Representational Painting Research Articles

Contemporary New Representational Painting: The Application of Material Language—The Fusion of Form, Thought and Medium

Contemporary New Representational Painting: The Application of Material Language—The Fusion of Form, Thought and Medium

Can Artificial Intelligence Make Art?: Folk Intuitions as to whether AI-driven Robots Can Be Viewed as Artists and Produce Art

In two experiments (total N = 693), we explored whether people are willing to consider paintings made by AI-driven robots as art , and robots as artists . Across the two experiments, we manipulated three factors: (i) agent type (AI-driven robot vs. human agent), (ii) behavior type (intentional creation of a painting vs. accidental creation), and (iii) object type (abstract vs. representational painting). We found that people judge robot paintings and human paintings as art to roughly the same extent. However, people are much less willing to consider robots as artists than humans, which is partially explained by the fact that they are less disposed to attribute artistic intentions to robots.

Can Artificial Intelligence Make Art?

In two experiments (total N=693) we explored whether people are willing to consider paintings made by AI-driven robots as art, and robots as artists. Across the two experiments, we manipulated three factors: (i) agent type (AI-driven robot v. human agent), (ii) behavior type (intentional creation of a painting v. accidental creation), and (iii) object type (abstract v. representational painting). We found that people judge robot paintings and human painting as art to roughly the same extent. However, people are much less willing to consider robots as artists than humans, which is partially explained by the fact that they are less disposed to attribute artistic intentions to robots.

Art and Ontography

AbstractGraham Harman describes the allure of art as the tension and fusion of a real object to sensual qualities so that it makes it seem that the inwardness of reality is opened to us. Yet real objects are withdrawn; how are we aware of their fusion? Since Harman’s ontology mandates that contact between real objects occurs only through sensual objects, this essay explores the idea that art’s allure must be a tension between sensual objects that draw the experiencer to believe, or alieve, they are in contact with the withdrawn real. By looking at the examples in representational painting and sleight of hand magic, we see that ontographic art objects use at least four, carefully separated sensual objects to produce their aesthetic effect. The conclusion summarises allure as a sensual object process, speculates on art’s dialetheic confusion of sensual and real objects giving an enduring allure to idealism, and notes potential motifs of an infra-realist resistance.

How Will Sense of Values and Preference Change during Art Appreciation?

We have conducted several experiments where various types of information offering strategies were performed. We obtained interesting phenomena from the results. The participants seemed to be able to gradually understand the artwork by offering information of the artwork. Of course, for an abstract art, the information of the artworks functions better understanding of artworks. Even for a representational painting, the quality and quantity of understanding was gradually changing. Thus, the information of art sometimes influences the art appreciation. In this paper, we will discuss how the value and preference of art will change according to offered information? In addition, we will discuss determining which factor (information) will change the viewers’ value and preference of art in the art appreciation. For that, we conducted two experiments, where information of the artwork was offered randomly (each person may obtain different information for the artswork). Additionally, for all the artworks, the information was offered in the same manner (all persons will obtain the same information for the artworks). The information involved title, painting materials, techniques, production year, name of artist, price, background, and theme of the artworks.

How will the information change the sense of values during art appreciation?

Abstract We have been studying the curation in museums. Since sometimes it is rather difficult especially for the novice viewers to understand and enjoy abstract artworks, as a curation, we tried to help viewers’ art experiences. In one of experiments, the participants seemed to be able to gradually understand the artwork and create good stories. Even a representational painting, the level of understanding was gradually changing. Thus the information of art sometimes influences the art appreciation. After knowing the artworks, people usually put value and become to like or dislike the artworks. Our question is how will the value and preference of art be changed according to offered factors? For that we conducted several experiments. In this paper, we will discuss such changing phenomena from the participants’ comments on artworks.

An Abstract Expressionist: A Study of Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard

The novel, Bluebeard (1987) presents a dialogue between abstract and representational painting, pointing out both the value and shortcomings of each school. It may end by imagining a type of art in which the usual boundaries separating the real and the artificial fall away; an art that is able to capture the complexity, sorrow, and beauty of life itself. On the other hand, it focuses on human’s cruelty to human. However, the novel also shows that even in the midst of war and death and sorrow the innate human impulse is a creative one. The novel discovers the human desire to create as it investigates the nature of new art itself. Vonnegut was mostly inspired by the grotesque prices paid for works of art during the past century. He thought not only of the mud-pies of art, but of children’s games as well.

