(Re-)Creating Order: Narrativity and Implied World Views in Pictures

Tekstualia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (43) ◽  
pp. 57-78
Author(s):  
Michael Ranta
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art History ◽  
Schema Theory ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
World Views ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
High Level

The philosophical debate on the nature of narrative has been mainly concerned with literary narratives, whereas forms of non-literary and especially pictorial narrativity have been rather neglected. Within traditional art history, however, the narrative potential of the visual arts has usually been taken for granted, though rarely by attempting to elucidate any deeper cognitive, semiotic, and philosophical aspects involved. Now, generally speaking, narratives contribute to the human endeavour to reduce the unpredictability of worldly changes, and human existence in particular, attempting to establish order in our experiences of transitoriness and existential vulnerability. The paper discusses some possible criteria of narrativity with regard to their applicability to pictorial objects. It demonstrates thatpictorial works may express or imply high- -level narrative structures or, put in another way, wider world views or schemata, and that our comprehension of and need for these schemata can be explained by taking recent research within cognitive psychology, schema theory, and narratology into account.

Art, History, and Postwar Fiction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Brazil
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
New Left ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
William Gaddis ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship

Art, History, and Postwar Fiction explores the ways in which novelists responded to the visual arts from the aftermath of the Second World War up to the present day. If art had long served as a foil to enable novelists to reflect on their craft, this book argues that in the postwar period, novelists turned to the visual arts to develop new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between literature and history. The sense that the novel was becalmed in the end of history was pervasive in the postwar decades. In seeming to bring modernism to a climax whilst repeating its foundational gestures, visual art also raised questions about the relationship between continuity and change in the development of art. In chapters on Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, John Berger, and W. G. Sebald, and shorter discussions of writers like Doris Lessing, Kathy Acker, and Teju Cole, this book shows that writing about art was often a means of commenting on historical developments of the period: the Cold War, the New Left, the legacy of the Holocaust. Furthermore, it argues that forms of postwar visual art, from abstraction to the readymade, offered novelists ways of thinking about the relationship between form and history that went beyond models of reflection or determination. By doing so, this book also argues that attention to interactions between literature and art can provide critics with new ways to think about the relationship between literature and history beyond reductive oppositions between formalism and historicism, autonomy and context.

scholarly journals The role of schemas and scripts in pictorial narration

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ranta
Keyword(s):  
Decisive Role ◽  
Schema Theory ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Event Sequences ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Northwestern University ◽  
Generalized Knowledge

Abstract The theoretical debate on the nature of narrative has been mainly concerned with literary narratives, whereas forms of non-literary and especially pictorial narrativity have been somewhat neglected. In this paper, however, I shall discuss narrativity specifically with regard to pictorial objects in order to clarify how pictorial storytelling may be based on the activation of mentally stored action and scene schemas. Approaches from cognitive psychology, such as the work of Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Mandler, Jean Matter. 1984. Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. London/Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Schank, Roger C. 1995. Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, suggest that cognition crucially depends on the storage and retrieval of action scripts or schemata, that is, narrative structures, which may occur at various levels of abstraction. These schemas incorporate generalized knowledge about event sequences, such as the order in which specific events will take place; causal, enabling, or conventionalized relations between these events, and what kind of events occur in certain action sequences. There also are scene schemas that are characterized by spatial rather than temporal relations. Further kinds of schemas seem also to play a decisive role. Drawing upon considerations from schema and script theory, I will focus on some concrete examples of pictorial narration, more specifically depictions of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, where narrative schema structures become involved and, indeed, the comprehensibility of the pictures as such presuppose mental script representations.

scholarly journals The rediscovery of an Adoration of the Shepherds by Jacques Jordaens: a multidisciplinary approach combining dendroarchaeology and art history

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Edvardsson ◽  
Andrea Seim ◽  
Justin Davies ◽  
Joost Vander Auwera
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Oak Trees ◽  
Dendrochronological Analysis ◽  
Religious Paintings ◽  
Production Period ◽  
Panel Paintings

AbstractThe implementation of multidisciplinary research approaches is an essential prerequisite to obtain comprehensive insights into the life and works of the old masters and their timeline in the production of the arts. In this study, traditional art history, cultural heritage, and natural science methods were combined to shed light on an Adoration of the Shepherds painting by Jacques Jordaens (1593–1678), which until now had been considered as a copy. From dendrochronological analysis of the wooden support, it was concluded that the planks in the panel painting were made from Baltic oak trees felled after 1608. An independent dating based on the panel maker’s mark, and the guild’s quality control marks suggests a production period of the panel between 1617 and 1627. Furthermore, the size of the panel corresponds to the dimension known as salvator, which was commonly used for religious paintings during the period 1615 to 1621. Finally, the interpretation of the stylistic elements of the painting suggests that it was made by Jordaens between 1616 and 1618. To conclude, from the synthesis of: (i) dendrochronological analysis, (ii) panel makers’ punch mark and Antwerp Guild brand marks, (iii) re-examination of secondary sources, and (iv) stylistic comparisons to other Jordaens paintings, we suggest that the examined Adoration of the Shepherds should be considered as an original by Jordaens and likely painted in the period 1617–1618. The study is a striking example of the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach to investigate panel paintings.

