Pareidolia and the Pitfalls of Subjective Interpretation of Ambiguous Images in Art History

Leonardo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 638-642
Author(s):  
Raquel G. Wilner
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Subjective Interpretation ◽  
Perceptual Phenomenon

Abstract In art history, we sometimes discover hidden images within a picture and conduct a subjective introspective analysis of the motivation behind these images. The author argues that many such highly ambiguous hidden images are better explained by the pareidolia phenomenon: the tendency to find patterns in random stimuli. The arguments brought forth by Sidney Geist and Dario Gamboni illustrate the pitfalls and controversy of subjective visual analysis and how a perceptual phenomenon can mislead our conclusions. This article proposes that this controversy can be approached by establishing pictorial intent: Did the artist deliberately paint the hidden image, or is it merely a perceptual artifact?

Medieval Manuscripts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Book History ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
British And Irish Literature ◽  
Textual Culture

Scholars studying medieval manuscripts work in a variety of disciplines, from literary atudies to history to linguistics to art history to classics. Publications in all these areas use manuscripts and offer important findings about medieval manuscripts. In addition to its practice within different fields, much of the study of medieval manuscripts is strongly interdisciplinary, using techniques native to the study of the medieval book like codicology and paleography, alongside text critical-methods originally developed in classics and refined there, in literary studies and in history, visual analysis pioneered in art history, and philological methods now found in literary studies and linguistics. Insofar as the study of medieval manuscripts has a unified goal, it is to describe and explain the production and use of manuscripts and the textual culture associated with them, generating primary data that assists in the writing of literary, cultural, and linguistic history. Given the breadth of the field, this Oxford Bibliographies entry must necessarily be selective. It focuses primarily on manuscripts of British and Irish literature in English (manuscripts of texts in Irish, Welsh, and other Celtic languages being specialist fields of study in their own right). As a consequence, the vast majority of the material listed is in English, though scholarship on medieval manuscripts is also published in French, Italian, and German, as well as other languages. After sections devoted to General Overviews, Reference Works, Textbooks, Anthologies, Bibliographies and Journals, the bibliography presents lists of Catalogues of Manuscripts and Facsimiles, which are two of the most important tools for medieval book historians. It finishes with lists of works relevant to the major subdisciplines of medieval book history, Codicology (the study of the physical structure of manuscripts); paleography, the study of Scripts used in those manuscripts; as well as studies of Scribal Practice and Manuscript Culture; and works concerned with Ownership and Provenance.

Jewish Art, Modern and Contemporary

Art History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Balakirsky Katz
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Jewish Art ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Modern Artists ◽  
Academic Study

This article takes a minimalist approach to the designation of “Jewish” in the category of “Jewish art,” focusing primarily on works that directly engage the modern Jewish experience and the role that Jews have played in the development of new visual media in the 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time, this article takes a maximalist approach to what is meant by the term “art” by including a wide range of visual mediums. The academic study of Jews in the arts can be traced to Germany in the mid-19th century, when both art history and Jewish studies were relatively new academic disciplines. While art history devalued Jewish art as derivative in the context of the development of modern national identities, Jewish studies devalued non-textual sources for academic study. It was the interdisciplinary field of Jewish art that would serve to negotiate biases from both academic branches, proving influential in the development of iconographic interpretation by promoting critical attention to the narrative function of a wide variety of mediums. This article traces the extent to which Jewish studies scholars have compensated for earlier disciplinary tensions by questioning the premise of nationalist models for art history and how they have broadened the criteria for visual analysis in the study of Jewish art. Although some of the most recognized modern artists are Jewish, the focus here is more narrowly dedicated to those artists and visual media that have secured a place within Jewish studies. In recent decades, scholars of Jewish art have forged an accessible path by adopting more of a “visual culture” approach that considers production and consumption of Jewish content in the plastic arts in non-hierarchical terms. Because Jewish studies touch on a wide range of disciplines, the study of Jewish art has come to include the material aspects of vernacular life (decorative art and handicraft) and popular media (stage design, photography, film) as well as the traditional fine arts (architecture, sculpture, and painting) within schools of style (Impressionism, Futurism, Abstract Expressionism). Scholars of Jewish art have largely avoided the high/low debate typical of other branches of art history by emphasizing the experiential aspect of Jewish objects of all types. This article is a survey of modern and contemporary Jewish art from approximately 1850 to 1990, when Jews participated in the artistic mainstream, and points to the considerable scholarly attention Jewish studies have placed on art as a comprehensive experience rather than a purely aesthetic one. The article opens with second-order categories, then moves to scholarship devoted to issues that are central to the field, such as nationalism and Jewish/non-Jewish relations, and closes with scholarship devoted to diverse media.