Nefes, Hareket ve Zaman: Rulo Formatlı Temsîlî Çin Resimlerinde Kullanılan Anlat

Bu makale, el rulosu formatlı Çin resimlerinin oluşturduğu belirli değerlendirme çerçevesi içinde, anlatı kuramının temel sorunlarından olan zaman sorununu çeşitli boyutlariyle ele almaktadır. Böylesi bir çalışmada diğer sanatsal üretim formlarının ve diğer temsîlî resim geleneklerinin değil de özellikle Çin geleneğinin ve Çin el rulolarının dikkate alınmış olmasının nedenleri, Çin resminin dünya sanat tarihindeki ayrıcalıklı konumu ve el rulosu formatındaki resimsel anlatıların, anlatı kuramını zenginleştiren değerli katkılarıdır. Çin resmi, üzerinde sayısız araştırmalar yapılmış olan Avrupa resim sanatı ile birlikte, dünyanın en eski iki temsîlî resim geleneğinden birisini teşkil etse de, “deixis,” yani “gösterim” kavramına verdiği değer açısından Avrupa geleneğine göre önemli farklılıklar içerir. Avrupa temsîlî resim geleneğinde güdülen temel amaçlardan birisi, sanatçının fırça darbelerinin izlerini tamamen yok edecek ve böylelikle iki boyutlu bir yüzeyde kusursuz bir üç boyutlu gerçeklik yanılsaması yaratacak resim tekniklerinin geliştirilip mükemmelleştirilmesi iken, Çin temsîlî resim sanatında, sanatçının fırça darbelerinden yansıyan bedensel eforunun izlerinin muhafaza edilmesi büyük bir önem arz eder. Öyleki, temsîlî Çin resimlerinin bilinçli ve eğitimli taraflarca yapılan değerlendirmelerinde, her resmin daima iki ayrı konusu bulunmaktadır: Bunlardan birisi resmin gözle görünen konusu—mesela bir peyzaj calışmasındaki dağ, göl, orman ve bunun gibi doğa sahneleri—diğeri ise, eserin hayata getirildiği anlarda sanatçının elinin resmin yüzeyinde gidip gelmelerinden hasıl olan fiziksel üretim konusudur. El rulosu formatındaki resimlerde izleyiciler, resmin konusundan doğan zamanda ve mekânda yolculuk duygusuna, ellerindeki ruloyu bir ucundan açıp diğer ucundan sararak, kendi beden hareketleriyle eşlik etme imkânı bulur; dolayısiyle bu tip rulo formatlı resimler, anlatı zamanı, bellek ve öykü paylaşımı aracılığiyle öğrenim kavramları ile ilgili bir dizi sorunun verimli bir biçimde ele alınmasını sağlar. İşte bu amaçla yola çıkılan bu çalışmada, öncelikle Çin resminin altı temel prensibi sunulmakta, daha sonra çeşitli kompozisyon tipleri ve özellikle el rulosu formatında öne çıkan konu türleri incelenmektedir. En son değerlendirme noktasında, ister görsel, ister dilsel yollarla anlatılmış olan bütün öykülerin, tek yönlü bir iletişim değil de, sanatçılar ve eserleriyle çok yönlü etkileşimlerde bulunulmasını sağlayan, anlamın, yani öykü deneyiminin tekrar tekrar ve her an değişen biçimlerde yaratıldığı tükenmez enerjili bir tür sinir ağı teşkil ettikleri saptaması yapılmaktadır.

Geographic Representation in GIS and Art: Common Threads as Exemplified in Paintings by Seurat, Signac, Mondrian, and Diebenkorn

This article explores the relationship between geographic representation in geographic information systems (GIS) and in art, as illustrated by the vector and raster spatial data models used in GIS and their affinity with representational painting techniques employed by the painters Georges Seurat (1859–1891), Paul Signac (1863–1935), Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), and Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993). The location-based raster data model is discussed in the context of the pointillism painting technique espoused by the French neo-Impressionist painters Seurat and Signac, whereas the object-based vector data model is related to the geometric abstraction techniques employed by the Dutch abstract painter Mondrian and the American abstract painter Diebenkorn. Commonalities between the spatial data models used in GIS and the representational techniques employed by these painters are explored within the context of both the cognitive basis of geographic representation and the representational objectives embodied by the artistic and scientific movements within which such representational approaches were developed.

