MODULE 7CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Art 100Understanding Visual Culture

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991

Piece, as installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

What are the key signifiers in this piece?

detail of mouth

synchronic [syn=together]

synchronic

Both formal and semiotic analyses are synchronic in nature: they consider meanings generated by an arrangement of elements within a single moment in time.

Synchronicunderstandingof a tree’s functions

diachronic

dia=across

diachronicunderstandingof a tree [dimension of time is present]

Dia=across or through timeDiachronic analyses take into account meanings generated over time, including the accretion and depletion of meanings.

diachronicunderstandingof a tree [dimension of time is present]

Dia=across or through timeDiachronic analyses take into account meanings generated over time, including the accretion and depletion of meanings.

Examination of tree rings:Synchronic or diachronic analysis?

Diachronic analysis takes change into account. Meanings of cultural objects are dynamic over time. New meanings accrue to images, old ones fall away and have to be painstakingly recovered, if at all.

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Young Man in Front of a White Curtainc. 1508, oil on wood, 16 1/2 x 14 inches

Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1482

Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c. 1483

Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Matthew+2

Lorenzo Lotto, Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1534http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Luke+2

To what do we attribute these differences?

Possible explanations

Individual style?Artist’s biography and preferences?Patron’s biography and preferences?Social, political, cultural, religious surroundings