Spielberg and Unintentional/Intentional Punctum

 The very concept of Roland Barthes' studium and punctum  in photography is a hard thing to understand, however when someone gives you a good examples about those, you get the picture (no pun intented).Is struggled my time to comprehend those terms when I was studying art history in university, before I got enough of that brainwashing (nobody should tell what kind of art you suppose to like).

If you google those terms, this is what you get:

Studium describes elements of an image rather than the sum of the image's information and meaning. The punctum of a photograph, however, contains a deeper dimension: the elements of punctum penetrate the studium—they have the ability to move the viewer in a deep and emotional way.

Lots of words after words. You can learn it by heart and spill it out on examination paper and get full points without understanding it's meaning.

However there is a movie that is full of studium and punctum, and that is Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List from 1993. 

Movie is black and white which is (on my opinion) the first punctum. Seeing a grey person in colour photograph or movie is a punctum, and so is seeing people murdered in peaceful world. Yet the world in the movie is not peaceful and murder and violence is always present. Thus the studium, the very atmosphere of the world has turned entirely so much full of punctum that it has turned to studium, thus the world is black and white because that is pointing to the status quo of the war and holocaust

At one point of the movie you can see a group of jews, driven out of their ghetto, walking towards their imminent deaths. Another sight of that studium situation. Then comes something that is punctum at it's purest form, something that irritates the viewer emotionally: A girl whose coat is not grey but visibly red. Seeing of those other people walking to their deaths is not very much shocking on a movie like this, seeing that little girl that is separated visually from other victims is. And later we can see that same coat on the middle of a giant pyre. Gassed and burned.

Still from Schindler's List (1993), Amblin Entertainment, Universal Pictures.

At the end of the movie, the real people whom Oscar Schindler's actions save, accompanied by the actors, gather to commemorate him on he's grave. Time is now early 1990s, war has ended, the world is coloured again. 

I don't know if this was intentional use of studium and punctum from Spielberg, most probably it was. However these terms were coined in early 1980s by Roland Barthes in La Chambre claire (1980). Yet one can spot so many punctums from lots of photographs and movies before that, Barthes was just givng a name to a phenomena. And Spielberg managed to give us a message by this. We must never forget.

Favorite Work of Art - Well, maybe this one

Hasegawa Touhaku (1539 - 1610): Pine Trees 日本語: 松林図屏風 (16th century, Azuchi-Momoyama-period), Tokyo National Museum, image via Google Art Project

 Can you tell what is your favorite work of art? If you know some major works of art or are deeper into it, you certainly get some ideas what it might be. I've had many proper candidates over the years, however after decades of collecting art digitally and studying art history in university, the very task of naming one certain work has gone nearly impossible. 

What is then a good work of art? This is of course, a subjective matter and we concept any kind of artwork differently, Besides no one held the right interpretation of artwork, including the very artist. For me it the feeling it summons from my consciousness or rather from subconsciousness. European art can be very arousing with its richness of detail, symbolism and vibrancy. Sometimes it can be too much and its symbolism includes elements that you have to decode with some expertise and knowledge. Don't understand me wrong, I like European art with all its splendor. But do we really need to use our brain all the time when we are looking an artwork?

I think not, and that is why my ultimate best candidate for best artwork ever is not European. At 16th century, when western artists were producing renaissance / manneristic art with all splendor, Japanese art gave us more simplified images, one could say it was less-is-more. With  few lines of ink the artist makes trees, ponds, few birds or a flower. The rest of the artwork comes within you.

If you live on forest rich region of this planet, like me, you can easily imagine it, or maybe you have lived that moment. You are standing on the edge of the forest, white mist covers nearly all. Suddenly a light gust of wind reveals a cluster of pines, you could almost hear that wind, maybe you could hear some droplets fall from pines. Hasegawa Touhaku painted these framed paper screens with one-colored ink, giving us familiar feeling from nature, way before Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840) and nature loving paintings of romantic-era. Touhaku's work lets our own imagination make the rest, fill that vast creamy void between those trees. It gives us a moment of rest. And that is why I consider it as one of the best artworks ever made. And you know what? I have never actually seen it.

