Do you have to Do Something to Know it?

This post explores personal experience with landscape painting, referencing ideas that can be found in my Head post about landscape and film using Victor Sjostrom's works as a lens.

Where is the Scholarly Discussion About Practicing What You Want to Know?

I have now spent several hours trying to find some good scholarly articles about how a person might understand landscape better by actually trying to produce it. For the most part, I've struck out. I can find articles on business management and economics, like one from the Harvard Business School Press called "The Knowing Doing Gap," which looks at the "challenge of turning knowledge about how to enhance organizational performance into actions consistent with that knowledge," but it doesn't quite address what I'm referring to. Or I can find articles in organizational management and psychology, like an article in Organization Science called "Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing," in which Wanda J. Orlikowski of the Sloan School of Management at MIT outlines a perspective on "knowing in practice which highlights the essential role of human action in knowing how to get things done in complex organizational work." Or even an article in the book Instructional Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory entitled "Learning by Doing," in which Roger C. Schank (Director of the Institute for Learning Sciences at Northwestern University) discusses "developing skills rather than perfecting routines," and the benefits of "just in time" training.

I hadn't thought it would be so difficult to find a reliable, scholarly person suggesting that you've got to try something before you can really teach it or talk about it knowledgeably. I suppose I might find something along those lines if I looked into Anthropology, where I know that there are discussions of the limitations of writing about populations if you haven't really lived with them long enough to really know them. But I'm talking about art here, and it just seems like there'd at least be a few art historians who would argue for experience with practicing a medium, and not just looking at it, being important for one to understand it. Why can't I find it?

The Difficulty of Search Terms

Partly it's probably because the search terms I can think of are so commonly used as analogies in just about every academic field. A "landscape" could be "the landscape of companies in the Fortune 500," "nature" could be "the nature of non-newtonian fluids," "art" could be "the art of concrete pouring for large projects," and "painting" could be "painting a picture of new methodologies in exercise science."

The Implicit Acknowledgment of Doing in order to Know

I'm pretty sure that what I'm looking for is out there; when a professor requires you to write a Sonnet or even to mimic the style of a prominent critic, the implicit assumption is that doing it will teach you something that merely studying it will not. My English professor Gideon Burton writes a new Sonnet every single day; I'm sure that he would argue that he has a better understanding of the form and could talk about it more intelligently now that he has tried it.

So, in any event, I've been trying my hand at landscape painting during this term, with the thought that it might teach me something about "nature," "setting," and especially "landscape" that I might not realize if I just continued to watch films or look at art.

Some Caveats About Comparing One Medium to Another

To start with I have to admit that a painted landscape probably engenders something different in a viewer than a filmed landscape, especially if the painted landscapes are more abstract, as mine are. When you look at a painting, I think you often try to compare that depiction with the real thing, and there is something of a "pause" in that moment, as you think, "how close is this to things I know in real life?" You may also ask yourself, especially if the painting is not photo-realistic, "does this landscape give me similar feelings to the thing in real life?" A final question that a person might ask themselves when looking at a painting might be: "Does this painting suggest new ways of thinking about or looking at the world that I would not have considered before?" All of these questions might run a little differently when looking at a landscape in film. If the film is live action, then the inclination for viewers is to see the landscape not as a "representation," like the painting, but as a "reproduction;" that is, the landscape in the film is usually seen as the "real thing," and not an artistic creation. Film scholars will be quick to dispute this illusion of "reproduction," as Bill Nichols does in his book "Introduction to Documentary." Nichols writes that everything within the frame of the film screen:

stands for a particular view of the world, one we may never have encountered before even if the aspects of the world that is represented are familiar to us. We judge a re-production by its fidelity to the original - its capacity to look like, act like, and serve the same purpose as the original. We judge a representation more by the pleasure it offers, the value of the insight or knowledge it provides, and the quality of the orientation or disposition, tone or perspective it instills. We ask more of a representation than we do of a reproduction.

So, there is no doubt that my paintings are "representations:"




But what about nature depicted in film? When do we care more about its fidelity than the pleasure that it gives? And isn't the film-maker's gaze a way of creating a work of art? The "framing process," of choosing this portion of land or sea rather than that, of finding the right lighting, of even noticing a bit of land for its aesthetic qualities...is not that the process of an artist? Let us consider this scene from Sjostrom's 1918 film The Outlaw and his Wife:

At what points in the film does the natural world merely serve as a place for action to take place (setting), and at what point does the natural world become something more, something to be appreciated in itself, as landscape? In addition, do we gain pleasure from these beautiful scenes, or merely satisfaction when they seem to be "true" to the original land? Are we seeing reproduction, or representation?Whatever the film scholar may argue, it matters the way in which the general viewer responds to the film.

I would argue that while a viewer might ask different questions about my paintings than about landscape in film, there are also similarities, especially when the film-maker uses his natural resources with the kind of subtlety and respect that Victor Sjostrom does.

Some Preliminary Conclusions About My Painting Experiment

As for the process of painting - I believe that I do have, if not a greater understanding of landscape, at least a greater appreciation for it. I think more now about horizons, of deep space and perspective, of things that are implied outside the frames of my art. I think of the time it took me to experiment with different styles, and which ones seemed to work, and which ones did not. I think of how humanity fits into representations that seem devoid of it. I think about not just the outdoor experiences that I have had, but about the ones that I will have, seeing with more discerning, even appreciative eyes. Perhaps as much as anything else, the length of time it took me to paint, to wipe and repaint, to stand back and consider, to plan my next moves, helps me to view landscape as something that involves contemplation, time, and consideration. But I also know that while these feelings in me are perhaps stronger now, they are not entirely new. The viewer who has never practiced, may still have similar feelings, even if they are less pronounced, or even unconscious. After all, I was moved by landscapes before I ever picked up a paint brush.

