Visual literacy

Visual literacy

Visual literacy is an introduction to the study of the visual modalities of communication with an emphasis on picture-based media (film, television, photography, graphic arts, and the new computer-based technologies such as 3-D animation and the World Wide Web). Topics include: visual interpretation, image manipulation, the social/political functions of visual imagery, and the role of visual media in cultural processes.

Based on the idea that visual images are a language, visual literacy can be defined as the ability to understand and produce visual messages. This skill is becoming increasingly important with the ever-expanding proliferation of mass media in society. As more and more information and entertainment is acquired through non-print media (such as television, movies and the internet), the ability to think critically and visually about the images presented becomes a significant skill. (Wilson, Clive, 2005)

Visual literacy is something learned, just as reading and writing are learned. It is very important to have the ability to process visual images efficiently and understand the impact they have on viewers. The lessons in this section provide teachers with a starting point in the learning process.

As a style, Cubism constitutes the single most important revolution in the history of art since the second and third decades of the fifteenth century and the beginnings of the Renaissance. Excepting Juan Gris and Ferdinand Léger, all of the artists, including the American artists, were onlookers. The work of some of these moved toward pure abstraction, the work of others returned to a more traditional, often-figurative art. To many parts of this complicated avant-garde profusion of styles the American artist could and did respond. Rather, Cubism in America tends to reflect the diversity of styles produced internationally. (Wilson, Clive, 2005)

Max Weber's Cubism also reflects the influence of Futurism in his concentration on the skyscrapers and hurry of New York, but his work is often monochromatic and the space virtually flat, in close accord with Picasso's Analytic Cubist canvases of c. 1911. Marsden Hartley, profoundly influenced by Weber, also produced works of Analytic Cubism, but in his work forms are stable and solidly realized in the manner of Cézanne's still lifes of c. 1890-1900. Several artists, most notably Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth--and Georgia O'Keeffe in a number of paintings of Lake George barns and New York skyscrapers--produced a uniquely American style which came to be called Precisionism. Finally, there are a small number of American painters who produced cubist works that are to be found nowhere else. In space, which was also airless and flattened to ambiguous but narrow confines, Patrick Henry Bruce presented arrangements of inherently geometric objects given three-dimensional solidity. (Wilson, Clive, 2005)

Much about the life of Patrick Henry Bruce remains unknown. In spite of financial urgency, Bruce evinced no desire to enter business but very considerable interest in art. Two years later, Bruce was in Paris. An especially abrupt letter reversed Guillaume Apollinaire's favorable critical attitude toward his work. Roché championed his work and to him Bruce gave all 21 ...