Young children’s preference for the representational painting

Young children’s preference for the representational painting

Visual Slippages between the Picture Plane and the Painting Surface: Richard Estes’ Double Self-Portrait (1976)

Abstract: This paper focuses on a particular visual slippage that may occur at the point where the picture plane and the painting surface might intersect in Richard Estes’ “Double Self Portrait”. Firstly, I draw on one specific scopic regime, Cartesian perspectivalism, and, in particular, Leon Battista Alberti’s concept of the picture plane as an “open window” (Alberti 1967, 56). Secondly, I investigate how Richard Wollheim’s concept of twofoldness and Hal Foster’s writing on the Lacanian gaze might facilitate visual slippages between different scopic regimes associated with representational painting such as Estes’ (Wollheim 1980; Foster 1996). Throughout this paper, I look at how aspects of Cartesian perspectivalism, twofoldness and the Lacanian gaze might combine to form amalgamations of scopic regimes within a scopic field. This serves as a foundation for my hypothesis that there may be a particular oscillation between different ways of looking contained within Estes’ ‘Double Self-Portrait”: looking through the surface, looking across the surface and a form of being looked at from inside the surface. Keywords: Painting, Picture Plane, Painting Surface, Scopic Regime, Cartesian perspectivalism, Twofoldness, Lacanian gaze, Richard Estes

Establishment and Development of Daegu Representational Painting Circle

Establishment and Development of Daegu Representational Painting Circle

Palettes and palates: Jacqueline Bullmore's Florentine diary

Jacqueline and Edward Bullmore, in their early twenties, left New Zealand for Florence in 1959. The art found in Florence would change the course of Edward's artistic oeuvre, ultimately distancing him from New Zealand's nationalist prescription of representational landscape painting. Jacqueline, homesick and a young mother-to-be, kept a diary of their daily routines. Away from New Zealand they tried their hardest to emulate aspects of New Zealand in their Florence apartment. Being in an international context was also about retaining their New Zealand identity, including their diet. A diary of private proportions has brought to life a six-month sojourn in a city imbued with the classical world, the Renaissance and the contemporary work of Italy's metaphysical painters, all of which fused together making Edward Bullmore one of New Zealand's earliest Surrealists. This essay discusses Jacqueline's diary and how it has assisted in the understanding of two young New Zealand travellers, both artists distanced from family and familiarity.

Appreciating art verbally: Verbalization can make a work of art be both undeservedly loved and unjustly maligned

Two experiments examined whether appreciating art verbally would aesthetically confuse viewers. Participants were asked to verbalize why they either liked or disliked two different kinds of paintings; one piece was representational, the other piece was abstract. Those who verbalized their reasons for liking the artworks were more likely to prefer the representational painting, whereas those who verbalized their reasons for disliking the paintings were also more likely to dislike the representational painting. While it was easy to describe reasons for both liking and disliking representational art, the same proved difficult for abstract art. The findings suggest that due to its figurative qualities people will be encouraged to generate reasons to describe representational art, rather than abstract art, and that these reasons could potentially be biased and cause them to change their preferences in line with these reasons.

Divisions of Manet

Throughout Foucault's work references to Manet surface and resurface, sometimes more or less obscure, but always the context of the dawn of modernity, that point history which the objects and discourses that we are today so familiar with first came into existence. Unfortunately, the book that Foucault had planned, Le noir et la couleur, dealing strictly with Manet never came to fruition, and we are left with Foucault's lecture transcripts from presentations given between 1967 and 1971 Milan, Tokyo, Florence, and finally Tunisia. These lectures, published by Seuil and edited by Maryvonne Saison, were effectively given by Foucault under the heading La Peinture de Manet on May 20, 1971 at the Tahar Haddad Club Tunisia.1 Foucault begins the lecture with a series of apologies for his fatigued state, for his inexpertise on both painting and Manet, and his general lack of preparation saying that he will be speaking in profane on the subject. However, this colloquial tone, at times bordering on insouciance (he mistakes the names of several paintings), that Foucault maintains throughout the conference is stark contrast to the content of that which he attributes to Manet's painting. For Manet's work we witness the first stages of a mutation, a fracturing that would entail a reorganization of the spectacle, the spectator, visibility, and invisibility. By associating Manet with the emergence of a new, semi-modern object, which he calls the tableau-objet, Foucault will use Manet's work to illustrate the advent of a new force painting: the force of objecthood that would alter the order of vision. As we shall see, this transformation the functioning of vision is fact a malfunctioning, a temporary moment of blindness, as the canvas transitions from the site of the represented spectacle to its modern role which the picture plane exists as nonrepresentational object, revealing something that cannot be represented. Traditional Representation versus Modern Objecthood To begin, Foucault charts the history of the relationship between paint and canvas as well as the techniques of traditional representational painting since the Renaissance. Through the use of certain lines, lighting, and color, tactics were developed that work to hide the material components of the canvas, that is, its rectangularity, its flatness, and its underlying support structure. These are well-documented artistic techniques including the use of strong oblique lines a painting to create the illusion of depth, drawing the spectator's gaze away from the edges of the picture plane towards the middle where a spectacle is presented. Additionally, the spectacle is lit so as to complement this fictional space, which is to say a lighting that comes from inside the painting, either from above as most Renaissance art or from the side as is popular later Baroque and Rococo works. This has the effect of illuminating a space that is ulterior to our world as it is lit by an ideal source, and although this ideal lighting may flow out into our space, our light of day never penetrates the picture plane. We can see for example Velazquez's Las Meninas all of these techniques at work. In that painting the strongest, boldest line is without doubt the top of the right-hand wall of the salon-a robust line that moves diagonally, cutting across the vertical and horizontal axes of the two-dimensional canvas. It is primarily on the strength of this line that all the depth of the room is opened up to us, and consequently, by creating this deep space which the spectacle of the Infanta will be situated, the flat surface of the picture plane is necessarily masked. In fact, even placing the back stretcher of a canvas the scene and thus representing the supporting architecture of the canvas the picture plane, Velazquez only does so a way that furthers the creation of an ideal space existing independently of the rectangular two-dimensional support structure. …

