Week 8: Blank Expression

When looking at Blank Expression i decided to go back over David Bate's chapter, Looking at Portraits. He dedicates a section of his work to the blank expression. Bates discusses that the blank expression involves a 'balanced but uneven composition' by combing the elements of 'background and figure, dress, pose and facial expression'. Bates refers to the famous painting Mona Lisa and argues that her blank expression leaves 'the key features of the face indistinct'. The audience are left deciding the expression of the subject from their own point of view, 'depending on the mood we project when looking at her face'.

Bates suggest that using blank expression draws the spectators into 'an intimacy that ironically is caused by what we want to see, the portraiture reflects the viewers desire in looking'. I found this particularly interesting as blank expression allows the audience to reflect their own feelings into an images, while interpreting the image in a specific way it is actually 'we who have produced the signified meaning and effect'.

When looking back on John Clang's work who disregards the facial features completely, the audience are able to easily project their own emotional impression onto the portrait. While John Clang interprets his images to family and losing touch, i was able to interpret the images through a sense of lost and confusion. The images lured in a sense of vulnerability from me because i felt strangely attached to the image even though I could not see the subjects face.

Bates further states that blank expression increases the 'ambiguity of meaning' so that the audience can interpret different meanings of the image through their imagination. This can be shows through simple or largely detailed images in which the smallest part of this image could interpret a specific meaning- 'the spectator is left in a space where every gesture or mark within the portrait image is a threat or promise of meaning'.

Bates final paragraph was really penultimate as he states that 'the meanings of the image are always corrupted by these processes of spectatorship, such that the viewer invests their meaning based on their relation with the signifying elements of the extant portrait'. Bates could be implying that the audience strive to find the meaning of a blank expression which essentially can play a part in corrupting the image as a whole.

I think i will try and ask my models to keep a blank expression to try and allow the audience to interpret the images for themselves, hopefully their moods will create an emotional impression as they will reflect on their ties to their own digital self.