Anne Wysocki’s “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty” was some dense stuff, and after reading it I really wish I gave myself more time and broke it down in between days. Essentially, Wysocki argues that “teaching the visual aspects of texts are incomplete and, in fact, may work against helping students acquire critical and thoughtful agency with the visual”.
I would have to agree with Wysocki’s argument. She uses the ideas of Robin Williams, whom we have read already, and Kant, who we are on the verge of reading, to explain her point.
What I got out of her depiction of Williams point of view of visual elements is that Williams is to textbook with visual elements. It seems as if Williams’ point of view is a math equation, where there is either a wrong or right answer with how to perceive a visual element. Williams’ point of view includes the elements of contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. Wysocki argues that all of these elements together helps explain to the viewer what is important in the visual text, but it doesn’t give the reader room to explore the visual of the visual text. She uses the Peek advertisement that Dr. Springsteen showed off in class on Tuesday, and said that Williams’ ideas don’t offer the reader any explanation for why the picture is on the advertisement.
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I agree with you completely that Wysocki's argument was very dense. I said the very same thing in my own blog. I think just having her argument in our head for a couple days could have been beneficial before writing a response too. My question is if you had more time is there anything in specific you would have liked to focus on, or write more about?
ReplyDeleteGood stuff. I would have liked her talk a bit more about a direct correlation between Kant and Williams, but then it was a pretty long chapter anyways.
ReplyDelete..her to* talk..
ReplyDelete