The Significance of Music for the Moral and Spiritual Cultivation of Virtue

Given its time-honored place, along with other arts, in many if not most past and present school curricula it would seem that at least some forms of music have been widely credited with educational value. Beyond the general association of music with high culture and, notwithstanding the evident discipline involved in learning to play musical instruments, however, it is less clear what sort of value this might be. Despite the considerable ethical complexity of much art and the vexed nature of any relationship between the moral and the aesthetic, one may clearly regard very many works of literature, much representational painting, and even some dances as having some moral educational significance. That said, it may be less clear how other arts or art genressuch as music or abstract painting-could be said to have much significant moral import or content (as well as being unreasonably procrustean to insist that they should). Indeed, recalling the well-known point of Richard Peters about the inherently normative character of the concept of educationthat it would be hard to regard a man as educated

White Flowers on Her Doorstep

Early in 1965 I was working on a PhD dissertation about the fascinating confl uence of early modernist creative energies that had brought together the painters of the Stieglitz group and such younger poets as William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, and quite a few others around the time of the 1913 Armory Show. It seemed to me that Alfred Stieglitz’s attempts to capture in his photographs what it meant to be an American, energized by the social dynamics of a young country caught between nature and a booming industrial environment (“America without that damned French fl avor,” as he put it), had been a major catalyst for most of the artists and writers involved. From our current vantage point it may seem hard to believe, but back in 1965, when I was a graduate student in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley, Stieglitz had been all but forgotten as an artist. His contention that photography was a serious medium for artistic expression was still largely discounted as special pleading by most of the prominent critics of the time. Besotted with what they thought to be the transcendent intellectual signifi cance of abstraction, these critics equated the “vulgar materialism” of photography with an equally vulgar “sentimental literalism” of representational painting. Even so, poets such as Williams seemed to me to have found their voice by combining the rapid, “snapshot” insights of photography with the structural innovations opened up by the early modernist painters’ experimental disintegration of conventional form. Williams had died just two years earlier—one of the last members of the original circle of writers and artists who had gathered around Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeff e, of course, was still alive, and just then in the process of recapturing considerable prominence in the art world with her near abstractions of the early 1960s—a prominence she had largely lost as a result of the sexist attacks on her work in the mid-1940s by critics such as Clement Greenberg and the death of Stieglitz, her greatest promoter. I wrote her, delineating my theories about her husband’s importance in the “discovery” of America by its artists and poets. Before long I received from her a letter—dated Abiquiu, March 24, 1965—in a handwriting I instantly recognized as heavily infl uenced—even in its dramatic use of pitch black ink and a broad-point pen—by the assertive fl ourishes and curlicues of Stieglitz’s own calligraphy. Bram Dijkstra

Concrete and Abstract Thinking Styles and Art Preferences in a Sample of Serious Art Collectors

59 art collectors (30 men, 29 women) were given the Gregorc Style Delineator to classify them by thinking styles and a questionnaire regarding their art preferences. Their ages ranged from 33 to 99 years (M=59.5 yr.). Abstract art was preferred by 34% of the sample. Representational art, such as Dutch Masters and Impressionism, was preferred by 66% of the sample. Of the collectors who preferred nonobjective abstract paintings, such as works by color field artists like Mark Rothko, and Abstract Expressionist paintings, such as works by Jackson Pollock, 62% had scores on the Gregorc Style Delineator by which they were classified as showing abstract thinking styles. Of the collectors who preferred representational painting, 86% were classified as showing concrete thinking styles.

