Contrasting (power of) visual and textual discourses in art studies: a critical perspective

Anabela Da Conceição Pereira

doi:10.1177/1470357215608550

Anabela Da Conceição Pereira

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357215608550

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Abstract

This article begins with the assumption that analysing visual discourse is a question of exploring the hermeneutic potentials and epistemological emergence of images as depending on individual perception, ways of seeing and social interaction, strengthening their agency, to ascertain their significance and recognition as aesthetical symbols, as meaning-making processes. The article presents a case study based on two world-renowned Portuguese artists (Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder) in which the authors understand the notion of the agency of image as an original means of interpreting social and cultural experiences, studying how artists transform their visual representations in ambiguous narratives about images. Starting from a critical and phenomenological perspective, the authors developed an image-based analysis, contrasting artists’ visual representations with their textual readings and recognizing the central meanings of self-representation in both cases.

Highlights

Our relation to visual discourse becomes a matter of being exposed to certain images, developing an understanding of certain representations, connecting certain habits, behaviours and ideas with the forms of representing the world, which acquire a status of artistic, aesthetic or educational instruments as they achieve meaning through a spatio-temporal context
This article proposes that we analyse images exploring their hermeneutic potentials and its epistemological emergence as depending on individual perception, ways of seeing, and social interaction, studying how artists transform their visual representations in ambiguous narratives about images, evidencing the agency or irreducible identity of the visual objects
If hypothetically we considered the meaning-making of a work of art as a process with two complementary dimensions – identity/recognition – our outcomes indicate that visual discourse has a major role in defining the first, while the significant purpose of textual discourse is the second

Summary

Introduction

Our relation to visual discourse becomes a matter of being exposed to certain images, developing an understanding of certain representations, connecting certain habits, behaviours and ideas with the forms of representing the world, which acquire a status of artistic, aesthetic or educational instruments as they achieve meaning through a spatio-temporal context (cf. Kara, 2011:103). We outlined a strategy of understanding the general notion of image as a distinct aesthetic performative modality, by emphasising its power beyond its mimetic empirical content (Kara, 2011:103), through a case-study about two worldwide known Portuguese artists – Jorge Molder (JM) and Helena Almeida (HA) – working with self-representation, mostly in photography. The model of this interpretative analysis of images has consisted in contrasting artists’ visual representations with their textual readings. It considers the objective and subjective conditions of interpreting and experiencing images, showing how the construction of their meaning, acceptance and artistic status is a process concerning certain systems of meaning, ways of seeing, and the agency of the visual object, and human perception

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