scholarly journals Caravaggio’s cinematic painting: Fictionalising art and biography in the artist biopic

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keeley Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Direct Reference ◽  
Personal Identification ◽  
The Self ◽  
Public Figure ◽  
Subjective Interpretation ◽  
Tableaux Vivants ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Biographical Knowledge

Explorations of the artist in the biopic genre are often formulaic in approach. The biographical narrative, modelled on the literary monograph, celebrates a public figure who overcomes challenges to rise to the top of their field. These films traditionally present the artist’s life and work as intrinsically involved with each other so that the artwork can only be explained through contextualising biographical knowledge. Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986), in the vein of his highly personal, experimental filmmaking, is not a biopic in this traditional sense. Taking advantage of what little is known about Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the Italian painter widely recognised as the first great artist of the Baroque period and a master of chiaroscuro, Jarman constructs a heavily fictional ‘biographical’ narrative. This narrative is built upon historical speculation, personal identification, and most significantly, his subjective interpretation and visualisation of the paintings themselves. A series of tableaux vivants, delicately postured, almost still, recreations of the paintings, provide the narrative impetus in Caravaggio. Many of these are situated as poses in preparation for Caravaggio's painting. These recreations are removed from their historical context, disregarding the artworks’ chronology and misplacing characters and events to construct a part-Jarman/part-Caravaggio profile – fictionalising both art and biography. This paper explores Jarman’s intricate appropriation of the art and biography of the artist in Caravaggio, and how this is implemented, and complicated, to serve his own narrative agenda. Developing André Bazin’s discussion about the adoption of one medium into another in ‘Painting and Cinema,’ I analyse the tableaux representing The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599-1600), The Entombment of Christ (1602-03), and Death of the Virgin (1606). This analysis takes place on three levels: firstly, art-history ‘fidelity;’ secondly, the perversion of the self-portrait; and finally, with direct reference to Bazin’s essay, the editing of the art-image.

scholarly journals Punishment in the frame: Rethinking the history and sociology of art

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamonn Carrabine
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Art History ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Current State ◽  
Sociology Of Art

Images of punishment have featured prominently in Western art and this article explores what might be learnt from studying such pictures of suffering. It seeks to develop an approach to the visual that avoids both the essentialism of art history and the reductionism of sociology by offering a rethinking of the relationships between the two. It begins by setting out the current state of the sociology of art, before discussing ‘new’ art histories that are inspired by social analysis. It then concentrates on how images of punishment have featured in Western art. This substantive material provides a rich resource to understand the force of representation and offers an opportunity to develop an aesthetic sociology that avoids some of the problems identified in the article. The approach developed in the second part is one that seeks to elaborate an aesthetic sociology that combines a historical sensitivity to images with the analytical concerns of social science. It strives to extend the art historian Michael Baxandall’s writings toward more sociological interpretations of visual analysis.

scholarly journals Scaffolding the Formal Analysis Assignment in Art History Courses to Promote Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Kutis
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
College Courses ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Self Regulated Learning ◽  
Repeated Practice ◽  
Complex Projects

