The Victorians and the Visual Imagination

Book Description

This innovative, interdisciplinary study explores the Victorians' attitudes toward sight. It draws on writers as diverse as George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Rudyard Kipling as well as pre-Raphaelite and realist painters including Millais, Burne-Jones, William Powell Frith and Whistler, and a host of Victorian scientists, cultural commentators and art critics. Topics discussed include blindness, memory, hallucination, dust, and the importance of the horizon--a dazzling array of subjects linked together by the operations of the eye and brain. This richly illustrated book will appeal to anyone studying Victorian culture.

Customer Reviews:

The Victorians and the Visual Imagination - Kate Flint........2001-01-03

A welcome study ! Offering interesting reading for academics and those who have a general passion for the period. This book is well referenced and sourced - pulling together the thoughts and experiences of many key and contemporary Victorians such as Ruskin, Dickens, Eliot and a whole host of lesser known but equally important writers and artists. Kate Flint explores the changing concept of perspective - she shows the impact of travel - the challenge to conventional perspective offered by physically altering one's position - train travel or ballooning for example. "Sight" as it was perceived by the Victorians is something we do not identify with today. Flint brings to the foreground the important fact that "seeing" in Victorian England was indeed a very different experience. I found this book a useful addition to my bookshelf and more than that, I really liked it.

Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain

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Brain, Biology and Bueaty
this has little to do with art
Stimulating, honest and inspiring
What studying brain cells can tell us about art
What studying brain cells can tell us about art

Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain
Semir Zeki
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0198505191

Amazon.com

Why do we find it hard to explain why art is beautiful? Perhaps it is because the visual system of the human brain is much more developed than its language centers, as it has had far longer--millions of years--to evolve. Semir Zeki believes that we can only reach a better understanding of art as we learn more about the operations of the visual brain.

Zeki demonstrates that the simple act of seeing is a profoundly artistic activity. Separating out the mass of geometrical and spectral information received through the eye to arrive at a visual perception is a complex and creative process. Zeki traces the functional similarities of the artist and the seeing brain. "Just as the brain searches for constancies and essentials," Zeki writes, "so does art.... It is those attributes of vision [to which] the brain has assigned specialised processing systems ... that have primacy in art. Among those one can include colour, form, motion, faces, facial expressions and even body language."

Zeki's examples are varied and convincing. For example, he explores the relationship between modern works that have emphasized lines and the reaction of cells in the brain that work on lines of specific orientation. More ambitiously, he even outlines the neurological bases of Fauvism and Cubism!

T.S. Eliot said that using language to discuss art was "a raid on the inarticulate, with shabby equipment." In Inner Vision, that pejorative statement acquires a heroic mantle: no artist worth the name and no one who enjoys visual beauty can afford to ignore the insights contained in this book. --Simon Ings, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

The work of the artist and the science of vision may seem distantly related as subjects. However, When Leonardo da Vinci wrote that, of all the colours, the most pleasing are the ones which constitute opponents, he was uttering a physical truth about the visual brain. Inner Vision is the first attempt to relate the science of vision to art. Using a range of examples from artists including Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Magritte, Malevich, and Picasso, Semir Zeki takes the reader on an aesthetic tour of the brain. He describes in compelling detail how different areas of the brain respond to elements of the visual arts such as colour, form, line, and motion, and argues that our experience of art relates strongly to the neuroanatomy of the visual cortex. Combining beautiful illustrations, rich insights, and entertaining prose, Inner Vision will be enthralling for scientists and artists alike. "Dr Zeki is one of the three founders of modern visual science. He has undertaken an ambitious project and has in my opinion succeeded admirably. The book is very readable and full of fascinating insights. It will appeal to a very wide audience including artists, neurologists, psychologists, and philosophers." V Ramachandran, University of California

Customer Reviews:

