1. ART 299 VISUAL CULTURE GLOBAL CONTEXT
1.1 COURSE INTRODUCTION
2. Overview Module 1.1
strange horizons: art in a globalized world
Hamilton, What Makes Today’s Homes? (30-1)*
Wang, Chanel No. 5 (not in text)
POST: thought experiments i-iv
3 Ways of Approaching History [ see table]
historicism
hermeneutics
critical theory
*the numbers in parentheses refer
to the illustration numbers in your textbook
3. Global visual culture
One of the real challenges in a class with such a
wide scope is comprehending visual imagery
made by very different cultures.
4. Global Visual Culture
Sometimes there will be pictures you
understand readily; sometimes there will be
parts of pictures you understand but other
parts you don’t; and sometimes what we are
looking at will be completely mystifying!
5. Global Visual Culture
This goes with the territory of looking at a
diverse array of world cultures. We’ll do our
best as a group to understand the things we
are seeing and to employ the appropriate
context to help it all make sense.
7. We worked with the Hamilton collage in class as
an example of a work that is fairly
familiar, depicting a world we can mostly
though obviously not entirely relate to.
As a group we were able to catalogue what we
saw in the picture, and to see it as a
representation of a
mediated, gendered, consumer society that is
pretty close to our own.
10. WHAT WE SAW: In class we discussed Wang’s painting as a
mixture of the visual codes of Chinese propaganda (for example
the uniform smiles, clothing, little red books, fists of the
figures, which actually appear to be duplicated across the two
panels) with the codes of Western advertising.
11. WHAT IT MEANT: We explored different possibilities for how this
painting might be interpreted. Does it have to do with Chinese
supremacy in manufacturing Western consumer goods? Does it
forecast a fully capitalist future in which allegiance to the Communist
party is replaced by allegiance to luxury brands like Chanel? What
other issues does it speak to?
12. Overall, the Wang picture felt a little more
difficult to comprehend than the
Hamilton, though we were able to tackle it
effectively as a group.
13. We tend to look at paintings like Wang Guangyi’s and think
that their mixing of cultures is unique to the present; one of
the things we’ll learn in this class is that this kind of mixing
has been going on for a really long time.
14. However, international trade has
been going on for much longer. In
Kalf’sStill Life of 1660, we see
some of the luxury imports of the
day—Turkish carpets, Chinese
porcelain, Spanish lemons—
depicted in a Dutch painting.
15. Willem KALF
Still Life
c. 1660
Pronkstilleven:
luxury still-life or
sumptuous still-life
USE THIS LINK to see the
incredible detail in this
painting:
http://www.dia.org/object-
info/281350f1-5fcf-4173-
b76e-
98a7cf422609.aspx?position
16. Similarly, we think of this Turkish ad for
IKEA as completely contemporary, an
artifact of today’s ongoing globalization.
And that is partly true. Huge global
corporations were not selling Swedish-
designed furniture in Turkey until recently.
IKEA advertisement, bus stop, Istanbul, Turkey
This Chinese ceramic camel is testimony to
the means of transportation that connected
China with trading partners in the Middle
East, across what is known as the “Silk Road.”
Camel with Rider, c. 700, China
18. 3 Approaches to History
Mode of historical Attitude toward the Purpose of writing
inquiry past history
historicism the past must be treated to recreate, as faithfully
with absolute respect, as possible, the events,
and understood on its beliefs, and meanings of
own terms the past
hermeneutics the past is important and to open up a dialogue
so is the present between past and
present that will inform
our current situation
critical theory the past is a creation of to make new things
the present that exists to possible within the
promote certain present
understandings and
suppress others
![Overview Module 1.1
strange horizons: art in a globalized world
Hamilton, What Makes Today’s Homes? (30-1)*
Wang, Chanel No. 5 (not in text)
POST: thought experiments i-iv
3 Ways of Approaching History [ see table]
historicism
hermeneutics
critical theory
*the numbers in parentheses refer
to the illustration numbers in your textbook](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)