Author: Arianna Finger

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Look Again! Thoughts & Notes

Relationships between Art History and Critical Theory

  • Heinrich Wolfflin (1864-1945; Swiss Scholar; p.2)
    • Influential in development of formal analysis in AH
    • Painterly vs. Linear: Objective classifying principles
  • What are the wider implications of chosen theory
  • “Discourse” as “Language”
    • Produced and Analyzed
    • Terry Eagleton – Literary theorist
      • “Language grasped as utterance…” (p.9)
    • Theory is a discourse – web of many intersecting discourses
      • Complexity (science)
  • Record of Activity
    • Synchronic – Present (x-axis)
    • Diachronic – Historical (y-axis)
  • Theory – Generally…
    • Enlarges perspective
    • Promotes formulation of new questions
    • Allows for better understanding of subject
  • General importance of CONTEXT…
    • Social Conditions and Power Structures
      • Ex. Social construction of power
      •  Class Structure & Social Hierarchy
      • Who makes interpretations
      • Who? Why? What? — led to generation of theory/discourse
    • Historical Paradigms
    • Influence of Institutions
    • Individual experience and agency
      • Ex. Behavioral changes
      • Points of view — All different…
        • Individual
        • Cultural
        • Familial
        • Historical
        • Space, time, place, people
        • Forms/shapes responses…
    • Difference in global perspectives
  • Theory vs Methodology
    • Theory
      • Process of questioning leading to new questions
      • Research questions
      • Framework
    • Methodology
      • Set of procedures (rules)
      • Characterize an Academic Discipline
      • Framework for theories
  • Psychology, Perception of Art, & Psychoanalysis
    • Psychoanalysis (broadly) = philosophy of human consciousness; social and individual
    • Sigmund Freud (1856-1939; p.88)
      • Father of psychoanalysis
      • macro and micro theoretical approaches trying to understand and answer the questions of human consciousness
      • methodology under which theoretical approaches ask questions in attempt to unlock the mystery of our mind
      • Used psychoanalysis to analyze
        • Content, subject matter
        • Artist relation to work
        • Viewer relation to work
        • Nature of creativity
      • CON – Lack of contextual analysis in favor of universal ideas
    • Jacques Lacan (1901-1981, French Psychoanalyst; p.96)
      • Updated Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
      • How  illusion of self comes into being
      • Unconscious structured like language
      • Issues of socially normative expectations and roles
  • Hermeneutics – ways of thinking about thinking
    • Polysemous – “of many senses”
      • Layers of meaning
    • Consciousness shaped by context
    • Art as opening being – exists in/creates cultural space within context of viewer perception
    • Art functions to shape viewer experience?
    • Preconceived notions as variable when considering how viewer interprets and perceives art
    • “Myth” as phenomena with “structuralism” giving meaning and structure
    • Discourse produces power
      • Shaped and perpetuates specific class/social dialogs
      • Knowledge secures power
  • Deconstruction
    • Construction of meaning
    • Exposes binary oppositions
    • Signs aquire meaning by differing from signified
    • meaning constantly floating, deferred
    • Meaning in motion — straight forward meaning is an illusion
    • Meaning relative to context
    • Absolute meaning is a fallacy