Image Analysis Essay

Image Analysis Essay

Art is a powerful form of communication and gives an accurate indication of how the world was at the time and how people were thinking. Relating to my previous essay, I will be analysing relevant images that back up the points and quotes on art from certain time periods, class and the categories in which they belong.

The Portraits of the Academicians of the Royal Academy, 1771-72, oil on canvas, The Royal Collection by Johan Zoffany

The first image is an oil painting completed in 1772, it depicts the Royal Academicians from the time. I came across this image through the lecture programme. From this painting, you can see that they are all upper class, white men and in the background you can see numerous sculptures and paintings (Print Culture and Distribution lecture, 2016). ‘Artists showed them only to initiates and only in the shape of paintings and pieces of sculpture’ (Munari, 1966, p.34). It is composed so that you can see all of the Academicians and the work that they have produced. This painting alongside the quote from Munari gives us a definite indication of the form in which art was favoured at the time period of 1770-1900 in London.

‘It mounted exhibitions to display recent work to fellow artists, critics, and collectors.’ (National Gallery of Art, 2016). This sentence from the National Gallery of Art’s website implies the same scenario from Munari’s quote, ‘At all events, forms were born in secret in ivory towers and fathered by divine inspiration’ (Munari, 1966, p.34). This suggests that this form of art was limited to few people which encouraged a change from ‘Pure Art’ to ‘Applied Art’.

Engraving from the Illustrated London News, 27 April 1889. Artist's conception of USS Trenton being passed by HMS Calliope during the Apia tropical cyclone at Samoa on 16 March 1889.

However, also in London around this time was The Illustrated London News, which launched in 1842 as the world’s first weekly illustrated magazine. Art was so restricted in terms of the mediums used and who could see it, this is why print illustration was distributed. It was also illustrated over photographs as it was less expensive and pictures such as the one above could only be drawn as they wouldn’t exist as photographs. It was considered a lower art form due to the processes mainly being drawing, printmaking and etching and then being printed many times over. It was accessible to anyone, it would only cost a sixpence to own a piece of art. This news magazine was aimed for the working class and often had illustrations of them.

From these two images you can see the divide of art during this period of time, the art schools and the design schools. This relates to a section from the triangulation essay ‘the separation of the arts into categories of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ (pottery is low art, sculpture isn’t)’ (Dormer, 1997, p.19). Design has always been seen as a lower art, although its purpose is usually to communicate. Whereas high art was usually just to look great or show class.

Printed artwork can only be in black and white so a big difference between the art types is what it is presented on and what media is used. Another difference is the purpose, in the Royal Academy painting, the painting boasts the Academicians skill and status. Whereas in the image above, the artist of the piece would have aimed to capture the moment of this event realistically but still in a form that works well as a piece of art.

The New York Times magazine, Brian Rea

‘We’re photo-saturated, so drawing is now special again’ (Vogue UK, March 2015). This suggests that people are now drawn to pictures over photographs. Compared to the illustration from The Illustrated London News, this type of image making is more expressive and creative, the drawing aesthetic cannot be achieved through photography. The earlier piece is more like a drawing to look as similar to a photograph as possible.

I-D Magazine Cover, 1980, Terry Jones

The last image is an I-D magazine cover, it is a British youth culture magazine where the front covers focused on postmodern graphic design. ‘As postmodernism favours expressive designs and a rebellion against for strict constraints, many of the designers who pioneered this movement were young’ (Pure Graphics, Modernism Vs Postmodernism, 2017). The success of using postmodern graphic design as a reoccurring style for this magazine is likely to be down to the audience, as it’s mainly young people. The designers involved in the movement were also young which ensured an understanding between the art and the readers.

The image has very bright colours in a collaged style, resembling the Dada movement. The typography used breaks the rules of standard typography layout. It’s upside down with a more abstract font which ties the hand in with the text, contributing to the postmodern quality.

The first and last image contrast significantly, postmodernism is a reaction to fine art and aimed to lack rules and constraints which is put in place from fine art approaches. ‘As an art movement postmodernism to some extent defies definition – as there is no one postmodern style or theory on which it is hinged.’ (Tate, Postmodernism, 2017). This definition from the Tate website suggests that Postmodernism tackles not being specified by being a wide variety of styles, as it is art that is meant to represent freedom. ‘the use of postmodern graphic design as a contained stylistic category is misleading because it implies that the design that succeeded it in stylistic terms no longer has a relationship with postmodernism.’ (Poynor, 2003, p.18). I learnt about placing art into categories in the last essay and found this quote was helpful when understanding this.

I’ve learnt from researching these images, the supporting quotes and my own understanding that a piece of art can mean so much more than just the picture itself and the purposely included meanings. It can inform you of the conflicts within art at the time, the type of people that were involved and the movements that were formed as a result of this. Art is so complex both in the way that you acquire skills in order to make art and how you interpret another’s work.

  

Bibliography:

1.       Munari, Bruno (1966) Design as Art. Rome: Editori Laterza

2.       National Gallery of Art. 2016. Britain's Royal Academy of Art in the Late 1700s and Early 1800s. (Online) Available at: http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/slideshows/britains-royal-academy-of-art-in-the-late-1700s-and-early-1800s.html. [Accessed 29 January 2017].

3.       Dormer, P. (1997) The Culture of Craft (Studies in Design MUP). Edition. Manchester University Press.

4.       2015. The Revival of Interest in Fashion Illustration. Vogue, March 2015

5.       Pure Graphics. (2017). Modernism Vs Postmodernism | Pure Graphics. (Online) Available at:https://shanny12.wordpress.com/modernism-vs-postmodernism/. [Accessed 28 January 2017].

6.       Postmodernism | Tate. 2017. Postmodernism | Tate. (Online) Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/postmodernism. [Accessed 29 January 2017]

7.       Poynor, R. (2003) No More Rules. London: Lawrence King