Brain, Biology and Bueaty.......2006-02-19

Neuroscientists have for a long been looking inside the brain to understand its function. Semir Zeki, in this book proposes the unconventional idea of looking into the most beautiful products of brain, visual art of instance, to understand the functioning of brain. Citing examples of Shakesphere and Wagner, he goes further to propose that some artists might be thought of as neurologists, "for they at least did know how to probe the mind of humans with the techniques of language and of music and understood perhaps better than most what it takes to move the mind of human". By showing the striking features of the patients studied by himself and others, he gives compelling evidence that vision is not a singular process and there are parts of brain that are dedicated to various functions such as color, form, motion etc. He writes about patients who have damaged a part of the visual brain (V4) and sees the world in dark shades of grey. Similarly, patients with damage in V5 neither see nor understand motion. They only see discontinuous static images. They for instance cannot see the rising level of a drink in a glass and the drink always overflows. Then he describes a patient with damage to a certain region in cortex, who cannot recognize faces. This person can visualize lines and objects but simply cannot recognize faces. All of these abilities that seem so simple and effortless to all of us normal people -- it's only when something goes wrong we realize how extraordinarily subtle the mechanisms of vision really are and how complexly integrated a process it really is.

For readers who are not familiar with visual arts, this book will give you a condensed idea about different branches of paintings and what the painter was trying to achieve. I found it interesting. The book itself has an aesthetic appeal and the publisher deserves kudos for the page layout and cover design. Although I do not share the degree of skepticism that my fellow reviewer drollere has, I think this book has its own limitations. For instance the cases of these patients have been described elsewhere ranging from Steven Pinkers- How Mind Works to some articles/lectures of VS Ramachandran. The concept of `micro consciousness' raised in this book is ill-defined and misleading and it has to be separated from the core consciousness defined by Antonio Damasio.

this has little to do with art.......2003-03-31

as someone with a doctorate in psychology who has retired to a life of intensive painting, i can say this book falls short in its fundamental premise: if we can identify a distinct visual capability in the brain, that capability forms the basis for visual esthetic judgments. that argument unfortunately goes nowhere, and the result is a thin book with its substantive content spread even thinner.

zeki's argument is roughly that the mind is an active creator of visual experience; that we create visual experience using a variety of "modular" cerebral functions (specific neighborhoods of the brain that detect edges, analyze movement, perceive color, recognize faces); and that art works which "appeal" to these modular capabilities provide the foundation for art. claims that art that becomes "great" if the mind is presented with ambiguous or multiple interpretations, provoking it to "actively create" varied interpretations from the work in view. in this way zeki hopes to reason his way toward a "neurological esthetics," a biologically based prescription of what is beautiful or compelling art.

well, where to begin ... because a brain function is invoked by a stimulus does not make it interesting or great; my review invokes your language capabilities, but that doesn't make my words poetry. a painting does not succeed by creating a variety of specific but competing interpretations, as zeki claims, but by reframing awareness into a realm where the mundane categorizations necessary for behavior are stretched by the exercise of the senses. what counts as beautiful cannot be determined from the quantitative activity of different brain regions. what counts as beautiful depends heavily on cultural expectations, not on physiology ... on and on the objections roll.

in the end, zeki's argument is highly parochial. his examples come from the "edge detection" art of the supremacists or the cubists; the "color perception" art of the fauves, the "movement perception" art of calder, and so on -- simplistic art for simplistic art theories. (someone should ask, where are the edges in monet or turner, the color in kline or velazquez, the movement in vermeer or van dyck?) on the philosophical side, zeki seems willing to cite plato or hegel as straw men to knock down, but seems completely unaware of the many philosophical or social psychological theorists who could enrich his "active construction" view of visual perception. finally, zeki seems not to have had a personal colloquy with practicing artists, who could disabuse him of his naive reading of western art and its traditions.

psychologists will find this book to be unexpectedly thin on the facts of recent neural research and cognitive function, and lacking in philosophical depth. artists will look at zeki's simplistic reading of art and art history, shrug and wonder, what is this guy talking about?

Stimulating, honest and inspiring.......2000-09-20

"Fresh air" is the best definition of Seki's book on art and brain. Innovative for neuroscientists and artists, it proposes a comprehensive, yet speculative (i.e., stimulating), vision on neuroaestethics. You won't read neither a neurosciences book, nor an art one. It's both... and more.

