Pate is an artist. He has standards and he can't work if his creativity is stifled. I mean, you can see here that he was worried about working with scientists at first, just like some of you anthro people are probably worried about working with the compsci people - nah, we're all friends here. ;-)But working with the archaeologists was a success! They told Pate: Hey, that's just how I imagined it.
However, this brings up an issue that cannot be separated from art: There are various ways in which art can be interpreted.
Keep this in mind as we go through some of Pate's work...
Okay, if you look at these quotes...I don't know, looks like Pate is calling most of us historically illiterate. Well yeah, it's true.Pate set out to try and fix that. Many of the paintings he worked on were used in brochures, textbooks, and on posters.
Of course, it's tough to get people to want to educate themselves, especially with the video games and the reality TV, etc, etc.
So, Pate had to figure out how to catch people's attention. And this desire, in addition to his standards as an artist, contributed to his paintings.
Unfortunately, he leaves the job of explaining the image to the writer, which...isn't so good from an accuracy standpoint. Remember - there are various ways in which art can be interpreted; if Pate leaves it up to someone else to explain his scenes, then what do we get if we look at his pictures without the text?
We might get an interpretation that isn't correct...
In general, Pate's creative process consisted of thinking about the time and place that he wanted to portray and imagining himself in the scene, living among its inhabitants. So here's something else to keep in mind: Pate's work is from his "general public" P.O.V. Are there subconscious stereotypes at work?
Okay, let's look at some of his paintings.
This painting showed up on a poster, so it had to attract people's attention.This is where Pate's role as a commercial illustrator AND member of the general public comes into play.
He knows artistic methods of attracting an audience's attention, both because he can say "what would attract me?" and also based on his previous experience with ads.
So how did he make this painting (and others) attractive? What draws us in?
We've got an exciting atmosphere going on here. The picture is dynamic and engaging. A lot of activities are going on at once. We've got some smoke blowing in the wind. You can just feel the wind and smell the fire radiating out from the image, right?
Also, we have characters looking into the eyes of the viewer, which might be creepy, but it does work. In fact, this is always what I see first. In his book, Pate says that he wanted this lady's look to say: "Don't you have anything better to do?"
But again, we run into the issue of artistic interpretation. Is this what you think she's saying?
Likewise, maybe some other methods are at work here. I can't help but try and relate my experiences to this image; that's how we process images, right? We can't help it. So, I mean. You've got you're shirtless women. Butts sticking out over here. Poor Pate probably didn't want his paintings viewed like that, but it's going to happen.
For these paintings, like the other one, there's definitely a sense of dynamic atmosphere that draws you in. Diagonal lines creating motion might make this image catch our eye. This guy cheering; even though he's not looking directly out of the painting, I feel like he's almost looking back at me, expecting me to cheer with him. See? Pate was a clever advertiser.
Beautiful colors in this one. More diagonal lines too. Hey look! A cat in the window! Again, we're given a lot of different stuff to look at so our little ADD minds can be appeased.
This one...okay, kind of boring. But at least he stuck some people in there doing stuff, which is better than just looking at some structure all on its own. Interior designers and architects use this same line of thought when trying to sell their ideas: they put people in their scenes, interacting with their environment. It's a method of attracting people's attention because it makes an image more relatable: we’re all people too.
Check this out. Oh man, I mean...talk about action-packed. You got people shooting...looks like they were cooking down there. People running for their lives. I thought this guy's head had fallen into his lap at first, haha. And this guy with his face all up in the frame sounding the alarm. I don't know about you, but this grabs my attention right off the bat.
Same idea here. KABOOM! And this guy is all, "Oh my god that's loud!" This kind of looks like a whip, even though it probably isn't. I think I let Pate down again with my inaccurate interpretation, but again...it's going to happen.
Another one of Pate's tricks for drawing in viewers involves making his paintings as relatable to modern society as possible. For this one, it's hard not to see the connections between a scene like this and, oh say...sitting around a campfire at Summer Camp, telling ghost stories. Except for the spear part, anyway. The point is the image contains some degree of "relatability" for contemporary Americans.
Here, you've got another character looking into the invisible camera. Dog here, action going on here, here, and here. Atmosphere... Bright colors. It draws you in.
Beautiful colors here. Atmosphere. Cardinal, chicken. After the main action grabs your attention, tiny details like this are what keep it.
Atmosphere...people interacting with their environment.
Again, very action-packed. Bright colors. And the facial expressions attract us too. I mean, if the horse looks that scared, it must be a pretty intense battle.
Intense expression, looking right into the viewer's eyes. That's the one that always gets me.To conclude:
By using his knowledge of what attracts the general public and by implementing this knowledge using a medium of high-standard artistic realism, Pate was able to make attractive "ads" for learning about the past.
I think they work pretty well. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment