How Learning to Look at Paintings Can Help One Better Appreciate Films

I think these questions are quite helpful to ask yourself when looking at art.

Criteria for Art Criticism
By Raphael Rozendaal:

Am I drawn to it?
Do I feel a strong attraction or connection?
Does it trigger a series of thoughts?
Does it change my thoughts?
Does it set a mood?
Does it amplify my emotions?
Does it encourage me to make something?
Does it provide new information?
Is it beautiful?
Does it intensify perception?
What is the level of abstraction?
Does it awaken memories?
Does it make me curious?
Do I want more of it?
Does it summarize an era?
Is it innovative?
Does it stand out?
Do I remember it after 10 minutes?
Does it surprise me?

Robert, yes, and I would add that the painting has a feeling of inertness, which adds to that feeling of, for lack of a better term, unworldliness. There is something of a composite feeling to the painting which the split down the middle emphasizes. It feels a little like two separate paintings conjoined rather than a wholly unified piece, and where that would be detrimental if the two sides were felt to be trying to interact more dynamically, in this instance it feels somehow appropriate. Some of this may come from the limitations of the painter, this is where one can compare the Cezanne and see the difference between technique or ability and how they apply to form, but there are times when limitations can still work to an advantage, which I feel is the case in this genre painting. I have to suspect though that someone like Clive Bell would be much less enthused about a painting like this than I am for reasons we can sort of see in Fry’s description of the Cezanne.

Learning how to look at painting in an introductory art class in my freshman year of college helped my ability to analyze film like nothing else, mainly because I get off on compositional filmmaking (my key guys being Antonioni and Rossellini). Getting a feeling for the way one can achieve balance within the frame was a big first step for me.

Then again though, I think my reading of films were just as influenced by doing “new criticism-esque” literary readings under another professor a year or so later. It was a really easy next-step for me to move from close literary analysis’ obsession with syntax and semantics to the basic structural characteristics of editing and patterns of mise-en-scene.

Oddly enough, I find myself learning more from painting again as my focus has shifted from narrative to trickier concerns like contour, texture, and creative readings of media automatisms.

“Let’s take the Cezanne painting (the one above the Van Gogh—assuming I’m right about both).”

Oh, and, Jazz, I meant to mention that, in a very real way, being able to recognize Cezanne and Van Gogh purely via style, even if one is not familiar with the specific paintings, is already the result of having performed a kind of rudimentary analysis, right?

@Matt

I guess, you’re right, but I guess I don’t find that level of analysis very meaningful. The “analysis” is almost sub-conscious—via familiarity, and I’m not sure it’s helping me understand the paintings in a meaningful or deep way.

(@Greg, et al., I’ll try to respond to your other comments later.)

I’m interested in this topic as I’m unable to appreciate forms that don’t contain the temporal element that cinema has.

Yes, a painting can be beautiful to the eye, a painting can be formally complex, and a painting can be embedded with symbolic meaning.

But in all of the descriptions and analyses of paintings in this thread, I don’t see any reference to anything profound. The contours of objects are a certain way; the man-made things are on the right side of the frame, the natural things on the left side. Sure.

But a painting is also be a world that reflects certain values and beliefs, ideas and feelings. Rather than breaking down the formal components of a painting, I’d like for you guys to show me a still image that you find moving and profound, in the same sense as a Tarkovsky (or whoever) film and then explain why you feel that way about it. I think Jazzaloha and I would learn more about how people engage with paintings by seeing them make judgments about paintings, rather than by just seeing them analyze them.

@ MICHAEL But a painting is also be a world that reflects certain values and beliefs, ideas and feelings. Rather than breaking down the formal components of a painting, I’d like for you guys to show me a still image that you find moving and profound…

But all we have done is the analysis – the interpretation is where profundity might be found.

This is an effective work to look at in terms of the OP. Where it perhaps lacks temporarily is has dynamics.
But does it lack the notion of time passing by way of liminality?
I think the profound meaning of the painting is similar to the profound meaning of Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive or the meaning behind part of Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality found in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass.

“I’d like for you guys to show me a still image that you find moving and profound…”

You mean specifically a painting?

