Knowing what is real is one of the most complex things that as humans we need to face. I will be questioning in this report “How do we know what is real?”. Through this paper, I will be considering some of the thoughts that Rene Descartes questioned in his first and second mediation (1641) within his first philosophy. I will also be looking at how this subject can influence other people’s art and the effect it has had on my practice. In this research, I will be using few different methods to help me with my research, some of these will be primary research and others will be secondary research. As I wanted my research to be very varied I will be getting some of the different sections of my research from artists websites, Descartes first Philosophy (1641) and I will also be looking at my own experiences so I will be able to relate this and link in my feelings on illusions within my own practice. Some of the websites that I will be gathering my research from is websites such as the Daily Mail where they are looking over some pieces of work to give their overall view on the work and also sometimes the artists own website as they can give some insight on what they are wanting to get from the work and also it can help you to see the process of how they have gotten to the final product.
When I first started looking into this question, I decided to initially look at epistemology, as this is something that links to Descartes work as it is the study of knowledge. I believe this links to what he discusses in his first two mediations (1641) as he wanted to know what we actually know and what is just an opinion? One of the many ways which he questions this is in the quote “What, then, can be esteemed as true? Perhaps nothing at all, unless that there is nothing in the world that is certain.” (Descartes, 1641) After reading this it made me think about how we can never truly know if what we are seeing is real or if it is just a figment of our imagination. From this it made me realise that in some situations our eyesight could start to be deceived and it could make us think that we are seeing something that is not actually there.
This brought back a memory I had from a visit to the Camera Obscura, which is an optical illusion museum in Edinburgh. When walking around, there were many occasions which I felt my sight was tricked into seeing something which did not exist and in these moments, it was very difficult for me to recognise these as reality. This thought process was something that really intrigued me, as audience perception will be different depending on the person who is viewing the illusion.
Once I had looked into how our eyesight could be deceived considered what Descartes had studied. Due to him being considered one of the main philosophers he helped to define a point of where existence could begin with saying “Cogito Ergo Sum” which is then translated to mean “I think; therefore I am”. As this was a very bold statement that was a lot of controversy about how he came to this conclusion as there ended up being many different scientists that challenged this theory due to our nerve endings.
After looking at some of the things which he considered, I wanted to look into how things on a similar topic could affect some of the artwork which we see and how this could influence my own practice
Op art is a very influential movement which started from Victor Vasarely and it mainly became popular once everyone started to become a lot more interested by perception. It first began to be linked closely to Kinetic art where artists where being drawn to movement in their works with people questioning if the movement was real or if it was being imagined.
The Art Story stated:
“The Op art movement was driven by artists who were interested in investigating various perceptual effects. Some did so out of sheer enthusiasm for research and experiment, some with the distant hope that the effects they mastered might find a wide public and hence integrate modern art into society in new ways. Rather like the geometric art from which it had sprung, Op art seemed to supply a style that was highly appropriate to modern society.” (The Art Story, 2018)
After reading this I was a lot more interested in how the movement developed and this would really help to widen my thoughts and ideas when it comes to creating my own work. In order for my work to be stronger and have more of an impact on people when they were looking at my work I decided to look at a few different Op Artists so that I could use these pieces of work as inspiration for my own personal practice.
Bridget Riley is one of the main Op artists who is most known for her paintings where she uses a variety of clean lines, and different colour arrangements mixed with geometric shapes. She has said about her work:
“One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.” (Artnet.com, 2018)
When reading this I personally feel like this links to my thoughts when I look at a piece of Op Art as I am initially questioning what I see and then its only when I take a second glance that I am able to start figuring out what it is that my brain sees within the piece of work.
In the pieces of work that she has created since around the 1960 they have all been heavily based around creating a disorientating effect on the eyes of the viewers.
An artist’s whose work is a completely different style to what we see being created by Riley is Oleg Shuplyak who creates many different portraits which have hidden images included in them. The piece of his which I feel shows this effect the best is one of Van Gogh as it is not just the portrait but there is also another portrait of him within the image. This is down to the fact that you really have to study and analyse the image that you are looking at in order to see the hidden images within the piece.
