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Introduction
Masterworks attract patrons and customers and the result is often a group of replicas of the original artwork by the artist himself or his workshop. Famous examples among the Old Masters are Cranach's 'Venus and Cupido the honey-thief', Titian's 'Venus and Adonis' or 'The judgement of Paris' by Rubens. But masterworks fascinate also other contemporary or later artists, who found inspiration for copies or imitations, often with the help of engravings of the original, disseminated on a large scale.
This process is carried on more than ever through new techniques. The multiple colourful silk screens of the Botticelli Venus by Andy Warhol are just one example. Recently the Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano conceived digitally a series of 'modern' Venuses using 12 well-known classic paintings. The purpose of this post:
1° to apply a 'mapping' of the relationships or connections among the original artwork, its precursors - if any, its replicas and its many 'successors' by contemporary or later artists;
2° to introduce the concept of weighing masterworks, using the mapping visualization.
An example is presented of three masterworks by Jean Antoine WATTEAU (1684 Valenciennes-1721 Paris), who is generally accepted as the forerunner of the impressionist style.
1° Mapping of relationships
The relationship or connection between artworks, as briefly pointed out above, can be visualized with a mapping tool (1).
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VUE (Visual Understanding Environment), an Open Source project based at Tufts University (USA), offers such a mapping tool for free(presently v3.1.2 released: March 8, 2012) which supports the construction of interactive presentations with interesting functionalities.
It brings a graphical presentation of a 'graph' composed of 'nodes' and 'links' (2).
In our application each 'node' is an artwork and each 'link' is the connection which exists between two artworks. Hence, we call it a
'Connectivity Map' (3).
As shown in the figure (click to enlarge), different nodes can have different styles and colours, reflecting the type of artwork (e.g. drawing, painting, print...) and their relationship: masterworks or predecessors or successors. Since each node has a content (selected details about the artwork, its creator, its owner, etc.) the map brings together in one 'figure' what otherwise would need a lengthy description (4).
An essential feature of the map is the presentation ofa
The history of the three masterworks (called the Paris-, the Berlin- and the Dresden-masterworks) and their many successors, included or not included in the map, are succinctly described on my website's page:
Notes
(1) Mapping usually refers to map-making or cartography. It implies preliminary 'surveying' and determination of the scale/level of detail and content of maps, entry criteria and symbol specification, layout, design, etc. The term is used in many disciplines, such as biology and neuroscience, mathematics, computing, logic, linguistics, psychology, operations research, robotics. Thus why not in art history, where 'surveying of artworks' is an essential activity?
An interesting project is ARTLAS, a digital atlas of arts and literature history which combines spatial, social, cultural, and esthetic questionings, with a narrative/descriptive approach, and visualization techniques, including charts and maps created with GIS technologies (Geographic Information Service).
(2) A 'graph' in graph theory consists of a finite set of ordered pairs, called links (also called edges or arcs), and entities, called nodes (or vertices). A link is said to point or go from node x to node y and the graph is then called a 'directed graph'.
(3) Since 'connection = something is related to something else', and 'connectivity = the ability of a device to connect with one or more others', - a term also used in graph theory - the map can be called a 'connectivity map'.
(4) The figure shown is only a 'snapshot' and does not offer the interactive functionalities of VUE in a presentation mode, where each node can have a high-resolution image which can be zoomed in and nodes and links can be linked to full document-files or to URLs. Keywords, tags or labels can be given to nodes and links, which then can be searched. Our WATTEAU'sConnectivity Map is a featured map in the Gallery of VUE.
(5) About the quantitative approach in art history, see my updated webpage 'Who's afraid of the quantitative approach' where you can download a pdf '"L’ Art et la Mesure - Histoire de l’ art et méthodes quantitatives" by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Editions Rue d’Ulm, Paris, 2010. A more recent article by the same author is entitled: 'Chiffres et cartes. Enjeux d’une « histoire totale » de l’art'.
In our application each 'node' is an artwork and each 'link' is the connection which exists between two artworks. Hence, we call it a
'Connectivity Map' (3).
 |
| Connectivity Map of three masterworks by WATTEAU |
As shown in the figure (click to enlarge), different nodes can have different styles and colours, reflecting the type of artwork (e.g. drawing, painting, print...) and their relationship: masterworks or predecessors or successors. Since each node has a content (selected details about the artwork, its creator, its owner, etc.) the map brings together in one 'figure' what otherwise would need a lengthy description (4).
