VISA 1Q98 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Pieter Claesz, Vanitas, Christianity Today
5 Aug 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
One of the central issues in the study of visual culture surrounds the idea of representation. Your textbook defines representation as the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us. (p. 12) when we study the idea of visual representation, we need to consider the issues of mimesis and social construction. Image icons are important to consider when we study visual culture. These concepts can be illustrated through an exploration of still life paintings like the one below. This example is very typical of still life paintings done in the netherlands in the 17 th century. When we use the phrase still life we are referring to images that have a collection of objects as their central focus (e. g. : flowers, fruit). We can see in this example that the artist, pieter claez, has paid great attention to detail. We can see, for example, the folds in the cloth, the reflections in the glass.
