Within painting, there are numerous possibilities for the ways in which a narrative can be compositionally presented in order to communicate a particular emotion or story. Traditional devices including gesture, facial expression, interaction of figures and symbolism establish foundations within the composition to facilitate a narrative response and formulate questions as to the how, what and why. This formal language may also be considered in addition to other concepts surrounding the term narrative itself. The notion of narrative as something which is fluid also encompasses issues of time, movement, and continuity; idea??s which seemingly contradict the static temperament of painting. How painters have been able to successfully construct elements of narrative in their work, while also capturing a sense of movement or a passage of time is the starting point at which the following research takes shape. When embarking on this project, I realised that there was no definitive text on this subject which specifically analysed the form and composition of pictorial narratives as sole entities. Theoretical discussions surrounding a painting??s formal arrangement have mostly been produced in relation to how they either illustrated or have been adapted from a written source. This paper is intended to examine the structure of narrative paintings from a stand alone visual perspective, and not how they are comparative to a literary source. Over the course of this investigation, I subsequently found that the methodologies of continuous narrative paintings from the Renaissance echoed certain theoretical concerns within contemporary cinematic narratives. While painting and film maintain a relationship to some degree because they are both visual media, (in reference to colour, tone and symbolism), the most interesting parallel is the depiction of time. This correlation between painting and film, where elements of the narrative are compositionally presented in a non-linear way, has had the most important influence over the production of my work for the exhibition, ??Hidden Fractures; A Narrative in Time??. Certain structures within film, such as event ??order?? and sequencing resonate correspondingly to the stylistic approach sustained within recent work. This ??jig-saw?? method, presents individual paintings (or canvases) akin to pieces of a story which have been sliced up, and placed back together out of their ??chronological?? order. These chosen snippets may represent a scene or emotion, and uphold their own position or viewpoint in relation to another image or painting. These unmatched sequences of images, similar to the unmatched sequences in film, can disrupt the perception and flow of space, and sense of narrative order. When sequences are viewed out of order, the perception of events within the narrative change. The viewer strives to construct the meaning of the work dependent upon each image??s relationship to another, in turn forming the underlying narrative. Through such ??story comprehension??, the viewer endeavours to create ??logical connections among data in order to match general categories of schema??. (Brangian 15)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/257600 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Edney, Katherine, School of Arts, UNSW |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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