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curiouslThis is for flickr discussion on Speed and Movement .
Quoted from Art and Visual Perception. A Psychology of the Creative Eye by Rudolf Arnheim.
p.423, Immobile Motion.
"Directed tension is as genuine a property of visual objects as size, shape, and color. The nervous system of the observer generates it at the same time that it produces the experience of size, shape and color from the stimulus input <>. The most simple-minded suggestion on how this feat [motion] can be accomplished is to assume that the artist picks a momentary phase from the process of movement - a single frame, as it were from the filmstrip depicting the sequence in the time dimention. <> I have already noted that snapshots, authentic though they are, often fail badly to convey a sence of action. No imagination or fantasy will supply what is missing.
Furthermore, sometimes the most effective representation does not correspond to any phase of the depicted event. An amusing illustration has been offered by Salimon Reinach, who observes that <<of the four attitudes in which European art had represented the galloping horse during the various periods of its history, only one was confirmed by photographic snapshots, and this one, used by Attic artists of the fifth century b.c., had been almost completely abandoned by Roman art and remained unknown to medieval and modern art up to the discovery of the Parphenon frieze.>> The three others turned out to be entirely <<wrong>>. The conventional attitude of the galloping horse with outstretched legs, as seen in Gericault's Derby at Epsom was used in Mycenaean, Persian, and Chinese art, and reappeared in Europe in the British color prints of the late eighteen centure, possibly under Chinese influence.
When photography gave the lie to this ancient pattern, painters maintained with good reason that the snapshots were wrong and the artists right; for only the maximum spread of the legs translates the intensity of the physical motion into pictorial dynamics, although no running horse can ever assume that position except during a leap. <>
Action pictures portray motion precisely to the degree displayed by the figure. In one of the Muybridge's serial photographs, a sequence showing a black-smith at work, the full impact of the blow appears only in those pictures in which the hammer is lifted high. In-between phases are not seen as transitional stages of the smashing blow, but as more or less quiet lifting of the hammer, the intensity depending upon the angle represented.<>
The most important fact to remember, however, is that in a successful work of photography, painting , or sculpture, the artist synthesizes the represented action as a whole in a way that translates the temporal sequence into a timeless pose. Consequently, the immobile image is not momentary, but outside the dimention of time. It can combine different phases of an event in the same image without commiting an absurdity. Wolfflin has pointed out that, quite legitimately, Donatello's David "still" holds the rock in his hand, although Goliath's head "already" lies at the feet of the victor. And when the same sculptor's Judith raises her sword, she is not about to decapitate Holofernes, who is already dead, but making a gesture of defiance and triumph independent of momentary motion."
Quoted from Art and Visual Perception. A Psychology of the Creative Eye by Rudolf Arnheim.
p.423, Immobile Motion.
"Directed tension is as genuine a property of visual objects as size, shape, and color. The nervous system of the observer generates it at the same time that it produces the experience of size, shape and color from the stimulus input <>. The most simple-minded suggestion on how this feat [motion] can be accomplished is to assume that the artist picks a momentary phase from the process of movement - a single frame, as it were from the filmstrip depicting the sequence in the time dimention. <> I have already noted that snapshots, authentic though they are, often fail badly to convey a sence of action. No imagination or fantasy will supply what is missing.
Furthermore, sometimes the most effective representation does not correspond to any phase of the depicted event. An amusing illustration has been offered by Salimon Reinach, who observes that <<of the four attitudes in which European art had represented the galloping horse during the various periods of its history, only one was confirmed by photographic snapshots, and this one, used by Attic artists of the fifth century b.c., had been almost completely abandoned by Roman art and remained unknown to medieval and modern art up to the discovery of the Parphenon frieze.>> The three others turned out to be entirely <<wrong>>. The conventional attitude of the galloping horse with outstretched legs, as seen in Gericault's Derby at Epsom was used in Mycenaean, Persian, and Chinese art, and reappeared in Europe in the British color prints of the late eighteen centure, possibly under Chinese influence.
When photography gave the lie to this ancient pattern, painters maintained with good reason that the snapshots were wrong and the artists right; for only the maximum spread of the legs translates the intensity of the physical motion into pictorial dynamics, although no running horse can ever assume that position except during a leap. <>
Action pictures portray motion precisely to the degree displayed by the figure. In one of the Muybridge's serial photographs, a sequence showing a black-smith at work, the full impact of the blow appears only in those pictures in which the hammer is lifted high. In-between phases are not seen as transitional stages of the smashing blow, but as more or less quiet lifting of the hammer, the intensity depending upon the angle represented.<>
The most important fact to remember, however, is that in a successful work of photography, painting , or sculpture, the artist synthesizes the represented action as a whole in a way that translates the temporal sequence into a timeless pose. Consequently, the immobile image is not momentary, but outside the dimention of time. It can combine different phases of an event in the same image without commiting an absurdity. Wolfflin has pointed out that, quite legitimately, Donatello's David "still" holds the rock in his hand, although Goliath's head "already" lies at the feet of the victor. And when the same sculptor's Judith raises her sword, she is not about to decapitate Holofernes, who is already dead, but making a gesture of defiance and triumph independent of momentary motion."
