Understanding Comics By Scott McCloud
In this segment of the reading, I found myself caught up in the color theories of Chapter 8. McCloud discusses how colors affect our perceptions of the images we observe, that is, they enhance our ability to separate physical forms more effectively than images that are just black and white.
This is interesting for a variety of reasons, and I'm inclined to think of how color usage is often symbolic, or perhaps not often, but it has the potential for that intended purpose. Think of country flags, for instance. The colors always mean something, that is, the blood from wars, etc. Now think about how colors typically lead us to a string of associations. McCloud's discussion leads us to many interesting follow-up questions including how the ways we think about color affect our perceptions and associations of visually-informative texts.
Color could also be thought, at least in reference to comics, as an element that adds perspective and complications to images that are originally black and white. The perspective change allows us a certain level of freedom in aligning our perceptions of a colored visual expression.
Color grabs attention. This is why it's utilized in technology and business settings. Color could be said to have a profound affect on human beings, that is, filling our visual experience and complicating our collective reality.
Take a look at this image. Think about how the color on the far left evokes something. Does it feel closer to what we'd see if we were there with those clouds in person? Is our experience colorful only for the reason that we evolved to see color for the purpose of better avoiding predators and poisonous berries? That may be somewhat tangent to my point.
Now let's dive into Chapter 7, which I deliberately put off until now because of an eager sense of philosophical inquiry. The definition of art is an impossible definition, but it helps to begin with a series of terms, like intention, expression, creativity, emotion, beauty. Although, beauty is a typical component of art but not required for art.
Take Matisse, for example, his painting "Woman with Hat," which he painted in 1905. Is this painting necessarily beautiful? Does it elicit a type of emotion? Familiarity? I bring this painting up for a variety of personal reasons but my point is that the impossibility of this painting is a representation of the impossibility of defining art. It's like trying to define life.
Art explores our past experiences and our inner emotional states. Is it possible to suggest that art is a replica of the human mind? An expressive force of the inner conscious or subconscious.
Either way, McCloud's six steps are not a foolproof method of explaining how art is created. I protest this simply because I'm more inclined to follow Hegel, who focused, like Kenneth Burke, on symbols in art, what a piece of art is attempting to evoke in terms of its symbolic relevance or meaning.
Hegel argues that art is "...a mode of absolute spirit...," a type of "beautiful ideal" that humans strive for in expression. This plays with intention, expression, creativity, and has the potential of touching emotion and elements of beauty. Hegel thought that beauty was the ideal for creative expression, that is, beauty was the goal of art, although, like I previously mentioned, art doesn't have to be beautiful.
Back to McCloud though. He writes, "...any human activity which doesn't grow out of either our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction" (164). This is McCloud's definition of art apparently, which I protest as well. Anyone is capable of creating art, but I'm tempted to keep my focus on intention and creativity. Couldn't survival be thought of as a form of art? An expression of life? What about reproduction? This reminds me of an essay by Walter Benjamin, who wrote about how technology has had an impact on the "reproducability of art." He means to say that technology has allowed us to experience art, previously a "one-time experience," as many times as we like. It takes away the expression and the luxury of what humans are meant to feel or think in response to art.
