Author: Kanon Shambora

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On Word and Image

Also wanted to mention kind of an unimportant point but something I thought was interesting in the Mitchell reading on word and image-

“Traditional cliches about visual culture… are based on the tacit assumptions of the superiority of words to visual images. Even in the most basic phenomenological reflections on intersubjectivity, the ‘self’ is constructed as a speaking and seeing subject, the ‘other’ as a silent, observable object, a visual image (60)”

“Image” in its passivity is considered inferior to “word.” I had never really thought about the physical implications of these words that might unconsciously make us biased towards one over the other. This hierarchy has become a part of the “natural” semiotic and aesthetic order.

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On Appropriation

After doing the readings for this week I realized that my view on what “appropriation” is has completely changed. I have always attached the potential exploitative indirect results of cultural appropriation with the actual concept of appropriation, and so there was always a negative connotation to the word for me. From Ashley and Plesch’s essay I’ve come to realize that the processes of appropriation extend both diachronically and synchronically and can produce kind of beautiful, fluid results.

Heyd’s “Rock Aesthetics and Cultural Appropriation” has made me personally realize that aesthetic appreciation shouldn’t be limited; instead we must educate those who engage in the aesthetic appreciation of other cultures to be conscious of context and cross-cultural etiquette. There is actually a lot we can gain from exploring other cultures (can enrich our understanding of other cultures, critique our own understanding of art, learn about another culture way of aesthetically appreciating something, offer a paradigm of resistance, and offer us an alternative model for the enjoyment of human creativity), but it is important to be respectful.

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Duncan Essay

Alexandra K. Duncan’s main purpose for writing this essay is to explain why placing graffiti in museums/galleries takes away from the legitimacy of the art, for context of a piece fundamentally plays a huge part in its overall message. Duncan primarily focuses on a former graffiti artist Zevs, whose pieces are very confrontational. For Duncan, placing Zevs’s art in a gallery context makes the confrontation Zevs is trying to create “artificially constructed (133).

I agree with Duncan for the most part; I do think that context does play a huge role in art, especially graffiti. Graffiti by its own nature relies heavily on context. On page 135 she uses tagging as an essential aspect of graffiti that is lost when it is placed in a gallery setting. I think it’s important to note that there have been distinctions made between street artists and taggers/writers; Zevs is probably considered more of a street artist than a tagger, and the art he puts into galleries most likely doesn’t create the social relations among taggers/writers that happens when graffiti is put on the streets. However, Zevs’s confrontational art is definitely more effective on the streets because it  is more of a direct form of protest.

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Oct. 11 Readings

In Rafaella Sarti’s essay, she focuses on debunking the idea that binary oppositions (inscriptions/graffiti, institutional/domestic, public/private) do not necessarily apply to the Ducal palace of Urbino. Boundaries are much more complex and blurred than one would think.

A couple of the essays talk about how “chronicle-like notes are, in particular, a genre that is by now virtually extinct (Sarti 68).” In Fleming’s essay, she makes the point that the way we view and wrap our heads around Elizabethan wall-writing is through a contemporary lens; our own biases of what graffiti should be make it difficult to view graffiti of the past “in its own terms (Fleming 34).”

One point that Fleming brings up that I found interesting is the fact that there is no verb to describe the action of creating graffiti. The absence of a verb for the action in the English language really just adds to how individual and secretive the act is. For there not to be a word for this action inflects “the notions of agency that centre on its production (Fleming 39).

Plesch’s essay goes into the reasoning for why graffiti was so popular at Arborio. For the people who came and wrote on the walls of this “liminal” place, the act of recording events is “a means to appropriate them, to claim them (Plesch 142).” For many of these people, graffiti was a way for them to cope with events beyond their control. The act itself is cathartic.

I personally really enjoyed the Horselads essay; it gave insight into an otherwise forgotten group of people. This essay really shows how valuable graffiti can be in teaching us about a significant group of people who have contributed  to society and yet are not given much attention in official histories.

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Medieval Graffiti

It seems a lot of the readings touched on how graffiti was received in medieval times. In Marianne Ritsema van Eck’s essay, she discusses whether graffiti was an accepted practice, and she focuses on the sacro monte of Varallo. Here creating graffiti was a common practice for pilgrims, however an anti-graffiti campaign is run by Counter-Reformation bishop Carlo Bascape through a series of new rules. I was especially drawn to the comparison the author draws between the graffiti on the walls and Bascape’s signs prohibiting graffiti, for they are both forms of text. She writes “the institutional voice against graffiti was advertised in writing at the same location where it was supposed to prevent illicit writing, thus competing for predominance in that same space (61).” It’s interesting how one form of text can be considered illicit while another is deemed okay.

