The Cognitive Style and Art of Cinema

During my first year at Krea, we did a five-shot exercise that stimulated my interest in the art and

cognitive style of Cinema and Video making under specific terms and conditions. Usually, a

cinema or a video of 30 seconds can convey a lot of visual information, connect our life, and

reflect our perceptions. Through visualization, our senses stimulate and help us imagine the new

world of art. Precisely, Baxandall, in this essay, explores art criticism. He enquires that

descriptive words can't sufficiently describe a work of art's "Visual Attraction." The art critic's

sole hope of properly transmitting the attraction of an art piece is demonstrative, causal words,

words unrelated to visuals. Connecting Baxandall's perception to Cinema, it is also a visual art

where no words can be explained and replaced. Coming to a muted video, it encourages people

to make beautiful hypotheses and various perceptions while watching it. On the other hand,

adding audio brings more attention to us. It gets more attraction to the visual art of Cinema as

Baxandall's views on the power of words appear to align with those of established language

theorists. When attempting to use one to explain the other, he is accurate in pointing out that the

divide between word and image becomes brutally clear. Likewise, writing can't replace or not

equal the video and audio art of visualization. The Cinema stimulates all our senses and activates

our perceptions and imaginations in the world's art.

As Shashvat Singh pointed out, the video and Cinema conveyed exciting points like the

first Cinema was just 12 seconds which is the movement of trains and people running away

while watching the scene in the theaters (https://youtu.be/MjufyLPKsEw). "The Countryman and

the Cinematograph," a silent film released in 1901, depicts a bumpkin responding irrationally to

a series of short films. The narrative of naive early cinema audiences mistaking moving visuals

for reality is a salve for the souls of self-conscious media consumers in succeeding decades up
until now. There's even a scene where he flees from the vision of a train approaching. During

those times, the quality may be black and white, but it reflected people's perception as accurate.

It's hard to imagine a period when producing a video was simple, inexpensive, and accessible.

With contemporary smartphone technology, we can generate a high-quality movie virtually

instantaneously. For many years, the most exciting motion films of the past were our parents' and

grandparents' stories, and subsequently, crackling sounds scraped off an extensive vinyl record

and projected to our ears from a wooden box. That's some very rudimentary stuff. The story of

the crowd panic and the train movie may be apocryphal. Still, with developments in 3D

technology bringing movies to life like never before, it won't be long before this legend is

resurrected. Here, I want to get the Baxandall reading, where he talks about the "Language and

Explanation" in the introduction. Even the most scientific description of an image, according to

Baxandall, contains cause words such as assured handling, according to Baxandall that connect

narratives with interest in the explanation of what one sees. Suppose the Baptism of Christ has a

"solid design," they are implying that there is a reason behind the image that this painting is the

way it is because it was designed firmly. The idea that descriptions of pictures are once divorced

from the natural objects of description and Baxandall conveys that one does not describe images

but our thoughts of having seen pictures.

When I was in 9th Grade, I watched a 30 seconds Cinema, "Life in Thirty seconds,"

which depicts the meaning of life through the video (https://youtu.be/sCXiNJTmX0w). It didn't

have any voice acting; only it had some background music and a one-frame video with only the

legs and hands of a Human with a forest and Mango. After watching the video, it made a lot of

sense and reflected my thoughts and hypotheses in my brain. This short film made me remember

my first-year Creative expressions five-shot exercise. I don't say that everyone has the same
perception and ideas in their thoughts while streaming the short film. As Baxandall said, connect

descriptions with interest in explaining what one sees is different from others. Here, the

visualization and perception are different from one to another. But what exactly does this

procedure entail? And what does this mean for our understanding of the visual art intentions?

According to Baxandall's reading, he introduces a "basic and simple theoretical posture" in

Chapter 1: the triangle of re-enactment (fig.1), which allows him to propose an intention in the

work of art, or the Artist as an intentional agent one whose volitions are caught in our

descriptions (p.34). To "re-enact" a piece of art's causes, one must first describe it and put words

to its aspects. After then, one "moves about" on the triangle, "a reduced reconstruction of the

maker's contemplation and reason applied to a job by an individual selection from collective

resources" (p.34). Here he explains the perception and people's intentions while experiencing the

art (Cinema) and the Artist conveys (Director of Cinema). So, my argument is significant

because it reminds me of Baxandall's efforts in the readings, which are primarily focused on the

historical explanation of Individual pictures or visualization rather than a succession of images or

visual art which posed as belonging to an individual's long- term pattern of creative activity.

Likewise, the art of visualization also considers the video and Cinema, which depict the same

values, explanations, and efforts through the movement and audio due to the development of

technology in the contemporary world.

I believe that Baxandall contributed to the experience of the picture (Cinema) as an object

or the movement of visual perception. Also, it stays parsimonious and entertains the people.

Baxandall's view that artistic works merit attention of the inferential critic only if they are

perceptually and visually attractive limits this idea of parsimony. This presumption is never

challenged, even though the work is methodologically self-aware in other respects. Finally, I
would like to conclude that The Cinema or video has a cognitive style that emerged from the

painting's values and efforts. It reflects people's perceptions, thoughts, and hypotheses which are

different for each individual. The Cinema of either 12 seconds or 30 seconds makes people

imagine many things and have various intentions about the Artist (Director) and Art (Cinema). In

my rephrasing and slightly shifting of the emphasis on this point, Baxandall's failure to take into

account the different kinds of inferential criticism suggests he favors one kind of right parsimony

in art criticism over another when there is a need to study the patterns of artistic intention that a

spectrum of possibly conflicting critical models can or should recognize.

Work Cited

1. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iRqANVSTd_HmcHt9uQHL8r05kk_6kRpl/view?ts=624

e91ed

2. https://youtu.be/MjufyLPKsEw

3. https://youtu.be/sCXiNJTmX0w
4. "Obituary: Michael Baxandall." The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 Aug.

2008, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/aug/26/historyandhistoryofart.

5. 202205050712_W7C2_Baxandall.pptx

6. Baxandall, Michael. "Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the

Social History of Pictorial Style." Amazon, Oxford University Press, 2011,

https://www.amazon.com/Painting-Experience-Fifteenth-Century-Italy-Paperbacks/dp/01

9282144X.