Expressions and Implications
University of San Jorge (Venue in the city centre): Calle San Voto, 6-8 50003 Zaragoza, Spain
The Original Image in Pascal Quignard’s Terrasse à Rome: Thinking in Image with Quignard through Mezzotint Art View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shima Sahranavard
In Terrasse à Rome (2000), the main character, Meaume, is a 17th-century Mezzotint artiste. In this unique novel, the French writer gives a privileged place to the original image. As the texts goes back and forth between narration and the descriptions of the images (images created by the artist, images in dreams, allusions to myths, etc.), the boundaries between the literary text and the images become very blurry. Through a thematic and stylistic study, I focus on both the content and the form of the novel to find out how the original image shows itself coming out of darkness just like the images which appear in mezzotint and emerge from the night in dreams. I contend that we need to think in image with Quignard to read between the lines of this novel and comprehend the captivating concept of image. Considering the fact that Pascal Quignard is a prolific author who has always shown a great interest in all representations of image (painting, engraving, parietal art, mosaics, etc.), I demonstrate the significance of image in this novel and how it reflects the philosophy of Quignard. I argue the reason why language being considered as a faculty which is neither sufficient to express itself nor to understand the depth of a lack in human beings, is replaced by image in the novel via the art of mezzotint.
Image-Works: An Exhibition Study Comparing the Perception and Appreciation of Physical Artworks and Digital Images of Them View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Johan Wagemans
Artists and art theorists alike often emphasize the role of the materiality of physical artworks and yet the broader public more frequently encounters digital images of them (e.g., online collections, social media). We designed a quasi-experimental, field study to compare the two conditions more directly. Specifically, we organized an exhibition in an old chapel in Leuven (Belgium), with 4 artworks by each of 3 visual artists (Patrick Ceyssens, Stefan Peters and Eline Wagemans). This exhibition was titled "Image-Works" because all the artworks display rather complex, multilayered images that require substantial work from the viewer to be appreciated. In addition to 9 stations with different arrangements of the physical artworks in the exhibition proper, we also designed a parallel computer experiment showing high-resolution photos or scans of all the images of the 12 artworks on a large LCD screen, either presented at fixed sizes or with a zoom in-and-out option. All participants viewed both versions (physical and digital) in counterbalanced order, with a video-interview in-between the two sessions, in which the artists explained their way of working, the materials they used, the role of size and viewer engagement, etc. Perception and appreciation were investigated through mobile eye-tracking, rating scales, and questionnaires. I present the initial findings, focusing on the differences in the eye-movement data between the conditions with the physical artworks and the digital images, in relation to the appreciation data. I also discuss the impact of the video-interview as a source of additional context information.
The Three-Cornered Hat´s Jota: Methodological approaches to analyze the image of Spain in ballet
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gonzalo Preciado Azanza
Dance is a powerful tool for disseminating and strengthening ideas across time. Dancing bodies act as cross-cultural archives that enable us to comprehend identities projected through inherited gestures. This presentation aims to provide an early methodological approach to analyze the constructed image of Spain in ballet, an amalgam of cultural stereotypes rooted in Romanticism. The provided theoretical framework allows us to perform an interdisciplinary analysis of The Three-Cornered Hat´s jota case study. Sergei Diaghilev fostered this ballet as a Russian-Spanish collaboration in which the choreographer Léonide Massine embodied jota steps after travelling to Saragossa. By so doing, the jota movements, symbolizing Aragon´s inhabitants, evolved into an international choreographic language that enhanced interwar cosmopolitan culture.
