Gillian McIver - Art History for Filmmakers: The Art of Visual Storytelling

To my wonderful family.

Gillian McIver

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

HOW DOES ART HISTORY RELATE TO CINEMA HISTORY?

At its simplest, art history is the history of painters and paintings, or paintings together with other art forms such as sculpture, from prehistoric times (more than 50,000 years ago) up to the present. It is the story of the development of Western visual culture; more recent interpretations of art history also include the story of how non-Western cultures affect and transform Western visual culture. It is the story of how the canon of artistic excellence was established. It is the story of great personalities, whose innovations and imaginations created significant works. Cinema history is often also structured in a similar way: a history of directors and their films; history of film cultures; history of national film industries; history of the development of film technologies; and so on.

However you decide to tell art history, it is a history stretching back more than 7,000 years, while cinema has a history of less than 150 years. Cinema plugs into art history because both cinema and painting are visual art forms, and cinema uses the imagery and symbolism that have been developed over the course of millennia.

Art history shows how humankind continually grapples with big ideas: mans relationship with God, human social relationships, reality versus ideals, social position, fantasy and imagination, good versus evil, nightmares and fears, nature and the natural worldall have been, and continue to be, explored through visual art.

Why Is Art Important?

All art, including film, may have a biological function. According to research at the University of Toronto, appreciation of art may be a natural process of the human brain. Researchers found that looking at art biologically triggers pleasure, pain, expectations, or other emotions. The results suggest that viewing paintings may not only engage the systems involved in perceiving visual representation and object recognition, but also may structure our underlying emotions and internalized cognitions. So art may be much more important to our human lives than simply being attractive, or decorative, or entertaining.

How Is Art History Useful for Filmmakers?

Most people today are more familiar with the moving image than they are with paintings. Even those who are very knowledgeable about painting cannot escape the fact that the motion picture has been the dominant popular art form since the early twentieth century. When discussing paintings, often the word cinematic crops up for certain painters or paintings. What is this concept, cinematic? The word is often thrown around, but has no precise meaning; yet because we are so familiar with cinema, we intuit that it means a picture that is like cinema: dramatic, narrative, intriguing. A cinematic picture is one that presents a moment in time, in which we can imagine the before and after: a freeze-frame rich in drama with a sense of suspense.

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The Third Man, 1949
Dir. Carol Reed
The cinematic in film. Composition and lighting create atmosphere that enhances the story by visually suggesting the tension and suspense necessary for drama.

WHEN I DONT FEEL IN THE MOOD FOR PAINTING, I GO TO THE MOVIES FOR A WEEK OR MORE. I GO ON A REGULAR MOVIE BINGE.
Edward Hopper, painter

IN A SENSE, PAINTERS AND CINEMATOGRAPHERS ARE CUT FROM THE SAME GENETIC STRAIN.
Sherwood Woody Omens, ASC, cinematographer . Omens studied painting before he switched to filmmaking.

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Scotland Forever, 1881
Artist: Lady Elizabeth Butler (1846-1933)
The cinematic in painting. The cavalry surges forward, toward the viewer, almost hurtling out of the frame. The excitement is palpable, and the picture almost seems to vibrate with action. We are invited to engage, not simply to observe. Notice how white and red are used in the composition to create a sense of unity in the mass of figures: white brings clarity and red attention. We will consider color symbolism and its cultural specificity in .

How the Cinematic Can Be Found in Art

A cinematic picture is one that gives an intimation or suggestion of a story or narrative; there is a clear sense of mise en scne, composition, lighting, and (sometimes to a lesser extent) tonality or color, which puts us in the frame of mind of a motion picture. The cinematic can be found in art when we notice that a picture has certain qualities that are shared with cinema: a dramatic moment, a sense of something happening, a striking composition.

Cinema and much pre-twentieth-century painting are about storytelling. Visual storytelling creates (by design) an intended effect within the viewer. It lends weight to the narrative development and engagement with the overall story by suggesting to viewers that they might consider a particular scene through a particular visual (cultural, genre, etc.) filter. However, we need to remember that a story is driven by its narrative construction, and can survive as a story being told in many visual ways. This can be seen when we consider the different adaptations that have been made of classic novels; for example, Wuthering Heights was adapted in 1939 by William Wyler, in 1992 by Peter Kosminsky, and in 2011 by Andrea Arnold, among others. Luis Buuel made a Spanish language version in Mexico in 1954, Yoshishige Yoshida set his 1988 adaptation (Arashi Ga Oka) in feudal Japan, and several Bollywood versions have also been made. Allowing for the license that adaptations normally take, the story is largely the same in all these films, but they employ very different ways of conveying the story visually.

Filmmaking is imaginative, but to some extent is always bound up with the need to make things appear believable.

The past is a territory that cannot be purely imagined, yet we have few guides to know what it actually looked like. Painting can help give an idea of how past times looked. What is especially convenient is that a painting filters reality, so the image of the pasta stately king, a group of peasants, a sixteenth-century interioralready indicates what are the key significant elements that the viewers eye should look at. Often production designers and cinematographers use paintings as a starting point for recreating the past or imagining new worlds.

But we need to remember that painters and filmmakers interpret the world. They observe it closely and then refine it to the most significant details deemed necessary. This is as true of trying to represent the past as imagining the future.

This book talks about art using the language of film, and demonstrates that the link between the two is strong and unbreakable. It provides a succinct and clear introduction to the history of art, illuminating the historical background of image making and showing how this feeds both directly and indirectly into filmmaking. Throughout the text, both linear and thematic approaches are taken; the emphasis is always on the experience of looking and watching, rather than following academic schools of thought. By using both the language of film and the language of fine art, and comparing the two, the book offers filmmakers a deeper appreciation of art and its value to cinema. The book will be useful to those doing degree-level study in film and also to those preparing to enter the profession of filmmaking, whether in cinematography, directing, production design, or art direction.