AIC, 1988 - AIC Associazione Italiana Autori della Fotografia ...

22 LTOMAGMDEINOSTROSECOLO
AIC
considered to be the superior "genre".
Narration and expression in painting,
as is common knowledge, were based
on an established set of rules,
conventions and techniques which
constituted an important part of the
public's culture, as well as that of the
artist. While the representation of
space was governed by the theory of
perspective, which although a
convention was based on scientific
principles, the representation of time
and movement was based on empirical
judgment and expedients which were
used to portray, or at least suggest,
action in relation to time. Various
techniques were used in the
construction of the pictorical "story"
and the rendering of both emotion and
the actual "event" in western art: for
example, a continuum of images in a
space/time sequence, inherited from the
Late Roman period; the cycles of events
depicted in sequence in separate
panels, as in the predelle or certain
frescoes; the simultaneous
representation of different moments
and episodes in one composition, with
the action taking place at various
depths and the main characters
appearing in different poses. From the
Renaissance on, these narrative
techniques were fundamentally
modified by the unification of time,
action and space, a theory which
derived from Aristotle's teachings.
Thus, it became a rule to communicate
the most significant moment of a
particular event; or rather to represent
that infinitesimal part of the present
which, more than any other part, could
condense the significance of the entire
event in a single image which would
enable an observer to reconstruct the
moments prior to it and those which
followed, and thus appreciate the
entire event. The "chosen" moment
had to be supported and
communicated by the general
composition of the painting and the
placing of the various elements in space
according to the laws relating to
perspective and time; the attitudes and
movement of the figures were
considered to be of fundamental
importance. Innumerable suggestions
were put forward in the many books on
art theory written during the period,
all concerned with the elaboration and
communication of rules, techniques
and precepts thet would improve
painting in general: books on
proportional theories and anatomical
studies, books that adopted a
phibsophical or mathematical
approach, books which expounded on
conceptualization on typification, or
which set down all the technical
devices for creating apparent
movement, either of an individual
figure or within the scene itself. It is
also significant that Diderot comments
on the above in the Encyclopédie,
within the general critical review of the
type of culture and art promoted by
the illuminists. In the section devoted
to Dimension, he puts forward, for the
first time, the theory that "duration
could be considered as a fourth
dimension"; in the section devoted to
Composition, he emphasizes the need
for action to be unified, and underlines
the importance of the characters'
emotions communicating time. The
painter, he writes, has a single,
indivisible, moment in which to
communicate movement within the
composition, the different action that is
taking place, the chiaroscuros, and the
gestures and expressions of the
characters. In fact, it was through the
emotions that fleetingly transform the
faces of the characters, and their
different degrees of intensity, that the
sense of time pervading a painting was
fundamentally communicated, precisely
because they were transitory, and
composite, and could evoke a moment
in the present in which a face still
bears the traces of an emotion just
experienced, or pre-announces one that
is imminent: "Sometimes, tears
continue to run down a person's face as
it is just beginning to radiate joy. A
gifted painter is able to capture the
change of emotion in a person's face,
the transition of their soul from one
state of being to another, and the
result is a masterpiece".
The expression of emotion, or the
impulses of the soul, had been an
object of formal study for some time. In
1696, Le Brun, the painter and
academic, has published his
Conference sur l'expression des
passions, which enjoyed a very wide
readership. It elaborated a method for
depicting the entire range of emotions
that pass across a person's face:
tranquility, attentiveness, admiration,
amazement, desire, love, hope, fear,
temerity, joy, laughter, pain, horror,
terror, fury, jealousy, desperation,
anger etc. which, according to
principles already established by
Descartes (Traité sul le passions de
l'ime), originated in the pineal gland
located at the centre of the brain.
Correlating psychological experience
and physical reaction or, more
specifically, internal impukes and the
actions they provoked, Le Brun
depicted a series of faces on which the
complete range of emotions was
"illustrated" through the various
positions, and consequent expressions,
of the main features: eyebrows, eyes,
nose, mouth, with the intent of
providing painters with a
comprehensive repertoire of emotional
"models" to be used in their
compositions. What he did, in reality,
was to express the infinite nuances of
emotion in a series of variations on the
theme, which were unique and,
therefore, unrepeatable, yet based on a
model that remained constant; the
method was decidedly academic, but
also constituted a species of analysis of
the possibilities of expression in
painting, and of the depicting
psychological states, the mysterious
world of the emotions, with form and
colour. Apart from its rather didactic
attitude, Le Bran's methods was not
only viewed by his colleagues as an
ufr
"aid" to figurative representation, but
also as an Adriane's thread with which
to orient themselves in the labyrinth of
emotions that were in a constant state
of flux or change.
