On The Study Of Literature Imaging

There are a myriad of literature motifs in the paintings and sculptures of Chinese and Western art history."Literature Imaging",also called "visualization of literature",is a theoretical generalization of the process from "letter" to "image".Inasmuch as literature is the art of language,the nature of the visualization of literature is the visualization of word image and the core of the study of the visualization of literature is the one-way transformation from word image to picture.In the light of the study of the basic theory of semiotics,the origin of the visualization of literature is the connoting image in language symbol.Vision is the origin of language.The original function of language is to name(or to explain)the visual images in the eyes of human beings.The latter come into psychology as vision,hence the "signifier" of language symbol.Word image is one form of language symbol,namely,because of the existence of image,voice becomes symbols and is used as the tool of human communication.The vision artists create paintings and sculptures on the basis of word image,the process of which is an imitation of personal visual image.Developing into a certain phrase,language is not only a collection of names,but also can interpret intangible concepts,i.e.the enigma of language.Although these words have nothing to do with human vision,they can still be transformed into images.Thus the abstract concepts develop an empirical relation with images,which become symbols by denoting both objects and ideas."Image and symbol connoted in word" shows that image can only denote ideas by the media of language.In this sense,the visualization of image means that visual artists interpret language by images.It mainly contains two ways:imitation interpretation and translation interpretation.The former is about what the writers write and what the painters paint.The literature motifs of art images are often dominated by nominal word images.The transformation from word image to artistic image is one period from objects to artistic images.The extension is the origin of two-dimensional vision,while psychological vision,i.e.word image is multi-dimensional.To replay the distinctions between objects is the general rule from language to image.If the connotation of a word image imitated by a painter is a literature image,then its counterpart in art becomes a symbol.The mechanism of the denotation is empathy,which refers to the language which the visual artists want to visualize and as an concept has nothing to do with human vision.He uses the images accordant or similar in structure to translate it,the generative mechanism of which is metaphor.Image and word and interpret each other and interconvert into each other.Space and time is the basic problem of the visualization of literature.Because background time is the abstract concept that can only perceived by human’s "inner sense",it is hard for artists to replay time concept of "night" by lines and color.Sill there are two ways to visualize the word image of time:expressed way and implied way.The former refers to that the artists use images like the sun,the moon,the rooster,the candle or the lantern to interpret the word image of time,while the latter refers to that the artists use the incidence happened in a former time point to illustrate the coming of night.It is based on the chronological principle.The two methods correspondingly refer to the two images "to offer information" and "to raise experience" classified by Reynolds.In the history of western artistic theory,people have been likely to mix the "signifier" and the "carrier of signifier".The carrier of signifier of language symbol is voice,which contains time and physical factors while refers to a space image.Therefore,language art covers time and space,so does image art.In the light of this,time-based language art can be transferred to readable image art.As for the visual perception of the observers,chronological perception runs in all aesthetic experiences,no matter they are time-based or space-based.The painter can transcribe the lineal point of language art by methods like color match and character image location arrangement.And thereby,it can be in accordance or partly in accordance with the time of events in literature motifs.The visualization of spatial collection of word images studies the general principle of the transformation from literature space to image space.Literature is the art of language;space is produced by vision;the corresponding relationship between language and vision makes space literature a true proposition.Applying perspective in the art of language,we can find the events described and the characters in the same space.Characterized by memory,literature space is an imagined space the author produced for the readers.The diversity of objects of vision results two main ways of language expression:description and narration,hence two corresponding literature space.The art of description can be classified into "painting by language" and"general description".Painting by language is an imitation of the image in our retina.The speaker leads the readers to see what he has already seen from a relatively fixed angle of view.The literature space it produced is like a visual pyramid,in which language and vision are equivalent.In the history of art,the examples of the visual arts created by this kind of art of language are few.The reason is that as a visual art by the media of language,an imagined picture with definite literature space,it is close to human’s true vision,which,as the true visual experience of the poet,might contradict with the imagined one if the painter tries to visualize it.On the contrary,what attracts the interest of most painters is the general description,which visualized a lot of works.This kind of art of language is not very close with human’s true visual experience.Despite the same space,the speaker and the objects do not constitute a visual pyramid.Because of the lack of relatively stable angle of view,the spatial relationship between "I" and the objects,the objects and the objects is not very clear.The readers can change their angle of view,which means that they can adopt any angle of view to observe the collection of word images.Since an image must have a definite space,which commit the painter to put the word image into the visual pyramid by the principle of vision,the chief task of the painter is to fix the angle of view.Normally,the angle the painter adopted might be different from the one adopted by the poet,hence the movement backward or forward lateral.Compared with literature space,the change from the first person narrator to the third person narrator will cause "inflation" and "deformation" in the image space.The second kind is the literature space constituted by narrative language.Narration means the writer replay the voice,behavior and expression of some characters in a certain period of time.The narrator is the agent of the writer,who secretly observed the events and told them to the audience or readers by the writer.As the onlooker,the narrator shares the same space with the characters.As for this kind of art of language,the chief task of the painter is still the adoption of angle.The difference lies in that he has to add the background,i.e.the landscape for the characters.Normally the painters will choose the angle that can explain the meaning of the literature motif best to constitute the picture and put the characters into the definite space.There are three situations about the background choice of the painter for discussion.The first one is the deliberate ignorance of the background for some reason;the second is the secularization and actualization of the background for an immersed sense;the third one is the filling of the traditional painting resulted from the restriction of the size of the picture.Time and space is the core of the transformation between word and image,and narration is derived from it.A lot of pictures are art of narration in the history of art.The main task of artists is to transfer the art of time into the art of space.Generally,there are three ways of visualization.One is to interpret language into action,in which artists interpret characters’ mentality and gestures caused by conflicts in order to achieve the purpose of telling a story to the readers.This is the common way the artists use to interpret the works of literature narration,which does not touch upon spatial transference.What they imitate is the descriptive and non-narrative language in the narrative works,and what they replay is the result of the events.This way suits only short narrative works.The second way is to connote time by space.Artists can connote the development of the plot of literature narration by in-depth or horizontal picture space.Namely,they can use the distance relationship to represent the chronological order of the events.Some artists put the focused plot in front,while others adopt the opposite way.The deflect of this way is that what the artists paint is only a part of the narrative events and the narrative contents are limited as the result of the limitation of human’s eye sight.The third method is the elongate the picture to match the linear plots.In order to interpret a literature narration completely,artists elongate the picture by replay the main characters repeatedly and make it match the development of linear plots.This technique might come from the art of religion,which must replay the complete event with both beginning and end to spread its religious teachings.Since this picture is readable,the followers can read it as they read words with the development of the plots.The nature of picture narration is the transference from time to space,i.e.the replay of the linear plot of literature narration by the artists with the plane or space of the picture.As for the form of narration picture,the profile of the characters is an important condition for the picture to acquire narration.The linear rank of the characters can produce a stage effect for the narrative picture.It shows that the painter manipulates the narration as a director of movies---he lets the readers "see" the story.The painter adheres the "positive principle" without the necessity of a fixed angle.Therefore,he can allow the readers see the scene in a way that they can never see it in their daily life.The narrator of the picture is actually the agent of the artist in his work,who organizes language like novelists and movie editors,and makes the picture narration possible by his constant presence.In most cases,the angle of the picture narrator and the one of the language narrator not contradict each other but also prove to be unreal.Therefore,the narrator is not reliable,and the picture narration is only a virtual process,which is conducted by the narrator and participated in by the readers.