Thursday, March 12, 2009

the painter and the viewer

I believe that a person's experience can affect his art style, and even the medium he choose. These are the things that makes the ‘content’ of art different. A Cezanne 's oil painting of a self-portrait is definitely different from Leonardo de Vinci's. The way(the medium, the techniques, etc) that the artist chooses to illustrate his work is also considered as part of the artwork. It sends a different message to the viewers as the viewers interpreting the artwork in their own ways of seeing. It makes people understand them differently. It also makes me think that people do see things differently according to what they know and what they believe. We all have different ways of doing things, even a same thing. Sometimes, even the same person can see things in a various point of view. Therefore, semiotics is like the basic rule to follow, although how one sees it is still up to the person.

What's in a name?







One of the ideas that Merleau-Ponty presents in his discourse on Cezanne is much related to Ferdinand Saussure's concept of the signifier (sound image) and the signified (concept).

According to Merleau-Ponty, "Cezanne did not think he had to choose between feeling and thought, as if he were deciding betwen chaos and order. He did not want to separate the stable things which we see and the shifting way in which they appear...."

Thus we have the infamous views of Mont Sainte-Victoire.

"...it is Cezanne's genius that when the overall composition of the picture is seen globally, persepctival distortions are no longer visible in their own right but rather contribute, as they do in natural vision, to the impression of an emerging order, an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes."

This takes us to Saussure. Things are not necessarily what they seem or ought to be.

According to Stanford's philosophy website on Saussure: "The sound image (signifier) and the concept (signified) must be what they are, not in reference to ‘the piece of furniture that one sits on’, but in reference to other signifiers and signified within the same language. If there were a motivated relationship between the word and the concept, then one word would be more or less adequate; this is, in fact, not the case since there are many different languages."
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/#5



Thus, Joseph Kosuth's work such as One and Three Chairs, 1965 embodies the Cezannesque vision and perspective while re-addressing Saussure's challenging notion of the langue.

See you in class,
Julie





Cezanne's doubt by Maurice Merleav-Ponty is an article that touches on the life of painter Paul Cezanne, his techniques and theories. Maurice also reflects on Leonardo de Vinci’s life and how things that happen to people as children often shape the way they are as adults. The author writes about how the way artist are in life can often reflect their painting style.  Although the author says that the meanings of his (Cezanne)  paintings can not be determined by his life, which seems to contradict the whole second half of the article. Painting for Cezanne was a “flight from the human world, the alienation of his humanity”. “There is a relationship between Cezanne’s schizoid temperament and his work because the work reveals a metaphysical meaning of his illness...."