MADA: Visual analysis

Considering visual material in context is important because it helps you to understand the practices of historically distinct artists, designers and architects. Context includes the ways the creator:

• developed ideas and resolved problems,
• approached materials and technologies,
• marketed their labour, and
• expressed their visual culture – their particular ways of seeing.

Note: As a result of considering examples historically, you’ll develop your ability to reflect on the context of your own practice.

To situate visual material in its context:

1. Selectively consider which contexts are most relevant to the example’s production and give you an understanding of its significance, for example, historical, geographical, economic, technological, social, cultural or political contexts.
2. Conduct research to find out more about these contexts.
3. Consider whether the visual material fits within any movements or styles relating to these contexts, and identify visual characteristics that link to these movements or styles.

To situate the visual material historically, discuss relationships between the example and the historical era in which it was produced. To characterise the era, consider developments in areas like society, politics, religion, science and/or technology that were current at the time. You can also consider relevant social and cultural aspects of the place in which it was produced. How is society distinctive, and how does the example reflect this?

Historical analysis: Julia Margaret Cameron

Figure 2. Julia Margaret Cameron, Mrs. Keene, 1866, albumen print.

Photography was a new technology in Victorian Britain. A cultural impact of this innovation in the 1860s was that photographic studios began producing portraits of the middle class. Ordinary people had portraits of themselves for the first time. This market relied on a particular technology for producing a print onto paper from a negative: the albumen print. It had a brownish tone, which today we associate with 19th century images. Julia Margaret Cameron’s Mrs. Keene (fig. 2) is an albumen print made in 1866 and an example portrait from this period. However, Cameron’s portrait is subtly allegorical, that is, it can be interpreted to reveal additional meaning of cultural significance. The wreath on Mrs Keene’s head is similar to the wreath of the classical figure of victory. Cameron’s use of allegory links to a current visual culture. Popular in the 19th century, classical allegories like victory or liberty were often personified by young women. Within the context of Victorian Britain, Cameron’s photograph is technologically innovative, and it communicates via an established visual culture.

The following activity presents images that are related to the example’s context and production. See if you can match the images with the correct description. Consider how these images relate to Cameron’s portrait.

Content includes the subject matter, the scene, or the story the example depicts. In some cases, it is important to summarise the story an example depicts, in others it is important to discuss the story of its production, the artists’ goals, or its reception. The associated story, and your interpretation of it, will contribute to the readers’ understanding of the visual material.

1. Consider associated narratives, for example, the story it tells, the story of its construction, the stories of its use or application.
2. Consider ideas in scholarly text sources; you can apply these ideas to understand the example.
3. Interpret the visual material, for example, make associations between the example and other material or ideas.
4. Reflect on how the visual material makes you feel.

Considering the content of the visual material: Gabriel Orozco

Figure 3. Gabriel Orozco, Yielding Stone, 1992, plastine.

Gabriel Orozco’s sculpture Yielding Stone, 1992 (fig. 3), is a large ball of plasticine measuring the same weight as the artist. Orozco rolls it around the street where textures on the ground imprint onto its surface and it picks up litter. The sculpture is amorphous and malleable, and thus it doesn’t have a fixed form. Within the distinction between form and content in art, Orozco places more emphasis on content than form. Content is the subject and meaning of an artwork. The content of Yielding Stone, according to Orozco, is that it is a vulnerable mass reacting to its context and, in this way, it represents the human body. Yielding Stone is an abstract artwork. Like Malevich’s painting, it does not depict external reality. However, its content, the human condition, is also abstract: a concept and not a tangible thing.

One way of thinking about content in art is through semiotics, the study of signs. Signs convey meaning; they represent things. Works of art, design and architecture can be analysed as signs because they convey meaning. In the 1860s, American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce identified three types of signs based on the distinct ways they convey meaning: an icon, an index and a symbol.

• An icon is a sign that denotes a subject by visually resembling it. Figurative paintings and sculptures are icons.
• An index is a sign that denotes a subject by being a result or evidence of it – in other words, caused by it. A footprint in the sand is an index, and in a similar way a photograph is an index too.
• A symbol is a sign that denotes a subject because people understand it that way, even though it has no resemblance to the subject. Written language is symbolic. Allegory is also symbolic.

In effect, Orozco uses, and questions, these three types of signs in Yielding Stone. The sculpture looks like a stone, so it is iconic. Although, interpreting it as a stone isn’t very interesting. The visible imprint of the steel gutter grate – Orozco rolled it across – is an index that shows viewers the sculpture is malleable, and in fact, not really a stone. Furthermore, this impression gives viewers an understanding of how Orozco symbolises the feelings of being an embodied and emotional human immersed in the world. Symbols are abstract. While the artist states that he is trying to convey this feeling, viewers can still make their own interpretations.

Understanding the ways signs communicate can help you in the studio. Think about how the forms of door handles are determined by human hands. Their affordances have an indexical relationship to their use. Think about how architects have used classical columns to symbolise power over the centuries. Visual analysis is a practical skill you will use every day. If you are writing an essay, consider the three elements – form, context, content – to develop a sophisticated analysis.