Understanding Visual Culture, Final Assignment 1, Part A

In this Assignment, we are required to do the following:

• “Consider” the painting of Mark Tansey “The Innocent Eye,” and John Ruskin’s saying: “The whole technical power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a sort of childish perception of theses flat stains of color, merely as such, without consciousness of what they signify, – as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight”; 
• Give an interpretation to this saying above (1000 words), bearing in mind the following: a) Ruskin was writing in the Victorian era; b) consider what the painting as a whole suggests: is it making a point or posing a problem; 

To do this Assignment, while reflecting on it, I tried to systematize my thinking and first consider Ruskin’s saying and then research Mark Tansey and his painting ‘The Innocent Eye.’ 

My understanding of Ruskin’s saying is that when he insists on the ‘innocence of the eye‘, ‘a sort of childish perception,’ ‘…. merely without consciousness of what they signify’, ‘as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight’  he wants a painter and a viewer to be free from any judgmental thoughts. They must be free from any rigid mental structures- views, tastes, and beliefs, which can significantly constrain and limit painter’ s technical ability to achieve a powerful, and original outcome in his/her artwork, as well as viewer’s ability to appreciate the artwork. 

I understand this saying as the painter should aim to create every artwork in the particular state of their consciousness, which can be described as ‘tabula rasa,’ which is usually a term we use for a child’s newborn’s consciousness.  

Certainly, this saying of John Ruskin, the most prominent art critic and philosopher of the Victorian era is rooted in his lifetime framing historical context. However, I also find a solid connection to his tastes in Art and his aspirations in life as I have read his biography and life story. I will try to explain this below. 

Romanticism characterizes Victorian Art as an “important strand of 19th century British Art’. As it is defined in Britannica: ‘Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also, to some extent, a reaction against the Enlightenment and 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. 

Another important feature of Romanticism is that it ‘…emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental’. The definition of Romanticism does go in one line with Ruskin’s idea of how artwork should be approached. His ideal artist was British painter J.M.W. Turner, and Ruskin was a lifelong fan of J.M.W. Turner’s Art and his defender, fighting with art circles establishment, the ‘art world’ of that time in Britain. J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) was one of the greatest Romantic artists of the Victorian era. ‘Turner is the exception to all rules, and cant be judged by no other standard of art….’ Ruskin wrote in polemic with John eagles, art critic of Blackwood’s magazine, who attacked Turner. While defending J.M.W. Turner and Pre-Raphaelists, Ruskin opened up the road for new, ‘Modern Painting’ in the Victorian era, when Academic Art (Academism) was still a dominating painting style. Academic Art is ‘the mode of painting and sculpture approved by official academies of fine arts, notably the French and the Royal Academy.’ This term, ‘academic art’, is used to describe realistic painting style as described in the article on www.visual-arts-cork.com. Academism aimed ‘to promote an intellectual style of the art,’ ‘…it considered fine art to be an intellectual discipline involving a high degree of reason’. This is totally opposite to Ruskin’s idea. Probably, Ruskin’s saying reflects his disagreement with academism which he might find as undermining ‘the whole technical power’ of the artwork. Because excess in the ‘academic’ approach in the creative process can be perceived as something limiting and restraining your artistic power of self-expression, which always consists of emotions, spontaneity, and breaking the rules. Another example of this conflict is a well known fact when impressionists initially were disqualified from academic approval, because they didn’t follow the rules about the colors, such as ‘colors should be naturalistic: grass should be green, … bright colors should be used sparingly and so on.’  

