Art History and Image Studies
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Item Open Access The picaresque tradition feminism and ideology critique(University of the Free State, 1999) Human, Elsie Suzanne; Van den Berg, D. J.; Visagie, P. J.English: Calvin Seerveld evocatively uses the literary term 'picaresque' in his transposition into visual and imaginary terms, of the philosopher D. H. Th. Vollenhoven's typology of philosophical conceptions. In this study the more limited use of the term 'picaresque novel' and 'picaresque fictional world' in literary criticism is expanded against the background of Seerveld's categories, in order to arrive at the outlines of a broader 'picaresque imaginary world'. The proposition of such an 'imaginary world' not only aids in accounting for the recurrence of similar metaphors, themes and strategies in cultural products, spanning centuries, but also counters the remnants of a subjectivist 'world-view' philosophy in the idea of the 'typiconic traditions'. 'Motifs' in both visual culture and art historical texts are considered to be dynamic 'motives' within the context of the directive imaginary framework of a 'picaresque imaginary world', generating and divulging its ideological orientations. The metaphoric significance in picaresque visual art, of motifs related to vision, the Fool, foolish bodily postures, and playful narrative emplotments, is scrutinized. The prevalence of the metaphoric association of knowledge and vision in 'ocularcentric' mainstream Western culture at least since Greco-Roman antiquity, make metaphors related to vision important barometers of ideological directive frameworks. Themes and motifs associated with the character of the Fool, are unravelled in order to explore his/her metaphoric role as the epitome of picaresque artistry, performing various functions with and in picaresque texts. After having systematized the types of metaphoric bodily postures and gestures that are related to the playfully subversive nature of the Fool, a few pictorial narratives are considered in order to assess how playful metaphors of actions and events divulge underlying picaresque orientations in narrative contexts. The advantages of viewing feminist art from the perspective of 'typiconic traditions' are considered. In feminist searches for trans-generational links among women - a main concern in feminist scholarship, particularly in literary criticism (I'écriture féminine) but also in art history - female cultural production is often relegated to separate or 'alternative' female traditions, that thus have no relevance for, and can have no enduring impact on patriarchal culture. The proposition of such traditions obscures the analysis of the ways in which women have negotiated and disrupted, and still are negotiating and disrupting, artistic, social and other cultural conventions in order to open up a gender sensitive cultural space. Seerveld's 'cartographic methodology' is the basis upon which the field of a feminist search for commonalities is typologically differentiated. Abandoning the search for monolithic female traditions, attention is redirected to the links and gendered contributions of female art to various age-old cultural traditions in visual culture. This approach aids in removing the spectre of biological and cultural essentialism. A study of picaresque art by female artists, moreover, has the potential of enriching our idea of a picaresque tradition. There are subtle nuances and accents in the use, by recent female artists, of motifs and metaphors related to the gendered body, that have not been exploited by male artists; which have not yet been incorporated into our cultural heritage and assimilated into the idea of a picaresque tradition. Finally 'new' methods of ideology-critical visual analysis are designed and experimented with. Such methods of interpreting visual culture are inspired by the theory of ideology outlined by Johann Visagie and combined with experience in teaching art students who 'think visually'. It entails arguing by means of the visual association and juxtaposition of motifs and their metaphorical meanings within specific contexts. The viability of this method of analysis and its potential to enrich art historical methodologies, are promoted in the light of progress in visual technology that facilitates easy visual reproduction of art. However, it is exactly in the context of the global reproducibility of the image and of the radicalization of the concept of the simulacrum that the ideological power of images can easily be regarded as anodyne, pulverized and ineffectual. In the proposed ideology- critical visual analysis, however, visual motifs are interpreted as communicators of ideological 'motives' as in the rest of the study.