@Matt, Greg, et al.,

I’m still working on the Fry quote, but both your comments about the painting with the girl and parents behind her make sense; I like your reading better than my own—although I wouldn’t toss out my comments, either (not to imply that either of you are saying that).

@Robert

But does it lack the notion of time passing by way of liminality?

What do you mean by this? Do you mean that if a painting creates a liminal feeling, it also evokes a sense that time is passing?

Michael said, I think Jazzaloha and I would learn more about how people engage with paintings by seeing them make judgments about paintings, rather than by just seeing them analyze them.

I think interpretating a painting is important, but I’m also interested in the connection between analysis and interpretation.

“although I wouldn’t toss out my comments, either "

I wouldn’t either . . . it just a matter of people being more or less attuned to particular details and such.

Matt, what do those images say? Explain their profundity to me. I think they’re all nice looking, but I can’t explain them the way I could explain Cassavetes or Korine. I’m left saying “Well, they just give me a feeling that’s nice.”

If I was a photographer, I would have no idea what images to capture. I don’t know how to turn my ideas into photos. I know how to turn my ideas about the world, art, people, etc. into movies, however. I know how my theory translates into practice.

What I want to know is how photographers and painters use their chosen medium as an application of concrete theoretical and philosophical ideas.

Robert, I think profundity is found in the judgment phase. Because quality is not only a matter of what something is or whether it succeeds in accomplishing what it set out to do, but also in whether what it set out to do is worth accomplishing. This requires a belief in the superiority of certain values, as well as a rationale as to why these values are superior. This belief system is followed logically by a certain set of qualities in a work of art. So if one holds X values, a work of art would made by that person would have Y characteristics that express those values. I want to see people do to paintings and photographs what Ray Carney does to movies – take critically acclaimed, nice-looking, clever images and make a case for them being bad based on a disagreement on what to value. That, I think, will show me what people are looking for in still images and how values and ideas are portrayed in still images.

@Jazz What do you mean by this? Do you mean that if a painting creates a liminal feeling, it also evokes a sense that time is passing?

I think there is that contingency in this work – she might be interpreted as getting ready to pass into adulthood.
Notice it is a sheep she is holding and not a lamb:
Sheep are symbols of the simple goodness we bring to life when we have the desire and affection to do good for others and to be good ourselves. Such goodness is gentle and patient, just like sheep, but needs to be protected from attack by other selfish parts of our character that can easily destroy our desire to do good for others. This can be seen in the way a shepherd is able to bring a flock of sheep together to protect and guide it and rescue those ones that have gone astray. In the Bible flocks of sheep were often a sign of material wealth just as we can be spiritually rich if we bring together all sorts of good affections in our lives.

@ Michael
Are you familiar with Alexander Sokurov’s work?
It is oneiric rather than blatantly structural as this painting is.
make a case for them being bad based on a disagreement on what to value
We did this with a painting on the Clive Bell thread. The problem with this generally, and I’m not sure why making those types of judgments are profound, is that we would seem to be relying on an intersubjective sense of the thing vs a more direct subjective perception based on initial feelings.

I’m left saying “Well, they just give me a feeling that’s nice.”

With this painting we moved from a feeling to analysis of form/structure. From there we would interpret the painting and then understand the historical significance of the painting, which would I guess be the point of intersubjectivity.

….profundity is found in the judgment phase.

I’ll have to think about that. What I’m thinking now is if that phase is skipped or at least not a priority one can appreciate art to its fullest – it seems to me judgment is what people are after and are skipping the most important part of the experience.

Jazz, I wasn’t trying to deny your reading of the painting, I just wanted to set aside the subject for the moment to focus on the form in order to see how it might effect the subject. In terms of the relationships between the figures in the work, I find the split between left and right suggests a way to look at that. If we think of the girl as being in a sort of separate space from the adults, then we can look at the doll as signifying the relaltionship between the girl and the adults, something like the doll is to the girl as the girl is to the adults. This helps solidify the visual connection made between the stroller and the two seated adults in the way the stroller’s handle is pointed towards them, almost overlapping the father, as if they were meant to push it.

