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Joined: 14 Aug 2008 Posts: 1786 Location: The fine land

(remember that this is coming from a guy who has read Understanding Comics, Making Comics AND Comics and Sequential Art for fun)

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 8:13 pm

A Bear wrote:

- No, there is totally a deliberate sequence in mind when the dude puts the caption next to the painting (or the photograph, or under the picture in the magazine). If he expects the caption to be read at all, he expects the reader to look at it after they see the picture. You may think me a bit hasty in saying so, but so be it: I will never compromise on this point, ever.

I was thinking about this a little more and it's fine if you don't want to compromise but then you're just choosing to be wrong. Having a sequence in mind is not the same as creating a sequence deliberately. Yes, the curator expects a certain sequence, but does especially care if that sequence is broken.

Here is a picture I grabbed from the first page of Google image search results for "art gallery."

Look at the positioning of the cards. Some are below their corresponding paintings and some are to the right, just as you might expect in a culture that reads left to right and top to bottom — they are in the "after" position. But half of them are on the left of their paintings, and while none are actually above them, a few are aligned with the top of their paintings' frames on the left. It's almost as if the curator has placed them haphazardly, according to whim and aesthetics without any thought to the idea that one might accidentally see the painting's punchline before the painting itself.

The curator doesn't care about sequence. He expects a sequence only because the purpose of the card is to answer questions that will naturally arrive from viewing a painting, such as who painted this?, what's the medium?, or in what year was it painted? Usually you don't have questions like that before you've looked at the painting, but sometimes you do. If you're at a gallery of, say, quaint landscapes by famous painters, you might be curious which famous painter you've arrived at before you really look at a painting. The point is, order does not matter to the curator and he is definitely not deliberately creating a sequence.

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 9:21 pm

I don't mean to be rude or anything but I am pretty sure that you are the one who is wrong. I am obligated to think this because of my previous statement re: never compromising.

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 9:22 pm

NOT EVEN IN THE FACE OF ARMAGEDDON.

Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 46

To play the Bear's advocate, maybe the curator intends some of those cards to be looked at before the painting. Probably not in that exhibit, but in a bigtime exhibit, I could see it.

Joined: 03 May 2009 Posts: 11 Location: Sydney, Australia

A Bear wrote:

NOT EVEN IN THE FACE OF ARMAGEDDON.

Isn't armageddon coming in 2012? I guess we'll find out the answer in 3 years.