storytelling in art history

James Gurney (author/illustrator of the Dinotopia books) has been blogging the making of the his Dinotopia paintings. In a recent post he writes about the place of illustration, animation and comics in art history, he offers these two diagrams by Dennis Nolan:

"The problem with this analysis is that it doesn’t take into consideration the forms of art that real people—like your great grandparents and my great grandparents—were excited about, namely illustration, comic art, and animation. In art history courses we never heard about these forms, nor about the artists who told stories with pictures."


"Dennis’s diagram puts the storytelling forms squarely in the center of the mainstream history of art, where they directly inherit the legacy of the ages. The modern movement still plays a significant, if culturally marginal, role as agent provocateur."

This makes a lot of sense to me. In the midst of the new mainstream I would add all film matte-painting and concept art. I've always felt that some of the stuff on say cgtalk.com or conceptart.org had much more in common with Rembrandt and da Vinci then most modern 'fine' art.

In addition to the centrality of Story-Telling that Dennis highlights, I would also add that illustration, comics etc have the following in common with traditional art most of which modernism lacks:

• Art as Storytelling
• Art has healthy relation to Science (Anatomy,Optics, perspective, and now physics)
  
• Art as Work (commissions, making money isn't bad)
• Art as Representation
• Art that in some way is Beautiful

(more ramblings on this topic here)

So, perhaps modernism will only be an ugly short-lived curiosity in the final story of art.

text, image, and sound relationships

When thinking of illustrated stories, or music videos based on songs, or animated poems, what is the relationship between the various media?

Should or do illustrations merely or only serve the text of a book? I guess it depends on the book, is it a comic book, novel, or picture book.

Should the visual seek to be unintrusive, humbly self-sacrificial in serving the text?

Should one medium self-consciously contrast or harmonize with it's opposite medium producing some sort of synesthetic polyphony?

Should the visuals of a music video merely be an advertisement for the song or publicity/notoriety of the singer? (here is a good counter-example, on the right side of the page)

This is similar to the form/content discussion, but the textual,visual, and audible all have their respective contents. "Form is the shape of content"
If this is so, perhaps the images, words, and sounds are simply mediated shapes of the same 'content', though this seems too platonic. Visuals aren't simple containers for the message or meaning of a piece of artwork.

This is also similar to the form/function discussion. I like Tim Smith's “Form REJOICES in function” rather then "Form follows function."

How does this relate to film?

In film, I think we have more unity of text/image/sound then say a music video. Where do comic books, graphic novels, and children's story books lie on the spectrum?

It would also be interesting to think about the relationship of text and sound in various musical genres. For example, Country being on the content/text side of things and say, Electronica being on the sound/form side.