Pictures as Fiction

[caronbot]

If I was doing the Ryan reading correctly, on page 36 when she was discussing fiction as a transmedial concept, Walton's counter-point to pictures being capable of inducing belief was that "in order to recognize a picture as representing something--lets say, a cow--we must imagine ourselves facing and seeing a cow.  Since what we are actually

Comments

[se101]

You might be confusing the term "picture" here. Picture could mean a hand drawing or painting or it could mean a photograph. I completely agree that a photograph would not be an act of make believe since whatever the image on the photograph would have had to existed in order to be availible for a picture.(This is all assuming that it was not a digitally rendered or constructed photograph

David and the Glorification of War

[ammamc]

How interesting that your userpic shows David's "The Intervention of the Sabine Women." Did this event actually take place? It is based on the myth of the the rape of the Sabine women, and is taken to be a representation of a certain event in Roman history, but this version by the French painter David is his own representation, an image from his mind, and no other's. Therefore, I agree with you that whenever we look at an image, we are make-believing

Re: David and the Glorification of War

[se101]

To be honest, I never thought of this painting in this way, I just always had a quirky love for mythical art. But your discussion is extremely thought provoking.
Your absolutely right in saying that the artist shows us what he wants us to see. "The Intervention of the Sabine Women" is a myth, which might have some truth in it, but is probably highly fictionalized(I'm wary of using this term after reading Ryan)
But at the same time, this painting is a myth and as Ryan says the myth is different from fiction since often the myth is meant to impart practical knowlege or a significant message to the viewer.
I always felt that David showed the futility of war and the passions of love with the mother and her baby standing between two warriors. In the end both myths and art show us or tell us what we want to read or see.

-Ross

[caronbot]

If the book didn't distinguish that difference, I wouldn't put it past myself to confuse the term, Ross. The book did say "in the pictorial domain, no such distinction obtain: all representational pictures--all pictures that depict--are inherently fictional"..."the global fictionality of pictures thus implies the global fictionality of all media using a visual channel" (Ryan 36). The instance that Walton was counter-pointing was in fact, a photograph, and that is what I was addressing.

I certainly agree that we make believe when we look at a painting, but that is not what I was pointing out as absurd. I apologize for my lack of specificity. I was talking, specifically, about a photograph.

-Matt