It seems fairly clear the girl is their child, which one could say might have been assumed by supposition given how few figures there are and the absence of any reasonable counter explanation. This is true, but the stroller adds weight to the connection, and with the idea of the separate worlds and the sort of equational connection between the girl, the doll, and the parents, that can lead to seeing the final object in the front plane, the hat, as also connecting the two halves of the painting and being further suggestive of something of the relationship and significance of the moment. The hat, being on the right hand side of the painting, puts it in the world of the parents. That it is sitting on the ground and is black with a bright red ribbon creates something of an easy feeling about it as there is a sense, perhaps, that it has been abandoned or that the hat without its owner suggests that perhaps the girl is lost to the parents,that the hat is a representation of her former presence in their lives, but is no longer in their sphere.

In other words, if we look more formally again, the first plane of the painting can be understood as being comprised of objects belonging to or associated with the girl, but the split between the two sides of the painting might suggest that the stroller and the hat also have a direct tie to the parents, so they might hold a symbolic relationship to them as they might be seen as standing in for the girl in their world.

I understand what you were saying about the house and the parents, the right side of the painting does have more weight, and as such I don’t really have a problem with the direction you are reading the painting from, although in this instance, I personally tend to think the directionality isn’t very strong as the weight of objects and darkness on the right is balanced by the emphasis placed on the girl herself given how I see her face as commanding the most attention overall, not just from the way it is framed by the landscape, but by the greater attention to detail given the girl, in comparison, the parents clothes and faces are rendered much more crudely, almost caricatures with simple lines denoting their features. Her look would push your eye back to the right, and the objects on the right push back left, and since the painting is split into halves, there is something of a balance there, but as you point out, an odd one given the lesser depth on the right where the attention is mostly drawn to the middle plane of the painting compared to the front and back of it on the left.

Oh, I should add that I slightly misspoke before about the eyelines of the parents, my memory was playing tricks on me. The father is looking farther off the canvas to the right of the viewer as if not wanting to engage with the viewer at all, the mother is the one who is almost looking at the viewer, but is staring just past us to the right in way that suggests the so-called thousand yard stare. This is significant to the painting feels as the way the two parents are seated suggests a pose, but they are refusing or unable to engage with the viewer, denying the ability to really connect with them. The girl also refuses engagement in that way.Here is a link to a much bigger version of painting where people can look more closely at the details if they like.

If you click the link, you’ll see what the painting was intended to be “about” as the “title” will give it away. The painting was a sort of a genre picture that was “popular” during the late 1800s as people with wealth would commemorate the passing of beloved children by having paintings, and later photographs, made with them and the surviving members of the family after they had died. It is a picture of mourning basically, and that is the title given to the work by some who saw it later on.

Now, the first time I saw this painting I didn’t know what it was “about” in any such precise terms, but the feeling it gave me was one of an eerie sort of stillness, and sense of of the uncanny. I “felt” the meaning in a general sense even though I wasn’t aware of the particulars or wouldn’t have necessarily assumed it was a picture of mourning. Robert’s reading of it works along the same lines in that way as he is responding to a liminal feeling the painting creates surrounding the relationship between the girl and the parents and the spaces they are inhabiting, so his reading makes sense even if it isn’t “right” in terms of what the painting was created for.

This relates to the idea of emotional logic as his suggestion carries something of the same emotional construction as the sense of loss intended. It isn’t to say that the two feelings are identical in terms of depth to those who directly experience them, but that they share something of the same shape and hold similar relationships. Once we “know” what the painting is about we can add detail to our understanding of it, like suggesting that the striped dress of black and bright colors balances the girl between the world of the living, the black, and her greater reward, the bright colors, or how we might see the further horizon on the left as being understood as being beyond the material world, which is then what the house is “blocking” as it is the world we live in, and so on. We can make those assumptions, and they may be intended or “right”, but they also might be unintended or a way to unite the work to the idea we have of it, ether way, there is nothing wrong with that, in fact that is how art works.

