Academic Sessions: London 2003
Visual Intelligence
Convenor:
Professor Nigel Whiteley, Lancaster University; nigelwhiteley@hotmail.com
Abstract:
Art history has undergone a paradigm shift in the last quarter century with the previous prioritisation of the visual and the producer being countered by readings and audience.However, there is a danger that the contribution of the artist in terms of her or his special skills in articulating imagery, may be undervalued. There is, rightly, a suspicion about texts that emphasise the artist’s uniqueness or genius, or which concentrate on the formal qualities of a work as relating to some transhistorical set of qualities, but there is a paucity of material that qualitatively analyses the way in which an artist has integrated the different aspects of a work in a way which achieves, for example, expressive power or subtlety, resonance, a compelling image, sustainable impact, symbolic richness or poetic evocation. The gain will be to reintroduce the idea of an artist’s special skills, but in a way that is inclusive. Previous models were exclusivist, producing an absolute and separate form of the visual, notably Formalism. ‘Visual intelligence’ encourages diversity and difference, and re-evaluates the artist’s particular abilities in articulating form, subject matter and meanings as one of the ingredients of the creation and reception of signs, without returning to simplistic notions of authorial creativity.
Ian Heywood (Department of Art, Leeds Metropolitan University) Mantegna, Bonnefoy and Intelligence.
Margaret MacNamidhe (Department of the History of Art, University College, Dublin) Romantic Intelligence: Renewing Emotion in the Work of Eugene Delacroix.
Claudine Mitchell (School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, University of Leeds) The Sculpture as Poem: Reflections on the Concepts of Metaphor and Analogy.
Catherine Clinger (University College London) Pansophist: the Preparatory Thought of Max Beckmann Apparent in the Jahrmarkt (1922) Print Cycle.
Sam Gathercole (School of Architecture and Building Engineering, University of Liverpool) The Dice Man Kenneth: the Use of Chance in the Work of Kenneth Martin.
Allen Fisher (Art Programmes, Froebel College, University of Surrey Roehampton) Visual Intelligence Exemplified by the Drawings of Joseph Beuys.
Nigel Whiteley (Dept of Art, Lancaster University) Visual Intelligence in an Age of Low Eye Cues.
Professor Nigel Whiteley, Lancaster University; nigelwhiteley@hotmail.com
Abstract:
Art history has undergone a paradigm shift in the last quarter century with the previous prioritisation of the visual and the producer being countered by readings and audience.However, there is a danger that the contribution of the artist in terms of her or his special skills in articulating imagery, may be undervalued. There is, rightly, a suspicion about texts that emphasise the artist’s uniqueness or genius, or which concentrate on the formal qualities of a work as relating to some transhistorical set of qualities, but there is a paucity of material that qualitatively analyses the way in which an artist has integrated the different aspects of a work in a way which achieves, for example, expressive power or subtlety, resonance, a compelling image, sustainable impact, symbolic richness or poetic evocation. The gain will be to reintroduce the idea of an artist’s special skills, but in a way that is inclusive. Previous models were exclusivist, producing an absolute and separate form of the visual, notably Formalism. ‘Visual intelligence’ encourages diversity and difference, and re-evaluates the artist’s particular abilities in articulating form, subject matter and meanings as one of the ingredients of the creation and reception of signs, without returning to simplistic notions of authorial creativity.
Ian Heywood (Department of Art, Leeds Metropolitan University) Mantegna, Bonnefoy and Intelligence.
Margaret MacNamidhe (Department of the History of Art, University College, Dublin) Romantic Intelligence: Renewing Emotion in the Work of Eugene Delacroix.
Claudine Mitchell (School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, University of Leeds) The Sculpture as Poem: Reflections on the Concepts of Metaphor and Analogy.
Catherine Clinger (University College London) Pansophist: the Preparatory Thought of Max Beckmann Apparent in the Jahrmarkt (1922) Print Cycle.
Sam Gathercole (School of Architecture and Building Engineering, University of Liverpool) The Dice Man Kenneth: the Use of Chance in the Work of Kenneth Martin.
Allen Fisher (Art Programmes, Froebel College, University of Surrey Roehampton) Visual Intelligence Exemplified by the Drawings of Joseph Beuys.
Nigel Whiteley (Dept of Art, Lancaster University) Visual Intelligence in an Age of Low Eye Cues.