Visual methodologies
Visual methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials
Gillian Rose
Publisher: London ; Sage, 2001.
ISBN: 0761966641 DDC: 302.23 LCC: P93.5
Compositional Interpretation
The good eye approach, builds on years of experience, attributing art to artists, schools, styles, sources, and influences, and then judging their quality. p.34
I personally reject this as a concept because it is elitist in its approach.
However, the power of the image must not be subordinated to the theoretical debates in which its interpretation is embedded. Adequate visual scrutiny should be used with other types of analysis so that what you literally see is related to reception, meaning and content. p.37
Not only composition, but also production (including the social modality (who commissioned the work etc. ) ) ownership etc. (provenance)
It is perhaps only useful to describe the techniques of production when this helps describe a particular characteristic of the work.
Composition as a schematic device (few components are completely distinct.)
Content - this may be obvious, and perhaps literally so, but not iconographically. "Take some time to be sure you are sure what you think an image is showing" p.39
Colour - hue, saturation, value. Are the colours harmonious? see John Gage colour theories 1993
Spatial Organisation - the organisational space "within" an image and the viewing position of the spectator are separate things. First then, volumes in an image - relationships, connections, lines, directions, rhythm is static or dynamic. Second the spaces around the volumes - width, depth, interval, distance. "Perspective depends on a geometry of rays of vision, and your eye is central to this geometry" p.40 (this often assumes there is a single viewpoint - that you have one eye. I have two separate eyes, and for this reason my work is about making the viewer move, changing his viewpoint physically.) But having a single eye-level is seen as normal, and having two eye-levels seems strange and incoherent. It is only one part of the toolbox, but, "perspective provides a benchmark for thinking about the representation of space in any particular image" p.42
Draw a summary diagram of the image... look for edges and where lines intersect
Logic of figuration (Holly 1996) suggests that "we stand where the work tells us to stand, and we see what they choose to reveal. The position of the viewer is designed by the spatial organisation of the work. (p.44) Angle, Height and Distance are all important in determining our contact with t he painting. Frontal angles are more engaging than oblique. Looking down on the work gives us power over the subject. Pictures in close up give us intimacy with the subject.
Focalizers are those looks in the picture from the point of view of the inhabitants of the image. Where are they looking? Can we see what they are looking at? What is the relationship between the people in the image?
Light - can enhance or call into question the 3D spatial quality of a work. e.g. consistent shadows from a window.
Expressive Content.
The first section deals with objective(ish) notions of composition. but what about the affective characteristics? Expressive content is not about meaning of the image. Words like "comfortably", "gingerly" and "solemn" to describe the actions and pathos of subjects in a painting.
Is there a Kantian aesthetic; one which argues for an intrinsic characteristic of the work of art? Or is art culturally dependant? And don´t we need to look at both cultures; the time of production, and the time of reception? p 47
This approach to a work is great for works which are new to you, and to describe the visual impact of an image. However, it does not lead to discussion of the production of an image, nor reflexivity that considers any particular interpretation. It relies on notions of connoisseurship, genius, Art, and has no interest in the social practices of visual images.
Chapter 3 - Content Analysis
analyse the content of a wide range of pictures looking for patterns.
1. finding images: Must address all the images relevant to the research question, but this may be too large a sample, so we need to be representative, and sampling will be needed. 4 ways to sample: random (using random number table) stratified (using subgroups that already exist, choose a picture from each subgroup. systematic (every 3rd, 10th or nth image, taking care with possible cycles within images). cluster (choose groups at random and sample only from them.
sample size depends on variation of images - if there is no variation, a sample of one is sufficient.
2. devising categories for coding - categories should be apparently objective, describing what is really there in the image. this can be qualitative, however, by choosing categories that relate to the theoretical concerns of the research. categories must be 1. exhaustive (every aspect of the images will be covered by the research) 2. exclusive (categories must not overlap) 3. enlightening (analytically interesting and coherent)
where do you devise codes? from the research question, from the theoretical and empirical literature from which the research question was formulated, from the familiarity you have with the images. initial category codes must be trialled to see that they conform to being exhaustive and exclusive
Content analysis must be replicable... any research at any time must give the same codes to the same images. again, a pilot is needed to secure this.
analysing the results: frequency counts; comparison of frequency with time, relationships between different coding categories. the results of content analysis need to be understood within a wider context to make sense of them.
issues: content analysis can lend rigour and consistency to large scale qualitative research projects, but numbers do not easily translate into significance (for example, "certain representations of what is visible depend on other things being constructed as their invisible opposite; and content analysis is incapable of addressing these invisible others. " Rose 2001 p. 66
cannot discriminate between a weak and strong example of codes in different images.
there is no correlation between elements of the image (which seems to be quite important in how an image works) and it cannot articulate the expressive content of an image.
content analysis ignores the site of production of an image, and the site of audiencing. You can talk to producers of images, and audiences, and you may find that their understanding of the images is very different not only from each other, but from the "objective" approach of content analysis, there is no reflexivity involved.
