Here, I’m just making notes on some books that peaked my interest in the library. These could potentially be useful in my essay. I am going to go back over this and fill in for each library book I want to analyse.
Bonnici, P. and Proud, L. (1998). Designing with photographs. Crans-Près-Céligny: RotoVision.
“What the photographer can bring to the job is composition, colour, texture, inspiration, integrity, style and passion.
literal, descriptive and informative versus abstract, suggestive and atmospheric.
“There are no absolute rules. You can create a different emotional impact by adjusting the size of an image but with an emotionally neutral image, enlargement will not improve it a lot”. “Surrounding colour matters, what you use as the background of an image needs to fit a palette of your overall needs. If you’re trying to promote something fun and vibrant, why hang/print it on a mute wall/background?”.
Make sure your image doesn’t clash with the atmospheric tone if what you’re trying to present. Think about the kind of text you want to use, what do you want to be focal? A simplistic text will compliment but look inferior to the image, that may be desired. A typographical caricature is fine if you want the text to be more important than the image. Discordant elements can be intentional but they have to intentionally subvert to be successful.
“How to get out of a tight corner”:
- Frame
- Lift
- Enhance
- Soften
A narrow crop can fit a bland composition. Tilt a photograph to add dynamism.
Challenges for myself:
- Alphabet photography challenge.
- Produce a magazine where you design using a set of images to enhance a set of perhaps crappy photographs.
- Design a holiday brochure with your works. Ship them out to advertise a break into one of your pieces.
Reed, C. (1996). Not at home. London: Thames and Hudson.
Introduction (page 7):
“Although often taken for granted, the idea of domesticity is an invention of the modern age. According to the cultural historian Walter Benjamin, it was in the early 1800s that, “for the first time the living space became distinguished from the space of work”. If we isolate the values that comprise the notion of domesticity – separation from the workplace, privacy, comfort, focus on the family – we find that each has been identified by historians as a defining feature of the modern age”.
Chapter 7, “Hi Honey, I’m home”: Weary (Neurasthenic) Businessmen and the Formulation of a Serenely Modern Aesthetic (Page 98-112):
The chapter introduces this concept that age-old depictions of early civilisation, of men working in fields, surrounded by nature and a simplistic work-life, a lack of over-bearing responsibility that comes with being a modern man, acts as a form of enticement for modern man as working jobs require more and more from us. Matisse’s “Bonheur de Vivre”, Joyce Robinson connects the longing of businessmen for a life of pastoral calm to Matisse’s famous quote:
“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relation from physical fatigue”.
I relate to this. I shouldn’t because Matisse’s language is both gender and class specific. “Why is the homme d’affaires, the businessman, one of the chosen recipients of the pastoral delights of Matisse’s art?”.
The chapter introduces a condition called “Neurasthenia” which was identified in 1869 by American Neurologist George Beard. He published “A practical treatise on nervous exhaustion” where he discussed the symptoms and treatment of this newly-discovered condition. “Neurasthenia was believed to result from the overcharging of the nervous system in confrontation with the incessant stimulation of urban existence”.
This can be drawn on in comparison to the “anxious age”, under the definition of neurasthenia, there’s no better way to stimulate ourselves with urban existence than social media access on an iPhone. STATS TO BACK THIS UP
“Convinced that the disease primarily affected the middle and upper classes, the “higher orders within American society, Beard singled out male “brain workers” as especially susceptible to the debilitating condition because of the increased mental exertion demanded by their occupations. Indeed, for Beard, neurasthenia was a “sign of mental superiority” and a natural, even socially acceptable, concomitant to the challenging arena of the marketplace”.
“French neurologists discounted Beard’s contentions that neurasthenia was a distinctively American phenomenon, citing the increasing number of European cases as ample proof of the condition’s universality”.
“The symptoms of neurasthenia were multiple and widely variant and ranged from ticklishness, stomach upset and insomnia to physically enervation, anxiety, and impotence. Cerebral fatigue or “over-pressure” was among the most often-cited neurasthenic complaints and was attributed to the excessive intellectual work demanded of the brain-worker”.
Neurasthenics could be of two different types, accidental or “shock”, and the degenerate or hereditary. Accidental came about through mental fatigue.
“Females, believed more likely to exhibit a natural propensity for the disease, were advised to avoid excessive intellectual stimulation of the marketplace and counselled to remain the protective confines of the domestic interior in order to safeguard their fragile nervous system”. Women were encouraged to embrace their domestic lifestyles because it was believed that it was not only where they belonged but also because it would be of harm to them to try anything else, for fear they were more susceptible to being neurasthenic. The willful violation of women against their roles as mothers and wives were the primary accidental causes of neurasthenia in women as they have willfully departed from the calm sanctity of the home.
shock/accidental neurasthenics (or overly ambitious females) responded the best to treatment. The “rest cure” was developed by Dr Silas Mitchel in the 1870s. Several weeks of isolation and rest in a country setting was the treatment recommended for the most severe cases. Otherwise, you were given hydrotherapy or a day in the country.
For the overworked, you were prescribed half a litre of wine every day, one cup of coffee and sex once a week. “The pleasures of venus, while not prohibited, were to be experienced in moderate doses. Other doctors advocated the domestication of the love goddess and recommended that the male neurasthenic procure as part of his treatment a femme a foyer, a housewife, who would provide for him a serenely calm oasis, a private interior realm for physical and mental rehabilitation”. That mix of doctoral unbias being tampered with in ways that wouldn’t be considered medical.
The woman’s domain was the interior, she was responsible for creating a psychologically and emotionally serene space for the male. The male was responsible for the exterior, only to use the home for recuperation to continue his work outside. Domestic activities like interior design were encouraged for the woman to uptake and it would be geared towards the benefit of the male occupant in the home.
“the decorative in the second half of the nineteenth century that order, beauty and serenity were the preeminently desirable qualities in domestic decoration” The home was meant to calm, not excite. “The psychology of rooms”. You wanted to not remind the weary brainworker of concrete reality but you also weren’t trying to arouse any particular emotions too. For the weary intellectual, you weren’t supposed to inspire analysis or the deciphering of mysteries. Art in the home was to inspire ambience instead of intellectual effort.
The book gives the example of Van Gogh, a well-known world-weary man who cut off his ear due to his health, giving his support to this theory by stating “in a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination”.
“What better way to transform our depressing hovels into oasis where the spirit can rest after the worries of mundane existence…Oh, to forget the ugliness of the street when we stand before an idealized landscape” – Alphonse Germain
Germain believed landscape art could serve an integral part in the domestic setting, “convinced of the affective power of interior decoration on the mind and soul of the dweller”. “Necessary to surround oneself with harmonious and serene effects, luminous colours with nuances evoking feelings of happiness and calm, and ornament inspired by nature”. Linear movement, the emotional value of colour and viewer physiological response. Frenetic/anxiety versus serene/calm.
“cultural antidote to modern urban civilisation”
“befitting its decorative function, the accessible pastoral iconography demands little in the way of mental cerebration from the viewer, and the thematic interest is evenly dispersed across the picture plane. Rather than focusing on one dominant figural group, the spectator’s gaze is thus invited to wander unimpeded throughout the comforting environment”.
“Throughout all of Puvis’s pastoral landscapes, women serve two functions: they are presented either as active and robust caretakers of the hearth or as visual emblems of rest and calm”. Women were foregrounded in Puvis’s paintings.
“a masculine dreamworld”. “Within this pastoral world of dreams, the female – in either guise – provides domestic comfort and serenity and contributes to the creation of a private interior haven distanced from the neurasthenic chaos of the city”.
PigeonWhisperer's Degree 