Brian came in to drop some well-researched knowledge about portraiture in the Renaissance. He told us that the painted sculptures of ancient Greece and Rome had all had their paint rubbed off by the Renaissance, so the Renaissance sculptors imitated the greatness of the ancients by creating sculptures with no color added. Portraiture in the Renaissance was a rich man's game. You either did it to show how rich you were (your social status generally), or to show how pious you were. A lot of information in these portraits was symbolic and decodable. What you carried, where the portrait was set, and what you were wearing had specific messages to send to viewers of the portrait. (I've always thought this would be a fun thing to take advantage of in a fictional setting!)
Self-portraits during this period were a form of advertising. You would paint a picture of yourself that you could then sit next to so passersby could see how great you were at rendering an accurate portrait. Still lifes were also a way for artists to show off their technique.
Brian estimated that watercolors first started being used in the 1820-1830 range. They could be easily damaged by water. They also depended on the availability of paper. Pen and ink images, though, go back much further, and if you consider the water-based ink paintings of Asia, they go back much farther.
Art can have periods of little change depending on what is going on in the society. European paintings had about 150 years of stagnation. During a much earlier period, traditional Chinese art stayed very much the same for about 100 years. In the year 900 it was much more advanced than that of the societies around it. Kat pointed out that it had a connection to calligraphy, and that the training for calligraphy (at least) has a kind of cultural conservatism where you want to precisely duplicate the style of the master before innovating. Ink-making in China was also standardized, where it was far more do-it-yourself in Europe. The sinosphere had a lot of social stability, and placed value on social stability. Europe in the Renaissance had a lot of different competing rulers with less hegemonic control (unless you consider the Catholic Church hegemonic). The Ottoman Empire was located between these two very different cultural groups.
One key question to ask whenever you are talking about art history in our world, or in a fictional world, is "What gets preserved?" Whether art gets preserved will depend a lot on whether it's politically accepted.
Brian told us about a piece from Kent, England, which had been broken up. Some pieces were lost, and some were sent to France during WWII to try to get them away from the German attacks, and then ended up in the German salt mines after France fell. Art works have a ridiculously complex history.
In Japan, shrines are expected to be rebuilt because of the dangers they face: earthquakes, thunder, fire, and the old man.
Cathedrals were made of stonework and wood with the expectation that the wood would be lost over the centuries, but the stone would stay and the wood could be replaced.
We're trained to think that the things that count are preserved, but new storage media can cause problems. NASA is losing some of its storage media.
These days, a lot of value is placed on photo-like images. This value started surprisingly early. Brian remarked that the less representative art movements followed the advent of photography, to capture what photos could not, and maintain the relevance of the artistic techniques in an age where accurate representation was already taken care of by the photographic medium.
Of course, photography was used for artistic experimentation quite early, using perspective, and creating images of fairies and ghosts, etc.
In the days of sculptures and painted portraits, the subjects of those portraits were often portrayed as idealized versions of themselves. A body model might be used because a famous person might not want to sit for the length of time required for the portrait to be completed.
Photography gave the sense of being more real, but still people used creativity. These days, digital media are also used in creative ways.
In the Victorian times, people would have death portraits. You would have a picture of a family where a child who had died would be propped up in the portrait. In the 1880's-1890's, taking an image was an expense, and difficult, so for daily life it wasn't so critical, but if a child died then you might have no way to preserve their memory, so you would take the picture immediately after their death as a memorial. By the 1920's it had become easy, and this tradition disappeared.
Polaroids were an image-capture technology of a particular era!
There was also the idea of the "Kodak moment." Photography companies would want you to be aware of times in your life when you might want to take a photograph, so that they could continue to have business. Now, it's so easy to take pictures that Kat has her kids photograph the food inside the fridge and bring her the picture so she can tell them what they can eat without having to stop what she's doing. Brian takes photographs of signs and plaques at museums so he can refer back to them later. For me, having the ability to make digital photos meant I tried a lot more shots, and a lot more risky angles, etc. because I didn't have to waste film if I got them wrong. You can even take a picture of paperwork, or a phone number, rather than having to make a copy.
At this point, three-dimensional solid representations are precious. Busts are not terribly popular currently, but they might become so with the rise of 3D printers.
So how do we incorporate this into our worldbuilding? Well, there's always the Portrait of Dorian Gray... But it's a good idea to ask if you have artists in your sff. A lot of arts and crafts don't make it into our fictional depictions.
In my world of Varin, portraiture is going strong because the people have a religious view that discourages taking too-accurate images of people (called "stealing someone's face"). In Australia and New Zealand, you can often find warnings about sharing images or videos of deceased people.
We have a tradition of not taking pictures of the Queen of England eating, or blowing her nose.
IDs require photos or some kind of biometric information. But are people allowed to keep glasses on? Do you want a photo showing your ears? (Some agencies do) Can you wear a hat? Can you wear a colander on your head?
Do you smile in photos or not?
How do we identify people? Hair and eye color are not always useful metrics. What if someone were identified on the basis of how bilaterally symmetrical they were, instead?
We use photos to show off socially, and to communicate. I just had author photos taken for my forthcoming novel, and how I "come across" in such a photo is an important cultural consideration. There's value in putting a face on an author. What happens if you send a photo of someone else? Or of yourself, twenty years ago? It's a form of communication that makes a statement about a current reality. These days, we are represented by postage stamp-sized images online.
Think about the fake profiles that issue friend requests. What are they trying to achieve with the photos they steal? What values are they trying to access with their images of graying military widowers, or hot young things?
Kimberly brought up the question of verbally describing a drawing of an image, which has its own sort of inception-like redundancy. Describing portraits takes time, and is quite challenging. Artists imagined many different versions of the Iron Throne before one was accepted as the cultural canon. There are moving portraits in Harry Potter. You might take the time to describe a piece of art in depth if it were highly relevant to your plot, but mostly you'll sketch out just a few details.
Morgan noted that art, and feelings about art, can be instrumental in a point of view or a mood.
Where art is displayed, and how much of it there is, indicates things about your world. Think through where art would appear, and what it would depict, and whether it is permanent or seasonal.
We briefly mentioned representational caricatures like the ones you might see at an amusement park. What is the function of that? We decided we could have a whole discussion on Othering in such representations, but that we didn't have time right then.
Kat asked what it would be like to revive a heritage art in artificial gravity.
I mentioned my story "At Cross Purposes," which featured aliens who loved Art and considered it the purpose of civilization and progress.
We wondered about scent art and how that might be used in a story.
How do artists talk about their art? Is everyone an artist? Are only a few people artists?
Thank you to everyone who attended!
#SFWApro
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