viz.

Because I seem to be the first non-UT/DWRL blogger on viz., I’ll introduce myself.   I’m Anne Bobroff-Hajal. I'm an artist interested in something rather hard to find: fine art that incorporates clearly-graspable rhetoric.   Art that attempts to integrate the left brain with the right.

Detail of Home Security at Any Crazy Price

So my entries on this blog will be a treasure hunt, searching for artists who have a double goal: to communicate something rational or scientific about the real world in a way that also powerfully moves and/or delights us.   There aren’t many such artists.  John Jones accurately observed  that visual argument tends, “contrary to Aristotle’s advice, [to] foreground the use of pathos and ethos rather than logos.”  I’m searching for those very rare artists from whom I – and maybe others – can learn techniques to balance logos, pathos, and ethos.

I’ll look for lessons we can learn about how to convey sophisticated, logical ideas on any subject: society, science, current events, history, the environment, whatever.  I’m not looking for propaganda, though, except in cases where its artistic content is very high.

Much “political” art today is actually at the other extreme from propaganda.  It may be beautiful to look at, but its rhetorical content can’t be discerned without reading a lengthy accompanying artist’s statement.   I’d like to find visual art that falls between those extremes: art that makes its rhetoric evident via visual means that are also beautiful, or wondrous, or touch us deeply. 

I won’t debate the points of view the artists portray, but rather look for the lessons we can learn from each about how to make an argument visually.  I celebrate the skills of artists who move their audience to debate.

Readers’ own finds would be most welcome additions to this treasure hunt.  Please post them in the comments section.

By the way, my interest in this search began after I began Playground of the Autocrats, a series of mixed media triptychs that convey my theories about Russian history (which I consider relevant to our lives today), developed during my Ph. D. studies in Russian history at the University of Michigan.  I wasn’t sure for a while whether Playground of the Autocrats could be considered art.  So I hoped to find other artists who had successfully achieved what I was attempting.