Preliminary: Figures and titles

It is crucial to note that paintings preserve traces or processes of affordance during production, e.g. how painters physically make sense of the painting medium (paints

and textures) while they create. For every viewer alike, there is an initiative step to tell

“what is what” in a painting. After this process, the basic “happening” in the targeted

painting are more attentively viewed. Before we start our analysis, which concerns the multimodality of the current data, we will explain here how the iconic GMs and the judgment of information zones are achieved in a two-dimensional visual text. The key, we believe, lies in a mechanism which is often subconsciously applied: our instinct to the separation of figure and ground.

The notion of figure and ground has a psychological backbone: We as viewers could usually tell the attention focus of a painting, and even find such process effortless most of the time. Such attention foci are called figures in perceptual psychology, and

the rest of the painting, which is usually less-noticed and “backgrounded” in our attention, is termed grounds. The notion of figure and ground has been proposed in visual psychology and cognitive sciences:

“The figure is located inside an outline (a closed visual edge), it has a form and is more or less like an object (…) In experiments, it is more easily identified and named, more easily linked to semantic, aesthetic and emotional values.”

“The ground (…) is more or less formless, more or less

homogeneous and is perceived as extending behind the figure.”

--Aumont (1997:46)

To identify the figure zones in two-dimensional paintings is mainly a perceptual process. In figurative and semi-figurative sample groups, as the figurativeness of depicted foci mostly stand as figures, which are attention zones opposing the surrounded grounds. In the more challenging case of abstract samples, it is still possible to tell specific layers or zones of Pollock’s paintings being figures. That is to say, even the seemingly wild action paintings created by Pollock are actually

governed by the cognitive principle of figure-ground distinction. Again, this may be due to the fact that even Pollock himself would subconsciously make sense of his creation during the rapid painting process. Some zones or layers of paints thus stand out, even just slightly, over the other zones or layers of Pollock’s abstract paintings.

Figure 3.6 shows the figure zones of one of Pollock’s painting. We consider the red parts to be the figure zones, since the blackness segregates densely into a unity, a gestalt area, at the center of the painting.

The following is a demonstration of figure-ground separation to a figurative sample, a semi-figurative sample, and an abstract sample. The outlined are the figures, and the rests stand for grounds.

Figure 3.1 The birth of liquid desires Figure 3.2 Figure zones to The birth of liquid desires

Figure 3.3 Character and bird Figure 3.4 Figure zone for Character and bird

Figure 3.5 Number 32 Figure 3.6 Figure zone for Number 32

Besides the visual-perceptual basis, painting titles are also an essential part of the multimodal whole of an artwork. In Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), visual

representational structures are divided into two major types, namely Narrative and Conceptual (1996:56). The narratives pictorials are those that contain actions or visual

linkages between visual participants within an image, while the conceptual pictorials being ones that are more motionless, meaningful in the appearance of the visualized itself. In categorizing paintings following such a distinction, their titles serve as a helpful semantic cue other than the mere visual content presented in the paintings.

Moreover, modern paintings are created by artists with a brand new extent of autonomy over their artwork. They are pieces of work in wait for specific

acknowledgment from viewers, art critics, exhibition curators, art dealers, and even from art museums. In this respect, the titles of modern paintings constitute a crucial part of the art piece as a symbolic, multimodal, and contextualized whole. We thus co-analyze painting titles and the painted images, so that the denoted content could be more comprehensively interpreted.

In our three sample groups, painting titles generally inform the viewers not only the expressed content, and also help trigger richer interpretation or appreciation to the painting. For instance, Dali, a skilled figure-ground reversion expert, entitled a

painting with the keyword Voltaire. In the painting, the close-up of Voltaire is formed

by the smaller outlines of three maids in black-and-white dresses. If not the title, the viewers might miss out the alternative, gestalt grasp of the Voltaire outline (Fig. 3.7).

The same title-image alignment could be commonly found in semi-figurative samples as well, such as a Miro painting entitled Portrait II (Figure 3.8). Of course, it is possible that many viewers could interpret the human figure the geometric zones in this painting indicate. Nevertheless, it is the title that more firmly fixated the

semantics to the pictorials.

In abstract paintings, particularly, it is often the case that they do not own a

semantically concrete title. Even so, the title directs us to be able to focus on the

“entity-like” status of visual Gestalts. When they accompany semantic titles, as in the

below example, the title helps greatly in hinting a certain way of painting appreciation.

In Pollock’s Out of the web (Fig. 3.9), the red zones already catch our attention in the first glimpse. However, adding in the information of the verbal cue, we are more likely to observe the vectoring that relaxes from left to right, as it matches the “out of the web” concept in the title. In this respect, painting titles appear as cognitively essential in the process of painting appreciation, serving as a more dominant interpretation within the numerous possible ones.

Figure 3.7 The slave market with the disappearing bust of Voltaire

Figure 3.8 Portrait II

Figure 3.9 Out of the web