Toward an international art library: the growth of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, 1979-2002

2002 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan M. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Art History ◽  
General Public ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research Library ◽  
Grant Program ◽  
Research Institute

The Getty Research Institute (GRI) is one of four programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts, all of which reside at the Getty Center situated high on a beautiful hilltop in Brentwood, California. (The other programs of the Getty Trust are the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Grant Program.) From the beginning it was understood that the GRI would develop a research program in the discipline of art history and more generally the humanities, and that a library would support its work. Since its founding the GRI has, in fact, developed a major library as one of its programs alongside those for scholars, publications, exhibitions and a multitude of lectures, workshops and symposia for scholars, students and the general public. What is now known as the Research Library at the GRI has grown to be a significant resource and this article focuses on its history, the building that houses it, its collections and databases, and access to them all.

Ranking Artists: An Internet-Era Analysis

Leonardo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Alan B. Oppenheimer
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Art World ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
Ranked List

To provide guidance to the vastly expanded, uncurated art world made available through the Internet, the author developed a methodology for objectively and repeatably rating artists. He then applied that methodology to Western painters in particular, creating a ranked list of the significance of nearly 10,000 of those painters. Analyzing the process, he observed that the Internet not only greatly broadens access to art but also provides the tools needed to curate that access in a meaningful, scientific manner. The analysis also exposes questions about both the methods used and more traditional art history sources, which can be explored through alternative methods.

Digital Technology: the Answer to the Art Historical Conundrum of A ccessibility?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Berry
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Art History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Travel Costs ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
The People ◽  
Accessibility Problem ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
High Level

The famous anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that there is an “unnatural idea of inborn culture, of a gift of culture, bestowed on certain people by Nature.” [1] Bourdieu is arguing that people, who have not been born into a higher class, or who cannot receive a high level of education, are unable to appreciate and understand art. The study of art history is expensive, and often involves extremely high travel costs, thus making it inaccessible to anybody who does not enjoy the means to pursue it. How can we address this accessibility problem in the study of art history? Is there any way to bring art to the people who do not possess “inborn culture?” Bourdieu wrote his book on art and class in 1984, at a time when the computer, and its democratizing potential, was a new and little -understood invention. My research proposes that modern technology provides an answer to this problem, which has plagued the discipline of art history. This presentation will examine three research projects that I’ve been working on at Queen’s. Each project uses digital technologies to improve the general public’s knowledge and access to art. The projects are all different: the first focuses on creating a digital model of 18th - century Canterbury Cathedral based on a book from W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections, the second project works on understanding Herstmonceux Castle and medieval England through technology, and the third involves image processing for art historical investigations. Despite their differences, each project makes art accessible to people who do not possess Bourdieu’s definition of “inborn culture.”        

scholarly journals "WELCOME, MY SISTER DEATH!" A Reflection Inspired by St. Francis Experiences of Death

LOGOS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Largus Nadeak
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
World Views

The understanding of  death varies depending on peoples world views and religious beliefs. The undersanding and the experiences of St. Francis of death is interseting to reflect. He accepted death as a part of human existence, so at the approach of his death he said, “Welcome, my sister death!” Francis’ view about death was transformed by his experiences of faith and fraternal worldview. Byreflecting death inspired by St. Francis’ experiences of death we prepare ourselves to accept our death. Death is not our enemy, but a part of our human existence. In our death we will rest in peace.

Digital Humanities in Singapore

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-117
Author(s):  
Miguel Escobar Varela ◽  
Andrea Nanetti ◽  
Michael Stanley-Baker
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art History ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Formal Institutions ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Heritage Studies ◽  
High Degree

In Singapore, digital humanities (DH) is inclusive of the larger spectrum of the humanities, including not only its traditional disciplines (e.g., languages and literature, philosophy, law, geography, history, art history, musicology) but also anthropology, heritage studies, museum studies, performing arts, and visual arts. Multilingual, interdisciplinary, and audiovisual projects are particularly prominent. A community is growing around an emergent concept of DH, and it is developing results mainly in society-driven research projects. Although the DH label is relatively new, and DH dialogue across Singapore institutions is at its early stages, Singapore-based researchers have carried out digital research for decades. An increasing number of projects are home-grown, but several projects have also migrated to Singapore recently due to the high degree of mobility at Singaporean institutions. Current trends suggest that the next stage of DH history in Singapore will include the development of more formal institutions and more participation in global DH conversations.

Documenting Media Art: An Archive and Bridging Thesaurus for MediaArtHistories

Leonardo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 435-441
Author(s):  
Oliver Grau ◽  
Sebastian Haller ◽  
Janina Hoth ◽  
Viola Rühse ◽  
Devon Schiller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Media Art ◽  
Innovative Strategy ◽  
International Media ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Art Community ◽  
Art Research

While Media Art has evolved into a critical field at the intersection of art, science and technology, a significant loss threatens this art form due to rapid technological obsolescence and static documentation strategies. Addressing these challenges, the Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research was developed to advance an Archive of Digital Art. Through an innovative strategy of “collaborative archiving,” social Web 2.0 features foster the engagement of the international media art community and a “bridging thesaurus” linking the extended documentation of the Archive with other databases of “traditional” art history facilitates interdisciplinary and transhistorical comparative analyses.

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