Gazing, Reading, Looking

This week was all about the image. In Wendy Bellion's Citizen Spectator, we learned that optical illusion art and the visual curiosity of the eighteenth century had cultural implications far beyond ordinary art objects. Bellion focused on the Early Republic period of American history, and specifically Philadelphia. She specified that citizens in Philadelphia came together in large numbers to look at optical illusion art, and this is "where citizens learned to use their senses to tell truth from deception" (7). This was a large theme of the book: telling truth from falsehood, discovering misrepresentation. In the republic, there were certain behaviors and actions which cemented your place as a Citizen of the Republic, and discerning truth from falsehood was one of those actions. In the eighteenth century people discussed these optical illusions and their ability to tell truth from falsehood and compared it to "common sense". But their common sense was different from today's idea of common sense. To the people of the eighteenth century, having common sense meant that the mind was naturally equipped to discern truth. It also meant that you were to be able to trust in your senses, especially sight. People were gazing at these art pieces more than just passively. They were looking, in a meaningful way. This looking was done by Citizen Spectators. This suggests that the individual was moved by, or motivated to action by looking.  The spectator, according to Bellion, could be compared to an active reader. This leads me to make the connection of readers and "lookers" (spectators), and image and language.

Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874

Photo Courtesy of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe]

Roland Barthes's article, "Rhetoric of the Image" looks to the linguistic nature of the image. I've had conversations similar to this article in my undergrad linguistics course; comparing different methods communication with language, which my professor always argued was different in some special human way. We wondered if animals have language, he answered "no". We wondered if the "dancing" communication of bees is language, he answered "no". We wondered if cave paintings were a language, he answered "no". Barthes, however, seems to be arguing that images do have a linguistic nature to them. Advertisements were the main images investigated here, as they are intentionally created to communicate a message. Some of the terms used in this article are not accessible to me, considering I have long forgotten the terminology of my linguistics course. "Coded iconic" messages vs. "non-coded iconic" messages were a bit difficult to understand, but what I took from this reading is that images can indeed have both hidden and apparent messages, and they can be interpreted in different ways; just as text can be interpreted in different ways.

These ideas about images, hidden meanings, and illusions can be linked to my object analysis in subtle ways. I am intended on working with a physical object, and not an image for my analysis.. however, I have been looking at an image of my object in order to analyze it. This presents a problem because at times I wonder how, "I can truly understand Grip, the raven, by merely looking at a photograph?" I have not been writing my method of analysis in the presence of the raven, and now I'm thinking that this may be a problem. Are there hidden messages within the display of the taxidermy raven? I already know that the photograph has been somewhat of an illusion because Grip looks very small in the photo, and I did not realize just how large he is. I will need to pay a visit to The Free Library of Philadelphia ASAP in order to investigate Grip more closely.