The comparisons Mia Gaia Trentin drew between Latin and Greek graffiti were also really interesting; Latin graffiti tended to underline the visit to a holy building while Greek graffiti was more closely tied to the devotional religious aspects of the journey. I liked how Trentin gave us context on the people creating these graffiti, because it explained why there is a distinct difference between the Greek and Latin graffiti. While graffiti can tell us about the cultures of different people, we can also learn a lot about the individuals during a certain time period and the way they go about certain processes. For example, in Doris Jones-Baker’s essay, she points out the importance of graffiti in (for example) the interior design of England’s medieval churches. She shows us that “graffiti can sometimes provide the historian with the names, dates, and other information about the craftsmen who built the medieval churches (13).” Through these etchings and sketches of the past, we can learn about the specific people involved in the making of buildings that are still up today.

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Ancient Graffiti

I think most of the readings assigned address what you can get out of interpreting ancient graffiti by paying attention to context. I thought the reading on Mayan graffiti was especially interesting, because the graffiti were made by and for a contemporaneous audience. For one thing, Olton is definitely not making an unreasonable claim in arguing that Mayan graffiti is evidence for a conscious, transgressive community. I don’t think the repeated pattern of making the ruler smaller than the protector is an accident or a coincidence, especially when considering that there are art pieces depicting the ruler as much more authoritative and “royal.” While the ruler is barely even drawn, other details, like the repeated cross-hatching of the protector’s vertical support point to how the artist made his/her details a choice. It was also really interesting that these graffiti were created by and only accessible to the elite class, so it’s plausible that these sketches were a way of communicating dissent toward the ruler. Olton even goes on to say that maybe these images operated as a warning to the ruler from his privileged subjects.

There is a lot of historical information you can gain from ancient graffiti, because they serve as evidence of individual people’s lives. I think in this way you can gain a much more specific perspective on groups of people you otherwise wouldn’t think much of. The Graffiti in the Athenian Agora reading shows just how much you can learn from what seems to be insignificant sketches made by people during this time period. Like the Romans, they engaged in sexual or obscene conversation on the walls. You can also figure things out like how ancient Greeks spoke (casual speech revealed in an example), their backgrounds based on the letters used (slaves used pi instead of phi), the ways Greeks traded and stayed organized, and the importance of religion in their lives.

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Ch. 4-6 Post-Seminar

Before coming to this seminar I thought I had a general idea of what the differences were between subjects such as anthropology and sociology. However, after that class I realized I could not give you a clear answer on what the distinctions are between these studies. After looking it up, I got that anthropology is “the study of human societies and cultures and their development,” and sociology is, “the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society.” Even in their definitions they’re pretty similar, so I guess the confusion was justified. This book has made me realize that although there are these different fields of study, many are interdisciplinary and cross paths in a lot of different ways with each other.

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“Look! Again” Ch. 1-3

D’Alleva starts off her book by defining theory so we as the readers are better equipped to understand the different strands of critical theory addressed throughout the next couple chapters. She describes the term as “a basis for action, but also an explanation of how phenomena work (6).” As someone who hasn’t had that much experience with studying critical theory, chapter 1 was great in helping me understand the next few chapters.

Chapter 2 focuses on analyzing form, symbol, and sign. Formalism is a way of studying art by solely focusing on an artwork’s formal qualities. According to formalists, artworks have no connection to their respective artists or to the cultures in which they’re produced. I always thought this was a strange way to look at art, since I feel like you can’t separate the artist from their art in this way, but I understand the merit in studying an art piece in such an objective manner. Iconography and Iconology on the other hand, is the study of identifying motifs and images in works of art, then taking these symbols and further explaining its cultural context. Like iconography and iconology, semiotics is similar in that it asks what works of art mean and how these meanings are expressed. Both these studies are clearly very different from formalism, which relies on not reading into the meaning behind an art piece. The “Word and Image” section of this chapter describes the relationship between visual (image) and verbal (theory) representations, arguing that though they are often linked, both have their own unique qualities.

Chapter 3 explores several widely practiced methods of engaging in contextual analysis. The chapter begins with the “History of Ideas,” which according to D’Alleva is a study of how “cultural meanings generated by a group or society persist over time, continuing or changing in their relevance and interpretation (46).” The concept behind history of ideas seems to parallel with a few of the methods discussed in chapter 2 (for ex. iconography and iconology).  The “Feminisms” section introduces to the reader the complexities of feminist art history. Feminist art itself must take into account the ways in which an artist or his/her representations of women are affected by her gender/dominant gender ideologies. However, feminist art considers not just gender, but also other factors that may play into one’s identity (such as race, class, family, age, sexual orientation, etc.). It was interesting to read how arts such as textiles and ceramics were not seriously considered by art historians until recently. Like certain aspects of feminist art history, LGBT/Queer art history has only recently been given attention, and so there are still “few full-length studies of these subjects (73).” The chapter ends with a section on cultural studies and post-colonial theory, which examines the interconnections of culture throughout society. Cultural studies is mainly concerned with ideology and power and is closely connected to Marxist cultural analysis.