I was drawn to the painting by the feeling I had viewing it and the more I looked at it the more strongly that feeling held. I don’t appreciate it because it is a mourning painting that does what it is supposed to do or something like that. i would like the painitng just as much if I found out that really wasn’t what it was painted for after all. I tried to give an idea of how I “read” the painting to show why and where the emotional connection I feel towards the work comes from and for my own benefit to see how well it holds after scrutiny. In that sense, one starts with a sort of provisional judgement which one tests by seeking to better attend to the work, without that effort any judgement is going to remain abstract and unable to be communicated. Even as I have looked more closely at the painting, I can’t sum up why this one effects me as it does, some aspects of it will always elude analysis, all we can do is try to point towards how we see something and hope that will help others to feel it for themselves and bring their own ideas about it to the discussion.

Another thing to consider is how what makes the Edwin Elmer “Mourning” painting worthy of interest, to those of us who deem it so at least, isn’t at all like what makes Cezanne’s painting worthy of notice. Elmer and Cezanne were contemporaries, but they were working in two completely different manners. While Elmer seems to have had some training or some basic grasp of painting technique, Cezanne is in an entirely different realm when it comes to expressing how we see as opposed to arranging what it is we are looking at. If you read the Fry description of the Cezanne you will see him enthused about entirely different aspects of the painting than what seems to make Elmer’s “work”. If one sees the Elmer painting as being good, it isn’t going to be for the same reasons one would like many Cezannes, so any consideration of the merits of one would have to either be on a different basis than the other, or one has to deny the merits of one or the other out of hand as the differences are simply too stark to allow for the same sort of appreciation being applied to both beyond some method of internal validation perhaps.

Robert:
The problem with this generally, and I’m not sure why making those types of judgments are profound, is that we would seem to be relying on an intersubjective sense of the thing vs a more direct subjective perception based on initial feelings.

Profundity in my mind means making insights which means having ideas. I don’t think feelings are profound unless they are guided by ideas of why this feeling or moment is valuable. Artistic instincts alone are not enough.

With this painting we moved from a feeling to analysis of form/structure. From there we would interpret the painting and then understand the historical significance of the painting, which would I guess be the point of intersubjectivity.

I only skimmed through the thread but I saw an unpacking of formal complexity (the way one analyzes Hitchcock’s direction) rather than a revealing of insights.

I’ll have to think about that. What I’m thinking now is if that phase is skipped or at least not a priority one can appreciate art to its fullest – it seems to me judgment is what people are after and are skipping the most important part of the experience.

This is true. I have raised this concern before. But I don’t think basing judgments on an intersubjective criteria equates to historical significance. The intersubjective view, as I understand it, distinguishes between (empirical) fact and Truth, holding that even if there are no objective answers as to what is better than what, it is still reasonable to assert the superiority of certain values as there is some kind of factual basis for your opinions. It isn’t a judgment of which works of art are good but of what are good values for a work of art to have. If I believe in the legitimacy of intersubjective judgments of art, then I could use this belief to make all sorts of judgments, some of which will agree with the historical consensus on which works are valuable and some which will clash with it.

My own view is something like this: I relate artfulness to profundity, I relate profundity to insights into the world and human nature, and believe virtually, if not all, profound movies are humanistic, life-affirming, and have a relatively slow (in comparison to mainstream movies) pace that allows the viewer to reflect and causes him to struggle. I believe movies do these things best by portraying things something like the way they are. They should capture the complexity of human relations, of any situation. They should portray characters the way we see people from the outside rather than the way we see ourselves. They should make films that are meant to be experienced and felt rather than decoded and have its metaphors deciphered. Etc, etc, etc. These are a bunch of rules I invented (/copied from others) and I leave open the possibility that there could be a film that has none of these qualities that I still consider to be profound. But that fact does not reduce my views into mere subjective, arbitrary opinions. There are right and wrong answers to questions of value. My point with this is that I can think of a number of ways in which to translate my ideas into a work of cinema but have no idea how one would go about converting deep ideas into photography or painting.

@Michael

What I want to know is how photographers and painters use their chosen medium as an application of concrete theoretical and philosophical ideas.