Tom Gunning: Setting me straight

My "Writing About Literature" professor, Dr. Burton, asked that we extend our research process beyond our own isolated bubble, so that we could better take part in a larger conversation about our research topics, and learn to make connections that will allow us to grow through collaboration. So, I decided to send an e-mail to the superstar of silent film scholarship, Tom Gunning.

Tom Gunning is the Chair for the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Chicago, and is "famous" for creating a new way of looking at pre-feature silent films, which he terms "the cinema of attractions." The following is an excerpt from his Bio on UChicago's faculty page (along with a great Bio pic):

His published work (approximately one hundred publications) has concentrated on early cinema (from its origins to the WW I) as well as on the culture of modernity from which cinema arose (relating it to still photography, stage melodrama, magic lantern shows, as well as wider cultural concerns such as the tracking of criminals, the World Expositions, and Spiritualism). His concept of the "cinema of attractions" has tried to relate the development of cinema to other forces than storytelling, such as new experiences of space and time in modernity, and an emerging modern visual culture.

I decided to send Dr. Gunning an e-mail with a question that I had been researching but could not find an answer for. Here is the e-mail:

Dr. Gunning,

I am a double Film and English Major at Brigham Young University. I don't presume that you respond to e-mails from anonymous students; but as I'm working on a project in your area of expertise, I finally decided that it was worth giving it a shot.

I have spent some time following the work you have done, especially in early silent film. About a year ago I found Martin Lefebvre's volume "Landscape and Film," which you contributed to, and have since learned about your work with what you term the "cinema of attractions." It was an exciting experience to realize that there is still a fairly current and evolving discussion about film, even in its classic stage, and it is a dream of mine to contribute to it myself.

My specific interest is in landscape and film, and I know that you have spent time looking at D.W. Griffith and landscape in particular. I am currently revising a paper I hope to find publication for about Victor Sjostrom and the "landscape view," as I was sharply struck by Sjostrom's use of landscape (seascape) in Terje Vigen (A Man There Was - 1917), and The Outlaw and his Wife(1918). I am formulating a paper that suggests that these two films of Sjostrom's may form a model that we might benefit from today.

One specific question I have is whether Sjostrom was diverging from common practice by shooting such striking, poignant scenes out in nature, as opposed to in the studio. I have extrapolated that most producers would choose to shoot big-budget films on a set in a studio because it would be cheaper than moving a whole film crew to a natural location...and that the studio system was really coming into its own during just this period...but have not found definitive proof for this in the research that I have conducted.

Whether you find the opportunity to respond to this e-mail or not, I wanted to express my admiration for the work that you have done.

Best,

Neal Call

About an hour later, I realized that I'd made a mistake in my e-mail (aw suck!), and sent Dr. Gunning a second e-mail apologizing:

As I was looking at Martin Lefebvre's book again, I realized that it was Jean Mottet who wrote an article about landscape in D.W. Griffith. It doesn't alter my interest in your work, but I apologize for misrepresenting. I just knew that you had done work with the early American film and D.W. Griffith.

Despite my silly mistake, Dr. Gunning responded almost immediately with an answer that probably saved me 5-10 extra hours of research trying to find evidence for something that didn't exist (and I'd spent that much time already trying to find it). Here is his response e-mail:

Dear Neal

A quick answer. In the teens when Sjostrom was working, shooting in a big studio for landscape scenes was not necessarily cheaper, so it was not unusual for directors of the teens to shoot landscape scene sin nature (Griffith, prodcuer Tomas Ince and the various directors who worked under him) Maurice Tourneur, all did great work in landscapes, However I would agree Sjostrom was perhaps more powerful than any of the others, not because he was the only one shoorting in landscape, but because he has such an extraordinary sense of the way environment interpenetrated his character and his narrative. Outlaw is perhaps the masterpiece in this regard, but most of his films show this great sensibility. It may partly be a cultural sensibility, since I feel the strongest rival to his talent in this regard is his fellow Swede Maurice Stiller, especially Song of the Scarlet Flower and (available on DVD) Sir Arne's Treasure I have an essay on Sjostorm, but it is not on one of his landscape films: “‘A Dangerous Pledge’: Victor Sjöström’s Unknown Masterpiece Mästerman” in Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930 ed. John Fullerton and Jan Olsson (Sydney: John Libbey and Co., 1999).

yours

Tom Gunning

And Dr. Gunning's response to my flub of attributing his work:

Dear Neal

I did wonder, but if you look at my Griffith book you will find pleanty on Landscape...

yours

TRG

You'll note that Dr. Gunning directly refutes much of what I wrote in my second post on landscape in film, but I am overjoyed that he did, because I knew that I was making a leap without enough proof. Now I can revise it to make it accurate. Even better, though, was that he corroborated my sense that Sjostrom did something special that other film-makers were not doing - he in essence justified my paper, even if he offered a concrete counter to a sub-argument. All things considered, it was an excellent exchange, and if I can come up with another good, concise question to ask, I hope Dr. Gunning might offer me another pearl or two.

Quick thoughts on my 2nd paper

I've already got a paper that I'm working on revising; it's 13 pages long, so it's quite a bit to bite off for anyone giving me comments. What I'd like to look at, in part, is the way that I make assertions in the paper as a stand-in for the reader, when in fact the reader might not agree with the assertions I am making. I intend to take lines and phrases from the paper so that my peers can give me feedback on whether those assertions hold up, or whether they are really only the opinions of the writer (me). So, the "new media" component would be the method of polling my peers and integrating feedback into the paper.

Also, because the paper is about a film - itself a comparatively "new medium," I think the arguments in the paper already address new media concepts, and I will continue to develop those.