Visual Culture Rules the World

Videos, You Tube, television, movies, magazines, text messages, Internet, advertising, FaceBook, MySpace.....

     We live in a world where visual media and images has a powerful influence on our lives.  Visual Impressions are extremely strong and shape our values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior.  Visual Culture can shape public opinion.  For some, Visual Culture is life lived on screen.  People may forget what they read, but they never for get a picture-- or a movie, a video, a news cast, or a magazine cover.  Visual Culture can break down walls or build them.  If someone does not understand what they are looking at or how to decode images Visual Culture for them becomes a form of mind control.  

     Studying art is important because our modern society is saturated with images.  Studying art teaches us to look for the point of view of the artist or creators.  It teaches humans how to decode images more effectively.  It teaches us to observe society, and culture and shows us how to understand where attitudes and behaviors come from.  Art teaches us to dig deeper and develop our own point of view and helps us to navigate through a world of images.

      Very few people take the time to reflect or question the point of view of the person, persons, corporations, organizations, or agencies putting their images before them over and over.  Who owns the images you are looking at?  He who owns the media rules the world.

Rosie the Riveter and Visual Propaganda

  

Visual propaganda during WWII helped to get housewives into the workforce.  The iconic image of J. Howard Miller's "We Can Do It" is often confused with Norman Rockwell's cover "Rosie the Riveter."  Norman Rockwell's cover of Rosie was inspired by Michaelangelo's depiction of Isaiah on the ceiling mural of the Sistine Chapel.   Rockwell added much symbolism in his cover including the robust arms of Rosie, and the Hitler magazine underneath her foot.  A link to a very enlightening video by the Library of Congress on You Tube explains the symbolism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04VNBM1PqR8

An Island of Dots

Seurat, Jatte, and Dots.  It's all about the dots.  Georges Seurat used a scientific method of using little dots to create this painting.  The brain does the rest. It is proof that we really see with our brain and not our eyes. The dots of color when seen together creates new colors and images. The brain does the work of putting the dots together and mixing the colors.  It took Seurat 2 years to create this painting of dots.  There is a modern commercial that imitates this painting.  Who can guess that commercial?

Artists in the Workforce

A respectable report on artist in the workforce is reported on by the National Endowment for the Arts.

http://www.arts.gov/news/news08/ArtistsinWorkforce.html


Photo source
http://www.flickr.com/photos/exploratorium_public_programs/199104927/

Artists Confuse Census Bureau

Click to enlarge


It sounds like the left brain trying to force the right brain into a box. Try googling 'characteristics of artist'. Here is another that is interesting. Artist was defined as an "Organism that presents art." Organism? http://books.google.com/books?id=cpc7CJH1-s8C&pg=RA2-PA119&lpg=RA2-PA119&dq=characteristics+of+artists&source=bl&ots=nJ6lAUxi8I&sig=rHhh4VkfDCAP6In38Pyzy8b7rYo&hl=en&ei=vWtKSqu

God...an Artist?

God is often referred to as the Father, but why do so many people call Him the Creator? Is God an artist? Being a part of this world is like living in a museum every day. It seems the Creator is constantly in His studio mixing colors, shaping, and sculpting. Every artist likes his art to be noticed. We always have a new painting hanging in the sky when we wake up. In this world there is always something beautiful, interesting, and unique to observe.

There are billions of people in the world, yet every single human being has their own distinct shape and color. Hands, eyes, feet, noses and other features of every single human seems to have been formed uniquely for them. The work of landscapers have really already been done. Landscapers are really workers in the museum of the world shifting art pieces around identifying what artwork looks best next to another. Witness the testament of autumn and spring or the songs of winter and summer. Make a point to visit a local botanical garden and observe a little more closely the intriguing creative quality of trees and mysterious beauty of flowers.

God the artist is really is in the full creative mode when He makes fish and things in the ocean. Have you seen just a piece of the coral reef or visited the local aquarium and witnessed the amazing shapes, colors, and patterns of things that live in the ocean? Kinetic sculpture is art that moves. The ocean is a beautifully choreographed song and dance of the kinetic art in the sea. Or what about animals? Whether at the zoo or on the Serengetti plains; observing animals are like going to another gallery in the museum. It is hard to ignore the grace of patterns, shapes and textures in animals.

We sit in the best art class everyday of our lives. All we have to do is use the gift of our own sight to what is really around us. If one refers to the Holy Scriptures, the very first scripture starts off with “In the beginning God created…” He was an artist in the studio before anything else. Art and creating are important to this world. Stop for a moment and imagine all this creativity gone and the world as a blank canvas of nothingness….. Or imagine you had no sight and were blind? Would creativity mean something then? Whether someone believes in God or not, anyone with sight can see there is no denying there is a great creative force among us or the importance of art in our world.

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15684217@N03/3230949286/sizes/o/

What Makes People Remember Art

Art is a product of a human experience. When art captures the human condition, human struggle, human psyche, human nature, or human behavior, it is destined to become a classic. It's destiny is classic because it then becomes a record of a time in history. Artworks that are intriguing and pull the viewer into the world of another are never forgotten and help the observer to understand the experience, struggle or condition of another human. Artists are powerful people that help others to understand the behavior, nature, and the psyche of other human beings. In 1948 Picasso captured the tragedies of war in his painting "Guernica." Tupac Shakur is a loved artist because his music seizes the experience and the cultural war of growing up black and poor. Right now our world is at war. Artist Arabella Dorman courageously and eloquently captures the psyche and culture of soldiers in the Iraq war in her series of war paintings. http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/2009/05/27/war-paint/
(The Tupac postcard is a postcard secret from http://www.postsecret.com/)