Visual research methodologies INTERTEXTUAL METHOD IN VISUAL ARTS Martina Paatela-Nieminen martina.paatela-nieminen@helsinki.fi www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 1
Presentation proceeds: This presentationaims to offer the intertextual method as a tool for you to experiment visual analysis in practise in the workshop. ▪ Some words about intertextual method´s background. ▪ The intertextual method in theory ▪ Examples of the method applied in education practise. ▪ PS. Unlike the presentation this particular PowerPoint version does not include any students' examples. Some works of art are not included. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 30.4.2019 2
The background of the intertextual method • What art education means to us at this moment in time is a relevant question, because both art and art education are open concepts that change over time and with different modes of thought. • Change is constant in our society. • Therefore new methods for understanding arts and art education are needed. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 30.4.2019 3
In modern art, the viewer investigates the art’s ultimate meaning. A work of art is then considered a closed system and usually has one correct interpretation (the artist’s intention). work of art – artist – tradition Käyttäytymis-tieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi 30.4.2019 4
The background of the method • We live in a world where cultural, linguistic, religious and philosophical diversity exists. • We also live in the world where everything is in continuous flux where art changes culture as well as culture changes art. Culture has become artified. • Art can be understood through different social and cultural networks. • I became interested in studying art in wider textual relations and to understand/produce plural meanings • text – discourse – culture www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 30.4.2019 5
A work of art per se Artist – work of art – tradition Textual relations Text – discourse – culture Käyttäytymis-tieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi 30.4.2019 6
What does it mean to study an image as a text? ➢ A text is a synonym to a verbal and written text (in daily life). ➢ An image has it's own visual grammar. ➢ However, an image can be studied as a tex t according to postmodern way of thinking. ➢ An image can also be called visual text. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 30.4.2019 7
What is a text? • Texts are visual, verbal and auditive, numeric, kinaesthetic symbols and their combinations (extended understanding). • Latin textum means a texture , a tissue, a woven fabric, a construction, a network. • Text derives from Latin verb texo that means a process : knitting together, weaving and constructing, layering and linking meanings. • Texts are traces that are shaped by the repetition and transformation of other textual structures. • A text contains meanings that the reader constructs subjectively. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 30.4.2019 8
Multiliteracy is textual Skills in interpreting, producing and valuing various texts Ability to gather, combine, transform, produce, present, and assess information in different forms and environments Extended understanding of texts : visual, verbal, auditory, numeric, kinaesthetic, and/or combinations thereof. Texts interpreted and produced in written, auditory, visual, digital etc. Forms. See: The National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014. Department of Teacher Education/ Paatela- Nieminen&Itkonen www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 8.July.2015 9
▪ The intertextual method in theory Käyttäytymis-tieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi 30.4.2019 10
An intertext is a relation between texts • The idea is not to study a text (e.g. a work of art) per se but a text’s ( art work ´s) relations to other texts (art works and culture). • An intertext is a theoretical construct that serves the process of reading, interpretation and signification (meaning). • The reader reconstructs the cultural codes that are realised in texts but also creates new meanings. • Intertextuality is the open-ended process of producing meanings in relation to different texts. • To understand plural meanings. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto
Intertextuality • Although “intertextual” relations have always existed does intertextuality as a concept date from the 1960s when thinkers started to study and re-read source texts in the light of new theories of linquistics and post-modern ways of thinking. • Textual relations and meanings were defined and studied analytically. • I applied intertextual ideas from: Mihail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva , Gérard Genette, Deleuze & Guattari. • Genette ´ s and Kristeva ´ s ideas are different views and thus complete the method. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto
Intertextual relations (text - genre/discourse - culture) From an image T o (pile of) images T o culture Producing a new meaning artistically 30
Produce a new meaning 30.4.2019 14
Intertextual method for art education is profound Genette has developed an open-ended system for producing differences and constructing meanings in contexts. Paratext : a visual text is related to its own context Hypertext: a visual text is related to its ´ genre / discourse . Kristeva has developed intertextuality from the point of a speaking subject, unconscious of texts and cultures. Geno-and phenotext: a visual text is related to culture . www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto
To start with, a work (of art) under study is first seen as a source text, a paratext , that works as a threshold of open-ended questions for the reader (Genette, 1997a). The text itself tempts the reader to ask questions and in the search for answers the reader relates the text to its setting and context and her/himself personally. 30.4.2019 16
. Secondly, the text is open-endedly connected to other texts, for example a work (of art) is related to other works (of art). Genres work as tools for grouping texts that are similar to each other through some artistic, social, ideological or political relations (amongst others). In order to study the texts according to a uniting principle, they are arranged in a palimpsestical continuum, from the newest text to the oldest. Genette’s palimpsestical reading, moving from the newest text to the oldest, is a way of producing transformations and variations from the textual continuum (1997b). A palimpsestical reading offers understanding as to how a newer text, the hypertext, transforms a preceding text, the hypotext (Genette 1997b). This is a way of re-writing transformations and variations from the continuum and understanding how a contemporary work of art (the hypertext) transforms, modifies, and recycles older art (the earlier hypotext) in a palimpsestical continuum. In this way, it is possible to produce interesting difference(s) from the continuum for further study. Käyttäytymis-tieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi 30.4.2019 17
Morimura Yasumasa 2013: Las meninas reborn in the night IV: peering at the secret scene behind the artist, from the series Las meninas reborn in the night I-VIII Manolo Valdes 2007, Helsinki Park Esplanade Pablo Picasso, Las Meninas 1957; Museum Picasso Diego Velásquez , Las Meninas 1656, Prado 30.4.2019 18
Producing changes Formal differences : quantitative reduction or extension, change of viewpoint, dramatization etc. Thematic differences : spatiotemporal world, culture, action etc, Stylistical differences : playful, humorous, serious, polemical, satiric, ironic Käyttäytymis-tieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 30.4.2019 19
Thirdly, Kristeva breaks up Genette’s contextual and genre- based thinking. The difference is further studied in a space of plural sign systems with the result that diverse as well as new meanings are produced for it. Kristeva focuses on a subject in which personal drives, the unconscious and the collective cultural memory become part of the subject’s reading process (Kristeva 1984). In a similar vein, a text has a logical structure and grammar, called the phenotext , and a dynamic unconscious force, the genotext, that produce meanings together (Kristeva 1984). Meanings are layered in the cultural memory and they are produced in the subjective reading process. According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), the reading process can also be unstable and proceed with unexpected offshoots. It depends on the reader as to which meanings s/he finds important to produce and develop further. Käyttäytymis-tieteellinen tiedekunta / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi 30.4.2019 20
Cultural relations 30.4.2019 21
INTERTEXTUAL RELATIONS Literature Music Society Dance Myths Advertisements Movies History
Task • Apply the following step-by – step model for studying intertextual relations. • After the study process concentrate on your artistic outcome and create a new meaning for the outcome. www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 23
Recommend
More recommend