 And here, I think, Ruskin is making the point which brings my thoughts to some aspects below:

1.  In his saying, he uses the word ‘technical’ to the word ‘power’, which means he underlines the dependence of technical skills from certain philosophies. Why did he not say just ‘the whole power of painting’ and used the word ‘technical’? Should I relate this word to the ‘technical skills’ term? If yes, then his saying is in total contradiction to the established process of learning to create Art. Overall, the learning process is all about accepting new concepts and trying to implement them in certain aspects of your life. In my experience as an art student, I explore myself as an artist trying new concepts on canvas that reveal my artistic nature to myself. If I don’t learn, let’s say, a new technique, then my creative power is severely constrained and underdeveloped. In other words, I have to be academic to open up my creativity. And that is opposite to what Ruskin is saying as to be ‘innocent’ what can be understood as ’empty,’ free from any influence. Or maybe he meant that after you get affluent with academically explained and trained technical skills, THEN you have to be as Ruskin describes? In this case, what he’s saying does make sense because we know many great artists who revolutionized Art breaking academic rules. 
2. When Ruskin produced his saying, was it related to the quality of the artistic outcome, or was it related to the philosophical question of artistic representation of reality? I, personally, after reading materials about Ruskin’s life, tend to think that this saying of his was more related to ‘what is the art and what is not’ polemics. However, I see that his ‘Innocence of the Eye’ is also related to the philosophical issue of representation problem that I will try to explain below. 

To understand the ‘Innocent Eye’ term in Mark Tansey’s painting, I researched what Mark Tansey was saying about his paintings and himself as an artist. Even though I didn’t find any comments about this painting, in particular, I found it relevant to read his interview on www.artchive.com. I put some of his thoughts below: 

‘I am not a realist painter…… But the problem of representation is to find other functions besides capturing the real’. ‘In my work, I am searching for pictorial functions that are based on the idea that the painted picture knows itself to me metaphorical, rhetorical, transformational, fictional. I am not doing pictures of things that actually exist in the world’, ‘….my work investigates how different realities interact and abrade’.

After reading his thoughts above, I understood that I had to investigate the subject of the ‘representation problem.’ I liked how it was put in the article ‘Philosophy of Art – Analysis of Representation’ on http://www.britannica.com: 

‘Representation always involves a certain degree of abstraction – that is, the taking away of one characteristic or more of the original. Even a fairly realistic painting of a person, for example, lacks some features that characterize actual persons: a painting is two -dimensional; the surface of a painting is paint, but not so the person … and so on.’ 

‘Art, even representational art, is not a reproduction of reality; it is a transformation of reality, ‘…..Each Art, each style of Art, and each work of Art transforms reality in its own way.’ And this is exactly what Mark Tancey is saying in his interview, and he even goes further, explaining that his artwork (and not only his probably) self contains a new reality. Therefore, there is no point in analyzing it, understanding it, and looking for resemblance with existing reality. Thus, I understand his the ‘Innocent Eye test’ idea in his painting, taking into account his words in his interview, as the cow has an innocent eye, so even when she sees the object on the surface of the painting – a cow – she doesn’t have a clue that it is a cow on the canvas she is staring at, as well as getting lost in an attempt to distinguish the reality from the artificially created image. So we don’t look for resemblance and search for accurate imitation of the existing reality. We should perceive the artwork as a self-contained reality within the artwork itself, like a new reality we haven’t been acquainted with earlier, ‘….without consciousness of what they signify – as a blind man would see them, as suddenly gifted with sight’, as Ruskin said.

As a resume, I can say that I find this painting fascinating because of its idea. I understand the men, wearing suits, standing in front of the image, looking at the cow, represent the Academism, The Institutions, the rigid, and the system. They are the judgers. But, on the other hand, the cow represents the freedom and the right to be free from established norms, free of looking for reality, and, consequently, free from any judgment.

Understanding Visual Culture, Final Assignment 1, Part B

The question: “What are the implications of saying perspective was invented, and what are the implications of saying it was discovered. Access these two possibilities and give reasons for the one you believe is correct.

Make a list of things you know to be invented and things you know to be discovered: Consider what distinguishes them and where perspective is best placed: Try to be attentive to counter arguments.”

My tutor clarified for me the term ‘perspective’ in this task, and told me that I should read it as a ‘single point perspective’.