I think I know where you’re coming from (and I think I know where Robert is coming from). You want to know about ideas and meaning behind the form, and you think that’s where the “meat” of the paintings lie. Yes? Generally, I approach art in the same way. The formal qualities may be terrific, but at the end, I want to know the ideas, feelings or meaning that the form expresses. Art can’t just be about form, can it?

If that’s where you’re coming from, I would recommend checking out the threads on Clive Bell (if you’re not already familiar with him). Here’s a quick primer on his ideas. (This is a much longer, more sprawling discussion on Bell, including a link to Bell’s essay that I would recommend.) Basically, for Bell, the “meat” of art comes in the form of aesthetic emotion—a euphoric feeling evoked by something aesthetically pleasing. Aesthetic emotion comes entirely from the form. In other words, the content—e.g., the subject matter of the painting, ideas, or even human emotions like joy, sorrow—is secondary or even unimportant.

Since I look for meaning and ideas behind the expression, I find this notion suprising, but intriguing. I’m not sure I agree with Bell completely, but I think his ideas work well with more abstract art, especially instrumental music.

In any event, how does all of this relate to the discussion? Well, I think that if we can analyze and appreciate the formal qualities of a painting—to the extent that this analysis helps evoke strong aesthetic feelings in us—then that might be sufficiently satisfying and worthy by itself. Some don’t feel the need to go beyond this. (And I believe that’s where Robert is coming from.) I’m not necessarily in that camp, however, as I’d like to hear some interpretation of the paintings ideas and meaning. Still, I think there is a lot of value in appreciating the form of the painting and I can understand how some people aren’t interested in going beyond this—if the form evokes those strong aesthetic emotions.

@Robert

I think there is that contingency in this work – she might be interpreted as getting ready to pass into adulthood.
Notice it is a sheep she is holding and not a lamb:

Interesting, so the images of a girl and a sheep create a sense of liminality, which then creates a sense of time passing. That makes sense, but this sensation of time passing is very different from temporal Art like music or film. And it’s also different from visual art that tries to convey a sense of movement or passage of time (e.g., “Nude Descending a Staircase”).

Sheep are symbols of the simple goodness we bring to life when we have the desire and affection to do good for others and to be good ourselves. Such goodness is gentle and patient, just like sheep, but needs to be protected from attack by other selfish parts of our character that can easily destroy our desire to do good for others. This can be seen in the way a shepherd is able to bring a flock of sheep together to protect and guide it and rescue those ones that have gone astray. In the Bible flocks of sheep were often a sign of material wealth just as we can be spiritually rich if we bring together all sorts of good affections in our lives.

I tend to think of sheep representing people—they’re vulnerable and not very intelligent and without a shepherd (God) they are in danger both from themselves as well as external threats. But I think I agree with your other characterization of sheep.

@Greg

Jazz, I wasn’t trying to deny your reading of the painting,…

Yeah, I didn’t take it that way. I knew the remark—“my comments shouldn’t be tossed to the side”—was going to give that impression, but I was too lazy to think of another way of wording it.

As for your recent post, I don’t really have much to add, except that I think it’s a very good post. I like your observations (and I do like your reading better than my own) , and I liked the way you withheld the title of the painting and then connected your initial feeling and analysis with the title. This is basically the kind of commentary I wanted for the thread.

For example, I like this:

Once we “know” what the painting is about we can add detail to our understanding of it, like suggesting that the striped dress of black and bright colors balances the girl between the world of the living, the black, and her greater reward, the bright colors, or how we might see the further horizon on the left as being understood as being beyond the material world, which is then what the house is “blocking” as it is the world we live in, and so on. We can make those assumptions, and they may be intended or “right”, but they also might be unintended or a way to unite the work to the idea we have of it, ether way, there is nothing wrong with that, in fact that is how art works.

so the images of a girl and a sheep create a sense of liminality, which then creates a sense of time passing. That makes sense, but this sensation of time passing is very different from temporal Art like music or film. And it’s also different from visual art that tries to convey a sense of movement or passage of time…

The mediums are different, so they use a different ‘how’ to supply information. Basically, we are talking about power dynamics between objects – and there, similarities abound in terms of conflict. In the painting, conflict is suspended by way of indirect gazes except for the author/painter. I’m taking Greg’s word for it, because I really can not tell. Do we feel conflict at Elmer’s gaze ? Does he know something we don’t?

