For my narrative reflection and journey into a visual experience I chose to visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It exhibited many pieces I was able to connect to McCloud’s theories about closure and visual literacy (6). Certain pieces stood out more than others, inanimately, but somehow speaking to me. Collections spoke, punctuated, and ended themselves as comics do with direction, icons, and framework. McCloud’s philosophy on our sense of self in relation to what we see around us was also very present during my excursion (10). I saw myself differently depending on what exhibit I was seeing. The visit was informative and inspiring.
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is an icon in itself. The entire building, both outside and inside, is a work of art set apart from many other structures in the city. Immediately I was transported into a place of culture and refinement. I chose to tour the museum without a spoken guide in order to take my time and explore my thoughts in accordance to our class discussions about McCloud’s readings. First and foremost I wanted to test McCloud’s theory about how we see ourselves depending upon what we are looking at. To do this I began “An Enduring Vision” which showcases photographs from the Lane collection. This collection interested me because the photographers were American modernists, photographing other humans. I wanted to take in the collection while being consciously aware of how I was viewing myself as I looked at portraits of other humans. According to McCloud, the way we view ourselves when we see human faces versus when we see humans in cartoon form is different. When looking at another human or a picture of another human we only have an abstract awareness of ourselves and I had yet to test this theory (10-11). This visual journey seemed like the perfect opportunity.
The Lane Collection was indeed brilliant. It had many photographs that did not suit my needs, such as works by Ansel Adams. These were brilliant to look at but the photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot and Edward Weston served my purposes better. As I scrolled through the many faces of sad, happy, stoic, and melancholy subjects I began to realize I did in fact only have an abstract awareness of myself unless I focused upon a memory of my own image. I was aware of my overall features and their general placement but nothing refined about my own face or body was clear to me without any focus. As I viewed series of photographs by one photographer within the Lane Collection I also began to sense a language. There was closure between each photograph or in the “gutter”, as McCloud would say (33). There were photos of inanimate objects that spoke more about sadness and unhappiness than any human face I saw, suggesting that how McCloud viewed symbols and icons in comics was correct (7).
Now that I realized I did have an abstract view of my own features when looking at photographs of other humans, I wanted to test McCloud’s theory further; I wanted to see how I felt about my own presence when looking at drawings of humans. To examine these feelings I viewed the exhibit “Rembrandt the Etcher”. As I read in the exhibits opening, Rembrandt was perhaps the only artist who saw etching as a true form of expression and he took full advantage of it, creating almost 300 works over his career. Though many are landscapes and other inanimate objects nearly half of the exhibit were human faces. I drank them in without thinking in depth about my sense of self. The scenes were primarily biblical and typical very graphic. I do not know much about etching but there was such fine detail in all of his work it was impossible not to get caught up in each piece. It was then that I realize McCloud had been on to something again: these were drawings of human faces and though I again was not aware of my sense of self I was able to connect more deeply with these drawings (12). I could be any of these faces in the crowd. My self-awareness was not necessarily heightened but my connection to the piece of work and its inhabitants certainly was. To see his philosophy at work in my own mind like that was a truly magnificent thing to behold.
McCloud’s views on sense of self in relation to what we see around us had, for me, been correct. Not to let the theory go further untested I began to wonder how I would see myself while staring at neither a real human face nor a cartoon, but the abstract. I took in an exhibit entitled “American Gestures” which is a take on abstract expressionism. It featured sculptures, paintings, and drawings from several different Expressionists such as Pollock, Krasner, and Motherwell. My postulation was that if I stared at a human face and saw myself abstractly, then I could stare at the abstract to see myself clearly. Sometimes the pieces were complicated and messy, reminding me that if McCloud’s idea of language were at work here, there were a lot of exclamation points and shouting going on in this exhibit. Other times the pieces were simple and neat. I clean period or a soft-spoken word was at work here. I spent enough time in the exhibit to hear all of the vocabulary and see all of the punctuation the artists had attempted to use, by McCloud’s standards . However, I felt no particular sense of self when looking at each piece. I felt no jarring sense of realization as I had in the previous exhibits when I thought of my own presence in relation to the art around me. I was simply there, to hear all that the art was trying to shout or whisper to me.
My visit to the Museum of Fine Arts gave me a lot to reflect on. After reading McCloud’s book and discussing his ideas in class it was easy to apply them to comic books as well as myself while reading comic books. However, I had a difficult time understanding how I would apply those same ideas to any other area of art or life. Now I see that many times my sense of self is compromised, depending on what I am looking at, and without my even noticing unless I make an attempt to be consciously aware. I also realized, after viewing the exhibit on Expressionism, that no matter the medium, there is always a language being spoken. It is ironic; when I walked into the museum they asked me to be quiet but I didn’t hear anybody asking that of the art, which was being the loudest of all.
References
Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Chicago: Hackett, 2001. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Print.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Chicago: Harper Collins, 1994. Print.