Then, Diderot took up the main idea
behind this way of portraying
movement and time in painting,
exploring its "limits" as regards
expression: having extended his way of
viewing paintings to the theatre, made
him more demanding and curious,
perhaps because of his unconscious
desire to perceive more keenly, to
experience emotions more deeply, to
witness a more perfect representation
of the visual language used in painting
and theatre and, more specifically, of
their individual capacities as art to
reflect upon reality and stimulate
fantasy. The rest we know, at least for
the most part: it is the story of the
machine age, and man's invention of
techniques for creating art in which
space and time, sound and movement,
art and science, reality and fantasy
whirled in an ever-increasing spiral,
until the potential of a new means of
expression, the cinema, w r> discovered;
until the most sophisticated
technologies and the most
mind-blowing special effects were
invented, which are responsible for
propagating the cinema myth, known
as the "Great Illusion", today. In the
space of a few decades, the images have
become increasingly more "real" and
"fantastic" through all the researching
and experience that was gained and
the methods that were evolved one
after the other and which derived from
both painting (transparencies,
dioramas, panoramas) and also
projection techniques, which resulted in
a vast number of optical and
mechanical inventions and
phsysicochemical discoveries (from the
time of Plateau through to Uchatius,
Reynaud through to Marey, Esatman
through to Edison and Lumière).
Perhaps it would be possible to explore
the cinema's complex evolution by
examining it in relation to painting
and the models it provided over the
centuries; models not merely in the
inspirational or iconographic sense, but
more as methods which could be
applied to the techniques created for
communicating the image, and the
establishing of attitudes towards it
(both as regards its creation and
viewing), and which were already
deeply ingrained.
In fact, in the cinema, at least for a
certain period, formal expression,
elaborated at length by painting and
sculpture, played a major role in its
evolution, along with the various
contributions made by science and
technology.
One notices that the movements and
expressions of the actors in silent films
were always exaggerated to compensate
for the lack of dialogue; a technique
similar — apart from the movement —
to that used in the paintings viewed by
Diderot, and also the plays he
watched. Neither is it difficult to
detect in the silent film sequences, a
typification of the emotions similar to
that worked out by Le Bran, and then
incorporated into painting technique
(whereas using the different positions
of the facial features to communicate
different expressions, is a technique
that has been adopted and devepoed
by the animation artists).
While art, from the avant-garde
movement onwards, ran into increasing
difficulties, the cinema, with the
advent of sound and various other
technologies, has grown out of its
rather primitive fascination with
recounting stories through gesture and
expression, and developed the capacity
to communicate, or suggest, the most
sophisticated expressions of reality,
fiction and fantasy — something
completely unknown before.
And finally, today, with the arrival of
electonically — created images and the
ever-increasing "commercialization" of
television, we have moved way beyond
those methods used in creating and
perceiving the image that were not
only part of cinema tradition, but also
its identity. Special effects assail the
senses — and the fantasy — to an extent
they never have before, adventuring in
a new, post-modem imagination,
which they have also helped to create,
dominated by a vast gamut of "effects"
that are increasingly more
mind-blowing, and which are moving
away from the traditional mimetic
techniques, like a space probe out the
Earth's orbit.
If painting could declare through F.
Zuccaro, at the beginning of the 16th
Century: "The invisible is the "object"
1 see before me" and if the cinema, as
Cocteau observed, permits its audience
"to dream the same dream", the
electronic image is establishing itself in
a heretofore unheard of realm of the
imagination, permitting the viewer to
perceive neither the invisible nor the
dream, but nonexistence (or that which
exists in the darkest recesses on the
"collective unconscious"), creating and
truly "legalizing" the wildest myths,
which act aggressively and disturbingly
on the banality of our daily lives.
Between monsters, demons and sci-fi, a
new repertoire of masks and grotesque
expression is being built-up,
phantasmagoria are, paradoxically,
created and "consumed", in which
words, are becoming — once again —
superfluous, governed by the logic of
stupefaction and sensation rather than
communication.
Perhaps, with all these new
technologies, the image is going
through a second childhood (it is no
coincidence that films which are one
big special effect are inevitably directed
at children); a difficult second
childhood, with its many
contradictions, its ingenuous and
stupefying attitude and, above all, its
being unaware of the fragility of itsidentity.
Meanwhile, the adventure
continues, and the potential of the
electronic image has yet to be
discovered — and exploited!