Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up as Abstract Art Theory

Authors

  • Takayuki Ijuin

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i19.307

Keywords:

Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow-Up, abstract painting, photograph, perspective painting, theory of vision

Abstract

As is well known, Blow-Up (1966) directed by Michelangelo Antonioni is based on Julio Cortázar’s short story; “Las babas del diablo” (1959). In literary terms, it is very difficult to find similarities between both works, except in their outlines. Many critics, therefore, thought Blow-Up was Antonioni’s own film with no special connection with “Las babas del diablo”. But we should focus on the common outlines of the two. Both deal with ‘vision’. The change of seeing through a viewfinder to seeing through a photographic print gives the protagonists a daydream-like experience.

Cortázar was not only a writer but also an amateur photographer, and Antonioni a film director. If both auteurs reveal their interest in ‘vison’ in their works, we can say that Antonioni follows Cortázar regarding this theme and further develops it through his use of abstract paintings. Antonioni was concerned with differences between the vision of the naked eye and photographic vision, and with similarities between the photographic vision and abstract painting. So, what is Antonioni’s understanding of vision?

I think there is a key to resolve this question in Blow-Up itself. One can focus on not only the change of the protagonist’s behavior in following the story’s development, but also on photographs, abstract paintings, and landscape paintings that appear in the film. Then we would find the possibility that Antonioni thinks photographs and pointillist paintings are based on the same principle; the retinal mesh-like structure.

 

Article received: April 10, 2019; Article accepted: June 5, 2019; Published online: September 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper

 

Author Biography

Takayuki Ijuin

Shimane University, Matuse
Japan

Takayuki Ijuin is an Associate Professor at Shimane University in Japan. He received a master degree (master of engineering) from Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan, in 1995. His research interests include modern art, design, film theory and psychoanalysis.

References

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Benjamin, Walter. “Little History of Photography.” In Selected Writings Vol. 2, 1927–1934, trans. Michael W. Livingstone and others, edited by Michael W Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, 507–530. Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.

Brunette, Peter. The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511624346

da Vinci, Leonardo. Notebooks, edited with an introduction and notes by Thereza Wells. New York: Oxford University Press, 1952, 2008.

Grossvogel, David I. “Blow-Up: The Forms of an Esthetic Itinerary.” Diacritics 11, 3 (Fall 1972): 49–54. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/464602

Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as Symbolic Form, translated by Christopher S. Wood. New York: Zoon Books, 1997.

Park, David. The Fire within the Eye. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Snowden, Robert, Peter Thompson and Tom Troscianko. Basic Vision. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i19.307 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i19.307

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Published

15.09.2019

How to Cite

Ijuin, T. (2019). Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up as Abstract Art Theory. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (19), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i19.307