The Relationship between Visual and Reality in Virtuosity by Gary Lucchesi

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe they are worth far more than that. Pictures, although seemingly simple in nature, are extremely complex. Far too often, people overlook what a picture truly is. When a person looks at an image, they most likely see only the image, nothing else. Many people do not look deep enough into an image to fully comprehend the true meaning of it. However, when an individual begins to truly study an image in an attempt to understand the true complexity of it, they will be surprised at what they overlooked before. As stated by French Realist Painter, Gustave Courbet, “Fine art is knowledge made visible.”

Surrealism is a movement that built off of the burgeoning look into art, psychology, and the workings of the mind. Popularly associated with the works of Salvador Dali, Surrealist art takes imagery and ideology and creates correlation where there is none, creating new forms of art. In this essay I will look to explore the inception of the surrealist movement, including the Surrealist Manifesto, to stress the importance of these artists and their work in the 20th century and beyond. I also will look to films from our European Cinema course to express how films incorporate the influence of surrealism both intentionally and unintentionally.

To support this idea, Bordwell illustrates how art cinema motivates its narratives differently, through two principles: realism and authorial expressivity. Firstly he proposes the notion that art films reflect realism in their characters, space, and time. Psychologically complex characters are present in real worlds dealing with true-to-life situations. Art cinema is concerned with the characters ‘reaction’ to these situations, rather than their ‘action’. Thus it bares an element of psychological subjectivity as the characters survey the world they are in, which aids the realisation of the distress of

Through studying and analyzing ‘Maestro’ ,written by Peter Goldsworthy, and by viewing and analyzing the film ‘Edward Scissorhands’ directed by Tim Burton, it is evident that the composers of these texts allow the audience to see distinctive experiences with our eyes as well as with our minds through distinctively visual. The many visual, written and literary techniques have the ability to create a significant and impacting visual.

Over the years, I have flirted with visual art. It started with pencil drawing, continued as an affair with marker illustration, then a dalliance with lettering, and I now have a relationship with photography. However, my favorite art will never be displayed in museums or galleries. It is not static and immutable. Rather, my chosen medium is fluid, living, volatile. No matter how well rehearsed, it will never be the same again. That’s the beauty of performance art.

Through the use of techniques and themes, a composer is able to create distinctively visual images when describing the setting and characters in detail which help us to understand and form meaning of what the composer is trying to convey in their texts. The use of techniques such as body language, symbolism, lighting, music and photographic background slides create distinctively visual images same with themes that are being used within the texts such as truth which is evident in the dramatic text ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ by John Misto, the song ‘Lose Yourself’ sang by Eminem, and the film ‘The Eye’ directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud featuring Jessica Alba. These three texts demonstrate how the responders are impacted and what is

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. Thesis. N.d. N.p.: Laura Mulvey, 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. NG Communications, 2006. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. .

The use of distinctively visual images allows an audience to perceive and distinguish the composer’s specific representation. From these distinctive visuals, the audience’s perceptions force them to respond in a particular way. In ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’, Ang Lee utilises a range of film techniques to position his audience through a combination of quiet, dramatic scenes and choreographed action sequences. In his painting, ‘Third of May, 1808’ Fransisco Goya conveys meaning exclusively with distinctively visual techniques. Both the composers are able to effectively convey their message and

Imagination is an intrinsic part of the human experience. It has the power to mold reality by defining the limits of possibility and affecting perception. Both Alan White and Irving Singer examine aspects of this power in their respective works The Language of Imagination and Feeling and Imagination. White delineates how imagination is a necessary precursor to possibility (White 179) while Singer primarily illustrates imagination's effect on human relationships, such as love (Singer 29-48). Despite their different focuses, White and Singer demonstrate the impact that imagination has on human perceptions of reality. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amelie explores this facet of imagination: the film

In John Berger’s essay “Ways of Seeing,” he shares his view on how he feels art is seen. Mr. Berger explores how the views of people are original and how art is seen very differently. By comparing certain photographs, he goes on to let his Audience, which is represented as the academic, witness for themselves how art may come across as something specific and it can mean something completely different depending on who is studying the art. The author goes into details of why images were first used, how we used to analyze art vs how we do today, and the rarity of arts. He is able to effectively pass on his message by using the strategies of Rhetoric, which include Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.

Art is experienced best on an emotional level rather than just the beauty, pleasure or understanding of it. Artists will use their form of artwork to pass along their views and feelings. Teresa López’s and Wendy Ewald’s “The Phantom” is a piece of art that invokes many emotions. It simulates both the possibility of comfort or fear of the unknown and the anxious waiting of the known through its immaculate composition. This is done through its use of dense distortion and contrasting colors. Through distortion the artists get us to focus on the phantom that is the only source of light and the contrasting colors make us realize how contrasting our perceptions can be.

Plantigna deliberates on various differences between the fiction and non-fiction filmmaker, particularly the role of imagination to the two differing styles of film. He discusses that the fiction filmmaker “freely creates imaginative events”, where the non-fiction filmmaker “portrays or makes explicit claims about actual historical events” (104). He then puts forth the idea that imagination is also important for the non-fiction filmmaker as he as the creator “decides how to represent historical events” (104). This is demonstrated in shot 237 where Resnais’ camera pans over the ceiling of a gas chamber that has been carved in and scored by human fingernails and the voice-over narrates, “the only sign—but you have to know—is this ceiling, dug into by fingernails”. Here, Resnais using his imaginative ability, has seamlessly

The line separating reality and the illusion of reality is a blur. The line separating the narrator’s self-aware expression and his story telling is a blur. The line separating Ambrose and the narrator is a blur. All of this may blur understanding. It is clear, however, that these blurs exist because of the “funhouse”. A funhouse, Lost in the funhouse, in which exist other funhouses. Various funhouses exist in the story and in the writing. For this reason, the title Lost in the funhouse is very significant.

The romantic idea of the auteur is described by film theoretician, André Bazin, observing the film form as an idealistic phenomenon. Through the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard reference, Bazin primarily refers to an essential literary and romantic conception of the artist as central. He considers the relationship between film aesthetics and reality more important than the director itself and places cinema above paintings. He described paintings as a similar ethical creation to film stating a director ‘can be valued according to its measurements and the celebrity of the signature, the objective quality of the work itself was formerly held in much higher esteem.’ (Bazin, 1967: 250). Bazin contemplates the historical and social aspects that indeed hinder a director’s retribution to their own personalised film, thus en-companying their own ideological judgement upon the world ‘more so in cinema where the sociological and historical cross-currents are countless.’ (Bazin, 1967: 256)

Today’s science fiction is often tomorrow’s reality. As the pace of change has quickened, so it appears that we are actually living within a science fiction movie. Programs on TV continue to amaze or frighten us with yet more technological break through and with clever new products and gadgets. Over the last decade and certainly through the rest of this century, the major agent for these changes has been and will continue to be electronic computer and its derivatives. The Digital Age exploded into existence not with a whimper but a bang. The globe still shakes from its entry. The journey was long, but the impact is immediate. Now, for instance, the breath of an unborn baby can be captured and rendered visible, the