This paper will provide a case study on how to promote self-regulated learning by employing scaffolding assignments using the learning management system, Canvas. With many college courses transitioning to the online environment, students are expected to complete large, complex assignments that meet higher order learning outcomes. A challenge of the online course is the faculty-student interaction and the lack of real-time guidance for these complex projects. A way to increase student success, as research has shown, is to scaffold assignments – that is, create smaller assignments that build toward a larger, more complex, assignment. Scaffolding not only provides students the opportunity to practice skills they need to develop, but also the opportunity for faculty to provide feedback to enhance learning. I explain how I adapted the standard formal analysis assignment from an introductory art history course into a series of smaller assignments using the Canvas LMS. By creating assignments that ask students to address select aspects of the larger task, students have the ability for repeated practice in their visual analysis skills (and writing skills) as well as the opportunity for frequent instructional feedback, both of which are recognized best practices in teaching and learning. Quantitative evidence supports this practice and suggests student learning and success has improved.

Comparative Effects of High-Tech Visual Scene Displays and Low-Tech Isolated Picture Symbols on Engagement From Students With Multiple Disabilities

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Holyfield ◽  
Sydney Brooks ◽  
Allison Schluterman
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Augmentative And Alternative Communication ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Multiple Disabilities ◽  
Visual Scene ◽  
Future Research ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Single Subject ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Difference

Purpose Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is an intervention approach that can promote communication and language in children with multiple disabilities who are beginning communicators. While a wide range of AAC technologies are available, little is known about the comparative effects of specific technology options. Given that engagement can be low for beginning communicators with multiple disabilities, the current study provides initial information about the comparative effects of 2 AAC technology options—high-tech visual scene displays (VSDs) and low-tech isolated picture symbols—on engagement. Method Three elementary-age beginning communicators with multiple disabilities participated. The study used a single-subject, alternating treatment design with each technology serving as a condition. Participants interacted with their school speech-language pathologists using each of the 2 technologies across 5 sessions in a block randomized order. Results According to visual analysis and nonoverlap of all pairs calculations, all 3 participants demonstrated more engagement with the high-tech VSDs than the low-tech isolated picture symbols as measured by their seconds of gaze toward each technology option. Despite the difference in engagement observed, there was no clear difference across the 2 conditions in engagement toward the communication partner or use of the AAC. Conclusions Clinicians can consider measuring engagement when evaluating AAC technology options for children with multiple disabilities and should consider evaluating high-tech VSDs as 1 technology option for them. Future research must explore the extent to which differences in engagement to particular AAC technologies result in differences in communication and language learning over time as might be expected.

A Pilot Study of Early Storybook Reading With Babies With Hearing Loss

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (9) ◽  
pp. 3397-3412
Author(s):  
Michelle I. Brown ◽  
David Trembath ◽  
Marleen F. Westerveld ◽  
Gail T. Gillon
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Storybook Reading ◽  
Book Selection ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
Parent Child

Purpose This pilot study explored the effectiveness of an early storybook reading (ESR) intervention for parents with babies with hearing loss (HL) for improving (a) parents' book selection skills, (b) parent–child eye contact, and (c) parent–child turn-taking. Advancing research into ESR, this study examined whether the benefits from an ESR intervention reported for babies without HL were also observed in babies with HL. Method Four mother–baby dyads participated in a multiple baseline single-case experimental design across behaviors. Treatment effects for parents' book selection skills, parent–child eye contact, and parent–child turn-taking were examined using visual analysis and Tau-U analysis. Results Statistically significant increases, with large to very large effect sizes, were observed for all 4 participants for parent–child eye contact and parent–child turn-taking. Limited improvements with ceiling effects were observed for parents' book selection skills. Conclusion The findings provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of an ESR intervention for babies with HL for promoting parent–child interactions through eye contact and turn-taking.

Art History as Genetic Epistemology

1985 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 962-964
Author(s):  
Pavel Machotka
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Genetic Epistemology
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