Narrative

Narrative and/or story in art is an idea that just keeps coming up.  Our text approaches it in a very literal sense, but upon deeper investigation we see that this theme is huge, branching out to touch concepts like identity, memory, empathy, synthesis, pivotal moments, point of view, sensory experience, subjectivity, and so forth.  According to Daniel Pink and other cognitive scientists whom he relies upon in his writings, story, or the narrative form, is actually how we think.  It's how we organize our memories, our experiences, and our predictions for the future.  In my view, art and artifacts of visual culture can scarcely be made that do not create or belong to a story.

It's these more nuanced aspects of story that interest me more than the literal depiction of events in a linear series.  For example, what about cultivating the ability in our students to create liminal space in an image (*ping Kathy), by choosing a particularly pivotal, saturated, or climactic moment (*ping Tiger Team 2) which urges the viewer to fill in the rest of the narrative?  The ability to evoke images in the mind of the viewer pertaining to the events likely to have immediately preceded or follow the incident which is actually being portrayed requires an extremely elevated and sophisticated process of cognition and artistic decision making which I like to call illustrative ability or intelligence.  One artist who comes to mind as a notable example of this talent is Bill Watterson, author of the beloved Calvin and Hobbes comics.  Just look at any of his book covers and you'll see what I mean.  I bring this up only because I was a little disappointed with the very literal examples of narrative provided in our text.  I feel like every time the subject of narrative comes up in an art history book, we yet again have to look at The Tribute Money. This may just be a personal preference, but I feel like I've seen this painting sooo many times, and there are so many other great example out there of ways that story has shaped and impacted the arts.