What studying brain cells can tell us about art.......2000-03-15

I was deeply fascinated by this book: because it provides compelling evidence that certain aspects of the way we perceive art can be explained by the physiological properties of nerve cells in the visual brain. Zeki illustrates this point most strikingly at examples of modern art. He proposes that many modern artists have unknowingly created visual stimuli that are optimally tailored to the response properties of neurons in specific subregions of the visual processing stream. Zeki's writing is extremely lucid, with a good portion of irony, and excellent illustrations increase the pleasure or reading this book.

What studying brain cells can tell us about art.......2000-03-04

I found this book extremely fascinating: Because it provides compelling evidence that certain aspects of our aesthetic experience when looking at paintings can be understood in terms of the physiological properties of neurons in the visual brain. It is written lucidly, with beautiful illustrations.

Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)

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Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)
Janet Ward
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520222997

Book Description

Germany of the 1920s offers a stunning moment in modernity, a time when surface values first became determinants of taste, activity, and occupation: modernity was still modern, spectacle was still spectacular. Janet Ward's luminous study revisits Weimar Germany via the lens of metropolitan visual culture, analyzing the power that 1920s Germany holds for today's visual codes of consumerism.

Narrating Modernity: The British Problem Picture, 1895-1914 (British Art and Visual Culture Since 1750 New Readings)

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Narrating Modernity: The British Problem Picture, 1895-1914 (British Art and Visual Culture Since 1750 New Readings)
Pamela M. Fletcher
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies (Clark Studies in the Visual Arts)

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Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies (Clark Studies in the Visual Arts)

Manufacturer: Clark Art Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0300097891

Book Description

Art history, aesthetics, and visual studies today find themselves in contested new philosophical and institutional circumstances. This fascinating and challenging volume explores the connections and differences among these three methods of investigating visual representation.

Book Description

Jane Goldman offers a revisionary, feminist reading of Woolf's work. Focusing on Woolf's engagement with the artistic theories of her time, Goldman analyzes Woolf's fascination with the Post-Impressionist exhibition of 1920 and the solar eclipse of 1927 by linking her response to a much wider literary and cultural context. Illustrated with color pictures, this book will appeal not only to scholars working on Woolf, but also to students of modernism, art history, and women's studies.

Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film

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Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film
William C. Wees
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520073681

Book Description

To view a film is to see another's seeing mediated by the technology and techniques of the camera. By manipulating the cinematic apparatus in unorthodox ways, avant-garde filmmakers challenge the standardized versions of seeing perpetuated by the dominant film industry and generate ways of seeing that are truer to actual human vision.
Beginning with the proposition that the images of cinema and vision derive from the same basic elements--light, movement, and time--Wees argues that cinematic apparatus and human visual apparatus have significant properties in common. For that reason they can be brought into a dynamic, creative relationship which the author calls the dialectic of eye and camera. The consequences of this relationship are what Wees explores.
Although previous studies have recognized the visual bias of avant-garde film, this is the first to place the visual aesthetics of avant-garde film in a long-standing, multidisciplinary discourse on vision, visuality, and art.

Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances (Discussions in Contemporary Culture, No 10)

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Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances (Discussions in Contemporary Culture, No 10)

Manufacturer: New Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1565844955

Book Description

A "highly recommended" (Library Journal) examination of how cultural differences are implicit within visual forms. Discussions in Contemporary Culture is an award-winning series copublished with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City. These volumes offer rich and timely discourses on a broad range of cultural issues and critical theory. The collection covers topics from urban planning to popular culture and literature, and continually attracts a wide and dedicated readership.

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Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies
Michael Ann, Keith Moxey Holly
Manufacturer: Sterling and Francine Clark Art I
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PSS2Y8

Customer Reviews:

fascinating and just what i was looking for!.......2006-03-12

I wanted to learn how to design, and I tend to need plenty of visuals when I'm learning something, so this book is wonderful to have. Tons of pictures and the text is clear and informative of course.

Good with the bad.......2004-03-29

First, the good: there is a lot of information here about different fibers, explanations of silhouettes, ease, and different styles that is very helpful. There are tips on sketching and charting your own designs, as well as structural details of different styles, e.g. set-in sleeves, saddle shoulders. Much of the information is opinionated, but the author usually explains her reasoning.

