I knew something bothered me about the showing of Paul Ryan's work at the McLean Project for the Arts (MPA). I just now figured it out. During the artist's talk on opening night, Ryan discussed how he was influenced by language, and hence his use of long, horizontal canvases (I wish I had an image to share, but the MPA has neglected to respond to my request via email). I may be wrong, but compositionally speaking, doesn't language significantly impact almost all art, except maybe for Minimalist work? As an English language people, we read left to right, top to bottom. Isn't this how we naturally look at everything? When we see a painting, we tend to start at the top left, and work our way down to the lower right. If the painting is compositionally sound, there will be some aspect that encourages the viewer to return to the top left from the bottom right, and thus maintain our interest and focus on the entire picture. The viewer can't help but be engaged by the piece.
This explains my problem with the majority of Ryan's work. The long horizontal form suggests to me, when I think of language, hieroglyphics. However, the symbols that comprise hieroglyphics tend to be tightly bunched together. Ryan's silhouettes are spaced approximately twelve inches from each other, so for me, this negates the entire language angle he's playing to. It could have been interesting if his silhouettes were close together and told a story, as with hieroglyphics. This would have engaged me much more. Instead, it appears that each painting is composed of about five isolated images. As I said earlier, the majority of art should be executed with language in mind. It's simply sound composition.
"The cow jumped over the moon."
How long did it take you to read the sentence above? That's essentially the same amount of time a viewer will spend with each of Ryan's pieces since he has not provided anything to pull the viewer back into the image. We are forced to read left to right... and straight off the canvas!!
Man, I sure am glad I finally got my thoughts together about this. Now I can sleep much better!!
If anyone has seen the current show at MPA, I would love to hear your thoughts. Am I way off base here?
Although I havn't seen the Paul Ryan show, there are a couple of comments I'd like to make about viewing images. My eye does not initially go to the upper left when I first look at an image. It moves to either an intense color or pattern. Or complimentary colors juxtaposed. Good composition in a 2D image will control the visual flow. However, given a long horizontal shaped image, I can understand the inclination to begin on the left and work your way to the right. As you said, natural for an English speaking person.
Posted by: Joseph Barbaccia | Friday, July 02, 2004 at 08:06 AM
I don't mean to suggest that if, for example, you are viewing a large white canvas with a red circle in the lower right hand corner, that you would begin at the top left and look at white, white, white until you finally reached the red circle. And I don't mean to pretend I have the scientific education to back up my claims (although I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night!!). I would venture that subconsciously, we all DO view images in this manner. However, not all images.
It gets dicey because not all images require a focal point, but most images do have one. Of course you will look there first, but the interesting thing is how you move through the rest of the piece. You don't want to stay on the focal point. You want to take in the entire image but let the focal point be your anchor. Since I've started about thinking about this left to right thing, I've noticed how I view (some) art.
We are likely saying the same thing. By controlling the visual flow, you will keep a viewer engaged. I just believe that keeping in mind the left to right thing is a part of that. One more example. Say you see a painting with a road that begins in the lower right corner and winds it's way to a house in the center of a painting. Say the house is clearly the focal point. You will look at the house first, but because you will subconsciously look from top left to bottom right, your eye will hit the road and be moved right back to the house, creating a comfortable visual flow. However, say you have the same house, except the road runs in front of the house horizontally, and it's at the bottom of the canvas. There is a car in the bottom right, clearly leaving the house (it's about to run off the canvas). Your eye will focus on the house first, and then you'll view the car and the car will take you out of the image. Then, you will likely have to force yourself back into the image.
I hope my example is clear. Obviously, the left to right theory doesn't fit all works of art, but on my last visit to the National Gallery I really thought about it while viewing the Impressionist works. I saw each painting in an entirely different way. The visual flow of each image really jumped out at me.
Posted by: J.T. Kirkland | Friday, July 02, 2004 at 09:17 AM