Thursday 24 October 2013

Visual Culture- Innocence Lost: The Politics of Looking & Making- 10/10/2013

 

Part 1- Looking and making as a Political practice.
Looking and making  as political practices refer to the kind of values and imagery we bring with us while making or consuming.
This also means that there is ' NO INNOCENT EYE'. This refers to consuming / viewing without the influence of social, geographical, educational or financial factors.
DENOTATION- literally what we see when we view art.
CONOTATION- values and ideas suggested beyond what is literally there.
Any kind of visual image carries some ideas & values about the world.These meanings are contested i.e. we don't all agree. These meanings are not always contested as the artist may have wanted. That means multiple meanings are possible and are produced through social relationships.
Looking is a political act that we do from a particular position, with a particular idea about the world. This changes what we see.
Awareness of this helps us to move from describing to analysing.
Examples of Manet's Olypia  , 1863 v/s Titian's Venus of Urbino, 1538 ( pictures below), Alfredo jar's Venice Venice, 2013.

Part 2- Ideology
Ideology means world view: what the world is like and how the world should be.
Society masks their ideologies as natural systems of belief/ value, but in fact these are constructed.

Part 3- Strategies of Resistance
Examples of how creative practitioners have resisted the dominant ideologies, asking us to look again.
Using 'juxtaposition' to create ' critical distance'. ( taking a step back and looking twice)
 Artists like Peter Kennard, Grayson Parry, Barbara Kruger, Hannah Hoch and John Hartsfield are examples od creative practitioners who have resisted the dominant ideologies. 
 
 
 
 

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