Single or one-point perspective is a drawing method that shows things appear to get smaller as they get further away, converging towards a single ‘vanishing point’ on the horizon line’ (www.bmoa.org; Bakersfield Museum of Art’). Even though this term has been a part of the traditional classical painting/drawing academic curriculum, artists didn’t produce artworks with a three-dimensional world of creating the illusion of depth and space up to the XIV century. It is related to Byzantine, Medieval, and Gothic Art. The Italian masters Giotto ( c.1627-1337) and Duccio (c.1255-1260- c.1318-1319) started to explore creating dimension, working with shadows, but it was still far from our modern understudying of this concept. The first known picture using linear perspective was done by Florentine architect Fillips Brunelleschi (1377-1446).
Below is an artwork of Masaccio (1401-14280 ‘The Tribute of Money” c. 1426-27, Fresco, The Brancacci Chapel, Florence; image via http://www.op-art.co.uk;

By the late XV century, the concept was well established in Renaissance Europe. It was present in artworks of Raphael, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Donatello, Titian and had been developed further by Dutch artists such as Hugo van der Goes, Jan van Eyck. We see it further in Baroque painters’ Art done by Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Vermeer. The concept of linear perspective had been contained in artworks of impressionists such as Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, and post-impressionists – Vincent Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat. However, by the end of the XIX century, the concept started to be challenged. It began with Paul Cezanne’s Art, who started ‘to ignore the laws of classical perspective, allowing each object to be independent within the space of a picture while letting the relationship of one object to another to take precedence over traditional single-point perspective.’ (Editors of Visual Arts-Cork, The History of Linear Perspective). And that was the ‘beginning of the end of the academic composition following the long-established rules of perspective.’ (Editors of Visual Arts-Cork, The history of Linear Perspective) Further, the world began to see new artworks without any hint about the classical concept. The most notable of which is Picasso’s work ‘Les Demoiselles D’Avignon,’ then Henri Matisse’s and all ‘Fauvists’. Those artists explored color, creating ‘shallow space where each object was distorted and adapted to fit the place in the overall design and brilliant color was used as an independent structural object.’ After them, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was ‘the first painter trio completely abandon contact with reality and give form and color alone with ideas of spirituality, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) took world art to another height and direction, creating their artworks called as ‘totally free of reality’ following a philosophy of ‘art needed a radical and complete revision.’ ( Editors of Visual arts Cork, The History of Linear Perspective).

While I was doing my readings for this exercise, I saw that in all readings about the single-point perspective, the words ‘invented’ and ‘discovered’ were used in one context – ‘obtaining knowledge’ about the concept. Some authors use the wording ‘single-point perspective was invented’, others use ‘the concept was discovered,’ and in both cases, they use the words as synonyms. So I guess the course author encouraged us to be independent in our approach to this question and differentiate the implications of the concept about these two different verbs. 

When I think about the implications of saying ‘perspective was invented’, I think about the technical methods and skills of creating the three-dimensional reality on the canvas, such as using parallel lines – orthogonal, converging into a single vanishing point the composition’s horizon line, foreshortening. Any invention we can compare with a recipe: you follow a particular algorithm of steps using specific rules if you want to get a specific result. Thus if I want to create an illusion of space and depth, I must use a specific system and follow particular rules; otherwise, I will get a very different result. 

Another implication of the word ‘invention’ of one-point perspective is related to the philosophical problem of representation in Art what is revealed and reflected in artworks created in a total absence of the single point perspective concept. W.J. T. Mitchell, (Iconology, Text, Ideology: p.37) well describe it:’ ....the invention of artificial perspective, first systematized by Alberti in 1435. the effect of this invention was nothing else than to convince the entire civilization that it possessed an infallible representation method, a system for automatic and mechanical production of truths about the material and the mental worlds. The best index to the hegemony of artificial perspective is the way it denies its artificiality and lays claim to be a ‘natural’ representation under the banner of the science of ‘the way things look,’ ‘the way we see,’ or ‘the way things really are.’ 

