Two considerations:
1. Allowing men and women into the field as players.
2. gender- not just tied up with men and women, part of culture on a wider scale, with cultural divisions and social structures enabling / disenabling gendered alternatives.
Standard histories of art don’t see art as a way of thinking about the world, adopts a practice very specific to particular practices, ie. Painting. The study of art should not just be about the materiality / the medium (the pigment etc)
How have people thought the world through forms of representation?
Painting: one of the major way in which people thought – the artistic discipline with the greatest cultural dominance. The modern alternative perhaps now being cinema and installation.
Why did painting become the dominant practice for the development of thought?
Image 1 . Diego De Silver Valasquez (1599-1660), Self portrait.
Self portrait of an artist- already a statement making the proposition of the I-ness of an artist. Linked to the development of authorship as a significance.
Concept of perpetual movement of the gaze.
viewer = seeing someone seeing – meeting the gaze (encountering the power of the gaze)
When we look at it we see a representation of the gaze.
Viewer found in the secondary space that the painting produces.
Reference to the history of covered paintings / veiled religious icons – the idea that one only meets the gaze of the subject at particular moments. Something has happened in the history of painting to open up the painting to viewing.
Valasquez is a pivotal figure in the history of painting – he creates work where we begin to see the pivotal motion of the gaze, with the viewer animating the life of the image. The images call upon the viewer to think subjective thought – invoking thoughts about life issues such as life and death.
16th / 17th Century marked a shift in the way of knowing things – as Foucault terms ‘the birth of classical representation’.
Painting exists not just as a set of illustrations, hence why it is difficult for us to say what we’re seeing.
Visibility / Invisibility
Space / question of space ]- all elements of painting.
The gaze
Velasquez – the court painter for Spain (Phillip IV) , so responsible for producing royal and sovereign images.
What is it that makes a sovereign body?
Velasquez attempts to find a visual representation in which you can experience the embodiment of power.
What are the rhetorics of representation that allow us to be in the presence of power?
The sovereign in very much represented in the masculine and the feminine (which is why portraits of Elizabeth I are so interesting)
Philip IV in Brown and Silver
c. 1631-32
Oil
199.5 x 113 cm National Gallery, London
When we look at it we see a representation of the gaze.
Viewer found in the secondary space that the painting produces.
Reference to the history of covered paintings / veiled religious icons – the idea that one only meets the gaze of the subject at particular moments. Something has happened in the history of painting to open up the painting to viewing.
Valasquez is a pivotal figure in the history of painting – he creates work where we begin to see the pivotal motion of the gaze, with the viewer animating the life of the image. The images call upon the viewer to think subjective thought – invoking thoughts about life issues such as life and death.
16th / 17th Century marked a shift in the way of knowing things – as Foucault terms ‘the birth of classical representation’.
Painting exists not just as a set of illustrations, hence why it is difficult for us to say what we’re seeing.
Visibility / Invisibility
Space / question of space ]- all elements of painting.
The gaze
Velasquez – the court painter for Spain (Phillip IV) , so responsible for producing royal and sovereign images.
What is it that makes a sovereign body?
Velasquez attempts to find a visual representation in which you can experience the embodiment of power.
What are the rhetorics of representation that allow us to be in the presence of power?
The sovereign in very much represented in the masculine and the feminine (which is why portraits of Elizabeth I are so interesting)
Philip IV in Brown and Silver
c. 1631-32
Oil
199.5 x 113 cm National Gallery, London
Male standing-upward force.Palpable, fresh, moist lips.
Queen Isabel
1632
Oil
132 x 101.5 cm
Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna
Confines of the skirt- boxed inset face- restricted.
Prince Felipe Prospero 1659 Oil 128.5 x 99.5 cm
Infanta Margaritac. 1656
Oil105 x 88 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Representation of children – formality of the baby body. With structured garments acting as a strength against the fragility of the child’s body. Shows children entering into a marked out gendered world.How do you embody . signify power?
Also relevant to landscape painting – a form which simultaneously shows itself as a painting and as a world with the painting oscillating backward and forwards between these two things. You can’t see the world without seeing the paint.
Velasquez
Marsc. 1639-41Oil181 x 99 cmMuseo del Prado, Madrid
Former militarised masculinity not present in the same way. An aging Mars, showing bare feet, who has pathetically left his helmet on. Seems lost in the darkness, in melancholy – completely undercutting what should be in his function.Nonetheless, he is still upright (taking the masculine form) whilst Ve;asquez representation of Venus is along the horizontal plane.
Velasquez
Venus at Her Mirror ("The Rokeby Venus")
c. 1644-48Oil122.5 x 177 cm
National Gallery, London
Back view prevents the artist from having to represent the Venus Pudica pose.
Looking in the mirror- she bcomes the figure who is locked into the circular gaze – the virtual space in the painting for which the gaze can exist.
How does the painting produce the volume for this space – in or out of the painting?
Early and late paintings of Velasquez – exploring the potential for representing different worlds.
Foucault Essay
Starts with a description- looks systematically.
There is nothing in the painting that is not significant.
- Position – posture of the artist already inserts into the painting the act of looking between the artist and the canvas and the model (or the viewer – the subject of the artist’s gaze)
Through describing / tracking the painting we are working through what it is that the painting proposes.
The shell shape – creating volume in the space of the canvas.
Light
The mirror? – an image , of luminous quality showing two figures – the models(?)
The space within the frame of the painting consists of essentially four spaces: the back space (in which the silhouetted figure stands), the centre space, the forward space (reflected back into the centre / back space by the presence of the mirror, and then forward again) and the (imaginary) space contained within the artist’s canvas.
The viwer thinks that we are summoned to be the model in the construction, yet the mirror changes this.
It is the mirror which holds the representation of the sovereign body and the sovereign gaze.
Illustrating the moment in which the painter thinks what the next gesture he makes is is a moment that brings into being the making / production of the thought. Reminding us that representation is produced.
What method does Foucault give you for examining paintings?
- Descriptive element of great importance.
- Paintings anticipate being looked at.
- We must allow paintings to do their work
- We must try to see what the painting does
- We must recognise the level at which the painting works.
Back view prevents the artist from having to represent the Venus Pudica pose.
Looking in the mirror- she bcomes the figure who is locked into the circular gaze – the virtual space in the painting for which the gaze can exist.
How does the painting produce the volume for this space – in or out of the painting?
Early and late paintings of Velasquez – exploring the potential for representing different worlds.
Foucault EssayStarts with a description- looks systematically.
There is nothing in the painting that is not significant.
- Position – posture of the artist already inserts into the painting the act of looking between the artist and the canvas and the model (or the viewer – the subject of the artist’s gaze)
Through describing / tracking the painting we are working through what it is that the painting proposes.
The shell shape – creating volume in the space of the canvas.
Light
The mirror? – an image , of luminous quality showing two figures – the models(?)The space within the frame of the painting consists of essentially four spaces: the back space (in which the silhouetted figure stands), the centre space, the forward space (reflected back into the centre / back space by the presence of the mirror, and then forward again) and the (imaginary) space contained within the artist’s canvas.
The viwer thinks that we are summoned to be the model in the construction, yet the mirror changes this.
It is the mirror which holds the representation of the sovereign body and the sovereign gaze.
Illustrating the moment in which the painter thinks what the next gesture he makes is is a moment that brings into being the making / production of the thought. Reminding us that representation is produced.
What method does Foucault give you for examining paintings?
- Descriptive element of great importance.
- Paintings anticipate being looked at.
- We must allow paintings to do their work
- We must try to see what the painting does
- We must recognise the level at which the painting works.
No comments:
Post a Comment