Hasegawa: Pine trees, Commons

Hasegawa Touhaki, Wikipedia

They Were Here - And thus I was there

It is about - 15° C and wind makes it more harsher. Sun is descending on southeast and i'm ascending to Puolala-Hill in Turku. Then i'm suddenly in a park, surrounded by fluorescent ghosts. A 19th century couple stands by the path a small dog standing vigilant at their feet. An amorette is flying above, aiming an arrow to some young elegantly dressed, early 19th century damselle, another volant figure, an angel is blowing a horn. There are some children playing around the park. No matter how much I try to use words to describe this exhibition is not enough, and no matter how I set my camera, change lenses from 50mm to wider 24mm, it is still not enough. This is a 3D-experience with sound, you have to be walking amidst of these spectres of the past. 

The artist, Alexander Reicstein explains it better, how They Were Here

brings former residents of any historical place to life. I think people never truly disappear without a trace: we can still hear words, steps and even breaths taken from long ago. Persons from the past wander in the park, meet each other in the street and enjoy fresh air on the balcony.

Alexander Reichstein

They Were Here

 

 

 

There is no death - its just a painting

 

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 – 1931) : Tuonelan joella (By the River of Tuonela) (1903), Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki.

Tuonela, in Finnish folklore, is a place where you go after you are dead. Its not hell, nor it is a heaven. We all have to go there. It is on north, its dark and somber place where the dead wonder as spectres or ghosts. However, eternal prison it is not, we can come back if we like, such as to protect our beloved or posterity.

Even so, dead you are, and remain as a shadow. In this painting we can see the mere desperation on the eyes of deceased, as they wait their turn to cross the river that separates Tuonela from our world. People of all ages. A young timid girl undresses with shyness, a young woman cries in desperation, covering her eyes, while older people submit to their fate that they knew will become someday. Woman on the boat cries for maybe last time ever, realizing when the boat starts to move that this is it, here I go. Man who is pushing the boat might be the very boatman who takes deceased across the river, a Finnish version of Charon if you like. He's eyes are focused and calm, like concentrating on he's work. Across the murky water of the river rises mossy rocky wall, Old, long time fallen snag of a pine lies next to it. On the left we see bloody red swan of Tuonela.

On the very right corner of the painting we see a man holding a mason's trowel, looking away. He's expression doesn't show any agony of the situation. This is Akseli-Gallen Kallela himself. He painted this work as a preparatory painting for frescoes of the mausoleum of Jusélius in Pori. Fritz Arthur Jusélius had lost her daughter Sigrid to a tuberculosis in 1898, when she was just 11-years old, and wanted to build a mausoleum to commemorate her memory. Gallen-Kallela was commissioned to paint the frescoes inside. Work included six frescoes where death among life was the leading motif. Painter himself has lost he's daughter Impi Marjatta in 1895 as a child. Thus the sorrow and anguish that Jusélius felt was very familiar to him. That was the force that made the very frescoes and their preparatoty works one of the best paintings he ever produced.

After all this sorrow and desperation we have to take a closer look on this painting, there might be a an important message to all of us. Just above the undressing girl we see a reddish face looking straight to us, breaking the fourth wall. He is an another painter Pekka Halonen (1865 – 1933), the second real person in this play. Then we take another look at Gallen-Kallela on the right. Is he on this painting or standing in front of a painting? What is clear that trowel he is holding is a symbol of  freemasonry. Turn of the 20th century was an age of spiritualism and theosophy. Concepts that changed the very perspective on death. It stated that we don't die, we just change our form from physical to spiritual. Thus painters on this painting, Halonen and Gallen-Kallela, other looking to us, other looking away tells us with their indifference of depicted suffering, this is just a painting, this is not real, there is no death!