The bad: I found many of her technical explanations incomplete and/or difficult to follow (and I've been knitting for about 10 years). I also found the many (many, many) self-gratulating personal references a bit tiresome. 'This is how I do this,' 'I like to do that,' 'Let me tell you all about a perfectly brilliant design idea I had one day while waiting for the bus,' etc. Somehow I got the impression the author has an air of superiority, as if to say her way is NATURALLY the best way, if not the only way. Maybe this irritated me more because I disliked most of her designs and thought them all but unwearable. If you're into 'haute couture' or 'wearable art,' you might enjoy them more; I prefer to design garments which are more subtle.... or, as she might say, 'bland and pedestrian.' (If that means saying "No" to big bulky coats knitted of fuzzy chartreuse mohair, complete with giant buttons, then color me bland and pedestrian.)

Bottom line: For the technical and structural elements of design, this book is worth looking into, but I'm still looking for a better knitting design book.

Inspirational.......2004-02-09

I am only a beginning knitter but I've checked this book out of the library several times in the past couple of years. The photos are gorgeous; even the pictures of swatches are eye-candy. This is not a book of patterns, rather, it is a sort of 'how-to' book for design inspiration using various sources; old photographs, coutour fashion, sewing patterns, and of course beautiful yarns and fibers. Don't pass this up if you are not ready to design your own knits. It will inspire you to keep knitting and treat yourself to some gorgeous yarns even if it is only one skein to make swatches from. This book is as much about the process, or journey as it is about the finished product. I was tickled the first time I checked out the book and discovered the author was from Rhode Island. Since then, I've wondered if she still lives here and holds workshops.

How one knit designer does her thing.......2003-05-21

Here is a fascinating peek into the way one designer, Deb Newton, does her knitwear. Her designs are very recognizable--interesting stitch texture, shapes from couture. She even cuts and sews knitted "fabric" into garments.

If you are an experienced knitter and want to design using those tempting stitch dictionary patterns, and if you like the fit and shape of garments to be tailored more than the standard raglan pullover, then this book is for you. The drawings are especially interesting, showing how Newton goes from swatches of yarns knitted in pattern, plus inspirations to a finished garment.

If you want a "how to knit your own" sweaters for simpler knitting techniques, I don't recommend this book. You can knit your own sweaters using the percentage technique found in "Knitting Without Tears" or "Knitting Around" by Elizabeth Zimmermann, or you can try "The Sweater Workshop" by Jackie Fee. But if you want more high-fashioned, structured design, this book will be a great resource.

The first book I bought to learn how to design.......2002-05-19

I worked very hard on a child's lace-trimmed sweater from a pattern only to be very disappointed by the result. The dropped shoulders had no shaping and a clumsy-looking knitted seam, the back rode up, and the button band was too narrow to control the curl of the edge. That was when I thought, "I could do better than this." I decided to start designing my own stuff. "Designing Knitwear" has a lot to offer someone who wants to design their own knitwear. Newton's ideas are inspiring. I don't particularly like the majority of projects she gives directions for, but I learned a lot about the design process from her, and about producing looks that are way beyond the run-of-the-mill. One thing I don't like about the book is that Newton takes the sewing approach, with the flat-knit pieces sewn together, the edges sewn on, etc. I like to keep sewing to a minimum in knitted garments.

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A Threads Book Designing Knitwear
Deborah Newton
Manufacturer: The Taunton Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N5YJW2

Product Description

In the Author's Words.... Designing Knitwear "This book represents the design process I've worked out over the years and upon which I still rely both for professional work and when I'm designing and knitting purely for pleasure. If you've not yet established your own system for designing, I hope you'll borrow the information in these pages and use it to help you devise your own methods of design." In this comprehensive and inspiring book on knitwear design, Deborah Newton gives a detailed and well written description of the process of design. There are hundreds of colour photographs and illustrations of designs, sample swatches and technical examples, to instruct both the beginning and experienced knitter. There are over 10 patterns which include beautifully textured man's and women's ganseys, a colourful 'Rainbow Coat' and a black & white stranded patterned long pullover in bold geometric patterns.

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