Answer:
Ellen B Cutler, A love of art led to a career in museums and teaching.
Answered October 16, 2020 · Upvoted by Michelle Gaugy, Art gallery owner, author, art consultant · Author has 1.9K answers and 876.4K answer views
Well, Laima Bandara, as I have pointed out before, art is not text and when we use the words “connotative” and “denotative,” we are usually talking about specific words, their literal meaning, their associations and their usages.
Now in visual art—and I do not pretend to address meaning in other forms of art—there is sometimes a denotative meaning. This is what we call “subject.” The viewer looks at the work and recognizes that it is a Madonna and Child, a still life, a landscape, a portrait or whatever. Obviously, then, subject applies primarily to representational styles, although one can well argue that form in abstract art is also its subject. The literal denotation of a painting, most often, is that it is a picture of some specific thing.
Once we have recognized the subject we begin to think about what that subject expresses. In this sense, we get into “connotation” and the feelings and implications encoded in the way the artist has presented the subject, and the style in which the artist has worked. Now we are getting into what we call “content.” What exactly is the subject matter and why has the artist chosen to include certain elements and exclude others?
If it is a Madonna and Child, are there other figures? How are they dressed? Is the Child standing, seated, in the Madonna’s lap, lying in a manger, nursing or something else? What symbols—such as fruit, flowers, halos, animals, etc.—are included and what is their meaning? How do those meanings interconnect and construct a message?
If the work is a still life, what are the objects? Are there perishables like fruit and flowers, and what state of freshness are they in? Are there containers and utensils and are they ordinary and familiar or exotic and expensive? Is there a conventional symbolism attached to those objects such as skull=mortality or death, hourglass or clock=transience of life, mirror=vanity. What do musical instruments, books, drafting tools, masks, antiquities, as you say, both denote and connote?
If the work is a portrait, who is the sitter and has the sitter simply agreed to pose or has the sitter commissioned the portrait? What are the sitter’s attributes, the objects and attire that tell us who the sitter is, whether the sitter is an important person or something about the sitter’s character? It the sitter is a famous person, then how is this representation different from other representations, and what does that mean.
The content or meaning of the work of art requires that the viewer conduct an analysis of what is seen and known, and come to a conclusion about what the artist had in mind, was trying to say. The content provokes a response, some kind of feelings in the artist. A scene of war is not necessarily horrifying or heroic or anything else in and of itself. War is only a subject. It is the way that war is presented, how the artist uses color, brushwork, scale, composition and other elements to present the subject that creates the sense of fear, anguish, pain, patriotism, admiration or whatever it is that the viewer feels.
Critics and art historians think more deeply into works of art that most people do. We tend also to have more information about the artist and the work than others might. You can say it is “important” for us to consider both “denotation” and “connotation.” The fact of the matter is that we do this automatically and all the time.
Explanation:
