Jonathan Morgan
Adjunct Professor of Art at Lone Star College & South Dakota State University, PhD candidate at IDSVA
Visual Studies:
Art History Course Intro
Prof. Jonathan Morgan
Starting with
the Basics
Portrait Bust Of Cardinal Richelieu
Kehinde Wiley, 2009
Subject:
The actual visual/physical elements that make up an artwork.
Context:
The conditions of the artwork's creation.
Content:
The intangible aspects of an artwork; the meaning behind the piece.
Portrait Bust Of Cardinal Richelieu
Kehinde Wiley, 2009
Portrait Bust of Cardinal Richelieu
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
1640-41 CE
Napoleon Crossing the Alps
Jacques-Louis David
1801 CE
Bull-Leaping Fresco
Palace of Knossos, Crete | Minoan | 1450 BCE
Comparative Analysis
Descent from the Cross
(a.k.a. Deposition)
Rogier van der Weyden
Oil on panel
1435-1438 CE
Culture: Flemish
Flagellation of Christ
Piero della Francesca
Tempera and oil on panel
1455-1460 CE
Culture: Florentine
Flaggelation of Christ | della Francesca | Florentine/Southern
Deposition | van der Weyden | Flemmish/Northern
Three Avenues of Analysis
- Media
- Culture
- Philosophy
Note: These are just 3 examples of ways to analyze artworks.
You may see other additional ways to approach this.
Comparative Analysis:
Media
Tempera Paint
Tempera Paint Ingredients
Oil Paint
Egg Tempera vs Oil Paint
Comparative Analysis:
Culture
Flanders
- Powerful Merchant class
- Materialism
- Influenced by Aristotle
Florence
- Aristocratic Nobility
- Idealism
- Influenced by Plato
Comparative Analysis:
Philosophy
Plato
Aristotle
-
Separates Form from Matter
-
Math as model for Pure Thought
-
Transcendental
-
Intuition over Logic
- "Overcoming" the physical world
-
Matter & Form are inseparable
-
Grounds theories in Biology
-
Imminent
-
Logic as foundational
- Discovering the order of the world
Visual Studies
Analysis & Visual Culture
The study of the visual aspects of culture, including:
- Art
- Design
- Media
- Everyday objects
and how they shape and are shaped by
social, political, and cultural contexts.
Also studies how images, objects, and visuality communicate meaning & influence social dynamics.
Insofar as we live in a culture whose technological advances abet the production and dissemination of such images at a hitherto unimagined level,
it is necessary to focus on
how they work and what they do,
rather than move past them too quickly to the ideas they represent or the reality they purport to depict.
In so doing, we necessarily have to ask questions about technological mediations and extensions of visual experience.
Martin Jay on the Importance of Visual Studies & Literacy
Semiotics
The study of signs and symbols, and how they communicate meaning through visual and cultural codes.
Visual Studies Terminology
Representation
The way in which images, objects, or ideas are depicted or portrayed, often reflecting and reinforcing cultural values, ideologies, and power structures.
Gaze
The way in which the viewer's perspective is constructed and influenced by cultural, social, and power dynamics, such as the male gaze or colonial gaze.
Visual Rhetoric
The use of visual elements to persuade or influence an audience, often employed in advertising, propaganda, and political imagery.
Visual Literacy
The ability to interpret, analyze, and create visual messages.
Surveillance
Monitoring and regulation of individuals and populations through visual technologies and practices, which can reinforce racial and social hierarchies.
Visuality
The structures and power relations of looking, being seen, and vision in society.
Liberty Leading the People
Eugène Delacroix
1830 CE | Oil on canvas
The Barricade (Memory of Civil War)
Ernest Meissonier
1850 CE
Oil on canvas
Liberty Leading the People (Romanticism)
The Barricade (Realism)
Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci
c. 1503–1505 CE
Oil on wood
Approx. 30” x 19”
Mona Lisa in its current display at the Louvre
Mona Lisa (Prado)
Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci | c. 1503-1516
Mona Lisa (original)
Leonardo da Vinci | c. 1503-1505
Untitled
(I shop therefore I am)
Barbara Kruger
1987 CE
Untitled
Barbara Kruger
Date unknown (late 20th-century)
Untitled
Barbara Kruger
1987 CE
Chivalry
Frank Bernard Dicksee
1885 CE
"Damsel in Distress"
A character type, trope, and/or theme where a primary female character must be rescued by the usually male hero, often due to her own inability.
The Knight Errant
John Everett Millais
1870 CE
Triple X Rancho
Allen Anderson
1941 CE
You're seeing less than half the picture
The Guerrilla Girls | 1989 CE
Two Thirds
The Guerrilla Girls | 1988 CE
Advantages
The Guerrilla Girls | 1985 CE
Guerrilla Girls wearing their signature Gorilla Masks
Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum?
Guerrilla Girls
1989 CE
Applied Visual Studies:
John Berger
“To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.(The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.)
Nakedness reveals itself.
To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded.
The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.”
Nudity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be without disguise.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972 CE
Sleeping Venus (a.k.a. The Dresden Venus)
Giorgione & Titian
c. 1510 CE | Oil on canvas
Venus of Urbino
Titian | 1538 CE | Oil on canvas
Examples of the "Venus Pudica" pose
Grande Odalisque
Ingres
1814 CE | Oil on canvas
Odalisque
Delcroix | 1825 CE | Oil on canvas
We are deep in the Orient – an exciting, erotically charged world of harems and hashish – and the lady is an odalisque, the concubine of a sultan, a woman kept for the purposes of male pleasure.
-Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Odalisque
Delcroix
Grande Odalisque
Ingres
Olympia
Manet | c. 1863 CE | Oil on canvas
"Olympia" Destroys Convention
Olympia
Manet
Venus of Urbino
Titian
Portrait (Futago)
Yasumasa Morimura | 1988 CE | Photography
Sleeping Venus
Venus of Urbino
Portrait (Futago)
Olympia
Grande Odalisque
Odalisque
End of Intro
Art History: Visual Studies
By Jonathan Morgan
Art History: Visual Studies
Prof. Morgan | Updated Summer 2025
