perception and idea projection in representation

Historical painting’s purpose: the idea is held on the canvas. The communicated idea sits within the image on the page, passing the idea of landscape, person or object onto the viewer. Similar to that of descriptive photography, the fixed meaning is communicated directly to the viewer with little need for a creative interpretation. Advertising imagery maybe fits into this niece, although contemporary mass mindsets are highly trained in creative association due to image saturation. 

Gainsbourough and the artists discussed in GOM. Begin the transition with the theory of idea projection onto indistinct brush strokes and the active participation of the viewer. The viewer has to be trained to see. If the viewer is not familiar with the image-based world, they will make no sense of the mass of coloured shapes (the required activity is probably closer to association rather than projection, GOM talks about projection is the sense of the artist projects details onto a mass of colour in order to give fixed reference points). The same effect was found when showing photographs of animals to native hunters in the Amazon, no relation to the animal was seen, the hunter had not been trained to recognise the form ‘ wolf’. – I forget exactly who or what I am quoting here. With relation to Lacan, until the self can recognize an external form and give it meaning, no internal change can take place (as in the Mirror Stage). 

Contextually, a shift in the cultural reading and activity of image viewing by the elite caused the meaning of skill in art to be shifted away from mere mimesis and painstakingly finished imagery, to a more ‘free’ style, actuating a mental process within the viewer. GOM offers an anecdote of the sculpture PLINNY who creates a statue for the top of a temple that looks brutal when viewed in the studio, but amazing when placed in situ. Cultural ideology gives shape to the forms of its visual production. 

Modern art (well, post impressionism) removes the idea from the canvas completely, and creates it in the minds of the trained viewer. Projection from the object onto the brain, which is why approaching modern art from a purely visual perspective is completely inappropriate. When considering modern art photography, the same projection is apparent, but can be more difficult to convey due to the fixed reality basis of the photographic image.  Without proper conditioning, the audience is a mere 'trote bebe'.