The implication of saying the single-point perspective was discovered is related to mathematical science, perspective geometry in particular, and it is not related to technical skills in drawing. In this sense, this concept is widely applied in science, including physics, and is mathematically described: ‘…Everything could be related to the same scale and described in terms of mathematical function’. As Paul Calter puts it: ‘While the main application of perspective is in art, it is an optical phenomenon and thus has its principal root not in art but geometrical optics.’ 

We were also required to list things we know to be ‘invented’ and things to be ‘discovered,’ then consider what distinguishes them and where perspective is best placed. 

I think that this task gets us back to Searle’s work “The construction of Social Reality’ and the philosophical problem of representation in Art. To make the list of things that are ‘invented’ and ‘discovered’, we need to define and distinguish them. Taking into account what we have covered over this part of the Course, the things that are ‘invented’ are things that humans create in material or mental planes. Like the aeroplane, bicycle, money, marriage, government, law, atomic reactor, chair, hospital, school, news and newspaper, alphabet, books, social networks, and internet. 

The things which are ‘discovered’ are things which humankind found around as have been existing and created without any participation of humans and independent from humans in its origin, like cosmos, Universe, mount Everest, planets, sun, gravity, vacuum, speed of light, animals, nature, air, electromagnetic field, consciousness, DNA – we can not control the origin of these things, and we can recreate them, we even can not explain them fully; 

Another important aspect is that regardless of whether we are aware of these things, aware of their existence or not, they influence us, and we can not stop this influence and be free from it. Our whole physical existence crucially depends on them. If we speak about ‘invented’ things, we still have the choice to escape from their influence, to be free from them, and our physical existence doesn’t depend on them. 

In this framework, the notion of ‘perspective’ is related to ‘invented’ things. We have a choice to implement it or not in our artworks. We can philosophically challenge the existence of this concept whether it is an ultimate way to see and perceive and represent reality on not. We believe that the truth looks like our human eye sees it: the objects become smaller as they get far, but do they get smaller? No. So this is an artificial mental concept used to create one type of artificial reality: painting. 

Bibliography: 1) ‘Brunelleschi’s Peepshow & The Origins of Perspective’ by Paul Clater, 1998, Dartmouth College, on http://www.math.dartmouth.edu; 2) “Was Ruskin the most important man of the last 200 years” by Daisy Dunn, 8.02.2019, Culture; BBC, on http://www.bbc.com; 3) “John Ruskin and the National Gallery”, author unknown, an article on http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk; 4) “Victorian Art (1840-1900)” Editors of Visual Arts Cork , on http://www.visual-arts-cork.com; 5) “Victorian Paintings: the Art and Culture” an article, author unknown, on http://www.victorian-era.org; 6) “Joseph Mallory William Turner-Biography and Legacy” British Painter”, an article, Editors of Art Story on http://www.theartstory.org; 7) “Academic Art. History, characteristics of Painting and Sculpture taught in Fine Arts Academies” an article, Editors of Visual Arts Cork, on http://www.visual-arts-cork.com; 8) “Ruskin, Turner and Pre-Raphaelists”, by Michele Leighton on March 9 to May 28 in Tate Britain, http://www.thecityreview.com; 9) Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology; WJT Mitchell, 1984, in Power of Perspective online on http://www.employees.oneonta.edy; 10) Mark Tancey, interview on http://www.artchive.com; 11) ” Philosophy of Art- Analysis of Representation’ on http://www.britannica.com; 12) ‘Single Point Perspective’ on http://www.bmoa.org; 13) ‘ Op Art History Part I: A History of Perspective in art’, http://www.op-art.co.uk; 14) “Linear Perspective’ on http://www.britannica.com;

Added after receiving my Tutor’s feedback.

I have added better citing as she recommended in some sentences of my text. Her feedback was very specific. I was happy to learn that I covered the topics in regard to their content in a right way. She made interesting and valuable points over the exercises. My main area of improvement was mastering the citing system, so I went trough my posts to add details in the citing I did.