When looking at this work I was very intrigued by the way that even though you can see the portrait and also the hidden images, you can change the way that your senses experience the way that they look at it, so you can constantly change your perspective. Doing this in my opinion is very important because you want it to be effective during a long period of time rather than once you have figured out the illusion then you never look at it again due to having no reason to as you don’t need to figure anything out. Need to clarify, consider what I am aiming to say to the reader.
After looking at the work of Oleg Shuplyak, it made me want to do further research to see how different Op Art has been from one of the first pieces of art to a more modern-day version. I believed doing this would show how much technology has affected the way that we work but also how much more effort can go into making an illusion.
At this point, you should draw from Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’ this would help to establish where you are coming from concerning questioning reality. I will support you in considering altering perceptions and how we see things. I also believe that if you are going to explore optical illusions in art you need to begin at the beginning and not so much at contemporary artists.
The first artist that I looked at to help me answer my question of How do we know what is real? was Erik Johansson. The work which he creates is mainly surrealism photography and the way that he creates his work is by taking multiple images which he then layers together on Photoshop and edits in order to make them look a lot more realistic. His work is mainly technology based and can sometimes take months to create a singular image. During this time, he is putting a lot of effort in to make small adjustments in order to make it seem as realistic as possible as doing this could make the difference to whether people are questioning if it has actually happened or if it is something which has been made up. His intentions when making his images is that he is always aiming “to make it look as realistic as possible even if the scene itself contains impossible elements. In the end it all comes down to problem solving, finding a way to capture the impossible.” (Johansson, E. 2018).
I feel like this quote could be very helpful when creating my own work where I would like to create a sense of confusion as to if something is real or not, especially due to my current work on impossible shapes. Whilst making this work I am finding ways to make sure that the impossible becomes possible with making these shapes.
Comparing this work to the work which Victor Vasarely creates you can see a great difference between the two types of work. Vasarely is considered to be one of the first artists to make a piece which was classed to be Op Art. When looking at the images which he creates you can see that they are a lot simpler to the work which Johansson creates even though they are still both tricking the mind and whilst doing this they are questioning reality.
After looking at both of these pieces created by the two different artists I feel as even though there was a difference of 50 years between these two optical pieces it can both have the same outcome of creating confusion when they are being viewed and it also helps to show how technology has been able to influence how Op art is created. Something else which I have noticed whilst looking at these two different artists is that the work that Vasarely creates can be seen and then if you change your view of it then you can constantly change if you see the illusion or not whereas for the work which Johansson creates, once you have figured out what he does with these different images you cannot see it and you have no way of being able to figure out if the image is real or not once again.
References
• Descartes, R. (1641) Mediations on First Philosophy
• Johansson, E. (2018) Erik Johansson. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.erikjohanssonphoto.com/closing-out. [Accessed 22nd February 2018]
• Vasarely, V. (2018) BISTALT by Victor Vasarely on artnet. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/victor-vasarely/bistalt-pHaemOE61_1k2vJkF8Fqkg2. [Accessed 22nd February 2018]
• Dictionary.com. (2018) Op Art Define Op art at Dictionary.com. [ONLINE] Available at http://www.dictionary.com/browse/op-art?s=t. {Accessed 22nd February 2018]
• Mail Online. (2018) Oleg Shuplyak: More of the intricate oil paintings that hide more than what meets the eye Daily Mail Online. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2088703/Oleg-Shuplyak-More-intricate-oil-paintings-hide-meets-eye.html. [Accessed 15th March 2018]
• Shuplyak, O. (2018) Oleg Shuplyak Gallery – Shuplyak. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.shuplyak.com/art.html. [Accessed 15th March 2018]
• Shuplyak, O. (2011). Double Portrait of Van Gogh. [Oil on canvas]
• Johansson, E. (2018). About. [online] ERIK JOHANSSON. Available at: http://www.erikjohanssonphoto.com/about/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].
• Biography. 2018. René Descartes – Academic, Philosopher, Mathematician, Scientist – Biography. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.biography.com/people/ren-descartes-37613 . [Accessed 04 May 2018].
• The Art Story. (2018). Op Art Movement, Artists and Major Works. [online] Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-op-art.htm [Accessed 17 May 2018].
• Artnet.com. (2018). Bridget Riley | artnet. [online] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/bridget-riley/ [Accessed 18 May 2018].