This is an incredible piece when you think about how it was used. Evidently, the wife wanted to get rid of everything of the daughter, Effie, and Elmer wanted something to remember her by.
I read where someone described it as dream like. which I find strange since most dream-like work is soft edge – I see this as hard-edged art.

The outside-the-frame story is that someone is trying to control their memory. What could be more artistically profound than that?

I want to see if we can pause to sum up some of the insights we’ve discussed so far—specifically as it relates to the differences between visual art and cinema.

With visual art, the “action” lies in the relationships between lines, shaps, color within space—delineated by borders. Robert mentioned something about the dynamics occuring between the objects within a painting or something to that effect. If this is accurate, this is very different from a lot of movies. Movies have this sort of relational dynamic as well, but viewers aren’t allowed to linger and absorb these dynamics like they can with visual art. (But does this apply to three dimensional art?) With the films the pictures moving through time and the relationship between images—versus the objects or details within a frame—seem to be where the meaning lies.

Am I overstating the differences? I know that critics analyze individual movie stills and can gain interesting insights into a movie—and I would assume this process is similar to analyzing a painting. (In this way, learning how to read a painting can help one read a film.) But I’m wondering if this is more of a secondary level of analysis—analysis that is not crucial. (That doesn’t sound right, either, but I’ll leave it out there.)

@Robert

The mediums are different, so they use a different ‘how’ to supply in formation.

Right, but the experience of the “what” is also quite different, too, wouldn’t you say? In the painting, experiencing the passage of time is much more abstract and less palatable than experiencing the passage of time in a film or music, right?

I read where someone described it as dream like. which I find strange since most dream-like work is soft edge – I see this as hard-edged art.

Nice.

The outside-the-frame story is that someone is trying to control their memory. What could be more artistically profound than that?

Agreed.

more abstract and less palatable than experiencing the passage of time in a film or music
I was thinking that in film, temporality is more visceral. Temporality adds another dimension to the power dynamics.
PKD said that music is spatial; that Beethoven fills our sense of space in a way that is unbounded.
And there is the case for the artistic profundity of classical music – it is wholly centrifugal.

Last week I partook in ‘Slow Art Day’, which is a worldwide thing that I observed through a meetup group at the Museum of Fine Arts.

The idea of ‘slow art day’ is that you go to an art museum with a list of five or six specific pieces of art to look at, and you spend ten minutes looking at each of them, then reflect on the pieces of art and how that was different than the usual museum trip where you look at a lot of different pieces very briefly.

It’s really interesting the different way you notice detail of a painting or sculpture rather than just the general impression.

Here’s an example:

A conventionally shaped Buddha statue, covered with stickers which range from cute anime characters to corporate logos, to price tags, to violent headlines, to images of guns. To me it represents the way all that information is blended together in an undifferentiated stream that all feels the same. I would have found it far less interesting if I hadn’t taken the time to analyze it.

Vermeer invented three-point lighting:

Working off of Robert’s comment, I would say that, yes, being, in a way, about memory is a good way to describe the painting as it manages to suggest both a feeling of presence and absence simultaneously, and what is a powerful memory if not that? Although I would go beyond that and say that the sort of binary or split construction of the work allows this to be felt as not only presence and absence, where the girl is more “real” than the parents, more “present” than the parents, which surely reflects something of the importance of her place in their world, but she is also in flux, caught in a movement, her head turned towards something we can’t see where her parents position is fixed or static, suggesting it is the girl who is in a liminal state while they are held in place. If we look the other direction though we can also say that there is something of a tension being the material and the transcendent as the dominance of and attention paid to the house on the right creates a solidity compared to the open space behind the girl. So reading from front to back shifts our focus as each plane is weightier than the the one just ahead of it, but that weight shifts from left to right as your eye moves further back in the painting.

