So what is meant by the term Visual Culture and when did it become big? Visual Culture has emerged recently to acquire academic recognition in our academic community today. Even though, visual cultures origin definition or view of its first use is not agreed upon. Yet, visual culture now appears in book, journal and course titles, and conferences. It is endorsed yet strangely unstructured. Books such as those by Walker and Chaplin (1997), Jenks (1995), Evans and Hall (1999) and Mirzoeff (1999) all appeared in the late 1990’s, which was a key moment in considering the historiography of Visual Culture. By the late 1990’s, the potential of Visual Culture was growing with enthusiasm by academics from a cultural studies background, and it moved from its art history background into the area of media and cultural studies. This is evident through publications such as Walker and Chaplin’s Visual Culture: an introduction (1997) and Evans and Hall Visual Culture: The Reader (1999). The Visual Culture: an introduction, has chapters on: institutions, the gaze, pleasure, and new technology. The Evans and Hall reader contains a wide array of authors from Barthes, Benjamin and Foucault, to the influential work of Tagg, Silverman, and Dyer (Evans & Hall, 1999). As Visual Culture progresses, it is no longer “art history with a difference” in these texts of Cultural and Media Studies, concepts which have been refined and argued through since the 1960’s, are now being developed in a new way. Some might argue from a different premise of visual culture of what it was thought to be originally. The range of visual concepts analyzed was broad. In prominent position and defending new approaches for what was to be termed Visual Culture: film, television, ... ... middle of paper ... ...history.”(Lister et al, 2009 p.101) This aspect to the discipline for analyzing graphic design would be understood through research, and the cultural eye of the audience relating to the eye of the designer. With these facts in mind, a study of a piece of work in graphic design terms may include: a visual analysis of the image, comparison with other posters by the artist, and with other posters by similar artist for reflection of style and treatment of the design. Also another consideration of analyzing a piece of work would be to consider the artists background, personality, there daily life, and relationships with subjects might be included in the piece of work. It would likely focus on the designers as central but contextualize this in relation to technology, materials, and address some social aspects. This would undoubtedly be a useful account to graphic design.
In Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine argues that a distinction between high and low culture that did not exist in the first half of the 19th century emerged by the turn of the century and solidified during the 20th century, and that despite a move in the last few decades toward a more ecumenical interpretation of “culture,” the distinction between high art and popular entertainment and the revering of a canon of sacred, inalterable cultural works persists. In the prologue Levine states that one of his central arguments is that concepts of cultural boundaries have changed over the period he treats. Throughout Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine defines culture as a process rather than a fixed entity, and as a product of interactions between the past and the present.
...central rather than peripheral in the forging of a more liberating and intelligent visual culture in the United States" (p. 37).
My intention here is to acknowledge two problems that I believe all scholars of "the visible" will encounter at some point in their work. Both showed up early in my research on commemorative artworks, but I suspect that they crash everyone's party at some point. I have no "solution" to these problems, but I believe they should, actually must, be addressed in work on visual rhetoric. The first, "readability," is both a practical and theoretical problem having to do with the possibilities of interpretation in visual culture. The second, which I'll simply label "materiality" for the moment, has a presence in numerous arenas beyond the study of visual culture, but remains nearly unaddressed and nearly unacknowledged in rhetorical work on visual images.
Through the texts included on my booklist, I am examining how culture becomes theorized through a variety of visual means, and how these visual means reflect cultural ideals. The historical debate between emotion and reason as two means for discovering truth are a salient example of such cultural ideals. The following texts range through the topics of anthropology, art history, philosophy and sociology to explore these cultural motives behind a work of art and how, in turn, that art functions within greater society’s ideologies. I particularly want to illuminate the indispensable connection between visual culture and modernization by taking a more sociological approach to the study of visual culture.
In order to familiarise myself with the above topic, I have invested much time reading vast selection of the portraiture art themes with aim to get acquainted with the knowledge and the language used in this particular subject. It was very challenging and entertaining to read comprehensive range of various critiques and analysis of the world best paintings stretching from ancient classic to contemporary western image. Developing understanding of the diverse art expressions and social and political influences tha...