An essential feature of the map is the presentation ofa
time-line: the horizontal axis.
The artworks in the map are positioned along this axis at a distance from the corresponding masterwork according to their known or estimated date of creation. For practical reasons, however, this time-axis is not scaled in years.The history of the three masterworks (called the Paris-, the Berlin- and the Dresden-masterworks) and their many successors, included or not included in the map, are succinctly described on my website's page:
WATTEAU's Embarquement pour Cythère
Only those successors are shown on the map for which a minimum of information is available, i.e. dimensions, ownership and available image in order to relate the work to one of the masterworks. Hence, the map is tentative and may be adjusted whenever more information is available.2° Weighing masterworks
In line with my quantitative approach to art history (5) I propose the concept of weighing masterworks, by using the time-line in the connectivity map: the links are labelled (weighted) according to the time-distance between the nodes. The farther away, the more lasting the inspiration of the masterwork. Given the often approximate dates of creation, time-distance can be labelled as the number of periods of fifty years between the creation of the masterwork and its successor.
The sum of the labels or total 'weight' is a measure, not only for the number of times the masterwork could inspire successors, but also for its enduring inspiration.
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Applying this rule to the successor-artworks shown in the Connectivity Map, the Paris-masterwork would then have a 'weight' of 19, the Berlin-masterwork a value of 15 and the Dresden-masterwork a value of 6. The web-page lists many more successor-artworks, but with very limited information and therefore not withhold in the table.
It would be possible for art historians to differentiate furthermore the type of nodes of successor-artworks (paintings, prints, etc.) and to define a more complex definition of the 'weight', considering for instance the degree of similarity between the masterwork and the copy or imitation.
The sum of the labels or total 'weight' is a measure, not only for the number of times the masterwork could inspire successors, but also for its enduring inspiration.
It would be possible for art historians to differentiate furthermore the type of nodes of successor-artworks (paintings, prints, etc.) and to define a more complex definition of the 'weight', considering for instance the degree of similarity between the masterwork and the copy or imitation.
Notes
(1) Mapping usually refers to map-making or cartography. It implies preliminary 'surveying' and determination of the scale/level of detail and content of maps, entry criteria and symbol specification, layout, design, etc. The term is used in many disciplines, such as biology and neuroscience, mathematics, computing, logic, linguistics, psychology, operations research, robotics. Thus why not in art history, where 'surveying of artworks' is an essential activity?
An interesting project is ARTLAS, a digital atlas of arts and literature history which combines spatial, social, cultural, and esthetic questionings, with a narrative/descriptive approach, and visualization techniques, including charts and maps created with GIS technologies (Geographic Information Service).
(2) A 'graph' in graph theory consists of a finite set of ordered pairs, called links (also called edges or arcs), and entities, called nodes (or vertices). A link is said to point or go from node x to node y and the graph is then called a 'directed graph'.
(3) Since 'connection = something is related to something else', and 'connectivity = the ability of a device to connect with one or more others', - a term also used in graph theory - the map can be called a 'connectivity map'.
(4) The figure shown is only a 'snapshot' and does not offer the interactive functionalities of VUE in a presentation mode, where each node can have a high-resolution image which can be zoomed in and nodes and links can be linked to full document-files or to URLs. Keywords, tags or labels can be given to nodes and links, which then can be searched. Our WATTEAU'sConnectivity Map is a featured map in the Gallery of VUE.
(5) About the quantitative approach in art history, see my updated webpage 'Who's afraid of the quantitative approach' where you can download a pdf '"L’ Art et la Mesure - Histoire de l’ art et méthodes quantitatives" by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Editions Rue d’Ulm, Paris, 2010. A more recent article by the same author is entitled: 'Chiffres et cartes. Enjeux d’une « histoire totale » de l’art'.
You may also like my other posts. Try the new 'dynamic view 2012'. Pull down the menu of the left button in the header and you may choose one of several options of reading styles: * Classic * Flipcard * Magazine * Mosaic * Sidebar * Snapshot * Timeslide