Muybridge, Futurists, Cubists, and more
Aug 16th, 2008 by Brad
<update: I’ve also put a version of the table below at: www.bradcarlile.com/bio/context.html >
Explorations of time and space are important to many artists. One of the early photographic pioneers of exploration is Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904). Those in Portland are fortunate to have the opportunity to see a nice collection of vintage Muybridge collotypes from Animal Locomotion at Hartman Fine Art (154 NW 8th, Portland OR).
I wrote a bit about this show at my fairly regular First Thursday Blog postings. PORT’s Arcy Douglass also wrote about Muybridge & Cubists in this posting. But I want to go further and show how Muybridge’s work fits into time/space explorations with other artists (Futurists, Cubists, Impressionists, and various photographic techniques).
One way to look at this wide variety of artists is in terms of subject movement, perspective movement, illumination movement, time scale, and representational method. I’ll also show how my various fits into this framework.
| -ism or Artist |
Subject Movement |
Perspective Movement |
Illumination Movement |
Time Scale |
Repres- entation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muybridge | Yes | No | No | sec | multiple frames |
| Futurism & multiple exposures |
Yes | No | No | sec | spatial distortion |
| long exposures |
Yes | No | No | min | blur |
| Carlile Passage Perceptions |
Yes | No | No | sec to mins |
color |
| Cubism | No | Yes | No | 0 | spatial distortion |
| John Gaeta “Bullet Time” in The Matrix |
No | Yes | No | 0 | panning |
| Carlile Layer(s) Organic |
No | Yes | No | 0 | color |
| Impressionism, ex: Monet’s haystacks |
No | No | Yes | hours | multiple paintings |
| Carlile Day Amalgam + Night Amalgam |
No | No | Yes | hours, days |
color |
If you were wondering why I chose two seemingly different attributes under representation. I took a cue from Mondrian, who reduced painting’s long-held “Disegno e Colore” to just lines and colors. In the simplist terms we have two representation possiblities (line & color). Side note: Historically, Italians used “Disegno e Colore” to describe the act of painting. To them, Disegno meant both “design” and “drawing.” Colore to them meant both “color” and physically applying paint.
Above I mentioned that these are artists that explore time/space, that was a bit of an over statement. I think that cubists were much more interested in capturing the full extent or feeling of the subject and go beyond straight representation, so in that manner they are more about exploring space, subject, and the feeling of an object.
As I mentioned one of my favorites from the Muybridge show was, “Plate 765” (1887). This is because we not only view each as an image but when standing back they all together from an combined image that is also interesting.
BTW, All of my work is created in film on camera without digital creation or manipulation.
Brad, just recently I found an interesting connection between Eadweard Muybridge and Albert Bierstadt. They were both in Yosemite at the same time – Bierstadt painting and Muybridge taking photographs. Years later Warrington Colescott (Robert Colescott’s older brother) painted a watercolor of the two of them there. It’s worth a look at Fifty Two Pieces. There are also some links to the controversy between the Paiutes and the NPS too.
http://fiftytwopieces.blogspot.com/2009/12/albert-bierstadt-mount-hood-muybridge.html