This paper deals, in broadest terms, with the questions of how artwork is connected to the changes and dynamics that prevail in a society. To describe these changes, I will investigate how a specific type of art reflects its social content in contemporary societies. My analysis is carried out by closely looking at the Pop Art movement, especially with Andy Warhol, who has come to be known as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. It will be argued that Pop Art managed to successfully articulate its time, and in so doing, it became a widely influential art movement whose effect is still very much existent in today’s world of art. In order to prove its claim, this paper relies on the theory of “the field of cultural production” by Pierre
Many do not consider where images they see daily come from. A person can see thousands of different designs in their daily lives; these designs vary on where they are placed. A design on a shirt, an image on a billboard, or even the cover of a magazine all share something in common with one another. These items all had once been on the computer screen or on a piece of paper, designed by an artist known as a graphic designer. Graphic design is a steadily growing occupation in this day as the media has a need for original and creative designs on things like packaging or the covers of magazines. This occupation has grown over the years but still shares the basic components it once started with. Despite these tremendous amounts of growth,
Urban visual culture focuses on aspects of culture that rely on visual representations. This essay will explore routes within Visual Culture and how it impacts the Urban environment, London is a prime example with the Grenfell tower incident and the way it was publicized though the news. Throughout this research, I plan to investigate Governing bodies and their format for developing affordable housing along with analysing the downfall within certain areas that do not achieve milestones to ensure its balanced within the market. I will also be looking at how the media influences the way people can perceive different information, and how in certain areas there are different ways of communicating with people. A key example I reference is the difference between high and low-rise estates and their impact on the property market within the perspective of urban
Visual culture “involves the things that we see, the mental model we all have of how to see and the things we can do as a result.” (Mirzoeff, How to See the World Pg.10). Visual culture doesn’t just involve what we see, it also involves how we interpret what we’re seeing. We interpret what we’re seeing based on our previous knowledge and previous experiences.
During my whole life and experience I have been interested in the Art, Creativity, and I have been traveling around Graphics Designing. When I go out to centres, supermarkets, the high streets around Kingston anywhere in London, Germany and other parts of Europe which I have seen. I have seen lots of Graphics designs in advertising, Billboards companies for example in electronical products or any type of product the graphics advertising companies running around the world, just because of that I was inspired in the graphics designing and I was influence by the subject.
‘You cannot hold a design in your hand. It is not a thing. It is a process. A system. A way of thinking.’ Bob Gill, Graphic Design as a Second Language.
In the art community there is a lot of controversy in distinguishing what the difference between an artist and a designer. Designers are told they are not artist and they need to stop thinking they are artist. When dealing with art and design specific demographics and viewers interpret the messages of each subject in different ways. Art is said to be elucidated and design is said to be understood. Artists usually develop a work of art with the intention of bringing an emotion viewpoint, instinctive feeling, and or state of mind. When you look at an artist work it cannot be limited to just exhibiting one individual thought or just one individual meaning. That is a big difference when it comes to graphic design. Graphic design usually has a very specific goal and point to make. When dealing with graphic design there should not be any room or space for any mixed messages or multiple meanings. The audience of the design should immediately understand the design that the designer created. Art connects to people differently in so many ways. The only reason it connects to people in different ways is only because it is interpreted differently.
In today’s society, there is a strong indication that the status of images is improving. We live in a mediated blitz world of images. They fill our newspapers, magazines, books, clothes, billboards, computer monitors and television screens as never before in the history of mass communication. We are becoming a visually mediated society. For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through reading words, but by reading images. Ever since I became a Mass Communication major, I noticed that the television culture is replacing words as the important factor in social communication. Words will be reserved for only bureaucratic transactions through business forms and in books that will only be read by a few individuals. Reading is losing to watching because viewing requires little mental processing. Visual communication has the ability to convey messages, but this “language” means nothing to those who can only read words and not images.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.
time period, social and political conditions, and other critiques just to name a few. All of these facts can be research and then applied to the artwork critique. This prior information can be used to help clarify certain aspects and create a deeper understanding of the artwork.