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Topic 8 Time, Narrative: Objectives of This Lecture

This document outlines the key concepts and objectives covered in a lecture about time and narrative in art. The lecture aims to introduce basic concepts of representing time and narrative, explore multicultural examples, and examine current options in narrative representation. It provides an overview of concepts around symbolizing and representing time from historical works. It also discusses fundamental narrative theory concepts and ordering of narratives, and gives examples of modern and contemporary works that experiment with narrative time and structure.

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46 views

Topic 8 Time, Narrative: Objectives of This Lecture

This document outlines the key concepts and objectives covered in a lecture about time and narrative in art. The lecture aims to introduce basic concepts of representing time and narrative, explore multicultural examples, and examine current options in narrative representation. It provides an overview of concepts around symbolizing and representing time from historical works. It also discusses fundamental narrative theory concepts and ordering of narratives, and gives examples of modern and contemporary works that experiment with narrative time and structure.

Uploaded by

nighb
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Topic 8

Time, narrative
Objectives of this lecture:

To introduce basic concepts of time and narrative


in art

To go beyond that kind of pedagogy by


considering multicultural examples

To explore the current options in the


representation of narrative time

Note: this material was originally posted on www.jameselkins.com, under “Syllabi.” Send all comments to [email protected]
Organization of this lecture:

1. Key concepts in the first half of the text “Time and


Narrative”

2. Key concepts in the second half of the text, on


contemporary possibilities of narrative

(These notes are minimal because the full text is


available.)
1. Concepts in the first half of the essay

These are among the concepts, names, and works that you should
memorize from the text:

Representing motion:
Poggendorf illusion (the example was by Donatello)
Umberto Boccioni (futurist artist)

Symbolizing time:
Goya, Parcae (Fates) (after 1819)
The Fates: Lachesis (spins), Clotho (winds), Atropos (cuts)
The vanitas (elements: clocks, hourglasses, skulls, flowers, bells, crosses...)
memento mori
Georges De La Tour, Mary Magdalen with an Oil Lamp, c. 1635
Hogarth, Tail Piece of the Bathos (1764, seven months before he died)
Titian, Three Ages of Man; Col Tempo (”In time [you will be like me]”)
Joseph Wright of Derby, Old Man and Death (1774)
Nicolas Poussin, Dance to the Music of Time (c. 1638) (the four figures:
Poverty, Labor, Wealth, Pleasure; the statue: Janus)
Symbolizing time, continued:
Annibale Carracci, The Choice of Hercules (c. 1595)
Gotthold Epraim Lessing, Laocöon: An Essay in the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766)
punctum temporis (concept of the representation of an instant)
Prospective and retrospective moments (Lessing’s interest)
E.H. Gombrich: argues against the punctum temporis (eg., adducing the “echo box” and
other memory phenomena that act in place of the supposed instant in time)

Modern / postmodern works that symbolize the passage of time:


Marcel Broodthaers, Midnight
George Brecht, Silence
On Kawara, Date Paintings
2. Concepts in the second half of the essay

Fundamental concepts of narrative theory:


fabula, plural fabulae
narrative
narrative cue
Nelson Goodman, “Twisted Tales” (1977)
Goodman’s concepts: order of telling, order of occurrence
My subdivisions: genre order of telling, spatial order of telling
My addition: order of reading
My subdivisions: linear order of reading, deductive order, associative order
William Rubin, “From Narrative to ‘Iconic’ in Picasso” (1983)
Rubin’s concepts: icon, style differences substituting for narratives

Medieval narratives:
Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1303-05)
Metaphors for organizing time: book, scroll, tapestry

Renaissance narratives:
Piero di Cosimo, Discovery of Honey (c. 1505-10)
Orders of reading in Renaissance fresco cycles: boustrophedon, cat’s cradle, labyrinth...
Modern narratives:
1. Simultaneous fragments: the example was Seurat’s La Grande Jatte 1884-86)
2. Entirely non-narrative works that appear to be telling stories: the example was Balthus’s two
paintings called The Street (1933-35) and Passage Commerce S. André (1950-54)
3. Stories that misrepresent fabulae: Max Beckmann, The Argonauts (1949-50)
4. Stories without fabulae: Beckmann,
5. Stories that begin as narratives and then dissolve: Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur, Jealousy

Contemporary (non-, anti-) narratives:


Terese Poulos
Michele Fleming, Life/Expectancy (2001)

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