next page resourcehome © Lloyd Godman

Perceptive Vision - Developing a Personal Style

Rhetoric:

In working on a project that you hope to exhibit in one form or another, it can be useful to understand the key aspects of rhetoric in image making.

Simply this refers to audience and intention.

At some point, you might have read an article in an art magazine and wondered why its is so dense and difficult to understand - You might believe that the audience is the general art public and the intention of the author is to communicate about the work of the artist. However when we look at the text from a critical rhetorical position - we might come to the conclusion that the audience is much narrower and is expected to know something of contemporary art theory and the context the artist is working in. - You might even come to the conclusion that the audience is actually a small group of peers and the intention is to impress them with some for of intellectual gymnastics.

 

So when we apply Rhetoric to our image making - As a creator it assumes that you have a specific audience in mind and that you have an intention with that audience. The idea that the audience is the general public – everyone – might assume accessibility but it is also naive. For instance, a specific exhibition venue carries its own weight. A public art gallery holds a different status than a dealer gallery, a national gallery a different status than a regional gallery etc. Some dealer galleries afford more respect than others.

 

If you are creating images of a threatened wilderness area – you see the audience as people who are undecided on their position on the issue and your intention is to sway then in favour of protecting the area you would approach the project in a different manner than if you are simply recording the area before it disappears.