idea that images can be read.

• The only thing needed if for an agreement between a group of people that one thing stands for another.

• To make the visual communication effective an understanding of the meanings of the images is needed so that the audience sees the right thing.

• Images with multiple meanings can be put into context by the use of other images.

• Colour can also give context images with multiple meanings 

• Colour form and format can be manipulated to change meaning 

• Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship between visual syntax and visual semantics 

• Visual syntax refers to the pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements It represents the basic building blocks of an image that affect the way we 'read' it.

• These elements include: framing - format - scale - colour - font - stroke - weight - shape - composition - layout - motion - light - rhythm -  space - depth - texture - text - words - tone - shade - line - mark - direction - editing - manipulation - simplification - emphasis layering - hierarchy etc

• The semantics of an image refers way an image fits into a cultural process of communication. It includes the relationship between form and meaning and the way meaning is created through:

• These elements include: cultural references - social ideals - religious beliefs - political ideas - historical structures - iconic forms - social interaction - individual experience - recognised symbols - established signs etc

• Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

• Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which studies the structure and meaning of language.

• Semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy

• Visual elements of semiotics include: symbol, sign, signifier, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche. 

• A metonym is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance, "Westminster", a borough of London in the United Kingdom, could be used as a metonym for its government.

• (A synecdoche (meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something, or vice versa.