A different sort of presence and absence might be said to be at the heart of the Cezanne and Vemeer’s as well, but there it lies more in the way of seeing and capturing what is being painted rather than in the way the subject matter is presented. We can approach each painting in a similar manner, but what we take away or how we appreciate them will differ as they each are presenting a different way of apprehending the world and stressing different things about themselves as worthy of notice.

“Robert mentioned something about the dynamics occuring between the objects within a painting or something to that effect. If this is accurate, this is very different from a lot of movies. Movies have this sort of relational dynamic as well, but viewers aren’t allowed to linger and absorb these dynamics like they can with visual art. (But does this apply to three dimensional art?) With the films the pictures moving through time and the relationship between images—versus the objects or details within a frame—seem to be where the meaning lies.

Am I overstating the differences?"

Yes, you are. Especially in this era where one can watch a film over and over, pause, and rewind. The home theater has made film watching much more of a gallery experience. Even so, the way you’re describing films is very Eisensteinian—as if montage where much more important than mis en scene. So while cutting certainly gives you another source of “meaning,” I don’t see any reason to conclude that “meaning” lies between frames but not in them. If you don’t grasp what’s in a given frame of a film, the relational meaning it might have with adjacent frames is going to be lost to you as well.

@Matt

I probably overstating the differences, but let me just try to defend my position a little more. Viewers are able to analyze individual shots and therefore analyze a film in the similar way as other visual art, but is that the way they’re meant to be watched and experienced? When we’re watching a film, there often isn’t the necessary time to observe and absorb the dynamics within the frame. Then again, maybe I’m just not that good at it. (Still, I don’t think my abilities are worse than the average viewer.) Moreover, if we agree that the theater is the ideal venue for watching movies, the ability to stop a film, rewind it, etc. is not available to us; hence, I do think montage—the linking of images has more weight and importance than the mise-en-scene.

Or maybe the nature of the dynamics within a frame of a movie is different from the dynamics with the frame of a painting. I’m thinking the difference has to do with motion of the people and objects in a film; also the duration of each shot in a film (sometimes very short). To the extent that shots are static and stay on the screen for a long time, the more the film becomes like visual art like painting and photography. But when a shot only lasts for a short duration or there is a lot of movement within the shot, the movie becomes different—that is, the dynamics between the relationships within the frame aren’t as important—partly because there isn’t the time to really take this in.

….analyze a film in the similar way as other visual art, but is that the way they’re meant to be watched andexperienced?

Uh…. I think you’re trying to make it appear to be one or the other between montage and mise-en-scene.
What is important is to understand the relationship between things such as the elements of film: aural, temporal, visual. THOSE RELATIONSHIPS COMPRISE THE MEDIUM OF FILM ART. In discussion it is fine to identify which has heavier weight, but it is that relationship to the others that makes a film what it is.

dynamics within a frame of a movie is different from the dynamics with the frame of a painting…that is, the dynamics between the relationships within the frame aren’t as important…there isn’t the time to really take this in.
I would say no, no, and no to those three things. Time to take them in? Jazz, perception is almost instantaneous.
I think there has been enough film still-frame analysis here on the forum to suggest that, not only is it (visual) important, but in some cases wholly cohesive with the totality of the film.

Right, as Robert said, Jazz, I think you’re grossly overstating the amount of time it takes to “see.”

Robert said, Time to take them in? Jazz, perception is almost instantaneous.

So could we glance at a painting or photograph and “get” as much out of it we analyzed the painting for a longer time? That’s not my experience at all. The longer I can look and think about a painting, the more I get out of it (assuming the painting is any good). This fits well with Jirin’s Slow Art Day example above, too.

Robert said, I think there has been enough film still-frame analysis here on the forum to suggest that, not only is it (visual) important, but in some cases wholly cohesive with the totality of the film.

Right, but I assume most of the analysis doesn’t occur while watching the film—but after, when one can take time to analyze the still. As I mentioned, this can lead to rewarding insights, but my point is that this type of analysis doesn’t really occur while watching the film—at least not in a very thorough way (at least not for me).

Yes – while looking one gets as much feeling from the work and then proceeds with the analysis: most of the analysis doesn’t occur while watching the film