Hermeneutics as a visual methodology ????
Discourse Analysis 1
Foucault´s theoretical arguments: "Discourse has a quite specific meaning. It refers to a group of statements that structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking. In other words, discourse is a particular knowledge about the world which shapes how the world is understood and how things are done in it." p. 136
so... Art is "not certain kinds of visual images but the knowledges, institutions, subjects and practices which work to define certain images as art and others as not art. Discourses are articulated through all sorts of visual and verbal images and texts, specialised or not, and also through the practices that those languages permit." p. 136
Intertextuality is the idea that no image stands by itself, but is understood through the meanings carried by other images.
Discourse is powerful because it is productive; it gives subjects certain ways of thinking and acting, it produces the world as it understands it. It seems to me that this is a cyclical, self-referential system, but as the "whole" system (i.e. everyone in the world, or even a subset of that e.g. everyone in the art world (or even smaller subsets) is huge (and even if there are only two people in the "world" I would still argue that it is huge) then this power is not imposed "from the top of society down onto its oppressed bottom layers" p.137 but that power is everywhere, since discourse is everywhere. And where there is power, there is resistance.
It seems to me that the whole "Is it Art?" debate is the friction between different discourse groups who want to believe they hold the truth (even if they say there is no "truth"). And of course, claims of truth shift historically.
Discourse Analysis I
"discourse as articulated through various kinds of visual images and verbal texts" p.140
[Discourse Analysis II pays "more attention to the practices of institutions" p.140]
The "discourse analyst is interested in how images construct accounts of the social world" p. 140
This is then in the area of social modality of the image site (see Rose chapter 1). As all discourse tries to be persuasive, discourse analysis focuses on looking at strategies of persuasion.
Discourse Analysis pays attention to two of the three "critical approaches" that Rose argues for in Chapter 1 - it takes images seriously, paying close attention to them, and it looks at social production (conditions) and effect. It does not, however, concern itself with questions of reflexivity. "do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order" (Foucault, 1972:17) p.141
Finding Sources: all sorts of sources are needed in DA - and "this eclecticism is demanded by the intertextuality of discourse." p.143 This breadth of material means that you need to be selective about your starting points. Look for ones that will be particularly productive or interesting. But then you will need to widen your "range of archives and sites", which may lead to serendipity, which is useful in DA as this leads to bringing together, convincingly, material previously seen as unrelated. This can be time consuming, and it is difficult to know where to stop collecting data. But it is quality of data that is important, not quantity.
Iconography (a method by Erwin Panofsky) is "that branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art, as opposed to their form." (p.144)
Western figurative paintings of the 16th to 18th centuries relied on a list of icons (motifs, allegories, personifications) that would be consulted by the artist making the work, and by the audience of the work to interpret it. Almost everything in a painting could be interpreted in one way or another, down to the very colours used in the clothes worn. Rose argues that using sources such as alchemy books and referring to other paintings of marriages (in the example cited in her book) but I would also regard a reasonable knowledge of biblical (and apocryphal) myths to be important too. DA, then, requires a use of a variety of source material.
Exploring the rhetorical organization of discourse: read and look at sources with fresh eyes. Pre-existing ideas must be held in suspense. Look and look again at the images. Identify key themes (though remember that these may not be the most often occurring themes) and use these to analyse images (See chapter 3). Think about connections between key words and images. look at how words or images are - given specific meanings. clustered together. connections between clusters.
As compared to content analysis, DA is more flexible as it assumes that new questions, new categories will arise from the analysis, and so inform your ideas, and guide your investigations. It is looking for truth (and claims to truth may come from a variety of sources, including scientific certainty, religion or the natural way of things). But "truth" can be rejected, and so in DA it is important too look for conflicting ideas, contradictions, uncertainties. Absences, too, can be as productive as explicit naming, "invisibility can have just as powerful affects as visibility" (p.158)
a nice example is The Cockney. seen as white, despite the constant presence of large black communities in the East End, after the so called race riots of 1958 race could not be made invisible so easily, and so the idea of cockney fades as a meaningful cultural category.
DA is a rigorous discipline that relies on a profound reading of the texts, rather than adherence to formal procedures.
Summary of strategies:
1. looking at your sources with fresh eyes.
2. immersing yourself in your sources.
3. identifying key themes in your sources.
4. examining their effects of truth.
5. paying attention to their complexity and contradictions.
6. looking for the invisible as well as the visible.
7. paying attention to details.
Take care though, because sources come from social institutions. e.g. sources from Victorian England will have been made by educated, wealthy individuals who can make images, photos, print books; not from uneducated, poor people.
There are some strengths and weaknesses to DA as a research approach. See p. 161 ff.