Animating Vision: Visual Adaptation in Girl with a Pearl Earring

Animating Vision:Visual Adaptation in Girl with a Pearl Earring Ilan Safit Representing fictional events in and around Johannes Vermeer's studio, the 2003 film Girl with a Pearl Earring, directed by Peter Webber, demonstrates the capacities of cinema for fusing temporal narrative with spatial representation. An adaptation of a popular novel of the same title, the film adapts both narrative's devices of structuring meaning and painting's devices of visual representation. In the film, genre painting's tendency to depict pictures-within-pictures receives special currency enabled by the plot's focus on the production of pictures.1 The film's penultimate scene demonstrates the intersection of narrative and visual representation in a way that underscores film's debt to its mother arts. Yet the act of cinematic adaptation also uncovers the potentials that lie dormant in representational painting and reveals the latter as an anticipation of the cinema. The scene takes place after the plot's dramatic events have reached their end. Griet, the adolescent daughter of a Delft tile painter who lost his eyesight, and thus his livelihood, in an accident, is taken up as a maid in Vermeer's busy household. Navigating between the demanding supervision of the family cook, the animosity of Vermeer's wife, Catharina Bolnes, and the inexplicable viciousness of their daughter, Cornelia, Griet gains Vermeer's silent favor as she witnesses and even assists in the slow production of some of his famous paintings. Griet's position shifts again from clandestine assistant to model when Vermeer's lascivious patron, Pieter van Ruijven, takes a special interest in her and demands that she sit with him for Vermeer's next commission. Although van Ruijven hopes to use the modeling sessions to seduce Griet, as he has done on a previous occasion with another maid, he is forced to settle for an image of her sitting alone. Orchestrated by Maria Thins, Vermeer's shrewd, business-oriented mother-in-law, the project proceeds secretively in order to enable Vermeer to avoid the jealous objection of his wife. The plot reaches its climax when an outraged Catharina demands to see the finished painting, in which Griet is depicted wearing Catharina's pearl earring. Vermeer is quick to protect his work from his wife's rage, but he remains silent and impassive as Catharina dismisses the young woman who served as its inspiration. The novel extends this plotline to a more conclusive resolution in which Griet, whose impoverished [End Page 52] family depends on her wages, accepts a marriage proposal from her social peer, the butcher's son, thus securing her and her family's financial future. The events of the narrative portray Griet, the girl with the pearl earring, as a strong and thoughtful woman whose common sense reins in her furtive passions. She is aware of the forces working against her—poverty, lack of education, low social status, femininity—and finally succeeds in reaching the highest level of autonomy within her limited possibilities. Through this plotline, the author constructs a character and a personality for the image that has fascinated so many observers.2 The sum total of the narrative suggests an ekphrastic substitute for the image, in the sense provided by James Heffernan's suggestion that ekphrasis "releases the narrative impulse that graphic art typically checks, and it enables the silent figures of graphic art to speak" (304). The textual mode of narrative amounts here to a verbal description of the girl with the pearl earring. The novel, which proceeds through Griet's first-person narration, performs an extended act of ekphrasis, for Griet's words and self-reported actions come to portray the person behind the portrait. The filmic adaptation, on the other hand, substitutes for the verbal first-person narration a loose visual one: Griet is silent throughout most of the film, but she is present in almost every scene. The viewer sees what she sees, though not necessarily from her optical point of view.3 In both novel and film we find comments regarding the success and failure of the ekphrastic act seen in reverse, that is, of the painting as a representation of the character. The novel exhibits a...

The Importance of Downtown in the 21st Century

As captured in this painting by Margaret Caldwell, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco is an icon of successful downtowns and one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. According to this Longer View essay by Donovan Rypkema, its uniqueness represents the distinction needed in the character of downtowns for U.S. cities to be competitive as we undergo economic globalization. Rypkema sees downtown revitalization, led by the differentiation afforded by meaningful buildings, as the spearhead of a successful economic survival strategy. The artist, who shows her work mostly in Los Angeles, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from USC and studied the techniques of representational painting of 19th-century artists in Florence, Italy. Her paintings, which often feature the urban landscape, are based in observation and are attempts to translate her visual experience of the world. Thanks to the Jernigan Wicker Fine Arts Gallery in San Francisco for their help in securing use of this image. The post-September 11 world is both dramatically changed and increasingly uncertain. But two factors on the horizon are assured: globalization and diversity. Globalization, however, has two facets: economic and cultural. Cities must learn to capitalize on economic globalization without being subsumed by cultural globalization. Cities must also deal with diversity on both the international and local levels. The downtown is a community's most effective venue to confront, learn from, and accommodate both globalization and diversity.